Each Little World

Spring fever

When I was growing up, I always came down with a strep throat just as Spring vacation was starting. Until I finally had my tonsils removed at age eleven, I was usually sick for my early April birthday, or Easter, or both. This year I'm reverting to form and have spent most of my time since last weekend in bed, or wrapped in blankets in front of the fireplace — while everyone in the neighborhood is out working in their yards and gardens. I pretty much feel like this little crocus: valiantly trying to perk up and push through this spot of unpleasantness.

 

In case you are curious, this is what a Northern urban garden — located at the curbside of a busy street — looks like each Spring once the snow melts. It is covered in all the detritus that the plows pick up with the snow and toss into the garden. Usually I remove all this gunk with great care, so as little as possible remains on the garden. Then I replace those old leaves with mulch. But this Spring, the garden is going to be left to its own devices a little while longer.

No half measures

He said:

Neighbors who have the courage of their convictions....

 

The view from down under

Apologies to all you Aussie garden bloggers, but it's not your "down under" I'm talking about. Rather it's the need to get down on the ground to really see and enjoy early Spring plants. They're best viewed face-to-face, which gets more difficult as the years go by and knees get more stiff and creaky. But once you're down there, you realize it's worth the effort. Of course, that's easy for me to say since Mark was the one crawling around the garden with the camera — not me! It looks like March is going out with 70 degree temps; a nice change but it will put a quick end to these cool weather early bloomers.

Iris reticulata

 Hellebore 'Royal Heritage Strain'

 Galanthus

Crocus 'Snow Bunting'

 Heuchera villosa 'Brownies'

 Crocus tommasinianus

Katharine Hodgkin pops in for a visit

"Katharine Hodgkin" always arrives shortly after the Snowdrops have made their March appearance. She's a tiny iris named for the wife of Eliot Hodgkin (1905-73), an amateur Alpine enthusiast and president of Britain's Alpine Garden Society. The plant was named in 1960 by Hodgkin's good friend, the equally respected plantsman E.B. (Bertram) Anderson, also a member of the Alpine and rock garden groups and author of a number of books on bulbs and rock gardens. This is the kind of special plant that one would only name after someone just as special!

The Pacific Bulb Society says that when the flowers of Iris Katharine Hodgkin first open, they have "an ethereal color scheme that's hard to describe." It definitely has barely-there shades of powder blue and seafoam green. But there's that splash of yellow and the deep blue striping. It's a complex little flower and the whole of it flushed with transparent gray. The PBS also describes Katharine Hodgkin as a hybrid of I. winogradowii and I. histriodes. I initially bought it as I. histriodes and still see it listed that way most often. 

 

I pulled a number of my older garden books off the shelves trying to discover where I had originally seen Katharine Hodgkin. I couldn't remember, except that I fell in love from the moment I first saw her and was thrilled when I bought my first five bulbs for $7.75 in 2001. I bought 20 more in 2007 but this is the best showing I've ever had — even though it's less than a dozen flowers. Whether the critters got the bulbs as soon as they were first planted or they have died out due to poor drainage, I haven't a clue. But she's such a stunner, that I will continue to add bulbs to make sure Hodgkin keeps coming back each Spring.

Garden journals: The book or the blog

For those of you who started blogging as a means of recording time and change in your garden, my stack of handwritten garden journals may seem laughable. Even I look at them in wonder some days: I wonder how I managed to be so disciplined as to create twelve volumes; but mostly I wonder how to get back to keeping up those hand-written diaries. 

The entires are very different from blog posts because they are not written for an audience. As a long-time writer, however, I'm always conscious of grammar, clarity and legibility whatever and wherever I'm writing. I'm also conscious that I don't have to back-up paper journal entries or worry about incompatible formats. 

I don't carry a laptop or iphone with me but I always have a pencil and a Lamy fountain pen (with a box of ink cartridges) and a notebook in my so-called purse. When I can't figure out how to begin a column or a blog post or almost any written document, I begin by sitting down with a pen and a piece of paper. There is something almost primal that happens when you pick up that most basic of tools. That's why I draw rather than paint — and why I draw in black and white rather than color. 

This series of garden journals began in 1997 with Mark and I interviewing potential landscape architects to find one who could help us implement the design that we'd created for our garden. The books include musings about the process, lists of plants, highpoints of tours and lectures. Eventually I began to use them like a diary, not worrying if I strayed from gardening. The subjects can get quite rambling — and thus don't necessarily translate into blog posts. 

Volume XII is the "current" journal. It resides in a basket on the garden bookshelves, where I toss anything I want to remember or paste into the journal. I write weather or bloom data or anything else noteworthy on my calendar which I can then use to flesh out the journal entries.

It was a perfect system until I got distracted. First, I started making entries that were like little art projects after I took a class and decided the books should be equally about words and images. I spent hours drawing and collaging. 

And then I started blogging. It wasn't long before it seemed redundant to keep both electronic and hand-written logs. Until yesterday, the last entry I made in Volume XII was in mid-May 2009, as Mark and I were getting ready to go to Chicago to have a real-life, real time meet-up with garden bloggers from around the country. 

I figured if I really wanted a paper journal I could print out my blog posts or even turn them into a book as Jenny at Rock Rose has done. But as more time has passed without me updating my print journal, it's reinforced my sense of the the ephemeral nature of blog posts — something I never felt with my newspaper columns. 

My column typically ran in full-color on the cover of a Saturday section front and was available on-line as well. I saved a newsprint copy of each one, knowing a copy also remained safely in the print — and later electronic — newspaper library. But given the unexpectedly fragile future of newspapers, the fate of those hundreds of newspaper libraries around the country is equally uncertain. A fact that was made eminently clear when the local papers dramatically cut back on public access to their electronic library last September. 

Based on what I've witnessed over the last few years, what it ultimately comes down to is this: the written word lasts longest when it is written by hand and preserved on paper. So I spent the better part of a week — with my 2009 calendar, my basket of bits and pieces, a stick of archival glue and my pen — catching up. My paper garden journal, like my on-line garden journal, is now on real time. 

March madness

Friday and Saturday's colder and snowy weather meant that I could return to indoor projects and forget about the garden. For a brief moment it looked like the temperatures forecast for this coming week would keep the garden at a standstill and me busy indoors a bit longer. But the weather has quickly rebounded, and by the time I woke up this morning the snow in the garden was gone again.

 

I'm glad, however, that I had this opportunity to enjoy my early crocuses in the snow. Nothing is a more magical sight than those tiny buds glowing amidst the crystalline snow. I only have two varieties of crocus: the purple C. tommasinianus ("Tommies") which are so small you need hundreds — if not thousands — to create a noticeable garden effect, and the white C. chrysanthus 'Snowbunting.'

'Snowbunting' dates from 1914 and I like to imagine it blooming in English gardens in the dark days of World War I. It is the only crocus cultivar raised by the great E.A. Bowles to still be commercially available, according to the E. A. Bowles Society. Bowles was passionate about crocuses and published a handbook on the subject in 1924. It is still a worthy choice according to Graham Rice who, earlier this month, called it a "star" of the RHS crocus trials.

If you are not familiar with Bowles, be sure to check out the Society's Web site where you can find out more about him, including a list of the 40+ plants named after Bowles that are still for sale today. Merely knowing that there is an organization dedicated to a particular gardener — rather than the more typical organization geared to specific plants — gives you a clue to his importance in English horticulture. 

If you'd like to add some 'Snowbunting' crocus to your garden, you can find them at Old House Gardens. I've ordered them from the OHG catalog, but I bought my first little bag of bulbs from the old Seed Savers store on Monroe St. in Madison. That wonderful shop, managed by artist and gardener Cynde Quinn, closed during a period of transition at Seed Savers Exchange parent company in Iowa. It was a great addition to the local gardening scene and I remember it fondly when I look at my blooming 'Buntings.'

This image (directly above) of C. 'Snow Bunting' blooming in the grass is proof that this little gem looks its best in the snow. The purple crocus is C. tommasinianus.

Spring has sprung

This weekend is the WIAA State Boys Basketball Tournament, held each year in Madison. It brings hundreds of players to town, their families and friends tagging along for a moment of March Madness.

It also usually brings a March snowstorm and this year was no different than seasons past. We noticed the first flakes drifting down just as we were finishing dinner last night.    

We had turned the deck lights on so Mark could see to finish grilling — our first use of the Weber since we hauled it out to cook our Thanksgiving turkey.    

Luckily, I'd picked a bouquet of double snowdrops to decorate the table on Thursday — when the sun was shining and the temps were climbing toward 60 degrees. This morning's 31 degrees reminded me why I mostly left the garden alone during this glorious warm and sunny week that has ended so abruptly. I've lived in Wisconsin long enough to know that I shouldn't even think about heading out to the garden until all the basketball boys head back home.

Felt: The most ancient modern material

Next week it looks like we'll be having much chillier temperatures, along with snow or rain: Perfect weather! I was afraid it was going to continue to be so warm and sunny that I would look silly wearing my favorite felt hat and scarf to the annual Ruth Ketterer Harris Lecture. Now some folks might think I look silly regardless of the weather, as these two items make a pretty dramatic felt and fashion statement. But felt is what I plan to wear to this lecture, whose topic this year is "Felt: The Most Ancient Modern Material." 

The speaker is Susan Brown, curator of the Cooper-Hewitt's recent ground-breaking exhibit, "Fashioning Felt,"  which showcased felt in every possible configuration from wearables to walls to industrial and ethnographic uses. Brown will focus on traditional forerunners of contemporary felt-making, illustrated with highlights from the inventive exhibition. (My favorites are the felt rocks). 

"Felt: The Most Ancient Modern Material"

Thursday, March 25, 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Ebling Symposium Center (Rm. 1220)

Microbial Sciences Building, 1550 Linden Drive

Free and open to the public

This is a new venue for this event, so be sure to check out the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection site for more information, including a map indicating parking. 

HLATC PHOTO

Hy-Brazil

On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell,

A shadowy land has appeared, as they tell;

Men thought it a region of sunshine and rest,

And called it O'Brazil — the isle of the blest.

    

From year unto year, on the ocean's blue rim,

The beautiful spectre showed lovely and dim;

The golden clouds curtained the deep where it lay,

And it looked like an Eden, away, far away.

    

— Gerald Griffin

LOOKING FOR HY-BRAZIL/SMYTH

Though few folks drinking green beer today would recognize my name as Irish, this poem notes its origin in the name of this mythical island in the Atlantic.

Foliage Follow-up: 3.16.2010

We've had such a spurt of warm weather that the snow is disappearing as I write. But the following foliage photos — taken as a nod to Digging's "Foliage Follow-up" to Garden Bloggers Bloom Day — are probably not exactly the celebration that Pam envisioned. This is more of a notation, marking the changes in the last few days as the snow departs and Spring arrives. It gives you a true picture of what a Northern garden looks like as the seasons change.

Leaves (Acer triflorum, above) are stuck to the snow where they landed months ago or maybe they were brought down by yesterday's winds. Since it's on top of the snow, either possibility could be correct.

The dessicated blades of Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' grass, however, are glued to a stepping stone adjacent to the plant. This is definitely the result of the 17 inches of snow that fell in early December.     

Korean maple (Acer pseudosiboldiana) holds its leaves which makes for a nice addition to the winter garden. But that heavy, wet December snowfall on such a leaf-covered tree led to serious damage on our largest Korean maple. This small one came through unscathed and will hold its leaves a bit longer. 

Heuchera 'Pewter Veil' shows that our garden has almost as much brown foliage as green at this point in the year. You just get a hint of the silvery purple that will mark the leaves later in the season. For now it's another somber — rather than celebratory — note.

Some leaves stay green under the snow and they are the ones we look for as soon as the snow begins to melt. Epimediums (above) are a stalwart example.

This dwarf bamboo (Fargesia rufa 'Green Panda') has been completely buried under snow and is almost entirely green. The season's total snowfall was about 50 inches and very little of that melted during the winter, so even good-sized shrubs were invisible until recent days.

Many of the evergreens had their lower branches "glued" to the ground all winter, like this Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra). We were very worried about what would happen when the snow relaxed its hold. But to our amazement, many of them just popped right up once that weight was removed. Even the small Star Magnolia went from being bent to the ground to upright in a matter of hours. It was a heartening sight and proved again that nature is resilient.

Hellebores (above) and sedges (Carex plantaginea, below) just laugh at the snow, pushing through regardless of the weather. Where the snow has melted there are big fat Hellebore buds poking through and the sedge leaves are upright.

Despite lots of good news, some plants took the winter hard and we are still waiting to see what happens. Arborvita are a good example. The garden under those trees is covered with fallen fronds while the trunks are still bent over in huge curves. We're hoping warm weather will help them recover.

Dwarf winter creeper (Euonymous fortunii 'Minima', below) is showing its dull winter green color, not looking much brighter than the lichens on rock where it's cavorting.    

Outside of the mosses, honors for the freshest green go — as always —  to the boxwoods. Whether they are one year or eleven years old, they always look lovely. Whether it's March or July, they're the green backbone of the garden.