Happy Mother's Day to the Hellebore Queen

I inherited my love of plants from my mother, the Hellebore Queen. She often took me plant-shopping with her at Mr. Miles' nursery, a wonderfully shabby labyrinth of clear-plastic greenhouses and planting beds behind a modest house on the other side of town. I would like to say that I was a plant prodigy, that at age five I knew the best cultivars for our Zone 8 climate, and that I frequently stopped on my tricycle to advise gardeners on proper pruning technique.

I'd like to say that, but it's not true. I probably knew the names of more plants than your average kindergartener, but mainly what I knew was that I loved being surrounded by plants. I loved the woods and swamp behind our house and am grateful to my mother for letting me wander alone out there for hours, requiring only that I be home for supper. I loved the enormous magnolia in our front yard, the top of which afforded me a view of our neighborhood available to no one else. I loved the azaleas that attracted bees, the crabapple tree which provided my brother and me a fine supply of grenades to hurl at each other, the Wandering Jew and ivy vines which developed roots like magic if you put them in water for a few days.

My mother bought me my first plant from Mr. Miles. I remember that it was an evergreen, I think some variety of Euonymus, which I planted beside the garage where it thrived under, or maybe in spite of, my watchful care. She bought me tiny cacti from Edward's department store, which I kept in my room, as well as an asparagus fern which I believed needed to be talked to in order to grow. (I spoke to it regularly and it did quite well, so who's to say?)

When I was in college and scavenging furniture for my first apartment, she provided me with a variegated philodendron in a straw basket. (I think maybe she didn't really like it but felt badly about throwing out a perfectly healthy plant.) In any case, the philodendron went to my apartment, followed me to two more apartments in Chapel Hill, a bachelor pad in Greensboro, Teresa's and my first house, then to Edenton, and back to Greensboro, where it trails off the bookcase over my right shoulder. It has lost its variegation over these last twenty years, and it often doesn't get watered for months at a time, and I'm not fond of houseplants, but of course I can't get rid of it now.

If you really want to see my mother's influence on my garden, come to my house. The hellebores in the front bed...from her. The beardtongue in the Charleston garden, the lantana that tempts the butterflies and hummingbirds, the forsythia that welcomes spring in an explosion of yellow, the deciduous azalea, the bearded irises, the Stella d'Oro, the hyacinths, the beebalm, the yarrow...I've never counted, but I'll bet more than half of my plants came from her. (To see the number of plants she's given me, you would think her yard is bare now. You would be wrong.)

More valuable than all the plants, however, she has given me a love of dirt and the things that grow in it, two gifts that I can take with me anywhere and which always keep me close to the Source of all life.

Thank you, Mama, and Happy Mother's Day!

New Blooms and a New Path

My favorite iris opened this morning...




















and remember that Baptisia that I moved last year, in willful violation of all the Garden Rules???
It bloomed yesterday.



I picked up some more stepping stones and made a path through the butterfly garden. I need to be careful, though, about publicizing all these projects. Barbara at Wild Birds Unlimited is beginning to wonder how I can accomplish so much in my garden and so little at work. My wife has expressed similar amazement.

First Hummingbird!

You have to get up pretty early to see a newly arrived migratory bird before Iris spots it at Greensboro Birds. She's keeping a running calendar of when she sees the first and last migratory species this year. (I thought I had her on the first Catbird of the year, which arrived in my garden on Friday, but naturally, Iris saw one Thursday.)

Well, I didn't get up early this morning but Teresa did, and she was rewarded with a glimpse of the first hummingbird of 2008! (We just put the feeder up yesterday.) I saw the little creature this afternoon, so I can vouch that she wasn't making it up.

(And I'm still seeing white-throated sparrows. Doesn't it seem a bit late for them to be hanging around?)

Product Review: Timberwolf Composite Edging

Which is the most baldfaced lie?

A) I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

B) Iraq is producing weapons of mass destruction

C) Easy to install!

I bought some edging materials today for Teresa's Charleston Garden, and unpacked it with no small amount of trepidation, for emblazoned on the box were those three words: Easy To Install.

The box also said that the edging strips were made in the United States from 100% post-consumer recycled materials, so I patted myself on the back for finding a reasonably green product and one not from China, but still, there was the installation looming at the periphery of my consciousness.

The product itself is a 16-foot strip of composite material that looks more or less like wood, but is flexible. It comes rolled up, so you have to stretch it out and let it "relax," according to the instructions. So I let the strips sun themselves on the deck while I dug a trench along the edge of the flowerbed and pressed the stakes as far down in the dirt as they would go. (Sorry that I don't have photos...it was raining, which is always good if you need to hammer something in red NC clay.)

Once the strips were sufficiently rested, I slid them into the slots at the top of the stakes, attached the little pounding block that came in the package, and drove them into the dirt with my rubber mallet.

I consulted the instructions again for the next step. There was no next step. That was it. No attaching Flange A to Base 49.6 with the Blue 1/2" pin. It took maybe ten minutes. In the rain. And it looks damn good if I do say so myself.

(Editor's Note: LMAID received no compensation from Fibertech Polymers for this glowing, erudite, and witty product review...But if you guys at Fibertech want to send me several hundred more linear feet of edging for the rest of my garden, I'll make sure that box appears in every photo for the next 6 months. )

Rose Breasted Grosbeak

Grosbeaks are rare visitors to my garden. This is only the third time I've seen one!
They spend the winter in Central and South America and the Caribbean, and summer up north. They are usually seen in Greensboro during their migration, although their summer range does extend into the NC mountains.

The photo below is for Iris at Greensboro Birds, who always likes to see different species hanging out together.

Straw Bale Gardening

Last winter Teresa asked me if I had ever heard of growing vegetables in straw bales.

"In what?"

"Straw bales. You know, wheat straw. The stuff people put over their lawns after they plant grass seed. You buy it out the back of a big truck..."

"I know what wheat straw is. But how are you going to grow vegetables in it? Last time I checked, plants needed dirt to grow. They've got these things called roots, and they're sort of important."

"Here, read this." She handed me a sheaf of printouts from various websites.

"Well. I stand corrected. If it's on the Internet, it must be true."

"Look. You buy the bales in winter and let them sit out for several months. They start to break down and get all soft, then you make a hole in the bale, put in some dirt, and plant your vegetables."

"I don't know, Teresa. It sounds sorta gimmicky to me."

"It might work. It's sort of like planting stuff in your compost pile. Remember that pumpkin that came up last year?"

"I remember the pumpkin."

"I want to try it."

I was gratified that for once, Teresa wanted to begin a project that did not require any tool more complicated than a trowel, so I was more than happy to get the straw bales. They sat behind the butterfly garden all spring, soaking up rain (yes, it's actually rained!) and getting nice and soft. The other day I plunged my hand into the center of a bale and found that the consistency was similar to that of rich compost. I could maybe envision a plant growing here.

We went to the farmer's market last week and came home with squash, zucchini, beans, peas, and asparagus. (The asparagus went in the ground, since it's a perennial.) Yesterday, Teresa spaded some dirt into the bales and planted her crops. She said they would need to be watered more frequently than a regular vegetable garden--I volunteered to water in the mornings if that meant I didn't have to make up the bed. (The latter seems such a waste of time--I'm going to get right back in it at night...)

So we'll see what happens. Stay tuned...

Beuller, Beuller...Anyone???

Remember the scene in Ferris Beuller's Day Off where the protagonist's bedroom is filled with flowers and balloons from well-wishers all over Chicago? That's sort of how Andy's garden is beginning to look, with gifts of white flowers. My mother, the Hellebore Queen, gave us a white Bleeding Heart (Dicentra spectabilis "Alba"), and her friend Judy sent some white creeping phlox. (The roses that we incorporated into Andy's garden also came from Judy.) Fellow NC blogger Carla sent a thoughtful card, with a packet of Thunbergia seeds inside.



















Elsewhere, work continues on the big center island bed. I dig up big chunks of sod, cart them over to the back border where I lay them upside down, then cover the whole affair with sheets of wet cardboard...

and cover that with grass clippings, mulched leaves, and old wheat straw from where Andy used to sleep under the deck. It is pretty labor intensive, and it's not the way to create a bed in a hurry, but I tried this on a smaller scale last year and was amazed at what it did for the soil. I don't plan (read "don't have the money to buy") anything for this back border right now, so I can afford to invest the time for nature do the real work.

Like I said, there are quicker ways to prepare a flowerbed but as Ferris observed:

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around, you might miss it."