It may be impolitic to admit this but I haven’t been the biggest fan of spring flower shows in a long time. Back when my garden existed only as an unrequited dream in my head, I would go to the show every year as a special treat. I’d soak up the smells, the colors and endless inspiration from gardeners able to follow their passion. It didn’t even occur to me to be bothered by the oddness of plants forced out of all reasonable sequence. The shows’ magic just worked on me.

Now that my garden(s) are for real, I have to make an effort to even attend the shows. When I’m there I find myself overwhelmed imagining the amount of effort it takes the designers to set up their displays; I cringe at delphinium and foxglove blooming with the tulips and azaleas; and sadly, I lose the magic.

This year I really tried to walk into the RI Flower and Garden show with a better attitude. – And am happy to report that it worked. I thoroughly enjoyed the creativity and loveliness of the garden club competitions and horticultural entries, and rather than cringing at the forced plants in the display gardens, I enjoyed them for their odd timing. Amelachiers and fringe trees in bloom now! – Heaven. I’ve never seen nicotiana forced before. Brilliant. My favorite garden displays are always the ones that seem the most naturalistic and this time there were several winners for me in that category, which gave me renewed hope for the current trends towards native plants and gardening for the wildlife. Hope is a wonderful thing.

And then there were the lectures. When I was first going to shows I never attended the lectures and now I wonder why not? They’re the best part! Yesterday we heard Scott LaFleur from Garden in the Woods speak on native plants for pollinators. Even though that’s right up our alley these days, I took pages of notes. And I’m desperate now for a sassafras in my yard – certainly not because compounds from its roots were used to make Ecstasy (interesting fact.) but because it’s a host for butterflies I’ve never seen before. And then we heard Steve Aiken from Fine Gardening speak on low-care plants – or as he put it, plants he hasn’t killed yet. Gail and I found ourselves nodding in agreement and laughing along with every selection.

All in all it was a worthwhile adventure – although the marketplace was disappointing. We had expected to fill in some blanks in our seed orders but, alas, the seed booths were were hoping for were not there this year.

Do you usually go to spring flower shows? Why or why not?

One of the things that sets Blithewold apart from other summer cottages in Rhode Island (aside from the grounds of course) are our extensive archives. The family left a priceless treasure of decades worth of photographs, letters, playbills, menus, journals, home movies and clippings in the attic – everything was saved. Generous family members have also passed relevant information and pieces from their own archives back into Blithewold’s keeping.

For years and years a devoted corps of volunteers, under the direction of our curator, Margaret Whitehead -who herself, started as a tireless volunteer, have been cataloging, transcribing, and scanning everything – and finding new information every day. So far the rest of us have only been given glimpses into Blithewold’s past by reading Margaret’s newsletter articles and the interpretation in the house, and by begging for stories but now … drum roll please … I’m really pleased to announce that the archives will be blogged!

Andrew Brennan, an intern going for a Masters in History from Providence College, has embarked on an epic endeavor to publish (portions of) Blithewold’s archives, along with his interpretation of them, to the interwebs. All of us who are interested in the family can look forward to getting to know Marjorie Van Wickle Lyon, the letter writer, and Estelle Clements, a habitual journaler, so much better.

He is beginning his journey with a particularly timely parallel – Marjorie’s trip to Egypt in 1904 – and judging by his introduction, I can also look forward to learning much more than I ever knew about a different era… A time not-so-very-long-ago when letters were handwritten and journals were private…

The blog is still in beta form and it may move to a different address soon but for now you may read it – subscribe to it! - here.

Did anyone in your family write letters or keep journals? Were they saved and have you read them?

It doesn’t take very many days of warm weather (has it been 2? – almost a week?) for me to begin to forget how unpleasant it has been this winter. I can’t help but want to get out to stretch my legs and see if any of the plants are starting to forget about winter too. A good wander through the gardens is still pretty unappealing though – there’s just too much wet, slippery snlosh (that’s snow and slush combined) and mud everywhere else. But for the sake of reporting the season’s progress, I made the wet-footed trek.

A few buds here and there are beginning to look decidedly swollen and in the rose garden some buds against a warm wall have gone so far as to break. Other things are right on schedule – the Salix chaenomeloides ‘Mt Aso’ is beginning to glow, the witch hazels are just beginning to unfurl their quilling paper petals, the snow drops are up! and the hellebores have started to show some bud. For everything else, only time will tell.

Have you been able to get out and about to check for signs of winter’s passing? What have you seen?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Punxatawney Phil didn’t see his shadow the other day and we all know that means spring is right around the corner. (Wahoo!) Gail and I are definitely feeling winter suddenly pick up speed and are switching gears and counting the milestones.

Now that we’ve sent in the seed orders we can turn our divided attention back to the plants. (Our attention is always divided, or so it feels. Right now we’re being pulled away to meetings, seminars, trade shows, etc – all good stuff! – but what we wouldn’t give for a week of blank days…) I already mentioned in the last post that the plants in the greenhouse are starting to put on new growth – and you know me with the new growth – I’m captivated by it. For some plants – our tender perennials in particular, new growth showing means it’s high time to cut the plants back. There are a couple of reasons we do this: one is, if we didn’t the plants would be leggy and weird next season. Cutting them back also encourages a big push of new growth, which we use for cuttings and we’ll start those around the end of this month.  (We’re old school in the way we make new plants too – no tissue culture for us. I suspect in this case, most gardeners continue to do as we do too.) We’re still enjoying the flowers and seed heads on some but when it’s time, it’s time. They’ll be blooming stupendously again before we know it.

Are you wintering over any tender perennials? Which ones? Have you cut them back yet?