The June/July selection for The Garden Bloggers’ Book Club is My Summer in a Garden by Charles Dudley Warner and this time I read the book! (Lately, since we’ve gotten into the maintenance groove, I’ve been able again to open a book and not just pass right out – hooray!)

Warner wrote this book in 1870 – about 20 years before the Van Wickles bought and built Blithewold’s first house – and if it weren’t for slightly elderly language as well as very elderly racial and political attitudes, it reads like I wish I had thought of it. And it reads like it was written by a gardener. Seems like every gardener I know has a similar sarcastic bent and a tendency to cynical optimism (hopeful pessimism?). On weeds, Warner says,

I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds. They grow as if the devil was in them … The sort of weed which I most hate (if I can be said to hate any thing which grows in my own garden) is the “pusley”, a fat, ground-clinging, spreading greasy thing and the most propagatious (it is not my fault if the word is not in the dictionary) plant I know.

Just last week I was talking to another gardener (Hey Pam!) about purslane and how we all have bumper crops of it and too bad we don’t think it’s super tasty. (She’s actually tried it; I don’t feel the need to) Warner goes on to say (in a way that makes this modern-day gardener cringe and that I won’t quote verbatim) that he saw an Asian man boil and eat it “with relish” and worried that if he worked in Warner’s garden, the man might “cultivate it at the expense of the strawberries and melons.” The humor at least is up my alley…

One passage that was non-cringe inducing was his rhapsody about a new hoe. We gardeners love our tools! (A tangent question to readers: What’s your favorite tool? Mine is my 15 year old hori-hori: The handle is polished from use, the blade is smooth as silk and sturdy, intimidating to weeds and fits perfectly in my back pocket – nevermind that my pockets have all blown-out) About his hoe, Warner says,

… I do not mind saying that it has changed my view of the desirableness and value of human life. It has in fact made life a holiday to me.

Nothing like a well designed tool to make a gardener’s day! Our vegetable garden volunteer, Dick, uses his mother’s tools and guards them from the rest of us. They just don’t make hoes and spades like they used to…

I’m not sure whether Blithwold’s Bessie (Van Wickle McKee) would have read or enjoyed the book. (Comments from the elves in the archives would be most appreciated!). Warner teases his wife mercilously (sweetly or meanly, it’s sometimes hard to tell), accuses her of stealing the credit of growing his vegetables and says in pre-votes-for-women days,

Here I sat at the table, armed with the ballot, but really powerless among my own vegetables. While we are being amused by the ballot, woman is quietly taking things into her own hands.

All in all, reading My Summer in a Garden is like a studying snapshot portrait of a nineteenth century gardener – it’s interesting for the view in the picture’s background of a different time and fun to find there’s a family resemblance.

This week, one of the Rockettes (Wednesday volunteers) said to me, “Kris, I finally read your blog … –You’re so chatty!”

I blushed and couldn’t think of a coherent reply…

To prove to any readers who might assume from my “chattiness” that “quiet” is difficult for me, here’s a post of pictures (mostly. pretty much.). Remember, inside every wallflower beats the heart of a social butterfly!

My morning walk took me through the cutting garden first: (hover your pointer finger over the pictures for names and click for a larger image)

A week or so ago I promised a picture of Phlox ‘Natural Feelings’ in bloom:

A hummingbird visited me in the Idea Beds and then lit in the bamboo where I shot its portrait. Can’t find it in the picture though…

Ketzel Levine in her blog Talking Plants says not to plant this. (It does have poisonous seeds…)

In the water garden, every step I took at the pond edge was accompanied by a sound like a dog’s chew toy as the frogs sqeaked and dove for cover.

Yesterday someone asked me, “what’s your favorite perennial?” and although I have a different favorite just about every day, I answered without even thinking about it, “Lavender!”It’s my all-time favorite perennial no matter what other daily favorites grab my attention. It’s got everything: a scent I love so deadheading is a pleasure (even if it does take an age — unless you shear, which I don’t…); it thrives on benign neglect – poor -well draining- soil, no fertilizer and little water, and it’s a honey bee magnet. In a nutshell, it’s my kinda plant! Anyone else out there care to share what’s your tried and true all-time-favorite number-one perennial? (Enquiring minds want to know!)

I was crouching on the pond bank at 8:00 this morning trying to get a frog shot (cute little guy, isn’t he? A pre-teen, I would guess, in that awkward phase between polliwog and voting age) when I became aware of a hum over my head. The Button bush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) was already full of bees!

Bees have been in the news a lot lately because of Colony Collapse Disorder and everyone has a different theory for the cause. Beekeepers in a couple dozen states and a few other countries have reported huge losses in their bee populations. Bees are susceptible to various mites and occasionally go through periods of die-off but the weird thing about the current problem is that bees have been disappearing. (Normally during a die-off, bees are found dead around the hive). Some say it’s caused by cell phones, some say pesticides, some say mites and so far no one has definitively hit the nail on the head.

I don’t know much about bees aside from what I’ve read in Robbing the Bees by Holley Bishop and what I’ve found online (click here for a to-the-point article). But I have been paying attention to one very active wild hive near the greenhouse and to me (and I freely admit to knowing absolutely nothing) – the bees look healthy! The only thing I’ve wondered about is why we haven’t seen them swarm. Normally when the hive gets too big for its britches, a new queen is crowned and the hive splits and they relocate to another castle. So far these bees are staying put.

One of the good things that has come out with the doom ‘n’ gloom news is that people are learning to be solicitious of bees and a lot of our visitors, rather than looking frightened when they hear a plant humming and see all the bee activity, look really reverent instead. There’s also been more press about planting for the bees and creating healthy habitats for them which involves a non-manicured approach to gardening. The recommendations are to plant a riot of flowers, avoid using heavy mulch, just say No to pesticides (avoid non-organic chemistry altogether), and let your garden “go” a bit. I’ve noticed too in terms of habitat, they also appreciate having a place to drink. We leave a little water in pot saucers for them but they also dip into the pond on a dry day. If you build a bee garden, they will come! And with a wild bee friendly garden, you’re likely to get other wildlife too – like hummingbirds and dragonflies… (and wasps… Sometimes, you’ve got to take the good with bad. And carry a sting kit.) Check out this video about planting a bee garden (it’s in Berkeley, CA – but full of good advice and info no matter where you garden).

Over the weekend I read this post on Garden Rant that caused a runaway train of thought about color. (Here’s hoping it doesn’t cause a wreck.)

I think we all have a special relationship with color. For some people bright colors are almost physically painful; for others, flash orange equals love. There have been studies that show that colors can affect people similarly. For example, yellow is invigorating, green calms and orange causes hunger pangs. And there are common associations like pink is for girls while blue is for boys. (Why?? Does anyone know how that one started??) And then there’s color theory: cool colors recede and warm colors advance; complementary colors vibrate in contrast while near neighbors on the color wheel blend in harmony. But there can be no universal rule for how you choose to color your world. When I moved into my house the living room ceiling was purple. That could be the pinnacle of coziness for some people but since I’m not one of them, I repainted. One gardener’s dazzling combination is another one’s toothache. Something that struck me in the Garden Rant article (by Michele Owens) was what she said about French Gardens. She said,

“Combinations of orange, blue-pink, and crimson seem to be popular. At Giverny, which I actually visited once while the tree roses were in bloom, these hot clashes are artful. In other gardens, possibly a sign of carelessness.”

To me, the only sign of carelessness in a garden is neglect.

With hundreds resources to choose from (books, magazines, public gardens, friends’ gardens), we can find a set of rules (or 10) that is particularly appealing and then once we come to the realization that our gardens are never going to be just like the coffee table book glossies (because no two gardens are ever alike), we can start breaking those rules and have a blast. Gardening is about coloring in your piece of the earth and whether you use all the shades of green in the box or pink, orange, and purple in concert; whether you stay in the lines or bust out, the important thing is that your garden pleases you most of all.

I noticed this morning while Gail and I deadheaded the North Garden for the weekend that I have a tendency to start at the same place in the garden and go counter-clockwise from there. Every time. Which is interesting (not very?) only because I noticed that the plants that I always start with look great! And the ones at the end of my circuit look, well, they look like they need to be deadheaded in a big way. It’s especially noticable with something like Kalimeris. I like to spend a few minutes with each plant knocking off a few done blooms just to keep the whole plant looking in-trim (deadheading every deadhead would be hours and a mind lost). But after I’ve bent over half a dozen Kalimeris in a garden full of a gagillion other things that need deadheading too, I’m done! (stick a fork in me) It’s early days in our maintenance rounds (it feels like we just finished planting – and then there was all that watering!) so I was reminded today that I should start mixing it up a bit! I’ve got to put the garden in a blender and begin the begin somewhere new and – go clockwise instead! (It’s a little like writing with that other hand) And that’s my advice for the weekend. Start weeding and deadheading in the corner of the garden that never sees your bright shiny face when you’re still feeling bright and shiny! And have a wonderful weekend! (Happy Birthday, Ruth!)