HAVIN' A GOOD TIME

Yesterday it was my birthday,

I hung one more year on the line;

I should be depressed, my yard’s a mess,

But I’m havin’ a good time.

I’m digging and weeding and planting,

I’m exhausted from gard’ning so well;

I should go to bed but a voice in my head

Says, “Oh, what the hell.”

                               with apologies to Paul Simon

            I have conducted a life-long love affair with Paul Simon’s music. His lyrics have spoken to me since the 1960s, when I knew all the words to all the songs from “Bookends,” “The Sounds of Silence,” “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme,” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” (Still do.) I convinced my teenaged self that I was the Kathy on the bus from Pittsburgh in “America,” sans cigarettes. A term paper entitled “Themes of Alienation and Loss in the Songs of Simon and Garfunkel” turned in when I was a junior in high school brought me my first important accolades as a writer: so impressed was the English teacher that she made it required reading for her senior classes.

Fortunately, I had no social life at the time anyway so repercussions were insignificant.

What angst-filled adolescent didn’t thrum in harmony with “And a rock feels no pain / and an island never cries”? Or “You read your Emily Dickinson / and I my Robert Frost, / and we note our place with bookmarkers / that measure what we’ve lost.”  And “The Boxer”!

In the clearing stands a boxer

And a fighter by his trade,

And he carries the reminders

Of every glove that laid him down

Or cut him till he cried out

In his anger and his shame,

‘I am leaving, I am leaving’

But the fighter still remains.

Only the Beatles (with “Hey, Jude’s” nah-nah-nah-nah nahnahnah-nah), could command three minutes of radio airtime with nonsense syllables the way Simon did in “The Boxer”—lie-la-lie, lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, over and over as the orchestra swelled in the background. Tears still prick my eyes when I hear it.

Mincers Pipe Shop on the Corner,
Charlottesville, Virginia

Never attended a concert given by the boys, but I did once see Art Garfunkel. He drove into town from his home near Charlottesville, Virginia, every Sunday morning to pick up his copy of the New York Times from Mincers Pipe Shop on The Corner, hard by the University’s Rotunda. Mincers was just up the street from the U Diner, where “grills-with”—fried-ice-cream-with-glazed-donut-heated-on-the-grill—could be had for a dollar or so all day. On my way home from a post-Saturday-night sugar fix, I spotted Art (may I call you “Art”?) getting into his car, a hefty hunk of newsprint under his arm.

In later years, I wondered by what Machiavellian contortions he managed to get the New York version of the Sunday New York Times delivered on Sunday. Mere mortals had to wait until Wednesday.

*****

In one of those simple twists of fate (old, pre-Christian Dylan’s a favorite, too), I recently rediscovered knitting. I grew up in a crafty family, and don’t remember not knowing how to knit, crochet, embroider, crewel, cross-stitch, needlepoint, petit-point, macramé and sew. Never cottoned to machine sewing, because it requires, well, a machine; but I’m still pretty adept with any sort of hand-held needle. This has come in useful over the years, especially for keeping beloved jeans and overalls in service.  I’m one of probably six people left in the world who actually knows how to darn socks.

Blue penguins wearing their protective jumpers

A few weeks ago, Tim, who trolls Google News most mornings, sent me an Attention All Knitters appeal for tiny sweaters for oil-coated blue penguins, victims of the latest disaster to befall New Zealand. The coverings keep the birds from ingesting the crude oil clogging their feathers until rescue workers can dip them in Dawn. Tim thought I’d like the picture of the jumper-clad birds: to his amazement, I leapt out of my chair to rummage around in the old blanket chest where I keep memories and things I might use again. Someday.

Piglet modeling my best effort

Ah, vindication! I emerged with 30-year-old knitting needles, single-pointed, double-pointed and circular, insisting we drop everything to go to our nearest JoAnn’s Fabrics—in Wilmington—to buy 100% wool yarn. (You see, the last time I knitted anything was around the same time double-knit polyester was all the rage, so the billions of skeins of yarn I kept are all acrylic or some even-more-sinister synthetic fiber.)

After a few false starts (like about 20), the stitches came back to me, as did casting on and binding off. Had lots of practice in picking up dropped stitches, and in un-knitting to correct mistakes. Must be like riding a bike, kinetic knowledge stored in one’s cells. The tiny penguin jumpers took shape. More or less.

Checked in with the lady at Skeinz, The Natural Yarn Store in Napier, NZ—a town I remember with great fondness for superlative fish-and-chips—who said the response from all over the knitting world had been tremendous, and every oil-coated penguin had an extensive wardrobe at his/her disposal. Oh, dear. No, no, she said, send your creations on: we’re dressing stuffed-toy penguins to sell, with a hundred percent of the profits going to the Penguin Rescue Fund. (I've already ordered two, at $25US a pop, for Christmas gifts. Click on "Take Flip Home" under Featured Products on the website linked above.)

Another penguin day, another penguin dollar
on the Otago Peninsula (photo by John Burke)

Why did I care? I’ll never forget the late afternoon I stood on a windy escarpment of the Otago Peninsula, watching yellow-eyed penguins coming home from another day of making a living in the Pacific. They resembled nothing so much as city workers disgorging from trains as they trudged out of the wave-break and trundled up the shore. All that was missing were the rolled-up newspapers and the briefcases.

Will I use some of my precious time to help them in their time of need? You betcha.

****

Marvelous Allium schubertii

            Anyway, yesterday was my 58^th birthday, and I spent a chunk of it outside in the garden, personalizing lyrics to Paul Simon songs, such as the one in the epigraph. I’m trying ornamental alliums again, despite years of one-season ponies (Simon, sort of, again), excepting the chive twins, garlic and onion. A sucker for any species of onion, I ordered Allium flavum, a 1759 heirloom, yellow-flowered, mid-summer bloomer; A. carinatum pulchellum, A. flavum’s younger (1810), red-violet-flowered cousin; and the Brent and Becky’s web-exclusive A. hyacinthoides, which was a no-brainer choice for me because it’s supposed to have blue blooms. Well, duh. Splurged on another five A. schubertii, an 1896 introduction with the most bizarre of all of Allium's bizarre flowers that, despite its cold-hardiness Zone 7-9 reputation, refuses to perennialize chez Fitz. Also treated myself to five more Scilla peruviana bulbs, a scilla with a secret yen to be an allium.

Happy birthday to me!

*****

 
            Since recovering (to a large extent) from the hormone-induced miseries of adolescence and the self-induced dramas of adulthood, my love for Paul Simon’s way with words endures. Unsurprisingly, his solo opus “Still Crazy After All These Years” provides the soundtrack to my maturation.

            So I sit by the window and watch the cars,

I fear I'll do some damage one fine day;

But I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers,

Still crazy after all these years,

Still crazy, still cra-aaa-zy,

Still crazy after all these years.

You better believe it. Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                                    Kathy

PICKING PERFECT PLANTS

            Ding-dong, the winter’s fled! At least it has in southeastern North Carolina. (A friend told me it snowed on Monday in Swansea, Massachusetts. Sorry, you guys. I remember the late-April Easter Sunday my little family hiked to the top of Black Mountain near Lake George, NY, for a picnic… as the snowflakes filtered down around us. Oh, yes, I remember. And I don’t miss it in the slightest.)



Colorful annuals grab the eye



But even if it isn’t in the air where you live, you’ll know spring has sprung by the color riot at your local garden centers, home improvement palaces and big-box stores. Counting on the warmth- and color-starved masses to flood in for succor, garden center sales will be brisk as customers do their damnedest to push the season.

            I know, I know. The first warmish day you’re going to rush out and purchase primroses and pansies, petunias and pentas, no matter what I say, so let’s run through some things you should look for when buying trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals. Several conditions affect the success rate of what you bring home.

1.      Buy as locally grown as possible. Plants already acclimated to your climate have an automatic head-start over “foreigners” from elsewhere. For example, I obtain most of the bulbs I plant for clients and myself from Brent and Becky Heath in Gloucester, Virginia instead of from John Scheepers and Von Bourgondien in Michigan. All have good products, but southeastern Virginia’s climate more closely resembles mine than Michigan’s. For the same reason, I advocate patronizing your neighborhood growers and independent garden centers over the big-box stores. Yes, the smaller guy’s prices are higher, but the plants are more likely to have been grown in the same environment you plan to put them in. Besides, in these tough economic times, small local businesses need your support more than conglomerates like Lowe’s or Wal-Mart.

Andromeda (Pieris japonica)
struggles to survive on the coast,
but my local Lowe's stocks it
every year anyway

2.      Another salient point about big-box garden centers: these stores order their plants by region (i.e., the Southeast) or by state. Taking North Carolina (of course) as an example: light, sandy, nutrient-deficient alkaline coastal soils are nothing at all like the heavy, acidic, nutrient-dense clay of the Piedmont and mountains. So what? So there is a marked difference in how a plant originating in Yadkinville in the foothills of the Blue Ridge performs in sultry Charlotte, mountainous Murphy and coastal Calabash. But Lowe’s stores carry the same plants in all three areas. Caveat emptor, y’all.

3.      Bargain-priced plants are often not bargains at all unless your green thumb is legendary. While there is nothing wrong with nursing neglected, ailing specimens back to health—indeed, it’s a commendable activity—my personal feeling is that life is too short to start out with ugly, albeit inexpensive, plants. (I also harbor a similar unreasoning prejudice against thrift and consignment stores. The thought of wearing someone else’s discarded shoes literally turns my stomach. This condition probably stems from years of ill-fitting hand-me-downs worn when new by my tall, athletically built older sister. I am not now, nor have I ever been, tall or athletically built.)



Pot-bound plants have a harder time
establishing than properly rooted ones



4.      Try not to be insulted by this statement of the obvious, but don’t buy sick plants. Check the roots as well as the top-growth; avoid both underdeveloped (most of the substrate stays in the pot when you pull out the plant) or overdeveloped (huge mats of root material hanging out the bottom) root systems. Roots should be light-colored and fill the pot comfortably, without bulges or cracks. It’s okay if some roots trail out, but you should be able to get the plant out of the pot without resorting to a hacksaw. Pot-bound plants take longer to establish in the landscape, and hardly rooted specimens may never establish at all. At best, you’ll have paid a three-gallon price for a one-gallon bush.

5.      Avoid plants that have known histories of disease or pest problems in your area. Kwansan cherries (Prunus serrulata ‘Kwansan’) are often prone to borers and fatal bacterial blights in my environs; red-leafed plums (Prunus cerasifera) also suffer lingering malaises, just never doing well. (Might be the salt, as they thrive inland). Talk to your neighbors and independent garden-center staffs to find out if there’s something you need to know about a particular specimen. The kicker here is this: every plant is an individual, and microclimates abound. My favorite example of horticultural “Confound the Expert” is brought to us by the Official State Tree of the Great State of North Carolina, the flowering dogwood (Cornus florida). In general, they don’t do all that well on the coast. They prefer acidic soils: ours aren’t. Personally, I vote for the deleterious effects of salt in the soil and air. However, beautiful specimens—though unusual—can be found. Fill dirt? Microclimate? Spite? Who knows?



These creeping phlox (Phlox subulata)
are not only bloomed-out,
their foliage is lanky



6.      When shopping for trees and shrubs, look for foliage with good color and minimal to no damage. Check for spots, brown leaf edges and bare branches. Often these conditions are caused by cold, transient pests or drying winds and the plant will probably make a full recovery, but why take the chance unless you have to? If you’re in the market for a deciduous plant during the dormant season, make sure the buds on the branches appear plump. Size at purchase is a matter of personal preference and budget. The good (cheap) news is that many trees establish faster when planted at smaller sizes; they catch up with larger specimens within a few years. As for shrubs, be aware that nurseries often dose their out-going stock with Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate), which makes the plant preternaturally green and lush… while it’s in its pot. This is particularly true of Mother’s Day favorites like roses, gardenias, hydrangeas and azaleas. I’m just saying.



Bloomed-out  snapdragons
(Antirrhinum majus)



7.      When in the market for perennials, remember stocky is always better than lanky. And believe it or not, plants that have overwintered in their containers have the most to recommend them. Quicker to establish once in the ground, two-year-olds frequently bloom earlier than their younger cousins. Beware of specimens with scanty, pale foliage and/or blooming far ahead of season: these plants have probably been forced into flower in greenhouses and may find the outside world difficult to adjust to. Keep in mind the old garden-center saw, “Buy plants, not flowers.” Avoid bloomed-out specimens, even though they’re the ones that grab your eye. Look instead for buds to outnumber blooms—that way, the big display will take place in your garden, not in the store. Check for light-colored roots and substrates with a nice, earthy smell—reject any plants with mushy root fibers or bad odors, as these probably have some malady or other.



Un-bloomed-out snapdragons
(Antirrhinum majus)



8.       The same principles apply to choosing annuals. You want good foliage color and sturdy plants, more buds than flowers, strong but not pot-bound root systems. (Bodacious in-store blooming is not as bad a thing as it is with perennials. Motivated by the biological imperative to reproduce, annuals bloom their little hearts out all season anyway. Which is why we love them.) Be sure you keep a weather eye on tender specimens until all danger of frost has passed, or you may find yourself starting over again.

So there it is, guidelines for picking perfect plants. Happy hunting!

And thanks for dropping by.

                                                            Kathy

THINKING AHEAD

                    The editor of Carolina Gardener magazine, like all periodical editors, lives in multiple time dimensions. I sent her copy for an April-issue article a week after Christmas, and for a June piece the end of February. She’s editing the May issue while putting April to bed, and simultaneously compiling the calendar of articles to assign for 2012. She says her kindergartener keeps her sort of cognizant of what day it is today: they ceremoniously turn the page of the little girl’s calendar the first of every month.

           

            In my business, dates don’t matter so much. I consider myself well-grounded if I know whether today is a Tuesday or a Friday, and, if asked, frequently have to stop to think before answering. This happens often, because Tim is more date-challenged than I am. (A case in point: we got married on St. Patrick’s Day—a Thursday—in 1998: T insisted on St. Pat’s so Hallmark would remind him of our subsequent anniversaries. Reverend Ken expressed some concern, as the day fell during Lent, when big celebrations can appear unseemly. “How many people are you planning to ask?” he queried. We retired to a huddle, then announced, “Including you? Five.” Problem solved. I never subscribed to the myth of the big white wedding. Over the years, anecdotal evidence I’ve accumulated indicates that the bigger the wedding, the shorter the marriage.)



Anemone blanda,
not a summer-blooming bulb
(see note at end of post)



            Where was I? I’m sure there was a point I meant to make when I started.

            Oh, yes: thinking ahead. When it comes to the garden, this time of year is when you plan for your summer show. That show should include oodles of summer-blooming bulbs.

            Summer-blooming bulbs? you echo. That means lilies, right?

            The category includes lilies, but goes ’way beyond those lovely, fragrant, colorful deer favorites. After studying Brent and Becky’s “Summer-Flowering Bulbs Catalogue 2011,” I picked nine lesser-known and generally pest-resistant genera to bring to your attention. All have performed solidly in my cold-hardiness zone 7-8-9 garden. In alphabetical order, they are:

1.      Crinum species and hybrids. This tough Southern standard is one of those plants found blooming around abandoned homesteads. Clusters of long-lasting, lily-like blossoms in shades of pink and white on 18-24” high stems perfume the air over arching, bright green strappy foliage. All this and deer resistance too makes Crinum a gotta-have. They resent being moved, so put them where you want them the first time.



Scadoxis multiflorus,
summer-blooming bulb # 8



2.      Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora, better known in some circles as montbretia. Twelve-to-24-inch spikes of hot-colored tubular flowers with sword-like foliage add pest-resistant vertical accents to mid- to late summer gardens. I wouldn’t be without gladiolus-like (only better because they don’t need staking) beauties in my orange garden. Smoldering scarlet ‘Lucifer’ and orange-peel-orange ‘Embers’ glow in my back border during July and August.   

3.      Gladiolus species. It seems you either like glads or you don’t. You either have the space to grow them, or you don’t. You either don’t mind staking them, or you do. As a notorious non-staker, I give the usual hybrids a pass, but have tried a few of the species, like heirloom (introduced in 1896) G. callicanthus var. murielae (also known as Acidanthera). They proved an interesting experiment, producing pretty, if smallish, white-and-purple flowers the first year then nothing but foliage in subsequent seasons. Just when I had decided living without glads wasn't so awful (Tim considers them funeral flowers anyway),  I popped ten G. ‘Flevo Junior’ in as a last-ditch effort. Boy, oh, boy!  Beautiful, long-lasting spikes of dark red flowers began in mid-June and kept going for almost a month. They did require staking, but I blamed the straight-species Liatris spicata that leaned against them. Inspired by this happy circumstance, I put ten G. nanus in a client’s pink garden that bloomed just as spectacularly, no staking required. I’ve gone off going off on glads.

4.      The glorious Gloriosa superba. These finger-like tubers produce scandent (hort-speak for “lax”) stems that require support. Cultivar ‘Rothschildiana’ blooms with eye-catching yellow-and-red flowers with recurved petals starting in July. In my garden, they continue to multiply in their mostly shady spot. The straight species has orange flowers: I added a dozen or so of them to my sunny orange garden, where they twine themselves into the eleagnus hedge behind them for a special late-summer show.



Narcissus 'Katie Heath,'
not a summer-blooming bulb
(see note at end of post)



5.      Hymenocallis festalis, a.k.a. spider lily or ismene, along with hybrid ‘Advance,’ are most common in the trade. Night-blooming, white, fragrant, lily-esque flowers resemble daffodils from Bizarro World, very striking. The strappy foliage is a glossy dark green and forms impressive clumps. In Garden Bulbs for the South, Scott Ogden mentions 40 species in just 13 pages, which is pretty impressive, too. (See Good Reads, in the sidebar.)

6.      Lilium species. I love lilies. One or another is in bloom from late spring to summer, depending on species and cultivar. I’ve planted Formosas (L. formosanum), Orientals, Asiatics, Trumpets, Orienpets (all hybrids, differing in bloom times and orientation of the flower), Turk’s-caps (L. martagon), Easter (L. longiflorum), regal (L. regale), tiny-flowered, chandelier-like species L. pumilum, and tangerine-orange, long-lived L. henryi. Many have wonderful fragrance, especially the Oriental hybrids. If you can keep the deer off them, you can’t go too wrong planting lilies.

Lycoris radiata,
One of two correctly placed
summer-blooming bulb photos
in this post

7.      Lycoris radiata, sprengeri and squamigera, also called spider lily, hurricane lily and naked ladies, respectively. It took a while for Lycoris to establish in my garden, probably because I kept moving them around the first few years. Now they’ve beaten me at my own game and the red trumpets of L. radiata pop up charmingly in unexpected places all over the garden in late summer to early fall, which is fine with me. Reclusive Brunswick County plant guru Frank Galloway tells me they often take two or three seasons to settle in before blooming even if you don’t yank them out of the ground every ten minutes. Just so you’ll know, the flowers appear at their appointed time as if by magic on leafless stalks; the grass-like foliage produced in winter to early spring has disappeared long since. While I’ve never planted that pink-flowering Southern standard L. squamigera, Frank gave me an L. sprengeri (a.k.a. tie-dye lily) to trial. And now I have a new favorite Lycoris.

8.      Scadoxis multiflorus, or blood lily. This one, another of those other-worldly-looking flowers I gravitate toward, you have to see to believe! Four-to-six-inch-wide spiky red spheres bloom in early summer, and are monster cool. The bright-green, lance-shaped foliage emerges after flowering finishes. The ones we planted on a client’s roadside bank have stopped traffic. Fortunately, it's not a very busy street.



Sprekelia formosissima,
the other correctly placed
summer-blooming bulb
in this post



9.      Sprekelia formosissima, the elegant Aztec lily. Really red, really big (to 5”) orchid-like flowers bloom in June atop foliage that persists all summer as a broadly bladed grassy clump after the flowers fade. A deer-resistant Mexican native.

It has occurred to me that most of the above selections bear a family resemblance to Lilium lilies, but that’s not a bad thing. Another thing they have in common is that they all need to be planted now for bloom this summer. (Lycoris maybe not until next year. For blooming, I mean, not planting.) So go to Brent and Becky’s website (link above) sooner rather than later for the best selection.

*****

Not surprisingly, Tim fixed the “Most Recent Post” problem detailed in “Taking Time.” Turns out it was a Feed-Burner problem. He just chewed over it for days until he cut the Gordian knot. Everything is as it should be now. In case you were worried.

Thanks for dropping by.

                                                             Kathy

 P.S.--A note about the pictures: apparently I'm not as assiduous as I might be about photographing the non-red summer bulbs in my yard when they're flowering, so I included three snaps of what's blooming today instead.



Tulipa sylvestris and Muscari aucheri,
not summer-blooming bulbs,
but a lovely vignette nonetheless,
photographed this afternoon in Fitzgeralds' garden