April, Beckoned by the Garden

How did it get to the middle of the month so quickly?  I have tried to get some discipline in my life, and jot down a few notes in this space at the beginning of each month.  Something has happened since my last entry, when I was rhapsodizing about the erythronium and the trillium.  They've peaked and are taking their bows.

The view from the same willow bench, four weeks later,
bearded iris about to bud,
viburnum tomentosum 'Mariesii' loaded with buds

trillium kurabayashii, 4th week

Oh, duh...the vernal equinox was March 20.  It is no wonder that we human beings have celebrated fecundity, birth, fertility, life itself, just then, for ever.  Who could doubt that some awesome forces are at work that could cause there to be more light, more warmth and little sprouts and buds to take on a sense of urgency about jumping out of the earth?  I have been popping outside (like the plants!) at odd moments, sometimes two or three times a day just to see what's emerging... no time for writing, or washing dishes!

Who could not want to dance? Dicentra spectabilis 'Gold Heart'

One morning while I was waiting for my tea to brew, I stepped out onto the deck, beckoned by a cacophony of birdsong and the promise of wonder.  There at my feet the tulips had joined the fluffy ruffles of pansies all mauve and merlot...


...I stepped from the deck onto the terrace for a closer look at the potager, and tiny white blossoms had begun to punctuate the robust new foliage of the alpine strawberries (fragraria 'mignonette').  Soon the amazing scent of the berries will waft through my head.


Before I could stop, my slippered feet were taking me to the daphne odora  that I moved last Fall to the newly reclaimed bed near the old cypress tree.  I have been hovering over my two plants because I'd read they don't like to be moved.  They are blooming and filling the air with their mesmerizing scent right now.  ( Now comes the hard part, once they are spent, will they go on to settle in?)


When I looked up from the daphne and turned to go back inside, I was so near the weeping katsura (cercidiphyllum japonicum), now so elegant and so graceful, I had to take a few more steps to admire the tiny emerging bronze leaves...a subtle reminder, in their infancy, of the glorious caramel scent they will exude at the other end of the season...

I decided not to trek across the dew-laden grass to visit the fruit trees...I was beginning to feel like a possessed old lady, still in her pajamas and slippers, in a trance, beckoned by the garden...

Later that day...

Cornus sericea 'aurea', glowing at the top of the iris garden

Pacific Coast Iris

Paris polyphylla, now a small colony!

Omphalodes cappadocia, a delightful addition to the hosta bed

Kali's cherry tree has blossoms!

Hosta 'Queen of the Seas', making an elegant entrance

My garden group is having a tea today.  It will be hard to grab my chapeau and take a quick ramble to experience today's news.  I feel like the March (April?) hare..."I'm late! I'm late! I'm late!"

Spring Forward

erythronium revolutum from Jane Platt garden

My eyes rest for a moment, here and there, where a new sprout pokes up that wasn't there yesterday.  Today's news is the erythronium and the trillium.

T. 'Kurabayashii', 3rd year, three blossoms

T. 'Kurabayashii', hello spring

The things that give me pleasure now are so simple, compared to the contortions we tend to crave in our youth.

allium mash up

Since I am a fool for allium, there are sprouts upon sprouts popping up throughout the Long Bed, and now in the bearded iris beds, and a few pots on the deck, peeking out amongst the pansies.  I tagged them all as I planted them, but the birds and the hoes and the rakes have shuffled them for me, and I can merely guess at which is which...only the little azureums and sphaerocephalum are easy to discern with their grassy foliage.  I think 'pinball wizard' has the huge fleshy buds just coming up now, but what of the 'christophii' and the 'gladiator' and the 'excelsior' and the 'bulgaricum' and the 'purple sensation'?  Maybe this year I'll sort them out, at least visually.   The tag situation is impossible now.  Then there's hyacinths and camassia shoulder to shoulder creating more confusion.  All these fellows are really getting me excited for the May show!

Dutch Iris, Hemerocallis,  Eremerus and Allium basking in the late winter sun

   

Then there's the delightful shock of a blossom or a scent!  The daffodils, 'tete a tete', began revealing their charming quintessentially daffodil yellow a few days ago...they'd given notice, of course, with their swelling capsules of buds, but the iris lazica startled me deliciously when I happened upon it...I'd no idea when I planted them last spring in April that they'd already bloomed in March!

Iris lazica, first of the season

This is the first year the little paperbush (edgeworthia chrysantha) seedling has charmed me with flowers.  After three years of potting up and coddling, I will promote it to a proper container worthy of its maturity instead of another nursery pot.  The scent alone has convinced me.

The prunus mume 'kanko bai' is nearly done in the front courtyard, but has earned its keep by cheering me up in the dregs of January.

The basket I made Christmas Day continues to draw my eye right outside the living room window. This project turned out to be even more satisfying than I could have ever known.  When the rest of the garden is just too far away to venture out in the cold or the wet, right outside the window is a charming landscape to get lost in...

Ready, set, go!

Papaver somniferens 'Drama Queen'

Long about now I get really really ready for Spring.  The Vernal Equinox may be March 20, but around these parts, the last frost date is still April 15 or so.  We are teased right now by a "warm" day of 55 degrees, now and then, and a "temperate" night in the high 40's, but beware...we could still get a serious chill like we did two years ago when it was 12 degrees on February 26!  I long to start my seeds for the veg garden, but alas, 90 days in my make shift propagation room produces only leggy weak babies, which are soon outpaced by their siblings planted 30 days later.  I content myself with grooming the long-suffering succulents and baobab trees that lean towards the light in my east-facing windows...

I am, however, enthusiastic about what I learned at the Yard, Garden and Patio show last weekend.  The lecture by Bill Thorness, who has just published The Cool Season Gardener, has enlightened me to the seven season concept.  One can plant something or harvest something, in every one of them.  If I add "harvest" to my outdoor garden activities, I am heartened to the remind myself that I am bundling up to go into the potager right now for mache, red mustard greens, lacinato kale, chioggia beets, collards, chard and parsley!  All is not bleak and wet and dreary...and if I shelter from rain, I can plant early peas now!  Bill has mastered the season extension concept with a plethora of contraptions, from the humble and free to the fancy dancy, from juice jugs to hoop houses.  Yes...I can!

The endless catalogues are seducing me.  How did I ever get on so many mailing lists? (well, chick, that's easy...request a catalogue...check...)  I had to make a huge chart to sort all the varieties, lunar planting dates, harvest dates, and rotation plans.  Now, at least, it's time to make some decisions and order.  Here again, Bill Thorness was very helpful.  The concept of planting a melange of beans, for example, is a brilliant way to have some of all you want to try.  Why wait for an open spot for the mid to late season types when you can plant them all together and harvest as they mature?  I did so well last summer with Kali's "Beaning Room" (three varieties of pole beans), the bean trellis in the potager ("Christmas", "Cranberry"),

"The Beaning Room"

Prolific cranberry beans

                                                                

(...but not the bush beans ("Orca") planted too late and crowded out by something else...)  I can have a grand party with colorful bean arbors...this year I have selected about eight varieties of French filet, pole beans, beans to dry, and bush beans...'Providers', 'Fortex', 'Velour', 'Uncle Willie's', 'Bingo', 'Kentucky Blue' and 'Christmas'. Oh joy... For me, a perfect example of "go with the flow".  I may grow lousy peppers, but beans, I can grow!

Another lovely thought occurs to me...time for planting poppies!  Last year I tossed out some old seeds near the iris stream that had been lanquishing in my seed box.  They rewarded me with a little show to my happy delight.  Now poppies should be an easy thing, that will reseed and reward you with their bright colors with very little effort.  I will plant "Lauren's Purple" this year, perhaps where they'll compliment the blue and purple bearded iris.  "Drama Queen" enthralled me last year in the pot with the variegated horseradish...will it reappear, hopefully with abandon, all around the pot?  Will the thousands of seeds gain purchase?  How about some perennial poppies too?

Suddenly this gray February day is no longer gray.  It is filled with delicious greens, bean architecture and the promise of startling pops of color in a few months.

My sun salutation for the day...sun or no sun.

Open Garden

I attended a presentation yesterday by several gardeners in The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon about opening your garden.  One of the pleasures of membership is the Open Garden season when any member can post hours their garden will be open to visitors.  There are usually well over a hundred gardens between April and October, some open several times, you can go and visit, learn, and make friends.  Many of us plan long afternoons to visit several at a time.

I have gotten wonderful inspiration and encouragement from the many gardens I have visited.  Being able to observe a mature specimen of my styrax obassia or hydrangea anomala petiolaris adorning a wall gives me so much palpable encouragement, and helps validate my choices.

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Strax obassia, two years on

hydrangea anomala petiolaris just finding purchase on a fir tree 

How a fellow gardener has solved a drainage problem or camouflaged a compost heap becomes my solution too. Solutions for the ragged knees of allium and daylilies have revealed themselves on these tours.  I have also, however,  been greatly intimidated by the magnificent mature gardens I have seen, the large estate gardens, the meticulously groomed gardens, the notable designer gardens, the gardens of the wealthy who can indulge in their passion with total disregard for the cost of several tons of rock artfully placed, or the pinus contorta 'Chief Joseph' that crowns the conifer collection.  Beyond my means...but not my dreams.

The meeting yesterday was good to affirm that everybody starts somewhere...with sun and soil and those dreams.  Time is the card none of us can play out of turn.  I, for one, cannot expect my garden at three (barely a pre-schooler), to present like a mature dowager, cloaked in luscious billows of rosa 'Lady Banks' climbing up the gazebo with thousands of hellebores and trillium at her feet.  I haven't even built the gazebo yet, and my few dozen trillium have yet to become a colony.  Alas.

Meanwhile, I have my family, friends, neighbors and small "interest group" gardener cohorts to host.  These people I know.  They don't judge.  They pat me on the back and say "good job".  They troop through here like dutiful parents at school open house and praise my crude "drawings" (a new scree garden with baby succulents that have yet to spread and crambe maritima) or how lovely my prunus mume 'Kanko Bai' (I could count the blossoms on it last year) will be...in a few years.  They simply wipe their feet carefully on the doormat when entering my house from the gravel path, since I have yet to lay the beautiful bluestone and flagstone entry walk in the Zen garden. Then there's my neighbor Larry next door, that I would like to screen with a 25ft tall hedge (the cupressus leylandii are growing awfully slowly).  Larry works at night and sleeps in the day, so he never sees the junk, weeds, jumble of beat up old cars in the front yard and dangling rotten gutters on my side of his house.  I see it all everyday.  My "borrowed view" must be refined.  How can I include in the directions to my garden, "next door to a dump?".  Alas.

Perhaps a very tall fence...

One day (but not today) I will publish an invitation to my garden.  But you can come anytime!