Up, Up, and Away, in My Beautiful Balloon Flower

Balloon flower, or platycodon grandiflorus, is an interesting summer-blooming flower that's always charming through even the hottest days.  The original balloon flower, also known as Chinese bellflower, grows to twenty-four inches tall and is good for the middle of most flower borders.  There are shorter varieties, such as 'Astra Blue', that I find I enjoy even more because they form nice bushy clumps that are perfect for the front of borders.

The plant gets its name from buds that look like hot-air balloons before opening into star-shaped single or double flowers ('Hakone Blue').  Most balloon flowers are a beautiful shade of violet-tinged blue, but there are also white and pink varieties available.

This is a shorter variety of balloon flower.

This is a lovely single flowered variety.

The balloon flower's unopened bud, a tight star-shaped "balloon," is where the plant derives its common name.

I think the lovely star-shaped flowers and their unopened "balloons" fit in perfectly with a cottage-style garden.  I've always wanted to combine the tall and short varieties in one bed to see how one solid mass of their pale blue flowers would look.

Balloon flowers love full sun and only begin blooming after the heat of summer has arrived.  They also emerge from the soil late in the season, so be careful to mark where they are planted so that they aren't accidentally dug into or planted on top of.  Otherwise, they are fairly tough plants that don't need much attention from the gardener which naturally endears them to me even more.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.

A Visitor in the Garden

Today we had a visitor in the garden.  Sunny, the poodle, discovered it in the sand next to my new raised beds.

Eastern box turtle, Terrapene carolina

The visitor was an Eastern box turtle, or Terrapene carolina.  The box turtle doesn't travel far in its lifetime (which is recorded to be up to 50 years or more), so we may see more of this one.  We know it's a female because of her eye color (amber or brown);  a male will have red irises instead.  The box turtle eats insects such as worms and slugs, and vegetable matter like berries and mushrooms.

You should never take a turtle from the wild and try to raise it as a pet.  The box turtle has very specific needs which, if not met, can cause the turtle to die within three days.  Box turtles also have a homing instinct so that when released, it will try to return to its birth area; this can be a dangerous journey for a turtle, who may try to cross busy streets to get back to its home.

I'm hoping she'll be a regular visitor to my garden, eating slugs and other icky things for me.  Sunny seemed to find her interesting too, although I doubt the turtle could say the same for the poodle.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.

Bloomin' Things: June 14, 2013

It's been incredibly hot these last few days.  Summer has come early this year, but so far the flowers in my yard seem to be enjoying the heat.  Blooming at the moment are hydrangeas, daylilies, roses, spirea, salvia, penstemon, gardenia, cleome, balloon flowers, and lilies.  The cherries are all gone; I ate quite a few of them myself, but the birds cleaned up all the ones I couldn't reach.  On the other hand, the strawberries and the blackberries are ripening, and the blueberries will ripen soon.

Hydrangeas have always been one of my favorite summer bloomers.

Tons of tiny "flowers" make up a hydrangea blossom.

A hydrangea of a slightly more purple color; the ph in the soil determines the exact hue of a hydrangea's flowers.

Cleome, or spider flower, volunteers itself in the garden year after year.

A large yellow daylily. I like its rumpled look; it reminds me of seersucker.

A gardenia blossom, as lovely to look at as it is to smell.

Penstemon, 'Husker Red'

A daylily with an interesting color combination.

A lovely stand of daisies at the Atlanta Botanical Garden

When the weather gets this hot, I tend to lose interest in the garden until things cool down a bit.  If I want to get anything done, I have to start very early in the morning.  Which probably isn't a bad philosophy at any time of year.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.

Book Review: Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols

     I'm so happy to have discovered the book Merry Hall by the British writer Beverley Nichols.  It's a wonderful, funny book published in 1951 about Nichols' attempts to create a garden at his newly-purchased Georgian manor house by the same name.  I was also excited to learn that this is the first in a trilogy about Merry Hall, followed by Laughter on the Stairs (1953) and Sunlight on the Lawn (1956).  And even though he passed away in 1983, Nichols was quite prolific, leaving us with a slew of other gardening books, novels, mysteries, children's books, plays, and memoirs to read and enjoy.
     "Some fall in love with women; some fall in love with art; some fall in love with death.  I fall in love with gardens, which is much the same as falling in love with all three at once."  So begins Merry Hall, a book that introduces us to a cast of endearing characters such as Oldfield, the gardener; "Our Rose", who is always trying to get her hands on some of the fruits of Nichols' exuberant kitchen garden which produces "battalions of leeks and cauliflowers and sprouts, and enough lettuces to supply a rabbit warren;" Gaskin, the butler; and Nichols' two beloved (and very spoiled) cats, One and Four.  The book is a delightful romp through Nichols' gardening endeavors, told with biting wit and great emotion, an unusual combination in a writer.  As Nichols himself says, "When I begin to write about flowers I lose all sense of restraint, and it is far, far too late to do anything about it."
      There are lots of great stories in this book, such as the one describing how a huge ugly hedge came to be burned down (which of course involves good friends and a bottle of great champagne), but the thing I like best about it is the author's voice, and his gardening philosophies as he frequently spells them out in no uncertain terms. For example, he states that, "begonias are not flowers, they are a state of mind, and a regrettable one at that."  He also announces that he loves geraniums and "anybody who does not love geraniums must obviously be a depraved and loathsome person."  About a previous owner who had planted elms on the estate, he says, "For this alone, he should have been cursed, and so should anybody else who ever plants an elm.  They are useless, hulking brutes of trees, and as soon as Constable had finished painting them they should have been rooted out of the British Isles."
     But Nichols is a romantic in spite of his acerbic wit.  Of the combination of plants blooming in his urn (clematis Jackmanii and apple-blossom geraniums), he says, "It is an enchanting marriage of colour, a sort of floral love-affair, and if you walk down the lane so that you see this exquisite duel against the sombre background of the copper beech, you will feel that life is very much worth living, and that you really had a very bright idea when you decided to be born."  On sharing the joys of a garden, he observes, "There is a great deal of truth in the old saying that in a garden the best fertilizer is 'the shadow of the owner;' it is equally true of the shadow of the owner's friends.  Even flowers need love."  One of my favorite passages is when Nichols descibes the truly important things in life "such as the dew on a spider's web, or the first fragrance of a freesia on a shelf."
    Nichols sums up Merry Hall near the end when he says, "This book - as you may by now have gathered - is not really a book at all; it is only a long walk round a garden, in winter and summer, in rain and in sunshine; and if it bores you to walk round gardens you will long ago have chucked it aside."  What a wonderful walk it is, though; I was actually sad when I finished the book, as though I had to say goodbye to a world I would prefer to visit every day.  I guess I have to console myself with the sequels, as well as his other books on gardens, including Down the Garden Path (1932) and Green Grows the City (1939).

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.


     

Bloomin' Things: May 18, 2013

There are so many things blooming in the yard right now that it might be easier to list what's not blooming this week.  The wiegela is still blooming; the hummingbirds have been enjoying it all week.  There's an azalea that's still going strong even though the others have been finished for a while now.  The strawberries and blackberries are still blooming, and there are starting to be some small, green strawberries on the plants too.  The blueberry bushes now have lots of yummy blueberries forming.  The cheerful yellow snapdragons are full of bloom in front of the dining room window.  A red asiatic lily on the back hill is gorgeous.  The yarrow is blooming (white in the back yard and pink in front).  Swamp milkweed, a newcomer to the garden this year, has already started to bloom.  This is a native that acts as a host plant for butterflies.  And depsite its name, it's actually pretty drought-tolerant once it's established and isn't weedy at all.  The red amaryllis is still blooming and a white and red one has started blooming as well.  A purple ice plant in the rock garden has started blooming.  The pomegranate trees are forming their lovely orange buds, and the cherries are ripening.  And, of course, the roses are just hitting their stride.

Swamp milkweed 

White yarrow; I love it for its ferny leaves.

The sempervivum in the goat pot is "growing long arms" as my yoga instructor used to say.

The snapdragon may have been the first flower I recognized in the garden as a child.  It was one of my grandmother's favorite plants, and I remember her showing me how the "dragon" would bite your finger if you put it in its mouth.  When she passed away, we decided to forego the traditional roses and instead put a huge spray of snapdragons on her casket.  Everyone at the funeral commented how beautiful they were and how my grandmother would have loved them.

Happy snapdragons

An interesting iris

Red asiatic lilies with raindrops. Yes, it's raining again!

A hardy ice plant, or Delosperma cooperi in the rock garden

Amaryllis 

Ripening cherries 

I'll have to keep an eye on the cherries to make sure the birds don't eat them all before I get any.  These are the tart, or pie cherries (it's hard to grow sweet cherries in Georgia). My grandmother cooked them in pies, but I've always preferred to eat them straight off the tree.

An old-fashioned rose of my father's is blooming.  

Speaking of roses, I took a walk last week in a lovely rose garden, stopping to smell all the wonderful blooms, especially enjoying the antique roses.  My favorite that day was a huge old bourbon rose, the rosa 'Zephirine drouhin.'  Introduced in France in 1868, this sweetly-perfumed rose has cerise-colored blooms and thornless climbing canes.  Its scent seemed to evoke a particularly peaceful and happy mood for me.  A few hours after finishing my walk, I was presented with a wonderful offer, which I have since accepted.  To celebrate, I found the rose online that night at The Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, Texas, and ordered one for myself.  It's already arrived and been planted next to the back garden's gate where I can smell it as I come and go from the garden.  I will post updates as it grows and blooms.  At the moment, it's a scraggly little thing who lost some leaves in transit (which is to be expected), but it will soon recover and become a beautiful, fragrant reminder of that day for me.  I think the moral of the story is that you should always take time to stop and smell the roses.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S. 

Bloomin' Things: May 5, 2013

I can't believe it's already May.  I'm in a state of panic just thinking about all the things that need to get done before it gets too hot.  I definitely need to finish the sod in the next couple of weeks, as well as any transplanting that needs to take place.  I also should probably complete the digging portion for any new flower beds soon, because once it gets hot, I won't feel like doing that kind of exhausting work anymore.

Some of my favorite things are blooming this week.  Still blooming from last week are the irises, some of the azaleas, and the wiegela which is becoming full of hummingbird-attracting blooms now.  Newly blooming are the peonies, blackberries, belladonna lilies (which aren't real lilies; they belong to the amaryllis family instead), and the petunias I used to replace the pansies in the front bed.  The pansies are still blooming, but I know the heat will cause them to become leggy soon.  Instead of throwing them away as most southern gardeners do, I moved them to the back garden to see if I can cut them back this summer and keep them healthy until the fall when they'll be in their element once again.  They have such happy little faces that I can't stand to just toss them into the yard waste.

A lovely peony blossom; they always seem to bloom right before a heavy rain, so I'm very glad I put peony rings around them.

A red belladonna lily (amaryllis) growing in front of the kitchen windows

I planted scabious in front of the lilies last year to give them a blue contrast.  For some reason, this blue doesn't show up well in my photos.  

The shrub roses are continuing their slow and long-lasting show of blossoms; I cut one back in March as an experiment; so far it has the most beautiful red leaves and full, bushy shape, but no sign of flowers yet.  The old-fashioned climbing roses on the back fence are growing long arms which I'll try to weave horizontally across the fence tops once they're long enough; when these canes grow horizontally, you get many more blooms than if they were growing straight up.

A new shrub rose for this year; he's going to live in the front yard next to the bench.  I'll surround it with the rue seedlings I grew indoors this winter.

The foxgloves (digitalis) are also starting to bloom on the back hill; I transplanted a few to grow at the base of the bird feeder earlier this year.  This is the same plant that the heart medicine, Digitalis, is extracted from.  But don't try to make your own rememdy from it; all parts of the plant are toxic, including the roots and seeds.  Some think that the common name, foxgloves, comes from "folk's gloves" as in the gloves of the wee folk, or fairies.  To me, the tubular blossoms look as though they might make perfect little hats for fairies, but I guess they could be gloves too.  Anyway, I love these flowers for their fantastical qualities; they're perfect for a magical woodland fairy garden.

Foxglove (digitalis)

I know his flowers aren't blooming, but I love the goat pot full of hens and chicks; they become beautifully red-tipped in the sun.  For the past several years, a red wasp of some sort has lived inside the goat's head; you can sometimes see him coming and going from one of the eyeballs.   

In bird news, I've discovered a nest of little wren chicks in a holly shrub at the dining room window.  The parents have been very busy popping food into their open mouths.  I don't want to disturb them, but I will try to get a photo soon.  The chickadees in the back yard may also have hatchlings; Sunny keeps standing up, trying to look inside the birdhouse.  If the parents catch her doing this, she'll most likely be chased across the yard (and believe me, the poodle will run; she ran from a moth once).

Of course it's been raining all weekend with temperatures in the forties and fifties, so I haven't been able to do much in the garden.  Instead I've been indoors having tea and biscuits and plotting and scheming for when the rain finally stops.  And it has to stop at some point, right?  Right?

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.

May Day, May Day!

Happy May Day everyone!  Today is one of the Grand Sabbats for Wiccans known as Beltane (aka May Day, Rood Day, Rudemas, and Walpurgisnacht in Germany).  This Sabbat is derived from an ancient Gaelic festival that involved circling a bonfire and decorating doors, windows, and cattle with yellow flowers.  In parts of Ireland, they would also construct a May Bush by decorating a thorn bush with flowers, ribbons, and bright shells.  This may have been a precursor to the Maypole.

The ancient Romans celebrated this day as well, worshipping the spring goddess Maia, who encourages crops to grow.  On this day, the flamen (priests) of Vulcan sacrificed a pregnant sow to Maia.  This month gets its name from this goddess who is also identified with Terra (Earth) and Bona Dea (the Good Goddess).  May 1 is also the day that the Romans honored the Lares, protectors of the city, hanging wreaths on their altars and burning incense.  This connection with May 1 may come via Maia's son Mercury who fathered the mute twin Lares with the former nymph Lara. Non-Christian cults were banned from the 4th century onwards, but unofficial worship of the Lares continued until at least the 5th century.

Maia with Vulcan

One May Day tradition is that of gathering dew from the grass and wildflowers to use in good luck potions.  A Wiccan Beltane ritual is to bathe with a penny wrapped in the washcloth for good luck.  The Celts also had a myth associated with dew gathered on May 1; they believed that Beltane dew promoted beauty and youthfulness.

Even more special than May Day, May 1 is the poodle's birthday.  Happy birthday, Little Miss Sunshine!

I don't think I'll be sacrificing any pigs (pregnant or otherwise) to Maia, but I think it might be a nice gesture to honor her somehow as the growing season gets under way.  If she can help make my flowers, veggies, and newly-placed sod grow, I'll at least think about frying up some bacon to celebrate.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.

Bloomin' Things: April 28, 2013

Lots of things are in bloom this week and so many more have buds that will be opening soon.  It's been a beautiful week: lovely weather (at least until the storm last night and the constant rain today), perfect temperatures, and lots of things coming to life in the garden.  I saw my first hummingbird of the year on Friday the 26th.  I haven't yet filled the hummingbird feeder, but he was getting sips from the Chinese fringeflowers that hang over my back fence.  I also saw my second snake of the year this week, but I saw him too late because he got his head accidentally cut off by the lawnmower.  Sowwy.  A moment of silence for our fallen comrade.

A lot of things are still blooming from last week:  candytuft, narcissi, pansies and fringeflower.

As far as the newly-blooming things go, my favorite ones at the moment would have to be the bearded irises.  So far, there's deep purple, yellow, and a pale lavender one with violet falls and a yellow beard.

A lovely bi-color iris grows next to a hydrangea.

I love the pure violet color of this iris.

The azaleas have been blooming this week; for my taste, there are too many colors of them in one yard, but they're pretty anyway.

White azalea

Also beginning to bloom this week are garlic chives, wiegela, amsonia, oxalis, shrub roses, paperwhites, the new daffodils planted this fall, and tulips.

The wiegela is just starting to open its buds.  Soon it will be a huge hummingbird attraction.

Amsonia blossoms; the leaves of the amsonia turn golden in the autumn.

Happy, happy clumps of pink oxalis

The shrub roses are just beginning to bloom.

Paperwhites 

The new daffodil addition this year,  Narcissus 'Season of Sunshine'

I love this dark, velvety tulip.

A pretty little tulip pokes his head up in the garden.

The chickadee continues his nesting activities in the new wren box.  Whenever I get too close to his nest, he flies out and lands on a nearby tree limb, from where he vehemently scolds me until I leave.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.  

Sunny's Sod

One of my garden projects this spring was to put in a small spot of sod for Sunny the poodle.  I'm hoping this will deter her from going potty in the herb bed.  So I sacrificed a section of the fenced-in kitchen garden (last year's pole bean section) for her to have some actual grass.  Not wanting the grass to grow into any of the surrounding beds, I chose fescue sod (My front lawn is bermuda grass, something that I deeply despise.).

The first thing I did was to dig off all the weeds and grass that were already present.  I turned the soil, removing rocks and roots (This was the hard part; it took me a couple of weeks of steady digging and resting to get this completed.).  Then I brought in 1.5 cubic yards of organic planting soil (OPS) and raked it smooth.

Here the organic planting soil has been spread on top of the area to be sodded.

Laying the sod was probably the easiest part, although by far the messiest.  I had streaks of mud all over my body, on my face, in my hair.  I've already laid 72 pieces of sod over the last three days; I still need a few pieces to even out the edges and to cut to fit around the walkway.  But the bulk of the work is now complete, and Sunny is already enjoying her new play area/loo.

I left a 2-foot wide border along the fence for flowers.  The dwarf crepe myrtle was the only thing that I didn't move from this area.  

I removed the walkway to the second gate so Sunny would have more green space.

Sunny seems to approve.  

The arbor was added to lead into what remains of the kitchen garden.  I've planted cucumbers and transplanted a muscadine vine from my woods to grow over it.  I'll finish the sod up to the arbor and even out the side next to the flower border.  

Since it's right off the patio, it should be easy to keep the grass watered.  I'm hoping it will have time to get established before the weather gets too hot.

It may be a small area, but it was a huge project for me, and I'm glad it's over.  Now I'll only need to convince the poodle that this is the approved loo, and not the herb bed, and certainly not the squash bed.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.  

My Seedy Garden

Today I started transplanting my seedlings outdoors.  I also saw my first snake of the year today, a teeny ring-necked snake, who was snoozing under a small drift of leaves up against the house.   I would have included his picture on the blog, but he didn't wait around long enough for me to find my camera.  I started several flats of seeds indoors this year.  I used a regular shop light with a 40-watt flourescent bulb 6 inches above the seeds for 16 hours a day.  Among the seeds used are 3 different types of poppy (Antique Flemish, Hungarian Breadseed and Black Swan), rue, wormwood, mugwort, 2 types of basil (Sweet & Spicy Globe), and Crackerjack marigolds.

Basil seedlings (at left is "Sweet Basil; right is "Spicy Globe")

Poppies waiting for their day in the sun

Mugwort, rue, and poppies "hardening off" outdoors

When I planted the seedlings out, I gave them a nice drink of MiracleGro Quick Start.  This helps prevent plants from going into transplant shock as they leave their pampered indoor lives for the harsh realities of the garden.  Today was a sunny day with temperatures that reached 80 degrees.  I would have preferred a cloudy day to transplant seedlings, but the gods don't always grant my weather wishes.  I also put sticks upright in the soil around the new transplants so that Sunny (aka The Poodle) doesn't trample them.  Last year she squished my squash; an exuberant poodle can be mayhem in the garden.

April 15 is the frostfree date in North Georgia; my tomatoes, cucumbers, and tabasco pepper have already been planted.  I'm doing all Cherokee Purple tomatoes this year; this heirloom variety was so good last year that I sliced and ate them like apples.

A newly planted Cherokee Purple tomato

The really difficult part of growing plants from seeds is deciding what to grow and where to plant it once it's ready to live outdoors.  I still haven't decided where the rue and mugwort are going to reside.

Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.