Even though the daffodils are still blooming their little hearts out I can’t help looking forward to the next thing(s) following hot on their heels. The tulips and cherry trees are just getting going, winter hazel and crabapples are on the way. I’m pretty sure that the spring display is just going to keep getting more and more spectacular. More colorful, anyway. It may be too early to tell, but at least right now my favorite tulips are a color reverse pair in the Cutting Garden — ‘Gavota’, which is red with yellow edges and its opposite, ‘Boston’. And I’m really enjoying ‘Silverstream’ in the Rose Garden. Even though we planted them in the herb garden last year (and again this year) I had forgotten that they start out a paintbox mix of flecked yellows, pinks and reds. So pretty.

And now that we have cut back, tidied, and weeded (mostly) the gardens, divided and redistributed perennials and moved some shrubs like playing musical plants, we’re ready for what comes next. Planting new things! It’s a thrill to finally see the available real estate and begin to envision where the gardens will take us this year that I can hardly wait. But our perennial plant orders haven’t arrived yet and local nurseries haven’t quite stocked up or opened doors yet.

So in the meantime we’re using our gotta-plant energy to catch up on greenhouse work and think about moving out. In fact, the sweet peas went outside last week, ready for planting in the next couple of days, weather permitting. Next out will be all of the nearly-hardy perennials and shrubs like rosemary, phormium (some are out already and didn’t mind the touch of frost the other night), farfugium, camellias, and various and sundry salvias like S. guaranitica and S. leucantha. We’re really on a roll now even though we have to hold our horses a little.

What’s next in your garden? Are you ready to plant new things yet or are you still tidying, weeding, dividing and redistributing (like I am at home)?

More changes are afoot in the potting shed than just a remodel and reorganization. We are entering the modern age finally and ordering seeds on line rather than sending them off by mail. But even though we’ve decided to embrace technology for the sake of faster gratification than waiting for checks to be issued and the mail sent both ways, I still think reading a paper catalog is easier and more fun than staring at web pages. –That said, I can understand why some plant and seed companies have gone entirely on line and I applaud them for not wasting trees, ink, and postage on me when clearly the world is moving away from those things. So for however long it takes for the rest of us to prefer the feeling of an e-reader in our paws rather than a bound book, paper catalogs will have a welcome place on my lap.

Last year I placed our first order (in my time) with Chiltern Seeds in England. I searched on line for what we wanted — certain grasses and sweet peas that weren’t available through our usual sources — and was only mildly annoyed when some of their plants were listed without pictures. After all, a google images search is only a tab away. But this year they sent us a paper catalog. At first I was overwhelmed by it because the skinny onion-skin pages hold 4000+ plant descriptions, all but 9 without pictures! But after flicking through quickly, I started reading from the beginning and found the reward: tucked here and there amongst perfectly illustrative descriptions is humor, personality, and interesting information.

I learned that Dispsacus fullonum, which I have been calling Fuller’s teasel (because that’s what its species name implies) is in fact “common teasel”. The teasel actually used by fullers to card wool is Dipsacus sativus, whose dried flower heads “are a miracle of nature” with ” hundreds of tiny, stiff, downward-turned hooks amazingly and geometrically arranged.”  The description of Eryngium planum ‘Blue Glitter’ made me nod and snort because “the writer likes this one!” and after calling the flower heads “innumerable,” he actually counted 85 on the stem on his desk. I never noticed before that Silphium lacinatum orients its leaves to the poles. (I also didn’t know it’s called compass plant, pilot weed, and polar plant.) So cool. And I loved that towards the end the writer looked like he was getting a little punchy. The description for Viola ‘Cats’ begins,

“It is no secret that the writer likes his cats: as he pens these words, there’s a white porcelain cat glowering down at him from the mantlepiece warning him against making purrfectly awful puns about purrfect faces or even suggesting having a purr of these lovely Pansies in pots outside your front door. So he won’t!”

Like turning the last page of a good book, I was a little sad to finish that catalog. But we placed a big order and have a whole season of our own opinions about those plants – mostly sweet peas and primroses – to look forward to.

Do you still read plant and seed catalogs cover to cover? Do you have a favorite?

Before Gail and I begin in earnest to plan and order for next year’s gardens I had to spend a little time looking back through the year’s pictures. I always need to jog my memory about what worked and what didn’t and remind myself what plants I fell – or stayed – in love with. The following 10 are a sort of random assortment in order of when I noticed them and had to shoot their portrait. Nearly all of these also held their own through the season, in bloom and out of it.

1. Paeonia x ‘Julia Rose’ was one of our new Itoh or intersectional peonies – crosses between herbaceous and tree peonies. They were all pretty great – with huge dessert-plate flowers and clean, gorgeous, fanned foliage for the duration.

2. Baptisia x variicolor Twilite Prairieblues(tm). This picture doesn’t do it justice. The color is slightly weirder – browner – which I love. The trademark blue pea foliage is as handsome as any false indigo out of bloom and I’m excited to see this 2 year old clump just get bigger and better.

3. Where has Campanula punctata ‘Pink Chimes’ been all my life? It’s an oldie but goodie that returned to Blithewold this year after an absence and I hope we never let go of it again. But disappearance actually seems unlikely since it spreads so beautifully we have already distributed some of its wealth from the Display Garden to the North Garden.

4. Oxalis vulcanicola ‘Duotone’. Be still my heart. True-black splotches on variegated purple hearts make this a Gothic stunner despite the sunny yellow and unbelievably persistent flowers. That clump is huge now and still blooming away in the greenhouse as happily as it would as a houseplant. Must has.

5. I’m a sucker for any flowering tobacco but I think I loved Nicotiana ‘Baby Bella’ the best this year. We grew it from seed; I took that picture at the end of June; and it kept on putting up luminous red trumpets until (a really hard) frost. It’s a short one – only about 2-3′ tall so it can be tucked in front and center.

6. I think Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace’ was on my list last year too but I’m thrilled to report that the clumps increased generously and are just as pretty as ever in bloom, and as seedheads still standing now. Maybe next year we’ll try deadheading them for a prolonged bloom…

7. My love for anise hyssop – in any form – is no secret. But I think ‘Black Adder’ is my all-time favorite because of its endless deep purple-blue spires and butterfly magnetism.

8. Salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’ was a new one for us this year and one that I expect will be a total keeper. And not just because it keeps throwing up perfect new growth for cuttings here in the greenhouse. More because those fabulous raspberry tubes opened early – in late summer rather than holding off for fall.

Lastly are two plants that I noticed when they bloomed (in early summer) but that waited until fall to knock my socks off.

9. We moved a two or three year old Indigofera kirilowii from the Rose Garden to a more prominent spot in the Display Garden so I got a better look and appreciation for its pinky-purple flowers and upright form. But I really can’t get over its fall blaze. How could I have missed that? Wowsers.

10. My love for sweetspire (Itea virginica ‘Little Henry’) has been coming on slowly for awhile – for about as long as it has taken to increase from a couple of spriggy twigs to a thicket (we bought it tiny about 8 years ago). But now I love it madly – as much (or more) for its translucent fall color as for its sweet summer dangles.

Are any of these on your top 10? What else?

I can’t imagine any other plant that embodies the abundance and exuberant excess of the holidays quite like a Schlumbergera. Blithewold’s recently gifted Thanksgiving/Christmas cactus in particular maybe — though I did hear that it was a good year for Schlumbergera all around. My two at home bloomed their little arms off too – but not like this one. It’s been going non-stop since our first Friday Sparkle right after Thanksgiving and shows no signs of quitting. And every Friday, as it stops visitors in their tracks, they’ve asked me and Gail the age-old questions of why theirs isn’t blooming/why it does some years and not others/why one plant will bloom while another doesn’t?

We all know they are day-length sensitive, needing a period of darkness to set their buds. But this does not mean they should be locked in a closet for weeks at a time. Bad idea, actually, to deprive them of daylight altogether like that. Better to give them natural nights, at least 13 hours long, unpolluted by lamplight. (I use that advice as a good excuse to go to bed at a reasonable hour.)

They also need cool nights in combination with long ones and that right there might be why some refuse to bloom. As soon as we turn the heat on in the house — unless we program the thermostat for night dips into the 50s — our modern, efficient, weather-sealed houses may be too evenly modulated to toggle the temperature trigger. Leaving plants outside at least until the forecast threatens dips into the 40s will probably give them the requisite weeks of cool, dark nights.

Although my favorite tropical plant reference book, the weighty Exotica by A. F. Graf, recommends temperatures that swing only down into the low 60s, we have used this Christmas cactus to decorate the “cold” end greenhouse where night temps dip into the 40s, and I would bet that’s partly why it has held its blooms so long. As if its been preserved in the refrigerator. By contrast, my plants at home, after the first and fast glorious bloom, dropped most of their follow-up buds. It could be they’re too warm but also maybe too wet. Although the soil shouldn’t be allowed to completely dry out, it shouldn’t stay overly moist either, especially through the winter.

The schlumbergera’s popularity among even non-gardeners belies their evident finickiness and difficulty as houseplants. If they didn’t bloom more often than not and survive for years to outgrow their holiday pedestals and mantels, they wouldn’t have become the passalong favorites that they are.

Can you count on yours to bloom for the holidays? Does it stay in bloom for ages too — or at least for the 12 days of Christmas? What’s your secret of success?

Right at the cusp of a season full of overwhelming delights, I discovered a teeny-tiny one. It’s a very small thing but for me, it was kind of huge. Ever since I found out that Aspidistra elatior, the famously boring Victorian houseplant, also known as cast-iron plant, has a flower, I’ve wanted to see it for myself. But I was never sure of the timing, and most days poor Uncle is way off my radar. It hardly ever even wants watering, for goodness sake. So just try to imagine the moment when I went to evict a pair from their pots (to use the containers in a Christmas display), and noticed the flowers! Picture me, all alone in the greenhouse, doing a little dance.

The flowers, right at soil level and mostly such a dark purple they practically match the soil, are completely incognito. Also since they open so close to the surface, the flower cups were full of bits of soil and perlite. It’s really no wonder I’ve been missing them all these years. But they’re so pretty. And while you might think that I’d leave them be and find a different pair of pots, I wanted a closer look at their full structure. (Click on pictures for a closer look yourself.)

I understand that this particular delight might not provide the same kind of thrill for anyone else but if you happen to visit the greenhouse – or for that matter wherever your travels take you throughout the holidays, I offer you the challenge of finding at least one small surprise to be delighted by. Maybe it will be these very same flowers…