Green Thumb vs Black Thumb

A friend of mine bought a house, just like me,  this past winter and has been equally possessed with the gardening bug.  There is nothing like a new house with a neglected yard/garden/patio to bring out the mad nursery maven in us all.   Her yard is huge (she doesn't live downtown),  and it is about 50% sun, 50% shade, just like mine.  Now, after several strong months of gardening time there is one major difference.   My garden is growing and her's isn't.  At all.  I don't know what she's doing over there, but I'm scared to bring her the huge pot of nasturtiums I grew for her that is now blooming.   

Nasturtiums on Death Row

Now, I am very very happy my garden is blooming but, same as her garden,  I don't know what I'm doing so right that every single thing has pretty much made it.  Even the seeds.  Okay, not the lily bulbs but truly, I had no control over that.  That was the 3:1 squirrel to plant ratio.

Maybe its that I grew up basically in a massive garden and know a lot about various plants from osmosis, and she grew up in the middle of Okinawa?

Maybe its that I don't travel for a job and have been here each and every day to make sure everybody out there is safe 'n sound?

Is it that I'm addicted to gardening magazines?  Reading gardening blogs?   Am I just lucking out? (please don't let it be this because massive die off when the luck runs out would be the end of me). Does she have some invincible invisible pest problem?   Its those Japanese seed packets right... they fail to grow on foreign soil?  But from what I can tell Japanese tomato seeds sure do look a lot like the ones here, they just have prettier calligraphied names.

Or are you really born with either black or green thumbs? And what does that mean exactly?  How does one help another one overcome blackthumbotosis? How do you keep from catching it?!

The Ever Blooming Garden - All At Once

ABC News the other night was remarking on the astronomically high pollen counts this year in the southeast.   This is to the tune of 5000+ (parts per whatever), instead of a normal very high of 120.    Sitting at my brother's house on Easter we could actually see puffs of pollen coming off of a tree in the breeze, like he had pulled out a cigar for a post meal boys club card game.

The bottom line is, this is true, as my meals now consist primarily of Claritin.

The cause of all this pollen, says the News, is that everything is blooming at once, thanks to an usually cool late winter in the south east followed up by the 3 week spell of summer we've just had with minimal rain.     And unfortunately this is true too.

In my garden right now, I have old-fashioned Bleeding Heart (Dicentra Alba) blooming with woodland phlox (Phlox Divaricata), which all makes sense, but what also is blooming are the coneflowers (Echinacea Purpurea), Cleome, and Agapanthas.  What the heck are they doing here in early April!!?    What is this going to mean for my mid and late summer garden?  I am having trouble believing that the coneflowers are going to bloom for 6 months, as great a plant as they are.

Some of this issue is of course, that some of these flowers were raised until weeks ago at a nursery, and combined with the summer weather they were just ready.  But that doesn't explain the agapanthas - I planted that last October from a clump dug up in Va, and because of the cooler weather in February it was actually late to come up!     Same for the cleome.  Those were seeds.

Its interesting which plants are getting mixed up by all of this.   The sedum, for instance, looks exactly like it should and is a long way from blooming.   The star jasmine, which should be blooming next month, hasn't even put buds out yet, so I'm guessing he is on schedule too.   The Lavender looks to be on schedule, the Catmint.   The Rose of Sharon and the Callicarpa bush are acting like its still winter, and haven't even noticed anything awry.  Both are still mainly sticks, which as I understand it, is normal for them.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can

The Lady Banks roses are blooming all over town.  White ones, yellow ones, why even the Food Lion has one (that's a grocery store).   Until I decided to get one I just never realized how many of them there are.  Everywhere.

My Lady Banks, who was planted a few weeks ago, and came home looking like a tiny bundle of straggly sticks, still is looking rather pathetic and small, but she knows what she is supposed to be doing.  She knows that she should be covered in blooms all over the place and be plotting world domination like the rest of her brethren.   So last night, with all of her might she willed herself to bloom. 

This is what we got.

Pretty cute right, in that Charlie Brown Christmas Tree sort of way!

Little Transformations

During this year my garden will never fill out and become this lush wonderland I have in my head.  I am just going to accept that now.  So garden, the pressure is off, but by next May, you better be looking like the secret garden, ya hear me?

Despite the fact that its going to take me forever to get around to showing you what my efforts will eventually yield, I am making small strides.   Below, a progress report.  This view is an eastern exposure, with one half being part shade and the other half being part sun.   This is the part shade section.  To give you an idea of height, the fence is just over 6 feet tall. I know, its the mother of all picket fences.  And at the 'path' the depth of the garden is about 10 feet, expanding out on either side.  I find it very difficult to capture depth in this garden, I'm not sure why.

Sometime in November 09 when I was raking up Magnolia leaves:

March 21st: A retaining wall and a few stepping stone put in to be able to get back to that section:

And April 2nd: only 11 days later.  Look at that Autumn Fern on the left there in front of the little wall (the pics will expand if hard to see).  He sure has a way of showing he's verrry happy in his new home.   Others pictured are 5 woodland phlox, 3 Creeping Cupflower which I am hoping will fill in between the stones nicely, and the Trailing Lantana I planted a month ago which I accidentally fell on.  Despite that, he is at least double his size.  In the background my outrageous sized Japanese Holly Ferns, and way over to the left my Persian Shield looking very tiny in his new home.   There is also a tiny foxglove in there, can you spot him?  He's an infant, but very healthy and seems to be doing a lot better than those getting more sun.  He's an experiment.

Progress progress progress.   One of these days that trellis will be covered in (something), and the statue will sit at the end of the little path.  Behind the holly ferns on either side are baby hydrangea bushes filling up the back space (eventually).  They just need to get a move on being taller than 8 inches so they can show up in the pictures.

A Tree By Any Other Name.... I Still Call A Tree

I grew up primarily in rural southern Virginia, in a place where even today they don't lock their doors.   The biggest crime around there, though heinous, consists of throwing Budweiser beer cans on the gravel country roads.

My brothers and I would often decide at night that we were camping out under the stars. It was okay by our parents seeing as we weren't all that close to the road so the likelihood of being bonked by a beer can was pretty low, mad-cows didn't exist yet, and the deer, while incredibly vicious to the hosta population, were found to leave children more or less intact.  We'd grab our flashlights and our sleeping bags,  put fireflies in jars (sorry buddies I didn't know any better then), and tell ghost stories under the large oak trees which grow like weeds in that State.    Invariably someone would end up being the 'outsider' for the night and there was a 50/50 chance the shunning would result in his return to his own bed inside in the wee hours of the night.  Which at that age meant 11:30pm.  And who am I kidding, it was always Russ that we picked on (the littlest, we had no shame).

Sometimes those remaining would go to the old cabin, which had become the pool house, throw on our damp bathing suits and jump in the pool in the dark.  It was nightswimming at its illicit best, because 'nobody' knew we were out there.  (Of course except our parents who I'm sure were watching the entire time now that I realize how not sneaky we really were).    We would all be as still as possible for a while and sooner or later the bats would come down and skim the water,  drinking and looking for others trying to do the same, I'd guess.  That entire pool area was surrounded by 3 large old apple trees and more likely than not we'd all bring some not quite ripe apples, found floating in the pool, back to our sleeping bags.  If Russ was still with us we'd tell him that eating not ripe apples could kill you.

Other times instead of the pool, we'd go out to the front yard and push each other on the tire swing tied up high in one of the huge black walnut trees.   The tree sat on the top of the embankment that led down to the road and if you got a push hard enough you could swing over the road tarzan-style.  Sigh.

The point of this little journey down memory lane is that the trees of my childhood I can recognize in an instant, I spent so much time with them.  In the dark, by the bark, by the leaves.  I know them like the freckles on my arms.  I think I could identify a white pine by feel alone.   But move 6 hours south and to the coast?  If its not a palm, magnolia or live oak, I HAVE NO IDEA.   I literally wouldn't know a sweetgum tree if it fell on me.     I have 3 trees on my property, one of which must be 70+ feet high, all of which I have no earthly clue as to what they are called.   They have acquired nicknames: the evergreen one, the flowery one, and the big one.     The one thing I can tell you, if you add the other three trees I have (a sabel palm, a crape myrtle and a live oak), NONE of the six of them grew where I grew up, which isn't all that far away.  Granted, Europeans can be 2 countries away in 6 hours, but for many of us... we haven't even left the general vicinity.  And heck, in NYC, you could still be on the George Washington Bridge stuck in traffic in a measly 6 hours.    It is quite a wonder how nature, left to itself, tailors itself exactly to the spot. 

Anyhow, as a self proclaimed nature person, I really gotta get on this tree identification thing.   How insane is it that I know the names of 50 plants in my backyard, 30 types of weeds, but don't know the names of the biggest plants around?

Before But No After

It has finally happened to me.  I have had a week here or so with the blogging blues.  I can't think of anything funny, entertaining, or even intelligible to say.   I even have the planting blues.   I went to the nursery on Saturday and didn't come home with a thing.  Nothing.  And really, I still have a lot of space to put things if I find something I like. 

I did weed half the front plot of wild onions.   So there was a tiny bit of forward action, but in comparison to the previous 4 weeks, I have hit the gloom.   I didn't even have to water anything because its been raining for the past couple of days.    I can now see why bloggers ferret away a few blogs.  For just such times as these, when you can't be bothered to be the slightest bit creative and haven't even put the dishes away or put the laundry in the dryer.

What I do have are some photos of plants that are in their 'before' stage and who will have their matching 'afters' later on in the year.    These will have to suffice for today.

I have planted a couple of the Endless Summer series of hydrangeas, which I plan on taking a few pictures of along the way, as it seems that many people have varying results with these.   The first of these is a Forever Pink, here pictured, March 28th.

The second is a Blushing Bride.  It seems to be a few weeks behind the Forever Pink, which actually has some flower buds forming.

Most of these hostas, which were sent to me by accident (and therefore free), are going to live with my Mom in Virginia where they will live hopefully long and happy lives, but two are going to have to tough it out and see if it can make it through the summer sizzle.   I know I'm already going to have to move them, but I'm leaving that for some time when the blues are gone.   There is a likelihood that the after pictures of these will be melted husks, but Compost in My Shoe, who lives close, apparent has some which have lived for years, so ya never know!  They made it from bareroot to here in about 3 weeks though, so they are sure liking it right now.

This is a Persian Shield (strobilanthes dyerianus), I have two of these as well.  Right now they are about 6 inches tall and 3 inches wide.  And recovering from the part sun area which I had originally planted them in.  They looked spectacular with the blue snowstorm bacopa (sutera hybrid), but that was the only thing they had going for them as a couple.

Here's my pitiful looking Butterfly Bush (unknown varietal).   He might be in too much shade, so I could be moving him too.  All this stuff about moving is making me exhausted just typing about it.

I have three coneflower plants, and will probably add another.   "Merlot" and "Kim's Kneehigh" are looking like they are having a bit of transplant shock.

Here's the before of the carjacker, Lady Banks.  I am not worried about her. Tomorrow I am going to get the little pegs drilled into the fence so I can get 'trained' as best I can.

I have dozens more where these came from so one of these days, later this summer, I'll do the real show.   Lets end with this picture, some African bush daisy's who look pretty much perfect.  Even as a before.

Living and Learning and Digging and Digging

I have officially been a "real" gardener for just over a month now, and you wouldn't think you could learn many "real" lessons in that amount of time, but you'd be mistaken.   Of course, I have thousands of lessons more to learn, but indeed a few things have made it through my neophyte skull.

As of today, I have learned that:

1) Digging a hole for a 3 gallon pot is really no joking matter,  particularly if there are any trees nearer than 2 miles away.  There was a 1 gallon version right there at the nursery.  Right THERE!!
2) Deciding that you don't have to get the small wild onions out of the front garden until you are ready to plant it up is plain stupid.
3) Dropping a cement planter onto the sidewalk is all she wrote for the planter. Cement planters are really heavier than they look.  Particularly when filled with wild onions.
4) Trailing verbena really really likes it here.  And it really really spreads.  And it puts out new roots for every one inch of plant so you can't even move it away from where its not supposed to be.  Why the heck wasn't this on the tag?  Its the mangrove tree of the 6" and under set.
5) They lie on plant tags. (see above #4 on theoretical verbena only growing only 12"- 24" wide, it is already 24" wide and only 1 inch tall!)
6) They lie some more on plant tags.  (Persian Shield isn't going to make it in any amount of sun here, no matter what they say, unless you want to water it twice a day, and give it a Victorian sun umbrella and an iced tea.)
7) All plant tags are lies.  Argh. They can't even get the color right.
8) Squirrels and I are not friends.   Squirrels really like rain lily bulbs, which used to be a problem but they have totally taken care of that situation.   And the oriental lily bulbs "potentially blooming all over the place situation" has been resolved too.
9)Lilies might not be the best choice for me, despite perfect growing conditions.
10) Finally, on a pleasant surprise note:  cosmos smell awesome.  3 little blooms smell up the entire garden.  How had I never attributed this smell to them?

So 10 lessons down, 10,000 to go!

Here a Statue, There a Statue

I have been thinking of getting a statue for my garden.  One made of concrete or cast stone that will year after year weather, streak and become less defined: it will become perfect.  Granted, I had my coffee this morning perched on top of a couple of bags of mulch, so I could be thinking of more useful garden accessories, but eh.   Garden chairs are boring.

I love statues in gardens.   No not the kind commemorating some big battle victory with a general on a horse, on a plinth 20 feet high, but the kind with soft worn mossy faces halfway hiding behind a fern.  Somehow they add peace to a garden in my eyes, the same way running water might.    There is no doubt they can add a major focal point, which, unless I want my focal point to be the palm tree, is something I desperately need.

The Savannah Bird Girl Statue, probably the most famous statue ever to come from this area, thanks to Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil (which, if you have any interest at all in the south, or plan to visit, is a must read) is the right style for me and my spot, I think.  It stood virtually unnoticed from 1936 until the book was publish in 1994 before it had to be moved from its cemetery plot for safekeeping.     I love this statue, but given its fame and proximity and number of replicas in this area alone, it is probably not the one for me.

Charleston itself is replete with statues of course.  Its just that kind of place.   You see them peeking out of driveways, tucked under camellias and many a Charlestonian has their entire teensy garden planned out around a favorite piece of cement.   Many are cherubs, Greek gods, angels, various Madonnas and fair maidens.   Some are part of fountains.  I saw a gargoyle guarding someone's trashbin area the other day too.  Its an interesting concept on how to keep the evil (i.e. raccoons) at bay, I'll give them that.

Surfing around as it pours outside, resigning myself that I am not going to get anything done today - at all - I revisited the offerings available on the internet.   To be honest, I am in love with a collection in my local nursery of marble "4 Seasons" maidens, but seeing as I only have room for one season, and I cannot afford any seasons, I have to expand my level of acceptable stone countenances.

Here are some of the ones I like, and I'm leaning towards choice #1.  If only she were a little taller on a shorter pedestal.   The combined height is near perfect (56").  So maybe the search goes on.   Well, like I said, I could invest in something to sit on out there instead...

Oh, and one final picture and note: if I could find this, this is what I'd get in a heartbeat.  I took this from someones blog a while back and I have no idea whence it came, so I apologize for not putting a credit.  But I love your statue/planter.