tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63275474379395830252024-03-13T09:03:30.738-04:00addicted to peoniesThe random musing of a girl who has never not found a place for a homeless plantAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.comBlogger100125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-66000596013646797832017-05-14T19:21:00.000-04:002017-06-11T19:23:59.125-04:00Buzzing with curiosity <div class="MsoNormal">
I need a steep learning curve, always have, always will. If
you want me to stay interested in something, you have to keep my attention,
once I know all the rules and the shortcuts and have learned all the
information, if there still isn’t learning involved, my focus starts to wander.
This has always been the way I operate. When I was a kid, I had crazes. I’d
totally immerse myself in something, and then 6 months later I’d be off that
topic and onto the next. Some people like it when the master a subject, but me,
I just get bored. It’s one of the reasons plants, gardening and the natural
world continues to hold my interest. I’m always learning something new.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just last week we had an amazing speaker at Murders who
really made me think about bugs in a new way. I’ve never been especially
freaked out by bugs; I actually think some of them are quite beautiful; but I
do find some of them quite irritating, especially when they are eating my
roses, but I’ve learned to tolerate a certain level of them, thanks to a talk I
went to a bunch of years ago given by Doug Tallamy, a <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;">Professor of Entomology</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span>within
the University of Delaware’s College of Agriculture & Natural Resources. He
made me realize that without insects, there would be nothing for birds to feed their
babies, and with that one fact changed my whole perspective on the way I
battled bugs. I gave up chemical pesticides and switched to more organic
treatments like neem oil, horticultural oil and insecticidal soap; treatments
that worked by smothering soft bodied insects, not by coating them and the
plants around them with toxic chemicals; and I started accepting more insects
in my world. The fact that I was trying to raise bees also helped point me in
this direction. I can honestly say that I was trying to create a more balanced
ecosystem.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Unfortunately I was failing. Or so Jessica Walliser helped
me figure out in the gentlest and most supportive way possible. Jessica was at
Marders talking about her newest book, Attracting Beneficial Bugs To Your
Garden, and although I invited a whole bunch of people, for some reason people
weren’t as excited about learning about creepy crawlies as I was. What a
mistake on their part. First of all the first thing that left me thunderstruck
was an observation so obvious, I can’t believe it had never occurred to me
before. Naturally, like everyone on the planet, I know ladybugs eat aphids and
so are good for the garden. Also I am super proud of the fact that I could
identify a lady bug in its larval form, but somehow, in all the years that I’ve
been gardening with “less toxic” treatments, it never occurred to me that both
ladybugs in larval form and ladybug eggs are both soft bodied and therefore
would be smothered and killed by these “less toxic” treatments. Whoops! How did
I not realize this?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had been tripped up by the thinking that something that
was organic or natural would be less dangerous. I should know better. I warn
people that although you can use copper to treat black spot on roses, it’s
still a heavy metal and as such can be toxic if used in excess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nicotine is not only addictive; it’s
also a neurotoxin, not just for insects, but also for most mammals, including
humans. This is why even though it’s a natural ingredient; it’s no longer used
as an insecticide.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The second whammy of the day was the revelatory thought that
since there was really nothing I could do to “fight” the bad bugs in my garden
that wouldn’t also hurt the good bugs, I had the switch directions entirely,
and instead of fighting insects, I had to encourage them. It sounds crazy
doesn’t it, but stay with me. Jessica’s message was simple. Nature has already
created predators for most of the bugs we’re battling, so the best thing we can
do in our garden is to try to encourage them to not just drop by, but to come over
and stay for a while. And for that we needed to know exactly what makes a
garden attractive to the sorts of insects we need more of in our lives.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These two thoughts have opened up a whole new arena of
thought for me, and two entirely new subjects I now need to learn all about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first is insects. Like I said,
insects don’t freak me out, but I wasn’t really drawn to them in the same way I
was fascinated by plants. I just used to tell people that I didn’t really know
that much about insects because I was a horticulturist, and that to find out
about the bug they had trapped in their baggie they’d need an entomologist. Now
I’m realizing that I really need to know my bugs better; that it’s not good
enough to just know what’s a beetle and what’s a fly, I need to be able to tell
a Minute Pirate Bug from an Assassin Bug and a Syrphid Fly from a Robber Fly.
And that I need to learn how to attract these bugs to not just visit my garden,
but to live and bred and reproduce their since it’s sometimes the larvae that
are the predators of the bugs I need to battle, not just the adults.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve embraced planting to attract birds; I can spew forth
the best ingredients for a hummingbird garden in a sentence or two. I know all
sorts of ways to make butterflies happier. I’ve even embraced pollinator
gardening, (this happens when you start raising bees and you’re trying to give
them as many food sources as possible. Now I need to learn a whole new set of
plant and critter interactions. I know what the deer love to eat, but what
about parasitic wasps? They like coreopsis, goldenrod, angelica, boneset and
veronicastrum; all plants I already have; but also mountain mint and yarrow,
two plants I hadn’t really been desperate to include before that are now on my
“have to have” list. The larvae of syrphid flies eat thrips. I loathe thrips.
They disfigure my dahlias every year, are wrecking havoc on my hydrangeas and
are super hard to deal with since they tend to hide in flower buds – so even if
I was still trying to kill them with an insecticide, it’s difficult to do
so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, if I add more
calamintha, oregano, dill and cilantro to the asters and angelica I already
have in abundance, I’m creating a fabulous an attractive garden for a nice
syrphid mother to make into a baby palace of her very own. And those Zizia
plants that I’ve been thinking are a nuisance; well perhaps I should encourage
those, as a whole slew of beneficials think they’re the most delicious things
on the planet (a nifty and generous early source of nectar.)</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I’ve said this is an entirely new way for me to think
about my garden, and I’m just starting to incorporate these thoughts, by
intermingling these plants into my existing beds and garden areas, but if I get
really ambitious I can create a beneficial insect garden. It’s probably going
to take me a while to get there, since I have a whole bunch of learning ahead
of me, but frankly I find the prospect of needing to study and do research on
something almost as exciting as the thought of finally making a dent in my
current thrip explosion.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paige Patterson has never seen so much vole damage so early
in the year and it’s sort of freaking her out.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-1802039940658162502017-04-20T21:32:00.000-04:002017-04-25T21:33:09.862-04:00It’s time to drag the little people outside.<div class="MsoNormal">
No, no, no, I’m not talking about leprechauns, I’m talking
about human between the ages of 2 and 17. I’m very specific about the age group
since a market research company called NPD Group recently determined that 91%
of that age group plays some sort of video game regularly. I find that
statistic amazing, and sad, mostly because I can’t imagine being that age and wanting
to inside on my computer for hours and hours and hours when I could be swimming
in the ocean, or exploring a forest, or watching bees pollinate flowers
instead.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had an interest in the natural world when very young that
was not only encouraged, it was nurtured. I found and devoured John and Mildred
Teal’s book,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Life and Death of
the Salt Marsh’, and boom, my mother hired the high school biology teacher <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Minardi, to take myself and a few
other nature minded kids through our local salt marshes for a few weekends of
exploration and in-situ learning. Oh and previously I’d had my own nature
tutor, Barbara Hale, who had taken me to the Creeks while Ossorio still owned
it, and to various other places where wild things still lived so I could get up
close and personal with the natural world. I was lucky.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, when I was a kid, there were only about 4
television stations to choose to escape in front of (even less for the years
when we lived in London) and the only other options were books and the
outdoors. Both habits, reading and interacting with nature, stuck and while
I’ve been known to lose myself in a book for the day, or deep into the night,
I’ve always got some sort of outside activity going. I’ve done it all. I’ve
collected seashells and butterflies, used potatoes to make art prints, looked
at snowflakes under a microscope, raised bees in a Plexiglas hive take lived in
the living room (my mom hooked me up with that as well, she was awesome) and
made tie dye with shredded beet juice. I’ve been a birder, a tree climber, a
gardener, a naturalist and a flower lover as long as I can remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bugs don’t freak me out, the ocean
doesn’t scare me and I like getting dirty.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
I have a bunch of these
little people in my life now, and none of them are all that excited to join me
in the outdoor world, and that freaks me out. I think (and studies suggest)
that kids are happier when they breathe fresh air, that running in the woods or
fields provides easy exercise and climbing trees improves balance. Lugging branches
and brush to build a fort makes you stronger and just making up things to keep
yourself occupied when told to “go outside and play” fosters creativity,
teaches problem solving, and gives you confidence. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
I believe that my
generation, most of whom are the parents that are raising these kids, know this
in their hearts. They too grew up like I did, without any really electronic
stimuli, and yes, of course it’s very seductive to spend hours getting down a YouTube
spiral or binge watching an entire season of a TV show in one sitting, but we
have to do better. So I’m challenging all the adults I know to find a little
person and drag him out into the fresh air.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
To help I thought I’d give
you a list of suggestions of things you could try to entice them with. I don’t
think everything will work for everybody, but it might trigger your own brain
to some of the things you did when you were a kid and you lost hours totally
engrossed in something that wasn’t a screen. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Go fishing. Build a fort.
Whether it’s in on the beach, under a bush, or up a tree, there is nothing like
making a place that is your own and where you get to tell your parents not to
enter. See how many pink rocks you can find in one day. Make art ala Adam Goldsworthy
using pine needles to sew autumn yellow leaves together. Try balancing stones
on top of each other to see how high a stack you can make. Do not use glue! Get
a microscope and check out stuff you find outside on it. Pond water, dog
salvia, snowflakes (this was super cool, but requires serious cold weather gear
and really good gloves. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Collect tadpoles, put them
in a large glass jar (we’re talking restaurant sized mayonnaise containers) or
a fish tank with a bunch of the water from the pond you found them in. Watch
them<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>transform into frogs<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the kitchen. Don’t forget to pay
attention to them everyday or they will hatch and you’ll have to gather up
hundred of tiny frogs from every corner of the room - even behind the spice
jars – I speak from experience here. Feed the tadpole lettuce or flake fish
food. We used hamburger, but it was not the right thing to do. Release them
back into the same pond area where you found them. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Collect black rocks with
white stripes. Figure out what leaf would be the best hat and wear it for the
entire afternoon. Drag a futon onto the back porch, turn off all the lights and
count shooting stars, or learn the constellations. See how many different
colors of green you can find by gathering as many green living things as you
can (leaves, grass, moss) and put them all out on a large sheet of white poster
board. Do the same with brown or pink or purple. Take a photo so you can
remember. Build drip castles with a bucket of water and sand.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Pick a whole bunch of
berries, blueberries, blackberries or anything else that stains your fingers
when you squish it. Take a tee shirt and boil it in a pot of 8 cups of water
and ½ a cup of salt. Wring the tee shirt out but leave it damp. Put your
berries in a pot with at least an equal amount of water and boil them for two
hours with a lid on the pot. The longer they boil the darker the dye. Make tiny
pigtails of the tee shirt using rubber bands or string.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let your boiled berries coil and remove
them with a strainer. Put the wet tee shirt into the pot and simmer for a
little while. Turn off heat and let it cool down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remove from the pot and rinse with cold water until water
runs clear. Take off rubber bands. Hang outside to dry. Wear gloves or have tie
dyed fingers too. Play in the rain, jump into puddles. Don’t worry about
staying dry and instead revel in being wet. Encourage nature photography. Use
your cell phone and then use an app to publish them so they can be cherished
and shared in person. Give your kid his own flower or vegetable patch to grow
what ever they want. Use a whiskey barrel and potting soil so you won’t have to
battle the weeds!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Create rock art. Collect a
pile of rocks, decide on a certain size or shape or color and gather as many of
them as you can. Then grab a bunch of newspapers and some nontoxic paint and
paintbrushes and go crazy. Give them swirls, dots, stripes or into creatures.
Give them each three or five or seven eyes. Put up a bird feeder and count how
many different kinds of birds you see. Keep a list. Get an identification book.
Ditto with butterflies, but instead of a feeder, plant a butterfly bush. Plant a
serpentine of sunflower seeds. There is almost no chance of failure with
sunflower seeds as long as they have soil, sun and water. Identify which
flowers would make good dresses if you suddenly shrunk to the size of a honeybee
and were invited to a ball. Collect interesting driftwood that looks like
animals and create a zoo, or that resemble buildings and construct a city. On a
windy day tie a magic marker on a string to a branch and holding a piece of
paper under it, let the wind draw you a portrait of the day. Hook up an
old-fashioned oscillating sprinkler and jump through it. Start a nature journal
keeping track of everything interesting you see every time you step outside. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Take photographs of any
animal or bird footprints you find and see if you can identify them. Take a
ball of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>colored bamboo yarn
outside and wrap it around a branch of a tree. Wrap it tightly with the yarn
touching itself to make a solid band. Add a second color, and a third. Do the
whole tree. Learn how to tell the sex of a worm (this is a trick, most worms
are hermaphrodites, but they still need another worm to create offspring.) Start
some seeds in empty eggshells. Fly a kite, better yet make your own kite and
fly it instead. Learn the difference between a frog and a toad and see if you
can spot both on the same day. Make your own mud with a hose and make mud pies.
Big ones! Make snow angels in the sand. Make sand castles in the snow. Get a
sunprinting kit and make cyanotypes using the sun and found object.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Collect fall leaves and
place between two sheets of wax paper. Put old tee shirts or paper towels both
under and on top of the paper and iron until the wax paper fuses. Let dry and place
in front of your window. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Make a
salad<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>including weeds and edible
flowers. Use purslane, dandelion leaves, violet flowers and leaves, some garlic
mustard and throw in a few chopped up daylily flowers for color. Buy a
magnifying glass and stare at a flower and then everything else you come
across. Marvel at leaves that have hairs on them the metallic looking powder on
butterfly wings. Dry what you see. See if your flower is a single flower or if
it’s a composite flower – one made of lots of tiny flowers. Think marigolds or
asters. Learn how to skip flat stones. Go for a hike. Search for spider webs
after the rain or when they are diamonded with dew. Make wind chimes from
shells you find on the beach. Make herb infused vinegar, or basil butter, or
freeze mint leaves in ice cubes to throw into iced tea.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Count fireflies. Create a scavenger hunt and find as many
things as you can that start with the letter B, or that have red on them, or
that have stripes or dots. Go on a paint chip walk. Grab some free paint strips
in colors you think are either hard or easy to find in nature and then take a
walk outside and see if you can find exact matches. Make a dandelion chain. Make
a wreath out of bittersweet branches in the fall, or out of wild grape vines in
the spring. Build warriors out of found sticks and carve them heads out of
peeled and cored apples. Dip the carved heads in lemon juice (I cup) + salt
(1tsp) for a minute and then mount them on their stick bodies and set them out
in a warm dry spot for a couple of days. Watch as the faces shrink and warp to
create fabulous alien beings. Have a battle. Make snowball with a squirt of
food coloring in them and leave them out in the sun on top of thick white rag
paper. When the snowball is melted, bring the paper inside and let it dry.
Frame the result.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I could go on, but I think you have enough her to get
started, and besides, it’s time for me to go outside and take my daily “what’s
in bloom” photo walk.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Paige Patterson’s is going to enlist her nephews to help her
make rosemary smudge sticks to battle insects with this summer. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-62279834822754883292017-04-16T22:04:00.006-04:002017-04-16T22:04:47.703-04:00Loathing and loving in the plant world.<div class="MsoNormal">
I try to not use the “h” word as I think the negativity it
connotes is pretty heavy and I’m really more of a lover than a hater. However
when it comes to this one specific plant, I’m a card carrying, big time, hater. Have you heard me rant about Lesser
Celadine yet? If you work with me any time in the spring when this evil little
plant is in flower, you’ve certainly heard me go off on a mad, crazed spiel
about how hideously invasive and horrifyingly difficult to eradicate this plant
truly is. I’ve been battling (Lesser Celadine or Ficaria verna, formerly Ranunculus ficaria) for
three years now and I’m losing. Big time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The plant is actually sort of pretty when you first come
across it. It’s in bloom right now with a big, beautiful, buttercup yellow
flower and glossy dark green leaves that make you understand how someone could
decide to dig it up and bring it to this country as an ornamental. It thrives
in full shade to full shade, can deal with all sorts of soil moisture levels and
fertility and doesn’t really care what kind of soil it’s growing in. It’s low
growing and makes a pretty weed smothering mat of yellow that makes everything
look sort of cheerful and yummy when you’re feeling a little tired of waiting
for spring. Plus it’s a spring ephemeral, which means it does it’s entire life
cycle in a super compressed period of time and goes dormant <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">by mid-June, just
in time for the rest of the garden to show itself off</span>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unfortunately, this lovely group of characteristics, all
combined in one plant, makes it an impossible thug. And because someone
brought it here and it’s not native, its got no natural predators or controls.
If it were a native, there would be an insect, fungus, animal, bird, disease,
or a bacteria that would have evolved with it and therefore would be able to
keep it in check, but because it’s so far from home, it’s escaped all it’s fatal
foes. <span style="color: #242c32; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">Nothing eats it. Nothing infects it. Nothing bothers it. Not
even me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #242c32; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #242c32; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">There are two suggested means of control -- both of which
have failed for me in no uncertain terms -- herbicide and manual removal. Did I
mention that I’m trying to be more organic? So herbicide is rarely something I chose,
but last year I blocked out a previous bad experience and broke down and bought
something toxic to try and control this stupid thug. What happened instead, is
that in the process of spraying the invasive’s leaves with my vicious chemical,
invariably some dripped off and went into the soil, where it traumatized and once
again, almost killed my collection of magnolias, magnolias being more susceptible
than any of my other trees to herbicide damage. I knew this would probably
happen; 15 years ago, when my lawn people put down a pelletized broad leaf weed
killer in the back forty of my property to try and control another vicious
little invader, Creeping Charlie, they instead sent every magnolia I had into
shock. All the other trees were fine, but it took the magnolias three years to
recover. You would think I’d remember something as traumatic as that, but
Lesser Celadine makes me crazy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #242c32; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #242c32; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">The other way to eliminate this pest is to remove it by
hand. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Sorry, insert laughing like a lunatic here. It’s just that
the plant can be pulled up by hand or dug up, but each plant has these tiny
little tubers attached to its roots and if you leave even one (and they
separate from the plant super easily) the plant comes back with a vengeance.
Try and dug it out before it sets seed too, as those spread around like germs
on a communal spoon. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #242c32; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #242c32; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">Did I mention that I believe I got this weed by using
compost from the dump? And that the folks that sometimes help me out weeded it
a bunch of it up and threw it into my compost pile as well? Thus making it
totally unusable as I can’t get it up to cooking speed? When it’s in bloom, I’m
blinded to everything else. I see people working in their yard as I drive past
and I stop the car to point out their own personal Lesser Celadine and give
them tips on removal. I just can’t help myself. I’m digging it myself, but it’s
slow go and I not that sure I’m even making a dent.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #242c32; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay, now that I’ve got that out of my system I need to balance
out all my loathing by telling you about a plant I just adore. The Itoh peony
(otherwise known as an intersectional peony) is a cross between a tree peony
and an herbaceous peony and has the best of both their parent plants genes.
Like a tree peony they have enormous silky petal flowers, but where a tree
peony has only a few blooms and if you cut them off you are removing years of
growth of the tree, the itoh peony likes being cut. They have all the blooming
power of the classic, traditional peony, with tons and tons of blooms, the
numbers of which increase each year. However, where the regular peony will flop
over and drag itself on the ground with even the slightest hint of rain, the
itoh’s stems are much stronger. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Vigorous, disease resistant and easy to care for with gorgeous,
enormous flowers. A plant you treat just like a perennial and cut back to the
ground, which comes back bigger and stronger and covered with more flowers
every year and is deer resistant. What’s not to love about all that? Yes, they
are expensive, but they make a huge impact and so treating yourself to at least
one a year is something even the most frugal garden out there will understand. I
already got mine this year. It’s divine, but I will confess that I have my eyes
on at least one more.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Paige Patterson also needs to add a bunch of gaura ‘Whirling
Butterflies’ to her garden this year… just because.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-11204566224011856882017-03-12T21:54:00.000-04:002017-04-16T21:57:00.794-04:00Trying to be better.<div class="MsoNormal">
I garden for a lot of reasons – because I love flowers,
because digging in the dirt, with a trowel or a shovel, with my fingers and my
toes, makes me feel grounded, but mostly because I love the natural world. I’m
a biophiliac, and as such I worry about my impact on the earth. I’m actually
pretty good with my ecological footprint, but far from perfect, especially
since I drive an SUV; but I am a vegan, I recycle, we use a lot of <span style="color: #262626;">energy-efficient LED
bulbs, I have bees, I turn off the tap when brushing my teeth and I try not to
buy water in plastic bottles. </span>I’ll admit, that sometimes the list of
things you’re meant to do to help the planet can seem overwhelming, but other
things just seem like a no brainer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every morning on my way to work, I stop at Starbucks, and I have
to admit, that I used to tend to forget to bring my reusable cup. I’d feel a
little bad about all the <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">green and white </span>coffee cups I was accruing, but not that terrible.
I assumed that since my cups were paper, naturally they were both recyclable
and biodegradable, so although I was definitely not helping with the plastic
tops, at least the cups weren’t going to be a problem. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wrong! It turns out that Starbucks cups, like almost every
disposable cup out there, are coated with a miniscule layer of plastic and thus
can’t be recycled. They’re just trash. Discovering this made me feel like such
a moron. According to carryyourcup.org, we <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Americans inhale about <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">146 billion cups</span> of coffee per year or
about 16 million cups an hour – and even if (like me), “you only buy just one
cup of coffee or tea in a disposable cup every day, you’ll end up creating
about <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">23 lbs of waste in one year</span>.”
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plus, since I’ve been putting these
silly things into my recycling bin, I’ve been contaminating the paper loads and
possibly contributing to these loads just being dumped into landfills instead. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">So today I bought three different reusable travel mugs, a no
brainer once I learned about the cups, as just one more step in my ongoing effort
to </span>have a gentler relationship with this planet we’re all perched
upon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I’m not going to lie and
tell you that I’ll never use a disposable cup again, of course I will, but I’m
going to try and use less, I’m going to try and do better. And that’s my goal
today, not to be a zealot and tell you we all have to do the impossible and be
perfect, but to tell you a few things I’m doing, as often as I can, and see if
you’d like to join me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now that we all have our reusable cups in hand, let’s try
and adjust our eating to a less impactful way. I read somewhere that the
average American meal has traveled 1200 miles before it reached your plate. This
is crazy. Instead we need to shop at farm stands and with our local growers, I
want to know where and from whom our food comes from. Sure the apples in the
supermarkets might be cheaper than those at the Milk Pail, but local apples are
picked when ready, and although some may be stored to help them ripen, and they
haven’t travelled anywhere but back and forth from their field to the Halsey’s
storage facilities and back to their apple stand in Watermill. <span style="color: #262626; mso-bidi-font-family: SourceSansPro-Light; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">Not so for your typical supermarket apple, which was picked
while still slightly unripe, sprayed with a chemical called
1-methylcyclopropene (an ethylene inhibitor) waxed, packed and stacked on
pallets, then stuck in cold storage warehouses until they are needed in the
stores, normally for an average of 9-12 months. Yuck. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #262626; mso-bidi-font-family: SourceSansPro-Light; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #262626; mso-bidi-font-family: SourceSansPro-Light; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">I happen to grow my own apples, but I still
get Pink Lady apples from the Halseys since mine ripen much earlier. I also
have too many, which has led me to the world of canning.</span> <span style="color: #262626; mso-bidi-font-family: SourceSansPro-Light; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">I think everyone should try canning. Personally, I’ve ended up
with far too much applesauce and jams from canning, but </span>I really believe
in putting up local summer food to enjoy in the winter. Not that I always have
time to do the whole hot, steamy, canning thing, so I’ll confess that I’ve also
started using my basement chest freezer to preserve my food, by quickly
blanching my veggies first (unblanched kale gets bitter in 6 weeks while blanched
kale can last a year!!!) and either making my herbs into a pesto like paste
with oil and freezing that, or stuffing them finely chopped into ice cube
trays, topping them with water and throwing them in the freezer. Once you have
ice cubes, stick them in a reusable freezer bag throw a cube<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>into your pot when you need a little <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>flavor. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eat less meat, please. I’m not asking you to become a
vegetarian or vegan, but the more meat we all eat, the more forest is cleared
to grow the grains that livestock eat. The less forests there are – the less
CO2 is absorbed from the air – the warmer our world gets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then there’s the methane livestock
release, the second most significant greenhouse gas, not just by farting like
people snicker about, but with breathe they exhale, based on the ways their
multiple stomachs break down food. This combined with the gallons of fossil fuel
used to transport and prep their feed as well as to transport the creatures
themselves from factory farms to slaughterhouses and processing facilities and
then again to our markets, makes eating meat a pretty bad idea. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know I’m simplifying things, there’s a much more
complicated argument when you take into effect the pasture land that animals
graze is actually an excellent place to sequester carbon, and that converting said
land to productively grow crops for human consumption will actually release more
stored carbon into the air, but I think I can counter that argument with animal
cruelty stories from both the life and death experiences of about 99% of the
meats you put in your mouths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Let’s just say it’s complicated, and the more local, less processed and
closer to natural your food choices are, the better for both the planet and
you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When you do buy
something, and we all do, please make sure it’s organic. I know, I know, it’s way
more expensive, but if we grew all the corn and soybeans this country produces
organically we’d remove almost 600 million pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere, <span style="color: #211e1e;">since organic soils capture and stores CO2 at much higher
levels than conventional farmed soils.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="color: #211e1e; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
since it’s organic food is much more expensive, let’s also cut down food waste
by only buying what we know for sure we’ll consume. Food waste in the American
culture is obscene – we throw out about 40% of our food a year! So even though
I preach that it’s better to buy in volume (less packaging, only one plastic
bag with a 5lb bag of rice as opposed to 5 bags with five 1lb bags) if you find
you’re dumping half a gallon of milk out each week maybe start buying a size
down. Remember also that wasted food in landfills quickly becomes methane, so
if you do have waste, try, try, try and get it into a compost pile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="color: #211e1e; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
confess that this is my real Achilles heel, and I even have a compost pile! I
just can’t find the right temporary mechanism for holding kitchen food waste so
that it can later be taken out to the compost pile. Nothing has worked for me
because I don’t I don’t have the counter space for one of those great vacuum
lidded scrap holder, I can’t handle fruit flies, I’m a little lazy and don’t
really want to walk out to the compost pile after eating dinner and doing all
the dishes. So I need to work on this. I presently have half a cabbage I fished
out of the trash, that’s going to go to the chickens instead, but that’s easy,
if I can get the tomato tops that are sliced off each night out there too I’ll
be golden. What I need is a laundry shoot type thingie built into the kitchen
backsplash that would let me collect all the waste outside in a nicely covered
bucket I could take back to the compost pile when I’m in the mood. If anyone
out there has solved this issue, please let me know. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I try and buy things in bulk to cut down on it, but of
course almost everything I buy<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>comes with packaging. So I’m always trying to choose packing I can reuse.
I have chickens that lay too many eggs for my family to eat, so my friends save
their egg cartons, which I fill with my leftover eggs in exchange for homemade
bread or extra produce from their gardens or their CSA weekly baskets. And I
buy things in glass instead of plastic as much as possible since glass in much
simpler to both reuse and recycle.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another easy thing to do, is to read books online instead of
tossing a novel after you’re done with it. I use Live-brary and all my novels
and Swedish mysteries are free now. Granted I have to wait a little while for
them to be available, but I read about 3 books a week so I’m keeping a lot of
trees from becoming paper. Of course I also own a ton of actual books, I’m a
huge bookaholic, but I try to buy them used. I don’t follow this second
directive as often as I should as I’m not that patient, but if the books been
out for a while, I almost always can find a cheaper, almost perfect copy on
Amazon at a savings! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Speaking of paper, when buying paper products, look for those
that are recycled or made with sustainable methods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s actually an interesting bit of research as to
whether washing and drying cloth napkins and dish towels is really better less
impactful than using their paper equivalents, but for most home owners, cloth
is the way to go, especially if you make sure you wash them (as well as the
rest of your laundry) in either cold or warm water only.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wash your hair less. No it’s not gross, it’ll save water and
it’s better for your hair. Honest. Oh and please try and shut the water off <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when brushing your teeth, it’s not hard,
it’s just a new habit we have to create. You already know about low flow water
faucets and water saving toilets, and I’m still looking for a toothbrush that’s
recyclable and vegan – I’m pretty sure no one reading this is gonna want to
gnaw the bark off a neem twig and then scrub their teeth using it’s exposed
fibers. However, I think we can all follow the old, “If it’s yellow let it mellow,
if it’s brown flush it down” adage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m going to try to use my car less by riding my bike more,
especially to work since as it’s 1.2 miles from my house (1.7 miles if I go to
Starbucks first) and then, not only will I get a little exercise and pollute a
little less, I might also be less apt to have plants jump into my bike basket
instead of the trunk of the car. Or at least it’ll be fewer plants, so I’ll
probably save money too.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And once I lose all that weight from biking to work (ha ha –
like a year later) I’ll have to go down a size or two, but luckily, since I
rarely toss clothing that no longer fits, I have a bunch of smaller sized
jeans. I do however have some items of clothing that were just plain old
mistakes. These don’t ever get tossed, but get traded, gifted or donated, whether
to The Retreat or to the ARF thrift shop, there are a billion places for
unwanted clothing to go. The challenge is ripped or stained clothing. If you
put those into the wrong bins, the charity you think you’re helping will just
toss them into the trash. Instead look for the donation bins put out by Big
Brother, Big Sister. They sell clothing that’s too far-gone as rag weight,
which is used to fill sofas and stuffed chairs, so it never goes into the
landfill. <span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Can’t deal with all this? Feeling overwhelmed? Want me to
stop talking? Okay then, I have one simple request for you. When you’re getting
food to go or ordering takeout ask them to not to give you any plastic
silverware and to skip the individually packaged condiments. By using your own silverware
and by using soy sauce or hot sauce from a bigger bottle you’re keeping a lot
of plastic packaging and waste out of our environment, and that’s a start. And
a start is all any of us has to do.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paige Patterson says if you use reusable chopsticks you get
bonus points.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-13702152662395923012017-02-26T21:57:00.000-05:002017-04-16T21:59:20.951-04:00Houseplants at the Beach <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
I’m writing this sitting next to the largest begonia I have ever
seen, almost the same size as an Endless Summer hydrangea, which is growing in
almost pure sand about as far from the Caribbean Ocean as I could hurl a flip
flop. It’s a mind blower. Not to mention the variegated philodendron that's
climbing up the palm tree next to it, or the collection of sansavarias that's
growing weed like along the driveway that snakes up to our rental house in
Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. By our pool we have hibiscus hedges as well as
variegated gingers, banana trees, and elephant ears – all plants I love to use
when designing summer pots for Hampton pool sides – but unlike my pots,
that tend to be disposable, these babies here are all planted in the ground.
We tend to think of tropical plants as annuals or as houseplants, but the
palm trees we put in baskets, strategically placed on either side of sofas in
living rooms that need a little greenery to give the room life, here are
planted alongside our deck as a wonderful wake up call to the true nature of
all these beauties.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">You wouldn't think a plant from the tropics would do well in a
house, but most of these plants are thriving in a low light (jungle floor)
environment, so your dining room corner where they only get indirect light but
it never gets below 50 degrees is actually perfect for them. Here in Costa Rica
it's like your home has been turned inside out and everything has been fed
steroids. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Everyone should spend some time in the Jungle. I promise, that if
you are a plant nerd like me and you’re heading to the beach down a winding
dirt path through the jungle and you come upon a field of spathiphyllum (Peace
Lilies) like I did, you too will let out a yelping OMG as loud as I did, and
will almost cause your husband to drive the rental car into the drainage ditch
that’s been following you towards the sea. I haven’t see as many anthurium as I
thought I would, but we’re planning a trip on an upcoming (predicted) rainy day
to go searching for them. (I have the best husband!!) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Bromeliads stuck in the dirt next to pizza joint, the grocery store
and the fish shop made me laugh as did the tillandias casually sprouting from
the branches of citrus fruit trees and telephone wires. Trees wear a variety of
pothos with same elan as some woman sport gold jewelry, clustered, and snaking
around their entire bodies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Although I will confess to being totally enthralled by both the
solitary sloth and the company of spider monkeys that dangle from the trees as
we enjoy our morning coffees, the Monstera (like philodendrons but with sharply
incised leaves that's look like Swiss Cheese – thus the common name Cheese
Plant) that both were using to transverse the canopy were fairly impressive as
well. I went off on a haphazard hike trying to find the Howler monkeys we could
hear (but not see) from the pool, and although totally not successful on my
monkey search I did discover a couple of pileas, and a few baby tibouchinas
that I desperately wanted to bring home with me. The pileas are fabulous houseplants,
but tibouchinas aren’t. They are however one of my go to plants for summer
color and to pet their fuzzy leaves in February is a total joy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I tried to get a photo of a Birds nest fern that was taller than my
husband by at least a couple of feet but the light was bad. At Marders we sell
them in 6 inch pots and stick them in bathrooms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The difference was revelatory. There were Peperomia like green guys
everywhere I looked as well as deffenbachias (Dumb Cane) just casually hanging
out. There are rumors of poinsettias trees that are 40’ tall in these parts,
but I haven’t spotted one yet. We sell Dracaena Maginata in a variety of sizes
in the shop, but nothing came close to the enormous ones we saw just growing
along the route we took to our rental in Costa Rica. Ficus elasticita
(Rubber Plants) casually spring up like dandelions, but with much bigger
leaves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Bill Smith and Dennis Schrader the two brilliant minds behind the
Landcraft Tropical Nursery on the North Fork have a home on the Pacific side of
the continent where they have made an apparently brilliant garden. Dennis
is the author of Hot Plants for Cool Climates: Gardening with Tropical Plants
in Temperate Zones and is one the man to see about bringing tropical into your
home and garden both as summer only plants as well as ones that can hang out in
your house and I’m dying to visit his home. If it wasn’t a 5 hour trip (one way)from
where I now sit typing I’d be poolside at his villa ASAP. Oh and if you've
never taken a trip to his North Fork nursery you must try and get there when
it’s on the Garden Conservatory tour. It’s a wholesale nursery so you can't
just drop in, but the garden amazing, and definitely worth the visit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I wish I had Dennis with me right now so we could geek out on plants
together, and I’m sorry I. missed the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons
(HAH) trip there this Past Christmas. I’ve seen what I consider annuals growing
in the wild before, a huge lantana in Mexico that was growing larger than my
largest viburnums at home and which is actually considered a pesty weed in it’s
home town, but Acosta Rica is revelatory. Yesterday at lunch I sat catty
corner to a self sown clump of Ptilotus exaltatus ‘Joey’, a plant I tend to be
quite fond of as it has fuzzy, soft pinkish lavender flower spikes, that I love
to pet when it’s slow at the nursery. The patch at lunchtime was growing
from the base of a telephone pole that was jammed next to a broken down wall in
a sort of Costa Rican hell-strip where the only water it’s getting is whatever
has come from the sky. Browallia americana is a native here as are two begonias
and the variety of butterfly weed, Asclepius curassavica, that I sometimes use
as a cutting flower at home – they last forever in a vase. We grow calathea for
its foliage as house plants, here it's a roadside plant that flowers
fabulously. The Wandering Jew we know from hospital waiting rooms? Here it's a
ground over. And the Crotons, wow, don’t even get me started on the Crotons.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I'm planning a trip to the Finca la Isla Botanic Garden, a
farm that's commercially growing fresh fruit and organic chocolate, just to see
the iridescent Jade Vine in all it’s electric turquoise beauty in it’s natural
state. I’m in love with the one that's growing in the Bronx Botanic Garden’s Conservatory,
the color is off the hook, but to see it growing in the wild, that's certainly
worth leaving the spider monkeys behind. Plus they also sell plants and we all
know I'm a sucker for a plant shop. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Paige Patterson knows she can't bring any plants home with her but
wonders, will anyone notice the baby spider monkey in her pocket. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-61573355232523187952017-01-23T16:30:00.000-05:002017-02-04T16:45:07.857-05:00Thinking Yellow Thoughts on a Gray Day<div class="MsoNormal">
I used to say I didn’t want any yellow in my garden, which
is sort of strange because I happen to really like all kinds of yellow as a
color. I wore yellow, I used yellow in my paintings, I even had yellow in the
art I hung on my walls, but I really didn’t want it in my garden. I guess it
was because I was just so enamored with pink and blue and lavender and white
and I felt that yellow would stand out too much, and be an eyesore. So I
planted only white daffodils, banned Black Eyed Susans from all my planting
schemes and pooh-poohed forsythia.</div>
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Boy have I changed. I now embrace yellow to such a huge
extent that not only are a large majority of my roses yellow, but I crave
yellow plants for the impact they bring at all seasons of the year. I lusted
for and now own a baby yellow rhododendron that I am coddling from a twig to
smallish shrub and which I hope becomes a huge statement plant. I have lined
the entire back wall of my property with a mass of forsythia that is a wall of
electric egg yolk yellow when March is at it’s bleakest and dreariest. I jam
clumps of Heliopsis <span style="color: #262626; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">helianthoides</span>
‘Lemon Queen’ into the backgrounds of all my largest flower beds (at my house
it grows to 8’ tall) and I invested in a gaggle of Cornelian Cherries (Cornus
mas) just to make sure I had something yellow bridging the gap after my witch
hazels but before my magnolia’s kicked in and did their thing. I have three
yellow magnolias, which made me feel somewhat superior. Then, last year,
Marders brought in six different yellow varieties, so now I feel that I have
sort of dropped the ball slightly.</div>
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I’m not sure if my change of heart about the color yellow
came about because I matured, or if I just suddenly realized that if I wanted
flowers that bloomed all year long I would have to get over myself and embrace
this color. Not only that, but After gardening for a little while, you realize
that the high, bright, white light of July and August washes out all those
delicate little soft pinks and lavenders and only bold, bright and strong
colors really pop when the sun is beating down on them.</div>
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Of course it also helped that I fell in love with witch
hazels. To be honest, I first noticed a witch hazel when it was doing its fall
peacock thing with leaves that looked as if they had been dipped in day-glow paint,
yellow, red, maroon and green all on one leaf. It was fantastic, so I started
paying attention and noticing them in gardens around town. Honestly, I’d not
really noticed them before I started working as a gardener, because in February
or early March, when ‘Arnold Promise’ was doing its incredible acid yellow,
lemony, blooming thing none of the nurseries I was visiting out here really had
them. Or if they did, by the time I started shopping, I’d have missed the
blooms, but most of the time the nurseries didn’t have them because most of
their customers are not year round gardeners.</div>
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Once I was out here full time, and once I realized exactly
how important yellow was to battle the dismal grayness of late winter and early
spring, I started seeing witch hazels everywhere. I once was actually almost
rear ended when I slammed on the brakes after catching a tantalizing glance and
at enormous fan shaped wall of something lemon shimmering in the snow that had
followed a pretty shallow dusting of snow. The plant was an old one, with what
I now know to be it’s classic vase shape, and it was filled with flowers. The
gentleman in the car behind me had some choice words for me as he veered around
my vehicle, but I was entranced by the possibility of blooms in the snow. I
had, of course already invested in two Prunus mume trees, the Japanese apricot
that had lent its image to the classic Chinese export pottery pattern referred
to as Hawthorn on a Cracked Ice background. They flowers weren’t Hawthorne, but
no one outside of China had ever seen a Prunus mume, so they named it after a
more familiar flower. The Prunus mume, does however, have a habit of blooming
in the snow, both here and in the Far East, so of course I had to have it,
especially as Chinese Export Porcelain was a family hobby, but the witch hazel
I saw in the snow that day was revelatory, so I tracked one down and bought it
immediately. </div>
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‘Arnold Promise’ is a cross between two species of
Hamamelis, H. japonica and H. mollis and thus is called Hamamelis x intermedia
‘Arnold’s Promise. I actually now have either 6 or 7 different varieties of
these intermedia witch hazels, specifically for the note of electric promise
they bring as the days slowly start to get longer. One of my favorites has the most
enormous and fragrant flowers, but its leaves are marcescent (meaning the old
leaves stay on the tree until the new leaves push them off) which is a bummer
as the dead foliage spoils the elegance of the long tassel flowers. It was marked
as Luna but I think it was mismarked as Luna’s leaves normally drop long before
it blooms. Anyway, I have been adding witch hazels to the garden for at least a
decade and planting most of them intentionally at the far back end of the
property (where the whole back property line billows with my sea of forsythia) so
that when I walk all the way back there, I’m rewarded by things in bloom. Today
I took that stroll to cut some branches to force in the house and three of my witch
hazels were in bloom. All orange ones of course (so I’ll have to write about
orange on another day) but one of the Arnold’s was just starting to push. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was a balmy 48 degrees, so I also noticed at least a
dozen dandelions pushing through the lawn. I have always loved dandelions, and
although they self-seed into my flowerbeds like crazy, I leave them up for my
bees to feed upon on unusually warm days like today when the girls are tempted
to leave their hives. Other flowers of note in bloom today, my Lenten Roses
(Helleborus niger), a number of my pussy willows (although not the pink or the
black yet) and my Edworthia is looking like it’s getting ready to pop. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both of my Prunus mumes died last year;
I guess the temperature ratcheting from 50 degrees to in the single digits and
back up again was just too stressful; or they’d be in bloom. I miss having
these trees since no one else had them in the area, much less knew what they
were. They weren’t yellow, but they consistently flowered in the snow, which naturally
made them plants I adored.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p>Paige Patterson’s hydrangea buds have started to crack open,
so if the temperatures drop there’s going to be no hydrangea flowers next year.
Bummer.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-47386853632123636732016-12-19T16:37:00.000-05:002017-02-04T16:39:11.871-05:00There’s a hole in my heart.<div class="MsoNormal">
There have been enormous changes in this area in the 50 plus
years that I’ve been living here, and there have been many things that I grew
up always expecting to remain that no longer do. Wonderful places that no only remain
in photographs, super 8 movies, paintings and my memory. These losses are
things that pain me deeply.</div>
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Georgica Pond used to be covered with lily pads so thick
that you couldn’t see the surface of the water as you pushed softly through a
haze of dragonflies with your rowboat, your oars lifting the flower stems which
slide gently off like the thickest, most elegant green noodles you could ever
imagine. Now the waters are 190 acres of dangerously polluted toxic soup.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I used to celebrate my birthday with Mr. Nichol’s and his
pony rides on the triangle of land where the western end of Georgica Road
bifurcates before joining up with Montauk Highway. I got one free turn for each
year of my age and I remember wishing only to be older so that the ride would
last longer. If only I was twelve! I think there was a house on the property and
a tiny barn where my birthday porters spent shivery winters, but for me it was
a tiny slice of heaven. That property, now complete with house and pool, two
years ago was for sale for $3.55 million. Bye bye ponies, I miss you.</div>
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From the time you crossed the Shinnecock Canal until you got
out to Montauk there was only one place where, if you looked south on sunny
days, you could see a stretch of silver shimmering just above the dunes, a
sliver of the sea. That was Sagaponack and that view is long gone, visible only
in the paintings of Barbara Thomas and Sheridan Lord. </div>
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The enormous dune that I grew up hiding from the wind behind,
building complicated secret dune grass shelters in which imaginary sand fairies
played, and in whose sheltering shoulders I reveled in the power of teenaged
kiss, was erased by hurricane Sandy, rubbed flat as completely as if it had
never existed.</div>
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I used to ride my horse bareback from Patsy And Alvin
Toppings Swan Creek Farm diagonally northeast to get to Carvel where we would
both have soft serve ice cream cones. I had chocolate with chocolate sprinkles
and my horse had vanilla with multicolored sprinkles. Then we would swim, or
rather my horse would swim and I’d clutch his mane, as we ventured into Kellis
Pond to cool off. To get there and back we could have headed straight through
the farm fields, without a single house to block our path, the only structure
being the strange bowling pin shaped structure (later learned to be a radio
transmitter for the East Hampton Airport) that lived in Jack Musnicki’s fields.
We stayed on the roads (most of the time) out of respect for the farmer’s crops,
but there was never a more incredible open sky view then that of laying flat
back on your horse’s wet haunches, reins slack as he walked patiently and
determinedly back to the barns, with nothing surrounding you but fields and
clouds. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There have always been out here places where you can
experience wonder, and when they are gone we mourn their losses deeply. I don’t
think it’s just about growing older and losing the ability to see and be and
experience life as a child, although that change is, in it’s own way, somewhat
devastating, and although I wish I could give the people I love the ability to
see this area through the eyes and the heart of my younger self, I wouldn’t
want them to share the pain. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last week we gained more pain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A part of me died when I watched the façade of the Sag
Harbor Movie theatre crumble and fold in upon itself. I know they saved the
sign, and that’s great (although it’s not the original sign – that was removed
in 2004) but for me that building was a lot more than just a sign.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What makes us mourn a structure? Is it the way the building
felt? Or the way we felt when we were within it? Or just the loss of the
familiarity of something that has been with us for a long time? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I love the Sag Harbor movie theater and everything it represents.
It determinedly persisted in being the theater I remember it to be, and wanted
it to stay. A single screen theater, like the one on Southampton once was, with
it’s incredible, and to a child, awe inspiring massive chandelier that I still
miss, the Sag Harbor movie theater has been with me my entire life. I am a
regular now and have always been so. I had planned to see Moonlight there last
week, the previous week I had gone with my father to see Tom Ford’s Nocturnal
Animals. We’ve been sharing movies there together my entire life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I loved the seats, even though I know they were
uncomfortable. I loved that there were no previews. That the popcorn was not
that great. That if this theater didn’t didn’t exist the only way I’d ever see
the films they showed would be if I rented them at home. But isn’t that the
point of going to the movies? To not be in your home. To step out of your own
world and become engulfed in a new one, to sit in a dark room with no hint
what’s going on outside the walls, no idea if the sky is blue or black, and
just be taken to another place by the way colors and sound have been mixed and
rearranged on a huge screen that fills not just your vision, but your whole
soul?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have fallen in love in that building and also had my heart
broken. I’m been terrified, overjoyed, disappointed, inspired, agitated, filled
with hope, brought to tears, astonished, awed, devastated and laughed until I
couldn’t breathe. I sobbed there so hard once that the strangers sitting a few
seats over from me offered me not just their tissues, but comfort as well. I’ve
been mesmerized, challenged, transported, staggered, amused, educated, and
totally swept away. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve been blessed, as have we all, but now that cavernous
gaping space on Main Street only reflects the enormous gulf in my chest I feel
knowing that The Sag Harbor movie theater is not there anymore. Luckily I know
that the reason we love Sag Harbor is that I am not the only person here that
relies on these kinds of quirky, non-mainstream, noncommercial stories to keep
her whole. And that as a community we will come together to make sure this part
of the Hamptons is not going to be lost forever.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paige Patterson mourns the drive-in too, but in a different
way, as that’s where she first saw Dumbo.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-8283696600170504942016-11-21T16:34:00.000-05:002017-02-04T16:45:28.636-05:00Explainations of Acorns<div class="MsoNormal">
There are about a billion acorns all over the ground this
fall and people keep asking me what it means. I had always heard that a huge
number of acorns presages a cold winter, a winter that arrives late and is bone
achingly cold, but honestly neither I, nor most scientists that study these
things, really know what triggers these overabundances. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are lots of trees that have years of overabundance,
and in <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Europe,
where people have kept notes on the fruiting patterns of many species of trees for
hundreds of years (because that’s what Europeans do) there’s been no real
rhythm or rhyme in environmental clues as to why trees in some years have such a
large number of fruit or nuts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What we do know is that when oaks do this, they are having
what is a called a mast year. <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Lato-Regular; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">The phrase comes from the word masticate,
and it refers to any fruit, seeds or nuts that any trees or shrubs produce which
could be considered food for animals. </span>A mast year is when a fruiting
tree produces 5 to 10 times as many seeds, or fruits or nuts than it normally
does. Although these bumper crops are cyclical, the cycles don’t seem to be
regular. My apples do this, some years we have crazy heavy crops and the next
many of the trees are much lighter, but not all of my varieties of apples do
this, so I always have a lot of apples, but not always on all my trees. And
it’s not as simple as the heaviest fruiters taking a break the next year. This
year I have three trees that aren’t really producing any apples, but none of
them are the tree that had the most apples. The tree that made the most apples
last year, so many that branches the size of my thigh in diameter snapped and
dropped under the weight, was again this year, just plain overwhelmed with
apples. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But back to our masting acorn trees. According to some
scientists, the phenomenon might be weather related, and since acorns take one
to two years to form and fall (depending on the species), it would be the temperature
and precipitation (or lack of it) from the previous year that determined the <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">rate
of acorn production from year to year. </span>Unfortunately, it’s not can’t be
quite that simple, since masting trees tend to happen simultaneously across a
geographic area so large that the weather patterns within it are too diverse to
be the only cause. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some believe this widespread synchronization is caused by a
chemical signal or cue the trees are giving off that triggers them to have such
abundance. Another <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">thought is that masting trees are just the results of trees
that are have succeeded in maximizing the efficiency of their pollen. If all
the oaks everywhere can release their pollen simultaneously, they will have a seriously
improved their chances of germination and thus increased acorn production. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every year oak trees drop acorns, acorns they’ve produced to
guarantee they have offspring. These offspring are the way to ensure the future
of the oak population, so each year every oak tree should try to produce more
acorns than they need to, just to make up for those that the various squirrels,
turkeys, chipmunks, voles, deer and mice (the masticators) are going to eat up
over the winter. And this is the basis of the last theory on masting trees. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a regular year a single oak tree will produce thousands of
acorns, but in a mast year it can produce up to 10,000 acorns. This strange occasional
cycling of massive amounts of produce and then a dearth (boom and bust) means
that the acorn predators are kept off balance. If a tree produced the same
amount of seeds or apples or nuts every year, the predators of those seeds,
apples and nuts would have a reliable food source and would just keep growing
in population until there were enough of them that the would gobble up every
single thing these trees dropped, and there would be no chance for the trees to
have offspring. Have a few years when there are not a lot of acorns (a series
of bust years) and the population that’s been dining on their nuts will starve
and crash. Then, if you can follow a bust year with a boom year or two, and the
predator population has crashed, some of your boom year acorns will have a
significantly better chance to sprout and become seedling oaks. Evolution will
of course favor those trees that reproduce the best, and the ones that do it by
tricking their predator population with mast years seem to be leading the way.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are two additional side effects things to a mast year
of which we need to be mindful. First that when there’s plenty of food for the
voles and squirrels and mice, the following year there will be plenty of food
for the predators of these small mammals, the raptors. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is great news, and I’m super
excited that this abundance of acorns means that the owl and hawk populations
are going to explode. Unfortunately one of the top acorn eaters in our area is
the white-footed mouse, and when there’s an explosion of acorns, the following
year there’s normally an explosion of these mice, the same mice that are really
more responsible for the deer tick population in our neck of the woods than the
deer they are named after.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So more acorns also means more mice which means mores ticks which
means more Lyme disease. Sigh. Thanks acorns.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On a side note, when I tried to explain the cycling of the
acorns to my husband Dereyk, he asked why if all these other mammals ate
acorns, humans didn’t and I proudly got to tell him that acorns are actually a
great source of protein, fat, carbohydrates, potassium, vitamin C, magnesium,
calcium, phosphorus and niacin and that the Iberian ham made from pigs fed on a
diet consisting mostly of acorns is thought to taste as good as it does because
the high level of anti-oxidants in the acorns prevents lipid oxidation in the
ham. And of course I added that I had, in fact, once eaten <span style="color: #1c1c1c; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">dotorimuk</span>, a thick Jell-O like substance
made from acorns when I was dining in a monk run vegetarian restaurant in
Seoul, but that I wouldn’t make acorns a staple in our food pantry, since most
species contained high levels of tannins that make them awfully astringent and
bitter to the palette. And that acorns were once considered a staple food
substance for Native Americans and that the ancient Greeks partook of them as
well. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dereyk just shook his head at me and said that right there
was a perfect description of the kinds of people we were. That I was a person
who ate acorns and he was a person that only ate things that ate acorns. And
that he thought he was on the better team, but that next time I had the acorn
Jell-O I should ask them to make it with a lot more sugar.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paige Patterson is STILL picking up apples from all over her
yard.<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-24175589718294809922016-10-24T16:44:00.000-04:002017-02-04T16:44:27.597-05:00Being a biophiliac <div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I discovered a new word today, one that I wish to throw
around with wild abandon and share with everyone. Biophilia. A word first
used by Erich Fromm, a German born American psychoanalyst in his 1973 treatise </span><u><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Montserrat-Light; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
Anatomy of Human Destructiveness</span></u><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, a word he categorized as
being, “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">This word is brilliant. This is a word that explains everything
about the choices I made as I've moved forward and deeper into the world I
define as my own. It encompasses everything I believe in. That I am
happiest when I am able to walk on the beach with my toes digging deeply into
the sand. That when I'm out of sorts I can go outside and stroke the leaves of
my trees and change my mood. That just noticing that my tulpelo tree (Nyssa
sylvatica) is a female and thus is covered with tiny black fruits with which
the birds are celebrating will lift me to a different place than
where I was before I spotted them. That no matter how stressed I am, spending a
moment or two scratching a furry critter's head will make me breathe easier.
It’s why carrying a twig of the electric fall foliage of a witch hazel around
the garden and sometimes sticking it behind my ear changes my outlook on
everything. I’m thrilled to possess this word. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">According to Edward O. Wilson, </span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">the entomologist
Curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and a Pulitzer Prize
winner</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">, who wrote a book titled <u><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Biophilia</span></u>
in 1984, this condition is, "the urge to affiliate with other forms of
life." It is this urge, he posits, that when followed, brings us to places
of great joy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it is an urge
that every human on the planet feels. In his book Wilson hypothesizes that it
is this innate relationship we have with the natural world that will allow us
to perhaps save it. He talks about how we not only have a practical dependence
on nature (without clean water and usable soil we would all die) but that we
also find solace and peace and emotional sustenance through our direct
interactions with nature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The natural world inspires us to make art, we find it’s sounds soothing
and it’s visuals beautiful. Thus landscape painting and ocean recording to send
us to sleep. I challenge anyone to find the sound of rain on a tin roof
upsetting. We mimic its smells to make both ourselves and our homes more
enticing, and are uplifted by the appearance of a rainbow for no other reason
than it is beautiful. We create strong emotional attachments with both the land
and with it’s other many creatures, and it’s all of this combined that makes us
whole. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">But many of us have grown disconnected from that wholeness, especially
our children. They don’t have the same easy way with their natural surroundings
that I, and many of their parents did. And it’s sad. It’s easy to blame
technology, especially when you watch people you love staring at their various
screens instead of watching the clouds rapidly shape shift on windy days. I
want to drag those kids into the garden with me. I feel like an old person
whenever I start a sentence with, “When I was that age….” But it’s true. When I
was that age my world was accessible only by bicycle and I didn’t have a computer
to play on. I had the back yard or a park or a garden or fields, woods and the
beach. I knew that fall was not far away when the dragonflies thickened above
my head and that winter was coming because of the smell in the air. I burned
leaves, I climbed trees and I played in the dirt. I picked up caterpillars and
tried to get butterflies to land on my nose. I had an intimate relationship
with my outdoors, whether pressing fall foliage in the family’s heaviest
dictionary, or cuddling with kittens in a farming friend’s hayloft. I wish I
could force these experiences on the children I know and love, but it doesn’t
work that way. They have to be coaxed, not dragged.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I was in a bad mood this morning, having not slept well and having
worriedly spun myself up over all sorts of mental noodles, and I was irritated
that I had to get up extra early to forage for a class I was teaching on how to
decorate with things you can find outdoors. The trunk of my car wasn’t working
and I couldn’t find the clippers I wanted and I broke a dried allium seed head
I had hoped to use for this year’s Christmas tree as a star, so I started off the
day pretty cranky. Gathering armfuls of purple and red foliage, slicing aged,
faded, pink tardiva like panicle hydrangea flowers on arm length long stems and
clipping branches ladened with berries helped. Noticing the bees leaving the
hives in their endless search for sweetness helped. Smelling the errant mint
that was captured by mistake with handfuls of purple flowered monkshood helped.
The sky being electric blue helped as did the wind that blew all the anger from
within my soul as it whipped my hair around my head like a wound up basket of
cobras being directed by an overly enthusiastic snake charmer. By the time I
got to work and started assembling all my pieces into an enormous vase I was
calmer. And thankful. And happy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I want to share this feeling, this biophilia, with everyone. I want to
scream from the rooftop that everything is better </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">when we stay
connected with the natural world. I want to take each and every one of you out
on the same walk I made through my garden this morning and share the way my
brain’s song changed from strident and jagged to melodious. Let us all get
muddy together, let us walk through rivers up to our knees and have the socks
in our boots get soggy. Let us rub up against another living thing that isn’t
human and whisper to it all our secrets, both fabulous and burdensome. Let us
breathe deeply of this fresh fall air and embrace all that nature has
surrounded us with. Let us reek with gratitude.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Paige Patterson has seven nonhumans cuddled up with her on the couch
this evening and couldn’t be happier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-78424952949672315992016-09-26T16:40:00.000-04:002017-02-04T16:40:57.742-05:00Too Many Apples<div class="MsoNormal">
When I bought my house 20 plus years ago, I hadn’t actually
been in the structure. In fact the only time I had even been on the property
was ages earlier, when as a child, I had decided that I wanted to meet the man
who was raising bees in an ancient collection of hives and had three enormous
apple trees. I had always told my family, or whoever was in the car as we drove
past his hedges, that when I grew up I wanted to own the Bee Man’s house. In
retrospect I find it fascinating that I had the hubris to walk up to a
stranger’s front door and knock on it in full expectation of getting a tour,
but it was a different time, and I really wanted to know what it was like to
raise bees. Plus I think my parents must have encouraged me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was an awkward conversation. The gentleman didn’t have a
lot of experience with precocious children, and I was used to having adults
think me charming, something this gentleman obviously wasn’t feeling about the
little blonde at his door. I don’t remember much about our conversation, other
than speaking about the mint that was growing all over his property, and his
telling me his frustration that when you bought packages of peppermint, many of
the seeds were actually for spearmint instead. At the time I wasn’t as knowledgeable
of the differences in mint as I now am, and I call vividly recall chewing the
pungent leaves he handed me and thinking that what he was calling spearmint,
didn’t really taste the same as the Doublemint gum that was my only other
spearmint taste comparison. I can still feel the fuzzy buzz of the leaves
against my tongue, and to this day associate the taste of spearmint with a
general sense of awkward anxiousness and a need to please. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think he showed me his bees and we must have spoken about
the apples, because before I bought the property I knew that the biggest tree
actually had two different varieties of apples, one of which was a clear,
yellow, sweet fruit and that the first tree was created with many grafts, all
of which were of the same apple, just cut from one side of the tree and grafted
to the other. At the time I thought it was a peculiar thing to do, to graft
branches of a tree back onto itself, and although I now understand that he was
just experimenting and playing, I vividly remember wanting to understand his
motivation, but being too scared to ask. He must have told me what the various
names of the apples were, but I didn’t carry that knowledge forward. I wish I
knew now, but I’m afraid I have no clue. All I know now is that I have one of
the largest apple trees in the area, and when fall comes, I have way too many
apples rolling around the lawn.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Too many apples doesn’t sound like a terrible problem does
it? A surplus bounty of deliciousness, shouldn’t make you crazy, but trust me
it does. As I too, raise bees, each year my apple trees are loaded, and there
are way more apples than I can make into pies, applesauce and dumplings,
crumbles, smoothies and juice. I am an apple butter queen, it’s deeply
fabulous, but I still have tons left over from last years harvest, and each day
more and more fruits fall to the ground. Fruits that I just can’t pick up fast
enough. It’s a Sisyphean process, the picking up of apples from the lawn. I
pick them all up in buckets, gathering all the ones that are still fit to eat
in piles on the front porch while the rest get dumped into the compost pile. If
I don’t get them fast enough, the wasps and hornets find them and feast upon
their sweet nectar. There is nothing quite like stepping on an apple satiated
hornet with your bare foot, trust me it’s an experience you’d like to avoid.
Both my dogs and myself have suffered the nasty biting pain of a stinger in the
toe, and so we always have a good supply of Benadryl stocked up for the fall.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Worse of all, I soon have too many apples to be able to
process them properly. So I start to give them away. I start leaving them on
friends’ stoops, and then on acquaintances’ stoops, soon start thinking about
leaving them on strangers’ front steps. And then I start throwing perfectly
fine apples away. The compost pile becomes a pungent, apple cider vinegar smelling
mess and I feel guilty, it’s such a waste. I send out emails to people who like
to bake. “It’s apple pie season,” the subject reads, “come on over.” And I
start to fall behind. There are just too many. Before I had a deer fence, I
used to come home to herds hanging out beneath the trees, mothers, daughters,
nephews and aunts all feasting, wet juices running down their chins. And I was
grateful for their voracious appetites. Now maybe I should put them out on the
road in baskets with a sign that reads “free” like the abandoned sofas and
broken furniture that I sometimes spot lounging on the edge of people’s
driveways. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The worst part is that they’re not really pretty apples, so
people are hesitant to accept them. The clear yellow ones are super juicy and
sweet but every year they’re spotted with a strange case of red freckles. Of
all my apples, they would be the most visually acceptable to those you claim to
like apples, but the measles make people nervous, we’ve all become too
accustomed to perfect looking fruits. The rest have rough skins, and brown
sides, that look unappetizing, but are the best apples I’ve ever worked with as
a cook (thus my amazing apple butter) and are actually my preferred eating fruits.
The taste of these apples is richer, more complex and for me, more rewarding to
eat. They call apples that have this kind of skin russets. Russets are amazing
apples, they last longer than most apples and their flavors are prized by fruit
connoisseurs. Most modern apples have had the russet bred out of them, along
with their richer, denser flesh, as the modern shopper prefers a shiny apple
with a cruncher bite. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Call me old fashioned, but I wouldn’t trade my apples for
the store bought variety any day, but it does mean that each time I hand them
over I have to give a little history lesson on the perils of modern shipping
techniques for heritage flavors. Sometime people listen and sometimes people
smile at me like I’m a little crazy. That’s fine, we already know I’m a little
crazy, but it doesn’t mean I’m not right about the apples. Don’t believe me?
Feel free to stop by and grab a couple of the fruits off my front tree and try
them yourself. Actually while you’re at the house why don’t you take as many
apples as you can. And take a few for your friends too, and for any strangers
you might know, or anyone you might know who has room on their front steps for
a bushel of apples or two. Or three. Please. My compost pile is already really,
really full.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paige Patterson wishes she had are many figs as she has
apples, but has yet to succeed in getting them to bare any fruit.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-46792119692233994442016-08-15T00:12:00.000-04:002016-09-01T13:40:17.040-04:00Editing in August<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6327547437939583025" name="_GoBack"></a>It’s hard to not be able to garden.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An impinged nerve. That’s what they tell me it is, but in my
language, it’s sharp shooting pain in my arm and an electric buzzing in my
thumb and pointer finger whenever I reach for anything with my right hand.
Can’t pull weeds, can’t dig holes, can’t transplant, can’t deadhead. All I can
do is look.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s good for me. It’s teaching me to really see. It’s
frustrating, but educational, and that’s always a good thing. Or so I keep
telling myself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s not great for the garden. My garden has exploded with
weeds, with flowers too, the dahlias are battling the tomatoes for room and the
roses that a friend is deadheading for me are getting ready to blow up with
color all over again, but a garden is a living breathing thing, at least the
way mine is created, and it’s got to be kept in check. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But really, the thing that’s making me uncomfortable is that
now that I can’t just bury my head in the weeds that I’m pulling, and I’m being
forced to look around the garden and really take it in I can see that some part
need more help than just a deep weeding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some parts need rethinking. All gardens need rethinking sometimes, or at
least parts of them do, and being forced to stop and really look at your garden
from a far, instead of being immersed in it working, lets you see what’s
working and what’s failing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
August has always been the best time to see what’s what in
the garden. And to make plans. At almost any other time, if you see something
that’s off you’ll probably grab a shovel and do a little rearranging, or remove
the offender and put something else in it’s place, but in August most of what
we are doing in the garden is making sure all our new additions have plenty of
water and trying to keep the weeds at bay. In August, when you notice something
is off you need to make a note and address it later, and that’s a skill that
some of us don’t really have.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m an immediate gratification kind of a girl. Not a sit and
ponder on it person. If one plant is being swamped by another, or if a color
combination is jarring and out of place, I'll address it immediately. Right now
I can’t, and in August, you really shouldn’t anyway – it’s too hot to
transplant, so I’m getting a seriously long overdue lesson in observing and planning.
Luckily I can still take notes, and I’m doing so with a vengeance. I’m filling
up pages in my garden moleskins with what I hope won’t be too cryptic notes and
scribbles for this fall, next spring, and the garden in general.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These a couple of the things you should think about when
taking notes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What parts of the
garden are bugging you the most?</b> Or what do you have to do before it makes
you crazy? For me it’s the Joe pyeweed on the east side of the ex-veggie garden
that needs to be transplanted, as does the Ironweed on the west side of the
garage. And I need to dig up and toss almost all my daylilies. After having
been eaten by deer for so long previously they’ve all reverted to one that is a
funny double orange with a red throat. At least that’s what I think has
happened, I can’t image I ever choose of planted these garish things. They all
need to be ripped out and discarded and replaced with the peach and pink and
cream colored ones I started with ages ago. There’s a couple that need to be
saved and I need to mark those with red ribbon so they are saved, but there’s a
lot to be discarded fearlessly. The ostrich ferns need to be eradicated from
under the apple trees and the wild plums more completely. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What part of the
garden needs a little fiddling?</b> The asparagus by the garage is swamping the
gooseberry next to it, so one of them needs to move, and the plain green hostas
I got as freebies need to be thinned and transplanted into various other shady
spots so that there’s more room for variation in foliage and texture in the bed
where they presently huddle. There’s a big gaping spot under the viburnums in
the front west side bed which needs filling and the bed under the pear tree
needs something medium sized right in front of the truck and behind the astrantia,
with something that will pair well with phlox. That bed also needs to not be
allowed to fill in with Dame’s Rocket next year as it’s removal is too
destructive and noticeable. There’s also a rogue hydrangea that’s popped up by
the Heller’s Japanese holly by the basement door that needs a proper home and
those hollies need to be pruned back so that you can actually use the back door
to get in and out of the kitchen. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Would things look
better it they were pruned?</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Would you get more light? I‘ve scribbled notes about the beech tree that
we keep lifting up and a few magnolias I want to shape as well as on those
things that need to be cut back hard this year, like the rose of sharon behind
the chicken coop or perhaps even removed entirely, like the jetbead that is the
rose of sharon’s neighbor. Then there are shrubs and trees that need to be cut
back so you can travel throughout the garden. I’ve got a whole page of notes on
those.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">When you look out
your windows what do you see?</b> From most of my windows the view is pretty
good except for the two little lime hydrangeas and two roses in the front bed that
need to be dug up and moved from the front of the bed to about halfway back.
This is only because I had to transplant an enormous corylopsis from that middle
spot to the back of the property, but by doing so I threw off the balance in
that bed so the front feels too tall and heavy and needs these four shrubs
centered where the corylopsis used to be. I sometime also use photographs as a
way of taking notes. And as a way of helping me remember. Now that we all have
a phone in our cell phones, it’s easy to photograph the view from my computer
so that I can see exactly where I need to add in more late summer color and the
spot by those hydrangeas so that next spring I’ll know exactly how high I need
the shade tolerant plant I’m choosing for that spot to grow. It was a great
tool this spring when I finally shot places in the garden that I want to add
bulbs, and much easier to refer than notes are when locating exact placements. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Is there anything you
have to walk and find or do you see the whole thing in one shebang?</b> I have
an entire perennial border that you have to trek to the back forty to see. It’s
fantastic. There’s a picnic table back there as a reward for having slogged the
whole way back, but it should be nicer, a better table and seating. And while I’m
on the subject of visually attractive objects, wouldn’t it be nice to have
sculptures in the garden? Ornaments you only see by walking through the entire
garden, or mobiles hanging from some of the trees. Or more benches so I could
actually go to a part of the garden as a destination and not just keep passing
through on my way through the thing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Does your garden have
a focal point? Do you need one? </b>I have an ancient crab apple that serves as
a focal point for the long view down my garden, and I’m lucky in that I’m
planted out all my neighbors for most of the season, so no matter where I’m
sitting or standing or walking I have something interesting to look at, that’s
either giving me a place to rest my eyes or inviting my to come closer and give
it a closer look. My compost pile is the only unsightly thing in the garden,
but I kind of dig it and it’s really not too exposed at all. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Does your garden have
too much variety or not enough?</b> I’ve been good here, buying things in
masses as opposed to one at a time. It’s meant that I’ve had to pass up a
couple of interesting plants, but it also means the garden beds look more
coherent, less a mish mash of random cool things. And being a plantaholic means
there’s no way my garden doesn’t have enough variety, it’s genetically
impossible.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">When you pull in with
your car is the view always attractive or is it really nice only at one point
of the season and the rest of the year it’s boring?</b> Most of the time this
bed looks pretty nifty, but there’s a supposedly variegated dogwood that has
reverted to being almost entirely green by the front driveway needs to just be
ripped out and disposed of. Not because it’s not a lovely tree, it is, but it’s
taking up a lot of real estate in that front bed without being interesting for
enough seasons. And although the path to the kitchen from the cars works
perfectly, the Limelight hydrangea and the Lemon Queen heliopsis flop onto it
too often when it rains. These they need to be moved somewhere else.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Is there anything
that just isn’t working anymore?</b> Actual the bed with the heliopsis
mentioned above, unfortunately, needs to be entirely rethought. This bed holds
my hummingbirds’ monarda but is swamping under its onslaught, what was once a
hint of red is now a seething mass and although fun for the hummers, it’s
slightly overwhelming for me. It’s also not that attractive a plant after it
blooms. And it’s in prime, walk past it twice every single day real
estate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the spring the bed is
delightful, although could use more bulbs, but when I compare mid spring photos
with mid august photos it’s obvious that there needs to be a big overhaul here.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The same thing needs to happen in the ex-vegetable garden. That
garden is gorgeous right through June, but as July barreled in and all of last
years forgotten and unharvested potatoes started really getting going, it went
feral. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t address it this past fall, just threw
tulip bulbs everywhere and again this spring I neglected to try and get it under
control so now I officially have chaos. I don’t need any notes or photographs
to tell me this, because when you have to bushwhack your way in to find your
swallowed up pepper plants it’s easy to see have far everything has gotten away
from me. I normally can ignore this problem by ripping out spent cilantro
(coriander anyone?) and using twine or yarn to pull plant up and off the paths,
but this year I can’t even begin to make headway. I certainly can’t tie twine
without my right hand and where in past years I’d start by harvesting the
potatoes which would at least give me a little breathing room, this year I’m
having a hard time figuring out how to use a spade or a garden fork with only
one arm. </div>
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So I’m using my imagination instead. I’m visualizing how it
would look with a larger path and a paved area for seating in the center. I’m
scribbling down that the fritillarias need more sun and that there’s a nice
transplantable daylily in there, but most of my imagination is captured by the
possibilities of change. Should it only really be about roses? Will I be
willing to stop sneaking in vegetables after swearing off them for the last two
years and then caving in? </div>
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And then from there I’m flowing outwards. The bed with the
lavender which is so terribly, terribly sandy, should I make that a place for
edibles and rework all the soil or is the idea of walking back there on a daily
basis laughable when I don’t even pluck cucumbers with any regularity that are
within cat throwing distance of the house right now. Perhaps I need to simplify
back there, and move the perennials back there up front and fill their empty
spaces with shrubs that have become way too thuggish upfront. Or maybe that’s
where all my extra red monarda from will go. </div>
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And then there’s the bed under the wisteria. The wisteria
has become so dense that the only thing the plants in that bed are doing is
suffering. And the paths are getting too narrow, so should I replant the whole
thing or should I just suck it up and try and dig out the wisteria? Is that
super crazy? </div>
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Oh dear, I’m starting to feel entirely overwhelmed, maybe I
need to put my head down between my knees and breathe, but wait, what’s that
feeling I have deep, deep inside me? Huh? That feels a little like excitement,
and a teasing of possibility. So maybe this not gardening thing isn’t going to
be all bad.</div>
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Paige Patterson hasn’t held a trowel in 6 weeks and is going
through withdrawal.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-65000349486509711432016-07-11T22:01:00.000-04:002016-09-01T13:41:04.796-04:00Jewels in the garden <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX111978418" style="background-color: white; clear: both; cursor: text; direction: ltr; font-family: 'segoe ui', tahoma, verdana, sans-serif; margin: 0px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; position: relative;">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yesterday, while my husband and I were sitting on our kitchen porch reviewing the day as it started to slowly pink up at the edges, we had eight hummingbird sightings. Now, don’t know exactly how many resident jewels we have flinging themselves across my flower beds, but we did spot two males dueling over the rights to the Jacob Kline monarda just moments after a female was feeding right around the corner, so I know there are at least three individuals. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am a hummingbird junkie and once you have your first hummingbird visitor, all you want is more – so I’m always trying to find ways to coax these beauties into dropping by, or moving in permanently. And although feeders are certainly an option when it comes to attracting these beauties, there’s a few things you need to understand about hummingbird behavior to get as many as you can. We know that the name hummingbird comes from the purring or vibrating sound of their wings beating almost 90 times a second, but that's not the only thing about a humming birds that's speedy. They also have an accelerated heartbeat, a incredibly rapid breathing rate and a high body temperature, which means they burn an amazing number of calories each moment so hummingbirds needing to eat often and voraciously. They have an impressively long tongue with which they lick their food at a rate of up to 13 licks per second, sucking up almost half their body weight in nectar each day, nectar being their primary food source along with tree sap, insects and pollen, so feeders with their artificial nectar might sound like a good way to attract them, but there's one other fact about hummingbirds that might point you in a different direction.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hummingbirds don't like to share their food.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They're territorial, so even though they are only about 3 ¾ inches long and weigh about the same as a couple of paperclips, they'll defend their territories with the aggression and determination of much larger critters. I’ve seen male pursue other males for hours at a time, and even go after other larger birds. They're fearless. I know those video clips on Facebook with throngs of hummers crowding around a feeder makes us all want to run out and invest in a few dozen, but in my experience it’s rare that a male hummingbird will share his food sources willingly. And since each male demands a territory of about a quarter acre, having all your feeders clustered on the porch so you can see these beauties might be fun for you, but it’s going to be stressful for the birds. At my house, if there are two males in the same space they will dive bomb each other making sharp chirps (playing chicken so to speak) until one gives up and flies away. The victor will then return to sip in all his solitary glory. So instead of a bouquet of feeders containing liquified processed sugar and sometimes even red dye all of which also have to be cleaned religiously, and which (in my experience) hummingbirds don’t want to share –– feeders which also leak all over the porch attracting not just ants and bees, but vicious, nasty, attacking yellow jackets, I’m a proponent of the planted approach. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The planting approach is simple, just fill your property with plants that are ladened with nectar and place them all over the whole yard. I did, and now with my 2.5 acres, I've hypothetically created room for up to 10 males and their families. Doesn’t that sound like a lot more fun? I already mentioned monarda as one of my favorite hummingbird attractions, but before I give you a plant list, I’d like to clear up a little misconception. Yes hummingbirds are attracted to and love red flowers; it's a color that they can "see" from miles away, so they're super attracted to those plants; but they also will drink from any heavily nectared plant. So certainly, add some red plants, but don't be limited to only scarlet, crimson, ruby and cerise. Yes they love my enormous clump of Jacob Kline monarda, but they also think my Marshall's Delight and Purple Rooster are pretty glorious as well. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Monarda (Bee Balm) has the top spot on my list of hummingbird attractors, so if there’s only room for one more plant in your yard, this should be it, but if you want to guarantee these iridescent visitors return to your garden year after year, and you have the room, there’s a plethora of plant possibilities I can recommend. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The entire salvia family will satiate hummingbirds as will any weigela you decide will add beauty to a shrub border. I am partial to the annual salvia called Black and Blue, you I've had them feed from both annual and perennial varieties. Personally, I have about 12 or so weigela scattered around my property, but I am sort of mad for the Sonic series as their ability to rebloom is fairly impressive. I'm not sure that they are as nectar rich as some of the old fashioned cultivars (they're fairly new to my garden) so if you want to be sure you're getting the biggest bang for your buck get a cultivar that's been around for a while. What both these plants have in common is a tubular flower which is a perfect fit for the long bill of the hummingbird in it's quest for the nectar buried deep inside each bloom. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since hummingbirds tend to show up and hang out in the garden from Mother's Day through Labor day, it's important that you choose plants that will be available through their entire visit – another reason annuals are always on my humming bird list. Fuchsias are a necessity, so I've always got a few stuck in pots in shadier spots around the garden and shrimp plants are also something they go crazy for, although I'm not such a huge fan. I prefer petunias, lantana, snapdragons and nicotiana, the last two of which I stick randomly into any bed where I have room, As an aside, once you have nicotianas they will tend to self seed willy nilly (if, of course you don't weed up the seedlings) and I also collect and save my own seeds to toss about with abandon in the spring. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Columbine, hostas, foxgloves, heuchera are all fabulous perennials to incorporate into your planting beds, and if you have a spot for a honeysuckle to ramble through, please plant at least one. I have one at the rear of my property and a trumpet vine that’s finally throwing itself over my porch roof for whomever has staked out their territory by the house. When planting I always advise massing plants and repeating them throughout the garden to make sure your plantings don’t look too hodge podge, but your hummer friends also want to visit a </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">patch of the same species (three or more plants) to really get a good quantity of nectar. Cardinal flowers are a perfect plant in heavier soil, and they will create their own clump (as the monarda do of course) so those are definitively a hummingbird have to have.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the shrub realm, flowering quince is a good early plant while butterfly bush is a great way to end the summer and clethra is sometimes even given the common name Hummingbird Plant. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I've been told that the Red Buckeye is a good hummingbird magnet, but I can't speak from experience since it's one of the few trees I don't have on my property. In an interesting aside, hummingbirds can only perch on their feet, they can’t use them to stand on a flat surface, nor can they walk, so it’s also important to choose plants they will feel comfortable resting in for those few moments when their wings aren’t going or when they decide to make a nest.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m still hoping to find a hummingbird nest somewhere on my property. The nests are tiny and almost impossibly hard to spot, with eggs the size of jellybeans, and I have yet to find one in any of my trees or shrubs, but I’m continuing to look. I believe there must be at least one here somewhere since the number visitors seems to be increases yearly. I like to think I’m feeding generations. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden website gives a great and sometimes forgotten tip on creating a hummingbird friendly environment when they suggest we include some fuzzy plants in our planting plans. Hummingbirds like to line their nest with soft plant fibers, and according the BBG, two of their favorites are the fuzzy stem of the cinnamon fern and pussy willows. They also suggest we let some thistle and dandelion go to seed just for the fluffy, down like fuzz that’s so attractive to the as nest-building materials for the hummers in your yard.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I like thinking that the dancing seeds of dandelions are making tiny little beds more snuggly. It’s one of the best excuses I’ve ever come up with for leaving the dandelions in my lawn. That and the fact that they’re also dream food for bees.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paige Patterson hasn’t been able to weeds for over three weeks and her garden is out of control</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-65436418622768233112016-06-13T20:12:00.000-04:002016-09-01T15:18:22.559-04:00A gift of weeds<div class="MsoNormal">
June was an extraordinary month for roses. They were off the
hook. People keep coming up to me and telling me how amazing their roses are
and I’m loath to crush their spirits, but this year everyone’s roses were
incredible. I chalk it up to a very dry winter and spring and therefore far
fewer opportunities for black spot to do it’s decimating dance, but also the
mildness of the weather meant fewer delicate beauties had a chance to do the
dieback and death thing. But now it’s July and if you haven’t been vigilant the
weeds are fairly impressive as well.</div>
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I gauge my weeding success by the garden cartful. Tuesday I
had four – well technically five, but I left the cart in the garden as there
was still room for a few more green bodies before it got dragged to the compost
pile. Today I have almost a hundred ferns to get into the ground, but first I
must weed. I’m not big on weeding. As I’ve written before I try and plant so
densely that the weeds don’t have room to establish, much less grow and bloom,
but I let my hesperis (Dame’s Rocket) run rampant this spring and now as I rip
each collapsed clump out of the soil, I have smothered perennials, and
therefore quite a few gaping holes to deal with. But I’m fine with it. It’s
just an opportunity to buy more plants.</div>
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Weeding can be an almost meditative activity if you allow it
to be, as you must focus when you are weeding. If not, you will rip good plants
out with the bad, especially if you let the weeds get out of control. So it’s
best to do a little weeding everyday. And those of us who do, are rewarded with
a repetitive activity that helps you learn to be totally engaged in the
present. Totally focused on what you are doing. Being in the moment, not
thinking about what you should have done, or what you can do in the future, but
concentrating on the actions your hands are taking is the best way I’ve found
to relax and let go. Not of the root I’m teasing out of the soil, but of the
day. It is a good thing to focus. To be present enough to see which stalks are
good, which are bad, which needs both hands and which needs just a little
finger scuffle to be removed. Some roots need to come out completely, some
roots can just have their foliage snipped off and some roots are actually
useful. Useful you ask? What weed is useful? Well technically, the dandelion
works as a wick for calcium, bringing it up through the soil to the leaves of
the plant, which if left to decay will release the nutrient back to the surface
of the soil for other plants to take up. </div>
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Hmm? Not that interested in letting dandelions take over
your lawn and garden beds? I understand. However if, like me, you have bees,
you will have learned how much they love and appreciate the golden suns of the
dandelions flowers as a food source.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I have become tolerant of dandelions, although I do try and pop off the
heads before they become the lion manes of seeded fluff. I’m somewhat
successful, but I still have quite a few dandelions, and I accept that. It’s
one of the most Zen things I do. </div>
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Gardening has taught me to accept imperfections and to enjoy
chance encounters. I have a purple cleome that in now blooming along with
Lauren Grape Poppies in a place I don’t remember seeding either plant, but they
are beautiful. They clash somewhat with the scarlet Jacob Kline monarda that
dominates the bed where they’ve decided to grow, but so does the unnamed ripe
peach colored rose that has determined the middle of the monarda patch is the
only place in my garden where it will thrive. It’s not a color theme I would
have chosen, but all four of these plants’ successes make me happy. And that
happiness helps me breathe.</div>
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Learning to breathe, learning to be, accepting the garden
for what it is instead of focusing on what it could be; these are all lessons
that have helped me in all different moments of life, and if I remember to
think of them when facing stressful situations, I handle myself better. I have
learned, the hard way, that if you go out to the garden to weed and you are
upset or angry or frustrated, and you don’t leave those emotions by the “garden
gate” so to speak, you fail. You rip up the peas when trying to remove jewelweed,
you get handfuls of nepeta instead of creeping Charlie. Those emotions do not
work when weeding. You have to stop holding on to them so tight. You have to put
down the wrongs of the day, the week, the year and instead pick up a trowel.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This year I’m frustrated by many things in life, as I am
almost every year, but I’m not bringing those feelings out among the roses. The
weeds themselves could be another source of frustration if I let them, but the
felling of accomplishment, of a job well done when I rediscover the cucumber
that has been buried beneath pokeweed and black locust seedling, is a feeling
that is too lovely to deny.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am embracing my weeds and their removal as a gift from the
universe, the chance to feel joy from clearing an entire bed of nut sedge, the
pleasure of astrantia, long hidden finally getting a chance to extend itself up
to the sun. The height with which my compost pile is building up to the sky is
a visual reinforcement of accomplishment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And for that I am grateful. Not that I’m volunteering to come weed your
garden anytime soon. I have plenty of my own weeds. In my garden and in the
rest of my life, but I am grabbing them by the roots and removing them,
sometimes careful, something with a ferocious vigor, but with lately, with more
and more success.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Paige Patterson is running out of room in her garden but
that hasn’t stopped any plants from jumping into her car.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-72492028026991583252016-05-13T20:09:00.000-04:002016-08-06T20:10:39.800-04:00The naming of plants <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
No one knows
how to pronounce the word clematis. I pronounce it
KLEM-UH-TIS but many others pronounce it KLEE-MAH-TIS. The truth is, there’s no
real, 100% correct way to pronounce it, as we have no one who still really
speaks Latin to correct our pronunciation the way Parisians do when I try and
use their native tongue to get directions to Giverney or to purchase a baguette.
The fact is, that unless you are reversing the syllables or dropping them (as I
sometimes am guilty of doing) it is always better to ask for a plant by its
botanic name instead of its common one, even if you mangle the Latin a little
in the process.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
The reason is
simple. Plants have far too many common names and they are super confusing.
Doesn’t a garden filled with Our Lady in a Boat, Chinese Pants, Venus’s Car,
Lyre Flower, Bleeding Heart and Lady’s Locket sound super? Like a fabulous
cottage garden filled with the most wonderful flowers right? Unfortunately, such
a garden would just be a solid mass of Dicentra spectabilis, since those are
all names by which it is known.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
When we make plant
tags at the nursery we always try and put both the Latin and the common name on
the tags, but the large number of common names can sometimes make that a little
complicated. Salvia splendens ‘Bonfire’ could be
commonly called Bonfire Scarlet Sage. Or it could be Bonfire Splendid Sage. Or
even Bonfire Tropical Sage. With a common name all three words are capitalized
and the name starts with the cultivar (without the single quotes used to
indicate it’s a cultivar in the Latin name) and is followed by the most common,
common name, each word of which is capitalized, i.e. Scarlet Sage. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
So who
determines which common name to use? Well at most nurseries, it’s the person making
the tags, so when I was entering the information, I would use the word Hosta for
both the common and the Latin name of that plant, but technically I’d be wrong.
The correct common name is Plantain Lily, although Funkier is used to be the
more common, common name. But in common usage hosta is the word all our
gardeners use. Should we use Coral Bells or Alumroot when referring to plants
in the heuchera family? I never call artemesia Wormwood, I just call it Artemesia,
the same way I refer to forsythia, magnolia, hydrangeas, and clematis by their Latin
names only. I’d never call a gingko a Maidenhair Tree but I’ve do call aruncus
Goatsbeard. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So it’s a dilemma. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Not that
figuring out the Latin names is any easier. You would think the professionals growing
these plants would use a consistent source of information to be the
reference guides but in the world of perennials, annuals and herbs, but there
doesn’t seem to be one. Allan Armitage, a god in horticultural circles, tends
to be the most up to date on the perennials and annuals, but even he has said
it is impossible to keep up in a printed form as names and cultivars keep
changing, growing and expanding.<u><o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
He has written
the textbook on perennials, and another on annuals, biennials and half-hardy
perennials and we treat both as bibles in the Marders reference library, but
there are too many plants that are not classified within them. The Royal
Horticultural A-Z<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Encyclopedia of
garden plants is also a good source, but it too is not that up to date. And
online listings don’t really help either – much to my distress the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden uses the <a href="http://plantinfo.umn.edu/default.asp"><u style="text-underline: #407DC2;"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">Andersen Horticultural Library's Plant Information Online</span></u></a>,
which only uses the first part of the Latin binomial. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
“Wait, wait, wait
Paige, what the heck is a binomial?” I hear you ask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m so glad you asked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
A
plant’s botanical name consists of two words, and is therefore referred to as a
"binomial." The first word
represents the larger group the plant belongs to, the genus, and its first
letter is always capitalized. The second word is the species and it is always
lowercase. A plant’s binomial name should be written in
full but lots of nurseries and growers and plant breeders don’t bother. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Most growers
actually sell the above-mentioned salvia as Salvia Bonfire, without bothering
with the single quotes or the second half of the binomial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which makes me crazy. Not because I’m a
control freak (although I am a tad) but because when you see a list of plants
to buy from and only the first part of the name is used, you really have no
idea what you’re getting. I happen to love Salvia
nemorosas and loathe Salvia
verticillatas, so luckily, because I am a plant junkie, I know that ‘Hypnotic
Purple’ and ‘Salute Pink’ are salvias I want to try but that I can skip
‘Endless Love’ – but does a regular, non-plantaholic know the difference? I
think nemorosas are significantly better plants, but if a first time gardener
buys a plant named Salvia ‘Endless Love’ and is disappointed it’s the way
verticillatas look and perform, they’re going to think all salvias are sort of
blah and are going to miss out of some excellent plants.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Other then
the basic binomial a Latin name can include subspecies, varieties and
cultivars. A subspecies (preceded by the abbreviation "subsp.") is a
geographically separate population within a species that is almost, but not
quite, a separate species. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
botanical variety (preceded by "var.") is a distinct variant
occurring in the same populations as ordinary examples of a species. Both of these
additions are really not necessary for the home gardener to know, so it’s up
for debate as to whether they should go onto our tags. If you know plants, you know
that sometime they’re helpful but very few people in the business of retailing
plants use them, including most of the vendors we work with in the perennial
and annual world. I know, I know, I hear you yawning but hear me out.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
A
cultivar (CULTIvated VARiety), or selection, is a type that is not naturally
occurring. These have been bred or crossed or chosen for some special
characteristic. Cultivar names are a word or words in a modern language (NOT
Latin) set off in single quotes and capitalized, but not italicized, such as
Salvia splendens ‘Bonfire’.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Hybrids,
or crosses between different species, are given unique names that are preceded
with an x, indicating that this plant is a hybrid between two species — for
example, Salvia x superba is a hybrid of S. sylvestris and S. villicaulis.
Sometimes that "x" inadvertently gets dropped along the way; this
plant is often listed as Salvia superba. And I’m not positive that many of the
people who sell us these plants even know for sure when something is a cross or
not, and even less know what that cross is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the nursery we can decide on having the x or taking it
out. I tend to leave it in but I am a maniac. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Another
problem we have is that when botanists make taxonomic name changes as a result
of advances in botanical knowledge (e.g. the Chrysanthemum genus was recently
split into eight different genera, including Dendranthema, Tanacetum, and
Leucanthemum) it may take years for the horticultural industry to adopt them,
but should we be up to date with the changes? Should our tags have the new
names? And will this help or confuse our customers? We could add the new name
to the old name with a slash i.e. Chrysanthemum/Dendranthema but some growers
will use the old name and some the new – this is the case with Actea/Cimicifuga
for example. Cimicifuga has had this new name for years, but very few people, including
some awfully good gardeners, use it or know it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Do you
know <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solenostemon_scutellarioides"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">Solenostemon scutellarioides</span></a>? That’s the new name for some of our good friends <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Coleus blumei</span>. I’m not going to be
able to remember that; to be honest, I didn’t even know the second name of
Coleus was blumei, and when they shelved the name coleus not all of the plants
became scutellarioides. Instead a number of them were moved into the
plectranthus category. And of course, to bring us full circle, my
adored Dicentra spectabilis has now got a new Latin name as well. Its Lamprocapnos spectabilis – I mean come on, are they kidding
me? There’s no way I’m not going to mangle that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’m going to still beg you to try and use the Latin
name, if only to prevent you from picking up the annual Chinese Forget-Me-Nots
(Cynoglossum amiable) and planting them all in your shade garden
expecting them to self seed into a big carpet of blue Forget-Me-Nots which is
actually an entirely different species of plant. What you want is the Myosotis
sylvatica –<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the word Myosotis coming
from the Greek word for mouse’s ear, and although the flowers look remarkably
similar they’re very little else that about them that is.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
Paige Patterson says
there’s no such thing as too many hydrangeas – thus the ‘After Midnight’ in her
car.<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-21962898320410521562016-04-11T20:17:00.000-04:002016-08-06T20:17:41.932-04:00Not the usual suspects<div class="MsoNormal">
Tired of piles of zucchini overwhelming your kitchen? Not
that interested in growing yet one more tomato? Bored with squash? I feel you.
I too have gotten to the point where I just can’t stomach the idea of planting
yet another row of cilantro to be ready when the currant ones bolt. I don’t
have one of those gorgeous, picture perfect potagers, because, as we all know
I’m just not that into weeding. So if I’m going to have to slave over something
and tend to it’s every little whim and need, I want it to be something
extraordinary, or at least something worth talking about.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is how I discovered cucamelons or Mexican Sour Gherkin
Cucumbers (Melothria scabra). A friend was distributing the bounty from his
garden in exchange for some of my chickens’ eggs and he handed me a baggie
filled with what looked like dollhouse watermelons. Tiny little striped ovals,
which he just popped into my mouth. Wow, crazy, pure cucumber taste with a
little zip of lime, these babies were delicious and one of the niftiest things
I’d ever seen to throw in a salad or on a crudités platter. It has to be the
“cutest” edible I’ve ever come across and one of the easiest to grow.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cucamelons
grow just like cucumber, in that they want sun and fertile soil and decent
water, but unlike cucumbers, they are super reliable and take up a lot less
room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still a vine, they need some
support to clamber upon, but they’re easy to start from seed and fairly
prolific once they get going.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And to go along with the theme, we need to grow one of the
melons called Metki serpent melons (Cucumis melo var. flexuosus) – a muskmelon
(Cucumis melo) that also tastes like a cucumber (Cucumis sativus). Often called
Armenian cucumber and usually found among the cucumbers in seed listings, these
melons are almost identical in shape and flavor to the cucumber. They get their
name from the fact that they can grow to be almost three feet long, and if not
grown on a trellis or support structure of some kind, will twist up into
squiggles that sort of resemble snakes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are ridged when growing and have a fuzzy skin, but when
mature smooth out into one of three colors, a pale green to white color, a dark
green or striped, which is the best looking.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am a huge fan of gooseberries and currants (Ribes) so
those shrubs are pushing their way into spaces where radishes and spinach used
to grow. When I was a child in England, my favorite desert of all time was
gooseberry crumble and I still salivate thinking about it. Ribes were outlawed
in America in the early 1900s to prevent white pine blister rust (a fungus they
are susceptible to) from affecting the lumber industry, the federal ban was
lifted in 1966 but it wasn’t until 2003 that New York State started to allow
home gardeners to legally grow these fruits. There are two types of gooseberry
plants, the American (Ribes hirtellum) which make smaller fruits but are way more
productive and less susceptible to mildew (the one bummer about growing Ribes)
and the European (Ribes uva-crispa) which are larger and much more flavorful.
Unlike most fruits, gooseberries can handle partial shade, but make sure
there’s plenty of air circulation to help you battle mildew. They must have
rich soil since they resent drying out, but they adore our soil and even if you
get small plants give them about 3 to 5 feet of room to expand as they grow. I
promise you the effort is worth it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another unusual
fruit worth growing is our native elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) a fast
growing shrub that the deer don’t seem to like. This might be because the
berries when red are toxic, so make sure you’re not harvesting them until they
are at their most purple blackness. This is a big plant (it can grow to be 12
feet wide and tall) that has a tendency to sucker, so you need to give it room.
I would advise planting it in a hedgerow, not the vegetable garden and trying
to find a number of different cultivars as the fruits are better with cross
pollination (much like blueberries.) This is another plant that can handle a
little shade and although they tolerate neglect, you’ll get a lot more fruit if
you keep them well-watered and top-dressed with compost each year. You harvest
the berries by cutting off the entire cluster and must cook the fruits to make
juice, jelly or wine. I’ve not tried the wine, but I do like them mixed with
apples as a pie filling. I do have to battle my birds to be able to really
enjoy large harvest, but when I don’t, I never have to worry about them going
to waste.</div>
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Another native edible that’s worth trying is the pawpaw
(Asimina) of which there are actually 9 native species but only one (Asimina
triloba) is hardy in our area. These are trees so if your pawpaw is in full sun
it’s going to get about 20 feet or so tall and would be happiest allowed to
sucker into a big pawpaw patch. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paw paws are not self fertile, so you need to have two to get
fruit set, and the best way to ensure a full crop is help with the pollination
with an artist’s paint brush. Seedlings can’t handle full sun, but most of the
trees you’ll find will be past that stage so plant them where they’ll get
plenty of it. However, do try to avoid planting them in a windy spot, as the
leaves can’t handle the constant stress. This might sound like a lot of work,
but the fruits are really quite delicious, with the texture of a banana and a
flavor that is almost as if you mashed up that banana with a mango and a pear. </div>
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I don’t grow pawpaws, but I do have a fruiting quince
(Cydonia oblonga) that is one of my favorite plants. Quince resemble hard fuzzy
pears that have a fragrance that smells like the offspring of a pineapple and a
lemon that made love in a vat of honey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fruit is either yellow or pink and rock hard so these are not for
fresh eating, but make an incredible jelly and are ready to be harvested
sometime in October. It’s not a pretty plant, so mine is tucked around the side
of my house, but I adore the plant and will always have one somewhere on any
property I own, albeit in as much sun as I can spare and without fertilizer as
too much nitrogen makes this plant stress. </div>
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Of course, if we’re talking about incredible jelly the other
plant that we should all grow is our native beach plum (Prunus maritima). When
I was a kid, there were a billion beach plums growing in the dunes (where
houses now unfortunately sprout) and almost everyone and their neighbor had a
stockpile of beach plum jelly put up for the winter, not to mention that they
all also had their own favorite, well guarded secret bushes from which they’d
picked their preferred berries. Some of the most delicious fruits are actually
growing on two shrubs in the center of The Bayberry Nursery’s perennial sales
area and in late summer it’s worth a visit just to steal a few of these tart
little treats. Totally tolerant of the salty air and sandy soils of the beach,
this plant can also be grown in the backyard and is a perfect shrubby bush to
grow if your garden is not all that fertile and you have plenty of light.</div>
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But enough with the fruit. A list of other fun things to
grow would definitely include lovage (Levisticum officinale) a plant that
tastes almost identical to celery but is significantly easier to grow. Normally
seeded in late summer or fall, you’ll probably want to start with a young
plants instead and in good soil the plant is magnificent with leaves that look
like giant parsley and are delicious when used in any recipe that calls for
celery and with gorgeous white umbel flowers that set seeds that mature in
August. Seeds that are amazing scattered into salads and fruit (they are
surprisingly sweet) and that will self sow if left alone, but are better
planted farther apart. You might not need a million lovage plants around the
garden, but once you’ve cut a stalk to use as a Bloody Mary “straw” I promise
you will never go back to celery again.</div>
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This year, I’m thinking about growing the rat tailed radish
(Raphanus sativus caudatus), specifically because instead of eating the root,
you consume the seedpods. Sort of ugly, the pods have that same hot radish flavor,
but are an entirely different texture and since I’m a huge consumer of
vegetative matter, I’m interested to see what these things are like. Plus
they’re meant to be super cool in a stir-fry, fantastic pickled in vinegar with
pink peppercorns, allspice and mace and another cool addition to the crudités
platter. The seed pods can get to be 8 inches long and are grown in the same
way you would grow any other radish, except that you don’t have to tear your
hair out it the bolt to seed quicker than expected. </div>
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The other day I actually saw seeds of garden purslane (Portulaca
oleracea), which has become this hot thing in restaurants all of a sudden, but
frankly I draw the line at seeding things in my garden I’ve weeded up
previously. I used the weed when making salads, and it is really quite
delicious, with a sharp, citrusy tang and a bit of a bite, the succulent leaves
add an interesting and distinct texture to herby salads, plus it’s super high
in Vitamin C but I enough of these plants have already found their own way into
my garden. I’m not bringing in more.</div>
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There are so many other interesting and unusual edibles I
could go on and on, but I have no more room, in either my garden or this
column. But just a few to ask around about would be ground cherries, stevia,
pomegranates, kiwis, amaranth, tastoi and perilla. Be careful with the perilla
though, as mine self-seeded all over the place. Not that self-seeding is bad, I
now let all my self-seeded cilantro go to seed since the seeds of cilantro are
actually coriander (two, two, two herbs in one!) and fresh coriander seeds,
unlike the dried and dusty ones you get at the store in the tiny glass bottles,
are significantly more delicious and work equally well when thrown in with a
cooking salmon or a bunch of freshly picked peas.</div>
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Paige Patterson has too many tomatoes planted on her
property, which is, of course, no big surprise.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-39295326293290618472016-03-13T23:36:00.000-04:002016-04-10T23:37:16.211-04:00So you say you need a tree<div class="MsoNormal">
This Sunday will be the first day of spring, which marks
many things in the gardening calendar, but for me, it is the beginning of the
season when people start saying they need a tree. Now sometimes they know
exactly what they want, “I’m looking for a pair of 7 inch caliper Fagus
sylvatica ‘Dawyck Purple’ please,” But most of the time they don’t. So I ask
them a series of questions.</div>
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First I ask where they live, and if they have deer, to make
sure they know when they choose their trees, which will be eaten and which
won’t. Then I ask what do they want the tree to do? Do they need it to block
their view of something or is it going to be a focal point? Do they want it to
give shade, or to flower, or to be interesting to look at all season long? Is
the tree is going to be in sun or in shade? Do they want it to be tall or
short? I ask where is it going in their garden and how much room do they have
for this tree? And then I ask them if they need it to be an evergreen or a
deciduous tree. Most of the time they can give me an answer, to at least some
of the questions, and we’ll jump in one of the golf carts and zoom over to the
areas where the trees that most readily meet their expectations are standing.
We use a golf cart because we’ve got to cover 14 acres and the trees that I
need to show people are never all gathered together in one spot, quietly
waiting.</div>
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Occasionally the people I’m questioning just seem to glaze
over or look at me cock-eyed as I run through my litany. So I speak to them in
a different way. I ask them about their tastes, how they live and what makes
them happy. “What kind of house do you have and what does your garden already
have in it that you like? Do you need the tree to be green all year long, or is
it okay if it loses its leaves? Are you trying to screen out your neighbors
house, or to get a little shade by the patio? What shape tree gets you excited?
Do you want a multi-stem or a tree with a single trunk?” This last is always an
interesting question in that a few trees can come both ways; crape myrtles (Lagerstroemia)
and swamp maples (Acer rubrum) come instantly to mind; and most people have
very definite expectations of how their trees should grow (multi-stemmed crape
myrtles are preferred five to one while swamp maples are expected to have a
single trunk.) “Do you want it to look like a lollipop – as if it was drawn by
a child, or a vase, or irregular?” Sometimes these questions get us a little
further along the way to making our decisions, but sometimes we just get into
the golf cart and drive around looking at shapes. Gumdrop. Shrubby. Pyramidal.
Vase. Compact. Espaliered. Blob on a stick. Squiggly. Columnar. Oval.
Topiaried. Spreading. Open. Layered. Weeping. Weeping is actually a fascinating
shape, people either love them or hate them, there really doesn’t seem to be
any middle ground. </div>
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“Do you want it to look formal or loose and more organic? Do
you want it to look like you planted it or that it grew on the property from
seed? Is this tree going to stand by itself or be in a row? Do they want to
line a driveway? Do you want to see it when you drive in or from the master
bedroom?” I don’t normally ask people how much money they want to spend, because
once we figure out what kind of trees they need or like, we can always find it
either smaller or larger, but sometimes they come in asking which is my best
bargain. Other times they want to see what’s the most expensive tree we have.
Some folks want it to be fully mature, while others want to plant it to grow
along with them.</div>
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There’s almost always a tree that meets people’s dreams (excepting
of course those folks who want an upright evergreen, shade tolerant,
deer-resistant, flowering evergreen that tops out at about 10 feet. I tell
those people I want that tree too, and if we invent or bred one, we can retire
as zillionaires.) For the rest there’s always a tree that’ll meet their wants,
but sometimes it won’t work in their realities. I can use both evergreens and
deciduous trees to block a view. But it you need to screen out that new house
that’s just been built right on your property line and your property slopes
down so you’re much lower then they are, I could get you a row of Japanese
cedars (Cryptomeria japonica) that are tall enough, but they might cost more
than your house did. So sometimes there’s compromises. </div>
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I know you’ve always wanted a huge Yoshino flowering cherry
(Prunus x yodensis) like the ones in Washington, but since there’s pretty deep
shade in the spot you are describing, it’s not going to be happy there. I know,
that as a salesperson, people expect me to just give them whatever they want,
but a larger part of my job is actually saying no to people who want to put a
tree in the wrong place. </div>
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Saying no and suggesting something better, that’s
really one of the cruxes of the picking out the perfect tree. No you can’t put
a European hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) where it’s going to get salt spray from
the ocean, even if you’re a couple of blocks from the beach – if the new
foliage gets salt on it, it’ll be toast; a fern leaf beech (Fagus aspleniflora)
or any other beech would be a far better choice. No a southern magnolia
(Magnolia grandiflora) will not work on the bright, but never sunny north side
of your house, but a silverbell (Halesia carolina) would be fantastic there as
would the variegated butterfly Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ‘Butterfly’), or a
white flowered eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis 'Alba'). I agree that Hollywood
junipers (Juniperus torulosa) look amazing in the dunes, but the deer will most
definitely eat them in the winter unless you want to wrap them in burlap or
fencing. You could substitute white spruce (Picea glauca) which are
significantly more deer resistant but unfortunately, look a little incongruous
in the dunes, or you could go with Japanese black pines (Pinus thunbergii) but
they are susceptible to turpentine beetles. Me, personally, I would wrap the
Hollywoods, because they are gorgeous, but this is your choice.</div>
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I want to make people happy when they choose their tree,
because trees matter. They are significant in both how they change a property
and how they make us feel. Trees ground us, and connect us with the earth. So
we all want the trees we choose to not just survive, but to thrive.</div>
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Then there are the tree collectors. These are people who
know almost as much as I do about trees, and sometimes more, and with them,
exploring the nursery is a huge treat. They’re the people I snap and email photos
for to the moment something crazy, new, unusual or beautiful comes off the
trucks. Some of them have huge houses, some tiny properties, some live right
around the corner while others live in completely different states, but
shopping for trees with them is always exciting. They’re the ones that
understand how cool a weeping astringent persimmon (Diospyros kaki ‘Pendula’)
is and can discuss with me the merits of it versus the more common Magic
Fountain weeping persimmon (Diasporas virginiana 'JN5') – not only in regards
to shape, but with a whole long debate on the variable pros and cons of
astringent versus non astringent fruits. I adore these folks and have a few
whom I have been choosing trees with for over a decade, trees which I’ve helped
place and obsess over almost as much as they have, but selling anyone a tree is
a chance to get to know them and a chance for me to help them get to know
trees, and what could be better than that?</div>
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I love selling people trees, not only because there are so
many fantastic ones to choose from and because they truly will transform a
space with their addition, but because teaching people about trees and talking
to people who love trees is a conversation that has the possibility of going
almost anyplace. It’s science and nature and beauty and color and form and
texture and history and emotion, all wrapped up in a single package of burlap
and string.</div>
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Paige Patterson has just placed an order for a whole mess of
gooseberries to be shipped to her this spring because they remind her of when
she was a child living in England.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-14109794023826746412016-02-14T09:06:00.000-05:002016-02-27T09:06:58.433-05:00Repeat Customers<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;">
<span class="" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The sky is an electric blue today and the sun is out so the chickens and I are both sunning ourselves on the kitchen porch. The chickens are far more relaxed than I am, lying on their sides on the new doormats stretching their fully extended legs out to get the most of the sun’s beating down warmth.</span><span class="" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span class="" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I tossed handfuls of poppy seeds out into the snow, seeds I bought for a song at the last Hamptons Horticultural Alliance lecture, and I’m watching the squirrels trying to outsmart the squirrel proof feeder that’s filled with hulled sunflower seeds, because I’m recklessly generous when it comes to my birds. It’s a good day.</span></div>
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I’ve been purchasing seeds for myself as well with a vengeance, especially since the Baker Creek seeds finally arrived at Marders, and as I was rifling through the gorgeous packages someone asked if I needed cilantro. Hahahahahaha. Cilantro was planted once in my veggie garden and has been self seeding there with impunity ever since. Cilantro and Bronze fennel (Foeniculum vulgare ‘Purpureum’): are two plants I will never need to buy seeds for again. My fennel has actually escaped the vegetable garden and is now traveling through the flower and shrubby areas of my garden in a way that would be super scary if I didn’t actually love the plant. I have a similar thing going on with Dames Rocket (Hesperis matronalis) but again, it’s a plant I adore so I’m not that upset about it. <o:p class=""></o:p></div>
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Unfortunately, Dames Rocket is now categorized by the DEC as an invasive plant, and they’re not wrong to accuse it as such, it’s just that I, like Marie Antoinette, am a huge fan. Actually, Marie is meant to have been super fond of the white variety and although I’ve considered ripping out all the lavender and other purple shades, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It’s Sarah Raven who gives us the tidbit about Ms. Antoinette, raves about the plant, and also uses the seedpods in flower arrangements – a brilliant idea I’m going to steal. Others have less nice things to say, but I don’t care as it does its thing right around the same time as my allium and my foxgloves and I crave its lushness at that time. I do have a form of control at my house, where, after it has bloomed I pull up some of the plants and cut back the soon to be seedpods on others, so it’s not taken over entirely, but I would never eliminate it, as the scent is crazy good and a real magnet for hummingbirds. It would also be a brilliant addition to an evening scented garden as the slightly cinnamony fragrance becomes more pungent with nightfall.<o:p class=""></o:p></div>
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Speaking of invasives, I confess I to having lythrum in my garden. It’s been there about a decade or two and it’s just hanging about, not really spreading or doing anything thug like which I will admit was somewhat disappointing after the rampant way I’d seen it take over wet roadsides in Massachusetts. I had the plant for ages before it went on the DEC NYS invasive plant list and think it’s fascinating how differently plants behave on different properties. This year, I believe, Miscanthus sinensis is going to be on the invasive plant list as is the Burning Bush (Euonymus alatus.) Both are sold as “regulated” now, which means they are being sold with a warning tag attached, but the “prohibited” label is almost certain to be landed this year. I adore my burning bush. Enormous when I bought my house, it was the victim of an unfortunately miscommunicated conversation where I asked it for it to be pruned back by 12 inches and it was instead hacked back to a foot from the ground. It was a hysteric day but the plant recovered nicely and smacks me in the face each fall with it’s blistering red. <o:p class=""></o:p></div>
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I don’t know what plant we’re going to use to replace all the miscanthus that is sold in the Hamptons, as this is one of the few stalwarts left standing on the deer resistant plant list. I’m leaning towards the fargesia family of clumping bamboos for a similar look, height and feel, but they’re significantly harder plants to find since they’re much less commonly grown. It should be an interesting spring. Now neither my euonymus nor my miscanthus has ever given me even a single offspring in the twenty plus years that I’ve had my house, but my viburnums and my buddleias, well that’s a very different story. <o:p class=""></o:p></div>
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Some of these plants have been here since the first spring I bought my house so it’s strange that it took them so long to go crazy, but in the last couple of years, both these suckers are popping up everywhere. I don’t know what happened – if there’s some genetic variant in some neighbors’ yard nearby that’s responsible for the genetic little legs these plants have inherited or if it is my bees that are responsible (the invasion shortly thereafter the bees came into my life) but I could open a nursery with these babies. I’ve dug up and transplanted them all and so far the butterfly bushes are not that impressive florally (I keep hoping I’ll get some cross pollinated superstar) but they keep the bees and hummers happy. The viburnums are just starting to get to blooming size so we shall see it there’s anything worth keeping here as well, but from the way these two are shooting around the garden I think they’re going to join their brethren on the invasive list pretty darn soon. It seems to only be viburnum plicatum types that are seeding, but I shall report back more after the summer when they’ve flowered.</div>
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Naturally, there is of course one plant on the list that I am sort of longing for called Wild Chervil (Anthriscus sylvestris) in its purple foliaged cultivar form called “Ravenswing.’ This flower has dominated the Chelsea Plant Show for years as it looks like a pink Queen Anne’s Lace flower on top with dark purple, cut leaf foliage that rivals any cimicifuga you could ever hope to meet. And I just happen to have a package or two of seeds that have somehow found their way home with me. But it’s scary entering the world of the invasive plant.</div>
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There are two other plants on that list that I wish had never been introduced to my garden, the Iris pseudacorus which I’m been removing for 15 years at least by now, and the Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria). I don’t even know how to begin to get rid of the celandine unless I nuke the whole area it’s taken over, and we all know I’m chemically adverse at this point in my life. The iris isn’t as bad, it’s just that it’s gotten among a bunch of plants I want to save and I have to dig everything up and trash the iris without demoing the other plants but if I focused on it, it could be done. The celandine is an entirely different story. Although said to be Wadsworth’s favorite flower, it’s out of control in a shade bed right outside the kitchen window and is suffocating all my other shade plants. Spreading by both seed and tiny little corms, the trick is to dig the whole plant up and try and get out all those corms. This is of course much easier said than done, which is why I’m still battling it. I will confess that I think I was silly and actually purchased the hideous thing ages ago, so I am solely to blame for the terrible damage it has done. </div>
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I deeply regret planting the thing, but I need to confess something to you, and that is that I still long for the Cypress Spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias) I put into a clients garden 15 years ago. It too is hideously invasive, and on the list, but I adore the chartreuse flowers and the coniferesque, fernlike foliage. It’s a euphorbia, so you have to wear gloves when cutting it and then burn the stems with a lighter, but it’s gorgeous in early spring bouquets. I haven’t been to that property in a while as the owners got Lyme’s disease and lost his interest in gardening, but I fantasize about digging up a chunk and planting it in my own east back border that is already home to a variety of mints and Gooseneck Loosestrife (Lysimachia clethroides) and Dames Rocket and all those random self-seeded viburnum and buddleia seedlings. It could be a thugs’ gallery so to speak. A bed that’s a mixed tapestry of flowering shrubs with underplantings of things I need for cuttings, but don’t want to take over the world. So who knows, so I might still someday dig up a few plants and transplant those suckers. Bad Paige.</div>
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Paige Patterson is also battling Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis), Purple Shiso (Perilla frutescens) and Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum) – none of which she will confess to having planted.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-52522053329308460412016-01-17T12:49:00.000-05:002016-02-27T09:08:46.153-05:00Recharging in the cold<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like most gardeners, I get a break in the month of January
and February to rest and recharge just as my garden does (although this year is
going to be a little peculiar, what with my tulips pushing up and my rhubarb
sprouting flower stalks in January.) And during this time I gorge on gardening
books, magazines and catalogs and attend gardening lectures and symposiums. This
satieties my soul the way pea soup and cornbread carries you through a wet and
cold January afternoon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">As I work constantly through the gardening year, I rarely
have a chance to go on all the garden tours and open houses other plantaholics
flock to, so my visiting of other people gardens happens in a darkened room on
a stiff seat facing a screen. I have been to Europe with Charlotte Moss, watched
Arne Maynard demonstrate his thoughts on various sites’ vernacular and seen Jinny
Blom, Sarah Price and Penelope Hobhouse discuss how frustrating it is to be a
woman in the garden design field and have it assumed that men helped create
their designs. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Last week I drooled over Debra Nivens plant palette in
California and exulted in the way she planted new plane trees all askew and
leaning to match the existing ones on the site she was redesigning. Over the
next month I will be making the drive to the New York Botanic Garden three
times to hear three different Chelsea Garden Show winners talk about the idiosyncrasies
of their personal design processes. And I’ll also be dropping in at the
Brooklyn Botanic Garden in a few weeks to join Thomas Rainer and Claudia West
as they speak about their new book, Planting in a Post-Wild World.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is one of my favorite parts of the winter. The
learning. I set up Pinterest pages on plants I must have and voraciously
consume blogs as if just struck with the gardening bug.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I fold over the pages of various
catalogues and write next to entries phrases such as “Need 30.” “Yes!!!”
“Finally.” And, “for under the magnolia grove.” When I feed my brain by finally
chewing my way through the enormous piles of gardening books and magazines that
have sprung up (more hoarder like then fairy ring I’m afraid) around the house
I get excited about the possibilities and promise of the back 40 -- one of the
Pinterest pages is actually called “the Back 40’ – and think about how I can
reinvent the garden.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sometimes this kind of thing is dangerous. Last year’s massive
perennial plug purchase came about because I read too many books on the new
perennial planting style and went to a lecture by North Wind Perennial Farm
founder Roy Diblik. Another year I found myself buried in an avalanche of
flower seed packages (with no greenhouse or even a sunny windowsill to start
them in) after discovering various flower farmer blogs. Occasionally it’s
depressing when I compare my failure of a vegetable garden (weeds hidden by
self-seeded verbena bonariensis that have swallowed up the cucumbers and shaded
out the haricot vert) to the ones up there on those screens in those darkened
rooms.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have twice had to delete a tab on Safari so that I don’t
go through with yet another order for dahlias. And I have a basket of leftover
seeds in the basement that are calling my name desperately and begging me not
to order any others before trying them first. But that’s the whole fun, really.
This time of being inspired, of dreaming about possibilities and change or
total unfettered learning, it’s how I restore myself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I do yoga everyday, eat only healthy, wholesome food and mainline
horticultural information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have
learned all about Crimson Crush blight resistant tomatoes that for the moment
are available only in the UK. I will be growing the Madame Butterfly
snapdragons as soon as I have a way to start them in a sheltered area eight
weeks before the late frost as their double flowers are not only gorgeous, but
supposedly harder for insects to pollinate so longer lasting as a flower. That
martagon lilies need lime and need to be ordered in June at the latest if you
want to be able to get any to plant in the fall and that you can find the best
deals in Canada (I have put a note in my calendar for this years’ purchase. ) I
have absorbed the plant names for an easy maintenance garden and reengaged with
Sissinghurst through Vita’s brilliant words once again. I have IV drip lines
hooked up to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>both Margaret Roach’s
and Nancy Ondra’ blogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
reading every book Carol Klein has ever written and winter is flying by.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The other day it was 12 degrees when I woke up so I dragged
the waiting pine needle bales over to mulch the artichokes which hadn’t truly
died down yet and so couldn’t be mulched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The ground was frozen so I covered them up but there were still some
silvery grey green foliage that looked unfrozen. I know that if I cover them
too soon, they push up under the mulch and rot, but this weeks looks like it’s
going to be cold enough, finely for them to get some rest. Me, I loathe the
cold. Just <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>dragging the pine
needle bags to the garden and spreading them challenged the tips of my fingers
and my ears. As we all know, I detest winter,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and still wonder why I didn’t stay put in Seattle when I had
the chance, but I am learning to be grateful for this pause. And although I
miss my garden and the comfort it gives me to walk through it at all hours and
poke in the soil, pulling a weed or two or breaking off a handful of flowers, I
am filled with excitement and anticipation about what my upcoming darkened room
learning will inspire.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Paige Patterson will confess to having made some <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">of her fantasy </span>purchases this
winter, she just won’t admit to which ones.</span><br />
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<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-25754738706248272662015-12-13T12:22:00.000-05:002015-12-16T12:23:24.697-05:00It’s beginning to feel a little like Christmas<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay so as I sit here writing this it’s 62 degrees outside.
Now don’t get me wrong, I happen to loathe the cold weather, so I’m not sad
about this weather at all, but I am a little worried.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My flowering
quince is flowering, in December. Sigh. Also the hydrangea buds have cracked
and I have fresh, delicate little leaves starting to unfurl. This does not make
me happy. I tell my clients to grab a butt load of burlap and start wrapping all
their hydrangeas, but I’m not planning on follow my own advice. I’m thinking of
doing one or two, but I have so many that it’s not really possible, or
affordable for me to do them all. So I’m ignoring them and hoping that we’re
going to have a winter like the one we had the year I gardened all the way
through February -- but I’m not holding my breath.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Instead I’ve decided to try and get in the holiday mood.
It’s a little tough right now, as it feels like September out there, and even
though our tree is up and decorated, it never really feels like the season is
upon us until I make my own wreath. Making your own wreath is one of the best
reasons to work in a garden shop or a florist and I recommend it highly.
Normally I join in one of our wreath making classes and starting with just a
wire ring, a bunch of evergreen cuttings and a spool of wire, I build the whole
thing from scratch, but this year I had a client visit scheduled at the same
time as the first class, so I had to start with a basic wreath and add onto it.
</div>
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As you can imagine, my wreath is very similar to my
personality. Or at least to my hair. It’s a little wild, unkempt and unruly,
almost improvisational you might say. Which is the same way I cook and I
garden. It means sometimes things work out fabulously, and sometimes they go
terribly wrong. In baking, improvisation is not always rewarded. In music it
can be marvelous. Unfortunately I cannot carry a tune. And although my garden
looks a little more Miss Haversham than Gertrude Jeykll that’s the look I’m
after. Fortunately, wiring layers and textures of greenery in a circle also seems
to work out for me.</div>
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Blue Atlas cedar, white pine and noble fir, plus a few left
over pieces of false cypress scrounged off the floor were placed on top and
wired around my base wreath with the loops of wire tucked under the existing
balsam. The blue Atlas cedar I cut long so it would extend out like Farah
Fawcett’s wings in that bathing suit poster. Then once everything was secure, I
grabbed a handful of shorter greens to tuck under and conceal any exposed
wires. These I also twisted up and forced into rutting out positions like
random Joan Mitchell brushstrokes of green. Luckily there was also some seeded
eucalyptus left over from a special order that I was able to grab and tuck in
as well. The result was pure Paige. Explosive, excessive and a little off
kilter. Intentionally.</div>
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<br /></div>
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At home I knew I still had last year’s silver bow, saved in
my Christmas ornament box, so I didn’t make a new one, although I was super
tempted by the burlap ribbon we have. I was also good and declined the proffered
pinecones, dried pomegranates and limes that were already “picked” or attached
to the green sticks used to work attachments into floral arrangements. And although
I am dying to use artichokes in a wreath I really want to try and get the ones
in my garden to flower more profusely so I can dry and use my own.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was almost seduced by the silver glitter branches I used
two years ago, but sense prevailed. That wreath was so big it didn’t fit on my front
door and I had to hang it between the two windows on my front porch, but it was
an extraordinarily crazy and fabulous wreath as I used the branches in a radial
way, sticking them into the sides of the wreath at a angle so that it resembled
one of those starburst gilt mirror you see in interior decorating magazines -- if
it was being copied and constructed by a drunk woodland fairy with a glitter
fixation. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also plan next year to grow and dry a ton of allium
Schuberti that I intend to spray either silver of gold and use not only on my
wreath but also as ornaments on our Christmas tree. I had planed to harvest and
dry my gigantic angelica gigas flowers this year, but I blew my chances and
left them out too long and they not only got soggy, but I also lost my ability
to collect more than a handful of seeds to sow for next year. All the more
reason why I MUST win the lottery and stop this silly thing called, “having to
earn a living.” It just takes up far too much of my gardening time.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I worked quickly today, getting most of the wreath done in
about 20 minutes and then hung it up on a nail to see it and to add the final
touches, and yes it could definitely have used a little more work, and a lot
more tweaking but I liked it. Hands sticky and black with sap I threw it in the
car with a pile of cast off Christmas tree cutting to dress up next year’s
tulip pots, brought it home and hung it on the door where, glass of wine in
hand, I attached my saved silver bow. Perfection.</div>
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Then I sent a pretty sad photo of my finished product (shot
in the dark with the unfortunate assistance of my iphone’s flash) to a friend,
complete with its off-center silver adornment and she said it was perfect, that
the bow was exactly how I would wear one in my hair, “slightly awkward and too
close to the forehead.” And of course she loved it. Which is the best kind of
Christmas present.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Paige Patterson learned wreath-making basics from Denise’s
classes at Marders and has never looked back.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-76420084221771690232015-11-15T07:53:00.000-05:002015-11-26T12:13:44.219-05:00Small is Gorgeous<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the disadvantages of working in a nursery is that
plants jump into your car. It’s a proven fact that a plantaholic working in a
nursery will face temptation every moment of every day, although you would
think that with the season is coming to an end, there would be fewer and fewer
renegades stowing away for the trip to my garden. You would be greatly
mistaken. Just today a few stalwart cabbages and a kale or two snuggled into my
trunk, as did a bag full of alliums. I know I wrote about bulbs last week, but
the ode to tulips was a soul song. Today I want to talk about some of the
smaller and less well know bulbs that also desire a place in any decent
gardener’s repertoire, and which are tugging at my heartstrings and demanding
that I take them home. Immediately.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t understand why more people don’t plant bulbs. Dollar
for dollar there is no way to make a greater impact in your garden -- except
perhaps with grass seed. Bulbs are transformative and for under $50 (the
average price of one three gallon hydrangea) you can add a huge bang of color
to any garden. Sun or shade, there’s a bulb for you, most of which are also
stupidly easy to plant and to grow. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We all know how easy daffodils are, and even if you don’t
like yellow -- which is silly, as it gives warmth to even the most hideous of
overcast and gray days <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- there
are a ridiculous number of elegant white choices available for sale (and
sometimes even found on sale) at all the nurseries selling bulbs. I challenge
you to plant a handful of the double White Lions or the gardenia flowered Obdams
in your garden this fall and not become an addict like myself. Nine in a tall
plain glass vase fill any room with the promise of spring, the scent of new
beginnings and a feeling of joy. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think it’s because we are a culture of instant
gratification, and there is less and less cause for imagination in the world,
that people don’t plant bulbs. How else could anyone choose to ignore a small
smooth orb that has everything it needs within itself to make beauty? I wish we
weren't a people who only recognize beauty when it is thrust, fully in bloom,
into our arms, but I shall persevere. I shall grab the sleeve of each and every
gardening soul who happens to wander past the Marders Bulb Display, and fill
their ears with stories of the wonders they are missing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I shall not only be pushing the
expected daffodils and tulips. I have a few other tricks up my sleeve for those
unsuspecting gardeners who walk into my liar. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First I will tempt them with Chionodoxa, a short little
bulb, that when happy, not only repeats year after year, but spreads by producing
little offshoot bulbils as well as by self-seeding and basically throwing
itself throughout the garden with gentle, wanton abandon. A lovely trait in any
plant, but especially appreciated by a girl who has a thing for tulips with
their dearth of repetitive success. Chionodoxa is also known as glory of the
snow as it is one of the first flowers to lift its tiny face to the sun, normally
right after crocus, last years plant of choice for my small bulbs indulgence.
This year, this harbinger of the spring is something I have decided to invest
in by the handfuls. I truly dislike winter, gray skies and the cold, so the
upward facing flowers of blue seem like just the thing I need to beat back interminably
bleak and chilly days. I have chosen to plant Blue Giant as who doesn’t want a
carpet of blue to erupt each spring. Chionodoxa is also deer resistant, a
lovely treat and a phrase that I unfortunately say less as less often out
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not to be confused with Scilla or Siberian squill, Chionodoxa
Blue Giant is a bigger flower, but the blue of Scilla is a truer blue color and
delicately lovely. Scilla is also deer resistant and it too is a wanton and
welcome invader of the flowerbed -- but I am a sucker for Chionodoxa’s slightly
larger and taller flowers. Next year I plan on investing in Scilla -- as it
also blooms at approximately the same time (I’m planning on a carpet of these
beauties as well, but a girl’s budget needs to be managed just a little bit.) Scilla
aficionados tell me that they think the flowers of Scilla last longer so I
shall report to you all after they both come up in the spring of 2017, but if
you want to compare, the trick to being able to tell the two bulbs apart when
they bloom is that squill is a littler shyer, with it’s flowers nodding in
downward facing tranquility, while glory of the snow faces the sun. And both
mix perfectly with the littlest of the daffodils we have left at Marders, the
Tete a Tetes – all the more reason why a bag or two might wiggle it’s way under
my passenger seat this week.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Next I shall dangle a package of Muscari under the nose of
the curious gardener and extol the virtue of a tiny bouquet of what look like
miniscule bunches of grapes attached to a wand of green. Grape hyacinths also
claim a fold of my heart, again for the clear blue color the classic, old-fashioned
ones bring to a garden, but I’d be lying if I told you those are the only ones
I long for. I have to confess that last year when I got help planting my crop
of tulips, I’m afraid I lost a few key patches to over enthusiastic diggers. So
soon I must buy more. But really this is to only way I have lost them in my
garden. I’ve heard tell that they are getting eaten by deer, but I’ve actually
not even seen that happen on my own, or in any of my client’s gardens so I’d
love to hear from some of you readers in more heavily browsed areas. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
And if by now, the poor
trapped gardening soul I’ve been speaking with has not grabbed a few bags of
bulbs and bolted for the safety of Brittany and Brian at the register, I shall
proffer a handful of <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeueLT-Roman; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">Fritillaria meleagris to my hypnotized prey. If anyone
wants proof of magic in the world, let them grow a checked </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Lbttbvrbpmthhwjvmwzojefeejw; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">Snake's
Head Fritillary </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeueLT-Roman; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">and inspect its elegant petals’ pink, purple, mauve,
green and white checkerboard patterns. How does a flower come to have this
delicate etching of mathematical precision? Why would a checkerboard, a grid,
be something that would evolve in nature? It’s mind-boggling. Especially since
the Fritillaria is a bulb that not only tolerates clay soil, but relishes it. A
bulb that likes damp feet? What’s not to love? The trick is to figure out what
to plant it with. In England they plant them in grassy meadows but with ticks so
rampant out here the wild meadow is not as often requested for the garden
tableau as it once was. I long to plant this checkered beauty among my more sun
tolerant hellebores, and perhaps shall sneak a few among my Chionodoxa this
fall. Gosh a girl can dream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeueLT-Roman; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">Paige Patterson buys the
bulbs for Marders -- which is bit like letting a shopaholic organize the shoe racks
at Bergdorf’s but so far it’s working out okay.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-16541855179614691892015-10-10T07:45:00.000-04:002015-11-26T12:17:17.609-05:00I'm in Bulb Trouble<span style="font-family: inherit;">In
the basement there are, I think, 1300 tulips waiting for the weather and I to
be bold enough to invite them out into the garden. You plant bulbs when the
earth is cold, and today there were the first flakes of snow, so it’s
definitely time. Now you might not
want to plant tulips by the thousands, but I think tulips are the best gift a
gardener can give herself as a reward for surviving the winter, and since I
abhor the winter, I need tulips by the armfuls.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />There
are specific tulips I must grown each year, but before I describe each of my
favorites, I want to clear up a little confusion. In this country, most tulips
do not come back that readily. It’s not the fault of the tulips, in their home
countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Crete and Greece (to name just a few
places where they originate) tulips ground in what is referred to as sharp
soil. In other words, super well draining soil. They survive beautifully in very
cold winters and dry hot, rainless summers, and multiply ferociously.
Unfortunately, when they are planted in our rich beautiful soil (or in clay
soil like at my house) and then suffer the indignities of our constant
irrigating of our flowers and our lawns, they rot. In a perfect world, to have
our tulips flower again and again, we’d need to turn those sprinklers off, and
let everything die down and go dormant. But since none of us are going to do
that, make sure you do amend the soil you plant your bulbs in with plenty
compost to make the soil loose and porous. The tulips that I grown in raised
beds actually do brilliantly, and some of them are on their third year blooming
-- tada -- the power of drainage. But my garden is, in many places, deep, heavy
soil, and so many of my tulips don’t come back which is why, every year, I
plant more.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><o:p></o:p>One of my favorites, it has
flowered for the last two years in a raised bed is the luscious Nightrider. It’s
a viriflora tulip, which is a class of flowers that have green in them. Mine
are not as darkly vivid as the boxed portrayed them, but the green center of
each petal’s back fades to white and before ending in a thick edge of pinky
purple. It’s a stunning tulip. I also insist on Ballerina, an orange lily
flowered tulip, which means that each of its petals comes to a point. It also
has come back for two years. It’s vivid orange works with anything I pair it
with in a bouquet, which is why I plant it heavily in my cutting garden. This
year I’m adding another lily flowered variety, Burgandy, which I hope will be a
dark, drinkable rich wine color. The ballerina varieties all seem to flower for
a very long time in the garden and last the longest of all my tulips in the
vase. I adore a tulip called Belle Epoque, but it’s a terrible repeater, so I
don’t plant too many of them each year. I still add them, because of the
fantastic coloring of their flowers. A mauvey pink that looks like it’s been
dipped in milky tea, its double flowers remind me of antiques satin bed coats.
Double tulips are my weakness I confess, and although they too don’t seem to
repeat as well as classic Darwin types, I am a sucker for their lushness. This
year I’m adding Dream Touch, a late flowering varieties that has a thin picotee
white edging on deeper magenta petals along with Purple Peony which I hope will
have the coloring of the robes worn by only kings and emperors as the die that
colored them was created from the slime of murexes and sea snails and was, at
once time, the most expensive color of a cloth. Most double tulips tend to be
late blooming ones.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Balloon is going to be a
new addition to the garden, a Darwin, with huge flowers (said to be 5” long –
I’ll report in the spring if it’s true) and the genetics to possibly live on
for a long time in the garden. I’m also adding Carousel, a Fringed type, with petal
edges that are delicately shredded at the tips. It’s meant to start off
primrose, creamy yellow and fade to ivory, but its real attraction for me is
the delicate red featherings that decorate each petal. It should be gorgeous in
a vase, and I like it because it reminds me of the “broken” or streaked tulips
in Dutch still life paintings.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Last year and the year
before I planted a tulip called Brooklyn, because it was double and it was
green and it looked like an artichoke. It was amazing, but this year I’m trying
a different green tulip, one called Evergreen that is a Triumph type. The
Triumphs are the largest category of tulips are a cross between early flowering
tulips and Darwin types and some of the other triumphs I have in my garden are
the longest lasting tulips I own. The Evergreen is a true green edged with
chartreuse according to it’s packaging, so we will have to see, but I have high
hopes for it, as the Brooklyn, although beautiful, was not a strong performer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Another category of tulips
that are gorgeous but definitely do not come back each year are the Parrot
tulips, but only a fool would neglect to add those each year. With pinking
sheared petals that romp and curl and twist and colors that dazzle these are the
supermodels of the tulip family. I always add a white parrot and a black parrot
but this year I’m adding <span style="color: #262626;">Estella Rijnveld a startling candy cane striped
explosion of shock, especially when stuffed into an armful of the elegant,
delicate, pure dreamy white blooms of Maureen. It’s hard sometimes to remember
to buy the simpler tulips when choosing what will fill the ground, but this
classic late white is another strong performer in the garden and amazing in a
vase.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #262626;"><br /> <o:p></o:p></span><span style="color: #262626;">I wish I had more room to tell you about the others, but you have to
trust me and find a place to grown them in your own yard so that then in the
spring, on a miserable grey day, we can visit each other’s homes, give a deep
sigh and say, “Finally, Spring is here.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #262626;"><br /></span>Paige Patterson also has a
thing for the blue of muscari and if she had enough money would carpet the
world with them.</span><br />
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<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-44496905604677258702015-09-13T12:16:00.000-04:002016-02-27T09:12:41.088-05:00Food for Thought<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am harvesting Sungold tomatoes by the
fistfuls, popping almost as many in my mouth as I do it the colander I’m using
to gather them. Such joy. Mouthfuls of pure sun. But as I bite down and explode them between my teeth I find
myself full of worry. Not from my tomatoes, but from all research I’ve been
doing to be able to speak intelligently about a lecture we are giving at
Marders in October. We’ve invited Vandana Shiva, World renown philosopher,
ecofeminist, activist and author, to speak with us on Seed Freedom, seed and
crop diversity and how to help farmers make the transition from
fossil-fuel and chemical-based monocultures to biodiverse ecological systems
nourished by the sun and the soil. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I’ve been doing a little research. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now my Sungold tomatoes are hybrids, which
means that they were created by using careful pollination crosses to create a
series of desired characteristics, disease resistance, size, color, taste etc.
and that these plants are created by man and thus if you plant their seeds, you
will not get the same tomato, but one with a combination of it’s genes that may
or may not be as good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is not a heirloom plant, as it has not been
around long enough and heirloom plants have been around for at least 50 years
whose seeds are stable enough that if you plant them the following year, you
will get the same plant again. They are actually old hybrids, seeds that
farmers thought were good tasting enough to want to save and share, and
occasionally improve on by cross breeding. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But contrary to popular belief, my hybrid is not
a GMO plant. A GMO plant is the result of genetic engineering, not cross
breeding. GMO stands for “genetically modified organism” and is a process
during which the plant’s DNA is altered in a way that cannot occur naturally
from just cross breeding plants, and sometimes includes the insertion of genes
from other species.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">GMO plants are things like Roundup ready corn,
corn that has a gene spliced into it that makes it resistant to the herbicide
Roundup so that the field can be planted with this corn, have roundup dumped on
it and the plant will survive. This is scary. Roundup (which contains glyphosate
that has just been declared “probably
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">carcinogenic</span> to humans”)
is not something we want drenching our food supplies or our fields. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But unfortunately, last year, it’s said
that 94 percent of soybeans and 89 percent of corn were herbicide resistant,
crops that take up over half of all farmed lands in the US.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #262626;">Of course, just like how overusing
antibiotics has resulted in the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, farmers’
almost ubiquitous use of Roundup is believed to be leading to the creation of
herbicide –resistant superweeds that are able to survive it’s use. This means
that these farmers are having to use even stronger herbicides on the earth and
it’s all starting to feel a little overwhelming. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #262626;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Remember all those Monarch butterflies and
their disappearing food sources? Roundup being sprayed willy-nilly on this GMO
corn and Roundup ready soybeans is one of the main problems. If you are
regularly dumping herbicides on the land to such an extent that you kill every
living thing except your genetically modified frankenfood, you are creating a
problem. Why can’t we all see this? Why does this have to be so complicated?
Why is it acceptable to live in a land where spraying the earth with
carcinogens is not only acceptable, but is seen as progress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh and lets not forget that the farmers that
are using these crops are not allowed to save part of their harvest and replant
it the following year because these seeds are patented and trademarked and
belong only to the companies that created them. That there is no more swapping
of successful plants between farmers, nor is there any genetic diversity, being
grown out there on the land<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Or the fact that if all the famers in the world
are using the same seeds we are creating a monoculture that is beyond belief,
not only losing great seeds, with great tastes, and great nutrition but with over
reliance on a limited genetic pool, we’re also creating tremendous
opportunities for global susceptibility to a single pest of disease outbreak.
Thus the famous Irish potato famine. <span style="color: #262626;">The problem
with monoculture is a loss of diversity, and a loss of diversity creates a
vacuum. And a vacuum is always going to be filled, whether with a weed, a disease,
or a pest. There will always be issues with agriculture, especially when we
have so many mouths to feed, but relying on a monoculture of genetically foodstuffs
seems to be taking us the wrong way.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #262626;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh did I mention that by not rotating crops we
are also exhausting the soil of the world so that we have to keep dumping
artificially created, man made chemical fertilizers on it -- fertilizers that
sometimes create more problems in their production and use then they benefit
the plant? And that following this method of creating and providing people
food, is an almost guaranteed way to kill our planet, not a sustainable
agricultural method as put forward by it’s promoters?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As I read more and more over the past couple of
weeks, I actually found a lot of the issues to be not only overwhelming, but
also incredibly political. There were lots of people trying to simplify things,
and others denying scientific observations, and yet others basing opinions on
what appeared to be limited scientific research. It was incredibly frustrating
and confusing, so as I ate my Sungolds one by one, I decided the best way to
get other people involved in this conversation, was to share my newly acquired
knowledge. I’m really looking forward to Vandana’s talk and I hope you will get
excited about this important discussion about GMOs, the future of our food
system and how we can all fight for the freedom of our food and planet and come
listen with me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For more information and reservations call Marders
at 631-537-3700.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Paige Patterson is still stunned that it takes
1770 gallons of water to grow 1lb of beef. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-84087512425297367552015-08-23T12:18:00.000-04:002016-02-27T09:14:51.315-05:00Breaking Down in the Garden -- Compost 101<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If there was only one thing you could do to make your garden a better place what would it be? Why that’s easy, the addition of compost. This adding of decomposed plant material into the garden is the most surefire way I know to improve the soil and give your garden radiant, glowing health. The question, however, is how do you add compost to a garden that’s two plus acres large without robbing a small back.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Easy. Play Lotto.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">No, but seriously, if I tried to spread compost over all the beds in my garden each year, and top dress the lawns with a thin dusting of purchased compost, I’d be in the poorhouse in a moment. The trick is to make your own. It’s not hard to make compost, but it is time consuming, so I will confess right up front that I am a passive composter. This means I do not flip my compost pile, rather I just let it sit and do it’s thing, but it also means I get plenty of weed seeds that are still active in my pile, so in some ways, I’m making the garden more difficult to maintain. However, lets hold on a moment, because I’m getting ahead of myself here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">First what is compost? Compost is what you end up with when a pile of organic matter breaks down into humus after a period of time. The organic matter is broken down by the soil-borne fungi, bacteria and worms that are already in your garden, and it requires the right mix of green materials (nitrogen rich components -- grass clipping, weeds, vegetable scraps, etc.) and brown materials (carbon rich components -- dead leaves, straw, shredded newspaper, sawdust, etc.) plus the addition of water and oxygen to break down properly. If you have too much green material, you won’t get compost, you’ll get slimily, slippery, smelly ooze. Too much brown material, and the material will take so long to break down you’ll be able to be added to the compost pile yourself. So the balance is tricky. I use sawdust, because I don’t have enough leaves on my properly to balance out all the grass clippings and weeds and fallen apples I toss into the pile, and sometimes I have to buy straw. The brown material helps keep air in the compost pile, because you need aerobic bacteria (the ones that need oxygen to function) to work with the fungi to break down the material into heat, carbon, dioxide and ammonium. This ammonium (NH4) is the form of nitrogen plants need to grow and the only one they can actually take up from the ground. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Compost is rich in nutrients and so can be used as a fertilizer, as an addition of vital humus or <a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humic_acids"><span class="" style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">humic acids</span></a>, and as a natural <a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide"><span class="" style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">pesticide</span></a> for soil, it can help a sandy soil hold moisture and help make a clay soli more porous. It’s like a wonder drug for your dirt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So what are the rules to creating a compost pile?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">1: You need a way to keep the pile in a pile. This is so that the heat created by the fungi and bacteria breaking down elements of the pile will not escape and the trapped heat will help speed up decomposition. This heat will also cook weed seeds and prevent the new soil you make from contaminating your garden beds with billions of tomato seedlings from last years cast offs. If you don’t build up heat, the pile will still break down, albeit significantly more slowly and with unwanted seeds still intact. Most people use compost bins, please note the plural, because you need to be able to turn the pile from one area into another, and you need to be able to start a new pile when the first start to really get cooking. You can buy a compost bin, they even have ones that you can spin around, but as I noted, I’m a bad composter so I have two big piles that I switch from year to year, one of which I’m using and the other of which is my active site. If I had the time and wherewithal, I’d build myself a three-box system with lovely slatted walls for ventilation. And, since I’m not flipping the pile on a regular basis, it would be great if I’d located it in a sunny location so that it had as much heat as possible. Unfortunately mine is in the shade half of the day, so although decomposition still happens, it’s much, much slower, especially when freezing temps arrive in the fall. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">2. Get the ingredient mix right. I’m going to give you a little science here, because it’ll help you understand the concept. We need a good carbon:nitrogen ration, plus some moisture to keep the good bacteria humming. Depending on whom you listen to, it seems that the most efficient composting ratio of carbon:nitrogen falls somewhere in the 10:1 to 20:1 range. Now this doesn’t mean 10 buckets of leaves to 1 bucket of grass clipping. Fresh grass clippings are super high in nitrogen, with a carbon:nitrogen ratio of about 15:1 . And dry, fallen, raked up leaves have a ratio of 50:1. What is lovely is that a bucket of lawn clippings plus a bucket of autumn leaves will give you the perfect ratio. So we don’t have to do the math to figure it all out. Unfortunately, I don’t normally get both at the same time, so this is why it’s nice to have the three-box system for creating a compost pile. In this, my perfect world, I would be able to rake up all my leaves (and those of my neighbors’) and put them in the first bin for use throughout the spring and summer when it’s grass-clipping season. (They’d have to be pretty big bins.) Then I’d throw a barrel or two of leaves down every week after the guys have mown the yard and dumped my grass clippings into the mix. My ratio would be perfect. But life doesn’t work like that, so I sometimes shred newspaper, but I mostly add sawdust (from my husband’s furniture making shop) or wood chips or straw that I buy by the bale when the nitrogen production of the garden is out of control. It’s also a smart idea to throw a few shovelfuls of garden dirt into your compost pile to get it going and bring the garden microorganisms in to start their work. Most people add kitchen scraps, but please avoid fish and meat and dairy as it attracts raccoons and rats and dogs. I am also blessed with chickens so their used bedding is added as well. Sawdust has a ratio of 325:1 so I need a lot less of it then I would need leaves, which is super helpful when the lawn is growing an inch a minute in season. Wood chips are 400:1 so I don’t really add them because they take super long to break down, but I will confess to using them as a way of starting new garden areas. I use them on top of cardboard to suffocate the existing grass, cover them with garden soil and compost and then wait until they start to break down to plant in them. It takes a long time, but I have lots of other garden projects to distract myself with. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> 3. Tend to your compost pile. This is where I fail. You should feed it consistently, which my lawn guys do, but I should be in there myself once a week with my carbon and often I forget. Turning every week would be the absolute best thing if you can, every other if you can’t. Mixing with a pitchfork (a chore I am bad at) every week or two to make sure that all of the materials are blended and interacting speeds things up super fast, as long as you’re pile is not too wet. It should be damp, not wet, wet equals slimy, too dry equals a slow pile. In a few months (if you are good) or in a year (if you’re bad like me) you’ll have delicious dark, crumbly soil that smells like fresh earth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">4. Make sure you have a mix of materials. The combination of different textures and nutrients created by the disintegration of many different kinds of organic matter will make your pile transform into a truly diverse mixture that’s the ultimate in plant nutrition. And don’t start too small, you need enough material to achieve critical mass, so it needs to be larger then a garbage pail, unless you have a small spinning composter that’s built for small amount. And don’t make it so large that you have no hope of turning the thing. That was my dilemma, but one I solved by just continually starting new piles down one side of my property. I now have an entire bank that ready for planting. The unfortunate thing is that if I keep planting in my old compost piles, I’m going to run out of places to put it pretty soon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Paige Patterson has too many pears to eat and is thinking about making jam and chutney today!</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-21933825878094523082015-07-26T12:21:00.000-04:002016-02-27T09:11:26.879-05:00Deer oh Deer<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
This past Sunday I gave a lecture on deer at the nursery. I told people that when I first start working with a client I ask them three questions. Where’s your house? Do you have sun or shade? And do you have deer? Then we talk about what they want to do in their garden. The reason I ask about the location of their house is that a great many people who are just starting out don’t know if they have deer or not. Now you might think you have no deer because you haven’t seen them but if you just bought a house in the Northwest Woods, you have deer. Noyac, deer. Shelter Island and North Haven, deer and deer. I didn’t know I had deer when I first bought my house and that fall I planted 900 tulips. In the spring I picked 3 flowers. I don’t want that to happen to the folks I work with.</div>
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Deer in the Hamptons are a fact of life, and I’m not going to get into the debate about the validity of hunting and shooting them, nor am I going to wrestle with the problem of deer fencing when the rules governing fences out here make most deer fences illegal even though these illegal fences are all over the place. Instead I’m going to talk about deer resistant plants how you can work with (or against) the deer you already have.</div>
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First, and let me be very clear with this, deer cannot read deer resistant plant lists. So if you come to me and tell me that you planted tons of astilbe because you found it on a list on the internet and you don’t understand why the deer ate it, there’s a good chance I’m going to ask you if you know for sure that your personal deer read that same website, because my personal deer never opened the computer, nor did they search their favorite foods out on google – they were too busy eating my monarda – a totally deer resistant plant on almost all lists (it’s in the mint family) not once, not twice, but seven times.</div>
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So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I will say that we have a deer resistant plant list. However at the top of the list it says that there is no such thing as a totally deer resistant plant, and that different deer in different areas eat different things. It goes on to say that weather, location and circumstance can all affect deer. And that the list we are providing suggests plants based on whether they have good, better or the best resistance. Again, I want to mention the monarda that was eaten at my house. I would have put it on the top of my list – I would have gone so far as to say deer proof, and I probably wouldn’t have believed someone who told me five years ago that deer were eating their monarda. My brain just wouldn’t have been able to process it.</div>
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But I know why it happened. </div>
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I have always had deer. I had about five that lived at my house for a decade, including a doe that had been hit by a car and had her leg broken. It had healed poorly and she had a terrible, staggering limp, but she was a survivor, and gave birth to her fawns in my far back yard. I had, at the time, about fifty hydrangeas, and she and her babies had a pattern, to which they were very attached. Out of all those hydrangeas, they ate about four. And it was always the same four. I wish I could draw you a diagram, because it doesn’t make any sense until you understand that deer are creatures of habit and once they get a routine they will follow it indefinitely until disrupted or distracted. So they ate a hydrangea in the front east garden, but not the two three feet to the right of it, then they ate another that was eighty feet away but not the seven to that hydrangea’s left, next they travelled to the ridge by the garage which had nineteen different hydrangeas of which they ate the one that was closest to the garage ignoring the five paniculata hydrangeas planted all around it and the other thirteen macrophyllas in the same bed (after decimating the phlox that I had thoughtlessly planted opposite it) and finally they travelled over to the left side of the garden by the shed where they ate (no destroyed) the oak leaf hydrangea. They ate that sucker to the ground. </div>
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This was their path, and it was a path they stuck to, which of course looped by the hostas on the west side of the house (but ignored the ones in the front bed) then passed all the daylilies and lilies and so on so as to better remove their pretty little buds. They only time they veered from this path was when the apples and pears started to ripen in the fall. Then they’d come up by those trees and not only eat the fruit from the ground, but ravish all the plants in the surrounding areas (except the aconitum and the ostrich ferns.) There are Annabelle hydrangeas by the apple trees that they’d walk by all the time, totally ignoring them, until apple eating time – then they’d shred the Annabelles like that was their job. Because that was their pattern.</div>
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But we managed, my deer and I. It was okay. I could sacrifice those plants, because they left the rest of my garden somewhat alone. Sure I used deer spray -- I once made the unfortunate mistake of getting into the car to drive back to NYC after spraying the garden. Shower or no shower, that was a tough trip. But we had a deal my deer and I. I respected their path, the way they traveled through the garden, and they let me have a few roses. </div>
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Then a neighbor three house down did some major construction. Construction that lasted for three years. And my whole world changed.</div>
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All the deer that lived at his house and the neighbor’s house and in the swamp at the back of his property freaked out at all the hullabaloo and came traipsing over to mine. And they changed my deer’s patterns. So now when I pulled in the driveway I wasn’t greeted by a deer or two, I had a whole herd. And this herd thought they’d discovered nirvana. They thought they’d discovered the best deli on the block and they tried everything. Thus the monarda.</div>
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So here are my totally unscientific thoughts on deer feastings. I have no proof, only my personal experience, and what I’ve observed. Mommy deer are mean. They don’t take their babies and coddle them showing them the best food, teaching them what’s yummy and what’s not. The fawns come up to the mommies and the mommies say, “Hey bugger off this is my hydrangea, go eat something else.” And the fawn takes a bite of whatever is nearby. My monarda was nearby. I also believe (no scientific proof again) that baby deer have less formed taste buds and so they don’t find repulsive the food their momma doesn’t eat, instead they start to develop a “taste” for things their parents reject. </div>
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When I started out gardening in this area deer never touched astilbe. Three years later they were loving it in higher pressure areas. Much like how we Americans had rarely eaten cilantro, and then, as it got fashionable, we started to consume it by the bucketful, astilbe got hip with deer. Tastes change, I guess for deer just like for people. When you had your first sip of scotch at whatever young age you first dipped your tongue, you probably thought it was vile. I did. And although a great many of you acquired a taste for it, and will go search it out, I still find it vile. But I’m unusual. The deer seem somewhat similar in how they acquire tastes for things, although unfortunately very few seem to find anything vile anymore.</div>
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When we used to do the deer lecture at Marders, we’d spend an hour pulling together all these deer resistant plants for both sun and shade to prove you could make amazing gardens and live with deer. These were plants the deer had never eaten. Now we bring over one plant. An andromeda, and I joke that if we ever hear of deer eating andromeda we’re all going to go sell shoes or cars. And honestly it’s not that bad, but we do it to make a point. Three years ago I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that deer would never eat ostrich ferns, hellebores, American holly, peonies and iris. But I’ve seen each of those plants consumed in the last two year. So it’s getting harder.</div>
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We recommend wrapping evergreens now. Last winter the snow was so deep that I believe if the deer were on your property when it started to snow, they were stuck there until spring. And after eating all the somewhat resistant plants, they got hungry enough to eat the ones that they’d never tried before. And they were stuck there for so long that their patterns changed. And they stayed on the property even when the snow was gone, because that’s what they’d become accustomed to. So evergreens that used to be safe (i.e. American holly) were eaten when there was nothing left to eat in some gardens, while meserve hollies that have been a delicacy for years, in other gardens weren’t even visited.</div>
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Plus having learned to eat a plant they previously ignored, it’s now something your deer will be happy to eat when they are hungry. And once deer start eating something they don’t stop. Sure they’ll stop eating it to eat your (or your neighbors) new hostas once they push up in the spring, but your previously uneaten evergreen is in their palate memory now and it’s there to stay. When the other choices become limited again, your specimen evergreen (discovered last year) will be their favorite meal again. If we have another winter like the last two and the deer are stuck in your garden, I’m telling you now, it’s no holds barred. Become good friends with someone who knows how to wrap and tie burlap.</div>
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They never ate butterfly bush and privet and forsythia, but these are all plants they’re now developing a taste for, not everywhere but in enough place that it’s worrisome. So how do we deal with the deer having changed their patterns to eat these new plants? We have to change their patterns for them. The deer never ate boxwoods before, and although it was in only a few instances, there were plants nibbled this winter. </div>
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How do we change the deer’s patterns? We prevent them from getting to the plants. Either with repellents, or with fencing if necessary. Bringing in a new rhododendron? Make sure you spray it, even if you live in a place where they’re not eating your old rhododendrons. The deer might not be eating the old ones because they’re not on your deer’s radar. But bring in a new plant, let them smell the freshly dug earth and see the change in their surroundings and they’re going to visit the plant and check it out. Since deer don’t have hands to feel, they “check things out” with their teeth. If you’ve sprayed the plant and it tastes terrible, there’s a better than good chance you can dissuade them from eating it to the ground. But you can’t just do it once, you need to keep spraying that plant for a whole season, for long enough for the deer to have gotten into a routine of ignoring that plant, to have made a new habit. Repellent not working? Use fencing. Just stop them from getting to that plant until the get used to it. It won’t work for hostas, but we all know those are deer crack cocaine, so be realistic, choose something that has a modicum of resistance. Just do a little research by looking around your neighborhood and talking to your neighbors and gardening friends before you believe as gospel the deer resistant plant list you just downloaded from the internet.</div>
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Paige Patterson has revised the deer resistant plant list on an almost weekly basis this year, but just realized she left phlox off the list. Bad Paige.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03255950373367471162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327547437939583025.post-89911628273384653692015-06-28T07:46:00.000-04:002015-11-26T12:21:58.667-05:00Little Green Monster<div class="MsoNormal">
Before Saturday night’s rain, we’d been having a very dry
early summer, and although it felt each night like we were still waiting for
spring to start, there was just enough heat for everyone’s roses to be able to
really show off all their glory.
Of course, timing being what timing is, I wasn’t able to stop by my
friend’s glorious garden to admire his fabulous collection and to congratulate
him on his 11 ribbons and his silver medal from the Southampton Rose Society’s
Annual Rose Show until the following evening, right after work.</div>
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“It’s a soggy mess,” is how he greeted me at the entrance
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If only my garden looked as glorious as his “mess.” </div>
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This is one of the great advantages in working in the garden
industry, I get to see a slew of gardens, and although it’s always a joy,
sometimes I get a twinge of garden envy. A Little Green Monster that looks at
someone else’s property and thinks, “I want that.” Sunday night I had more than
a little twinge as we wandered through his property wine glasses in hand, I
think my skin actually was showing more than a tinge of Verdi as we sipped and
walked.</div>
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It’s a small property, but there is a garden that is
gloriously full of roses incorporated into all the bed, scrambling up walls and
posts and over pergolas -- even wrapping themselves up and over the railing on
his second floor master bedroom porch. It is a glorious property, a jewel box
of color and fragrance filled with roses rare and voluptuous. </div>
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Now just like him, I have Eden roses, but while his have
muscled their way up and around his entrance pergola posts to make a ceiling of
the softest, most fragrant pink imaginable, mine are just starting to make an
impact on the fence where I’ve been training them for three or four years. He
has a rambling rose in a dusty purple lavender color that he bought as a small
1 gallon two years ago that is now dripping from the eves of his garage/carriage
house – a beauty that made me seriously consider rose theft. </div>
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But it was his Leonardo Da Vinci rose that really brought
out the green monster within me. The Leonardo Da Vinci rose is part of the
Romantica Series and was created by the same breeder who bred the Eden rose, a Frenchman
named Jacques Mouchette, the director of the illustrious Meilland Group. The
Meilland Group has also brought us such stunners as Bonica, Yves Piaget, Carefree
Wonder and Carefree Delight and the Drift roses. He is not to be trifled with,
and actually builds better roses than (dare I say it?) David Austin, in my
humble estimation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Leonardo
was staring me in the face, daring me not to shout out this thought to the
heavens.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Europe, Leonardo Da Vinci is a well behaved medium to
large sized shrub, but when it was brought to this country, it started showing
a tendency to ramble and my friend’s has grown like it’s a steroid junkie,
swamping the front of his pool house and enveloping it a curtain of pink that
just keeps on growing and throwing out the most delicious quartered, old
fashioned looking flowers that bloom on and on and on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rich pink, gorgeous and able to last over a week when cut, I
long for this rose, but of course, it’s not one of the ones we brought in this
year, so I can’t have it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And to make matters worse, he said I was the one who’d sold
it to him. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Why didn’t you get one too Paige?” he asked knowing that I
am a plant junkie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The regrets plantaholic are classified in long lists in our
minds, or as we get a little older, on scraps of paper, moleskin journals, or
the electronic notes section of our phones.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I told him that I most definitely would be getting them in
next year, if they were available, but that luckily at the shop we had cornered
the market on the best white rose on the planet, also created by the same
breeder. This rose, called White Meidland is one of the best, low maintenance
roses of all time, disease free with great dark foliage and a tendency to bloom
ridiculously well, it also looks (unlike the Knock Outs -- another easy to grow
rose) like a great old fashioned rose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Tons of petals, quartered like Leonardo Da Vinci and fabulous. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unlike Leonardo, it’s not a Romantica, but instead is more
of a groundcover, or landscape rose, a spreader, but it’s excellent in pots,
and well deserving of a home in any kind of garden. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And already has found a home in mine.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So okay, no Leonardo Da Vinci for me this year, but I could
quell my desire for lush beauty by just throwing a couple more of these into
the trunk of my car. So the next day I strode into the nursery, parked by the
rose section opened my trunk and reached for the White Meidland, when out of
the corner of my eye, wait, isn’t that the last two Pretty in Pink Eden roses,
new this year and gorgeously vivid where the original in baby soft pink? How
could our sharp-eyed rose connoisseurs not have swept those two baby’s up?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I grabbed both knowing that although I
had to have one of them, my friend’s garden would the perfect home for the other.
Oh and of course, I threw in a couple more of the White Meidlands, I mean how
else could I handle the Little Green Monster?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paige Patterson has never refused a rose bush a home,
although she did finally rip out the two red rootstock roses that pushed up
from funeral pyres of this winter’s two causalities.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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