Blooms in the NC Desert

It is DRY, people!!! It's so dry the weeds (the ones in the lawn, that is) are dying. The weeds in my flowerbeds, however, have their thirsts quenched regularly and are growing like mad.

It seems like it used to rain when I was a kid. I remember the smell of rain, the rumble of thunder, lightning popping, and thick, heavy raindrops pelting my back as I pedaled hard to get home before the heavens opened up. I remember ditches full of water, and tadpoles. Now, it seems like every summer we go weeks and weeks without even the hope of rain.

As long as the city will permit me, I keep my flowerbeds watered. (Pretty soon, I guess I'll be saving bath water and hauling it out in buckets...) Fortunately, most of my plants are fairly drought tolerant; mostly I'm just trying to keep the new plantings alive.

My summer flowers are starting to bloom, including:

Lilies

Coneflower ("Rocky Top???")

More lilies

Beardtongue

The Birds of the Air

There are people, I suppose, who can look at a bird without any sense of awe. I probably don't want to spend a lot of time in such company. Birds bring wonder and delight to the garden, and the wise gardener will take thought of how he can welcome them to his plot of land.

I love my birds. They watch me as I hew out a garden in what was, until very recently, a dismally monotonous spread of chemically-enhanced suburban lawn. I think they like the improvements I've made, and if they possess a capacity for gratitude, (and who is to say they don't?) they appreciate it. The towhees and brown thrashers scratch about in the mulched beds in search of insects; goldfinches cling to the coneflower stalks in fall to eat the seeds, and just this morning, I watched a robin building her nest in the branches of a dogwood. The baths and feeders, of course, are the prime attraction. Some therapist is going without a sailboat because I have birdfeeders.

Sometimes I wish I didn't love my birds quite so much. Like Sunday, when we heard a sickening thud against the living room window, and I went out to find a mourning dove lying on the pavement. She quivered once, then closed her eyes and died as I knelt beside her. And last year, when I came home to find that our cat had caught and killed a hummingbird, just a few days before she would have left to winter in the tropics. I buried them both in the garden, their graves marked with white quartz stones that I found in my digging.

Jesus said, "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God's sight." It is worth reflecting on that line...not one of them is forgotten in God's sight. I'm always disgusted by pious people who claim to love God yet do not respect God's creatures.


Joel Gillespie, a thoughtful evangelical Christian blogger (and how refreshing it is to put those three adjectives together) writes:

All life created by God is worthy of a certain reverence. Even if we are allowed to eat of the meat of other creatures, it should not be done callously, and the beasts should not be treated contrary to their nature and good just to bring us marbled meat to grill on a fire. How we treat our fellow creatures matters.

I have known few people mean to animals who were not also mean to people.

It does not lessen us to look more highly upon our fellow creatures. They are smarter, more sensitive, and more amazing than we have yet to realize. One day we will feel great sorrow over how we have desecrated and disrespected these wonderful fellow creatures. We can start changing attitudes now. I hope that we do. (Read the full article)

For some superb bird photography, check out Greensboro Birds. Iris updates her blog almost every day with photos of birds taken around Lincoln Green Apartments and the Battleground. And if you wonder what kind of birds she's going to find at an apartment complex and a park, then you really need to take a look!

Looking Busy

Today I yanked the pansies out of the front bed. All of a sudden, half the bed was empty and bare, while the other half was jammed full of hellebores, hostas, astilbes, and ferns, all growing on top of one another. (Half the time, when I get hellebores, it is winter and I have no idea where the hostas and astilbes are sleeping, and so the hellebores invariably get planted on top of something.)

So I moved some of the shade plants into empty spaces. As long as I was moving things, I figured I may as well re-work that corner where the coralbells are. I noticed that the coralbells looked nice beside these chartreuse-leaved hostas; they looked even better after I rearranged them, plus it was a good excuse for postponing a number of less rewarding chores involving laundry.


The first Stella d'Oro bloom (May 2)

Ask Your Healer if Spiderwort is Right for You

I was admiring a friend's spiderworts today and commented that mine hadn't bloomed yet. When I got home, however, I found nearly a dozen of the pretty purple flowers glistening with raindrops. I love these plants. They were given to me by my mother, and for several years they grew by the driveway of our old house. I left them when we moved away, but when we returned to Greensboro, the new owner of the house was kind enough to let me dig up several of my old friends.

There are two types of spiderwort: Virginia spiderwort (Tradescantia Virginiana), which I have, is a native perennial with 3-petaled purple flowers. Each flower lasts only one day, but it blooms profusely all summer. The common spiderwort, (Tradescantia andersoniana) is a related hybrid and comes in many colors.

I like it because it fulfills my most important criteria: you don't have to fuss over it. Plant spiderwort in full sun to part shade and leave it alone. It will grow like crazy, especially in moist soil. If it gets too leggy, cut it back to about six inches.

Mine live in a low place at the back of my yard which puddles after any decent rain. They divide easily, so you can start with just a few clumps and soon have all you want. In a few years, you'll be foisting them off on all your friends.

Their names probably comes from their foilage, which is long and narrow, and bends like the legs of a spider. Another theory attributes the name to a thread-like substance, like a spider web, which is secreted when the stalk is cut. "Wort," by the way, rhymes with "dirt" and is simply an Old English word for "plant."

According to the USDA, Native Americans used spiderwort for food and medicinal purposes. Mashed spiderwort leaves were rubbed onto insect bites to relieve pain and itching; a paste made from its roots was used to treat cancer; spiderwort tea served as a laxative and a remedy for stomachaches caused by overeating. It was combined with other ingredients to treat kidney trouble and "female ailments."

I can just imagine the commercials that would have run during mealtime if the Cherokee had had TV back in the day...

Teresa's Container Gardening

The weekend was devoted to Teresa's containers. Her gift is gardening in small spaces. I need a third of an acre, with sprawling beds, eight-foot wide borders, and sweeping curves, or I feel like it's not worth the effort, but Teresa can focus on one planter and arrange plants in a way that really is artistic.



When we lived in Edenton, our only "garden" was a screened porch and outdoor staircase. Teresa went out and bought a whole collection of annuals to dress it up. One of them was this asparagus fern, which is coming back after its third winter. It lives on the deck in a big copper tub with absolutely no drainage. It gets HUGE!



Our deck bakes in the summer sun. Most things we've planted there are either dead or on life-support by August, but last year we had great success with...something purple that the hummingbirds loved. Did I record the name of this marvelous annual? Yes. Can I find where I wrote it? Of course not. This Angelonia (Summer Snapdragon)looks a lot like it, so based on that unflappable logic, we are giving it a try this year.

Iris!!!

Proof that you can transplant irises in the middle of January, right before a hard freeze, and they'll still bloom.

Annuals???

I thought Gerbera Daisies were annuals. (Although I consulted The Carolinas Gardener's Guide and learned that " near the coast and occasionally further inland, Gerberas act as perennials...") These have made it through a second winter in Greensboro, after having been moved from my grandfather's house in SC. I had them in the front bed, but last year the asters got so big that they swallowed up the Gerberas, so today I transplanted them to another bed where they can enjoy plenty of room.

Dahlias also can return in "mild winter areas," according to the Burpee Complete Gardener. I don't consider this area particularly mild, but I have a dahlia that must think so. Last year its petals got eaten by squirrels and its leaves shaded out by the dogwood, so I think I'll move it to the back as well, where it can get plenty of sun and Andy can defend it from the wildlife.

Plants on Ebay

We've bought a lot of things on Ebay: a digital camera, Carolina basketball tickets, books, and dishes. For a long time, though, it never occurred to me that people sell plants there too. But they do.

Teresa wanted a Sweetshrub (Carolina Allspice) for her flowerbed, and after a fruitless (sorry) search around Greensboro, I found Lee's Nursery on Ebay and ordered one. Since Lee will combine shipping ($7 for 1-10 plants) there was no reason to just buy one plant...clever rationalization, huh? So I scrolled through the listings and found a dwarf burning bush, a mock orange, and some Nikko Blue hydrangeas. Just the things to fill in some gaps in the back border.

Lee had good feedback from other buyers, and at $3 a plant, I figured I couldn't go wrong. They shipped on Tuesday and arrived on Thursday by priority mail. The plants were as advertised, 1-2 feet long (hydrangeas smaller) and in great condition as far as I can tell. Only the burning bush had leaves when they arrived, but the mock orange has since put out several buds. The others are green when I scrape the stems, so hopefully they will leaf out soon!

The plants are about the size you would find in a 1 gallon pot, maybe a little smaller, and pruned back if still dormant.

The Pessimistic Gardener

Being a pessimist by nature, I'm always astonished when plants come back to life in the spring. I know that's what they are supposed to do, but there is always this nagging fear that something may have gone horribly wrong over the winter. Especially with lantana, which is iffy in zone 7 anyway. Despite my consternation, all four lantana bushes have lived to see another year, and so on Saturday, I cut back all of the old dry, brittle stems, leaving only the shortest of green-leaved nubs poking up from the ground.

I was similarly convinced that the variegated hydrangea that we bought just before the Easter freeze must have met its end, but no. Tiny buds are miraculously emerging from the stalks.

It seems to me that pessimism might be more healthy, psychologically speaking, than optimism. An optimist, I imagine, is frequently disappointed, whereas a pessimist is pleasantly surprised to wake up and find that no plague, pestilence, or other catastrophe (aside from a few slugs) has overtaken his garden during the night.

Absentminded, Color-Impaired, and Spiteful

You would think that I would remember this burgundy iris from last year. I remember purple, white, and yellow, but not this one. (I recall that I was given some more irises back in January, but they were planted somewhere else.) Obviously the gnomes have been at work.

I'm enjoying the twenty or so May Night salvia that I picked up at Lowes for a dollar each at the end of last season. The bees love them and their dark purple flowers are a good contrast with the light green foliage of the Anise Hyssop (also from the dollar table). I'm always pleased when I hit on color combinations that work--purely by accident. (I am not skilled at matching colors; the only pants I own are jeans and khakis because they match everything.)

I don't buy a lot of plants at the big box stores. One, I don't think they water them enough; and two, I'd rather pay a few bucks extra and buy from people who know plants. I do like to cruise the markdown racks though, because I can get perfectly good plants that other people with less sense ignore because they aren't blooming anymore. Plus, at those prices, I figure I'm getting them below cost...just my own little way of sticking it to the Man.

Fence Bites the Dirt

Saturated ground and 60 mph winds are a bad combination. I came home from work to find two sections of our fence flat on the ground, and realized with dismay that a hydrangea, red-twig dogwood, and arborvitae were crushed underneath.

Still dressed in my argyle sweater and khakis (and by the way, where would an ESL student from El Salvador learn the word "preppy?") I seized my hammer and set about dismantling the fence to liberate the trapped plants.

They all seemed to suffer only minor damage, so I pruned off the broken limbs and am now seeking recommendations for fence builders. I know, replacing a fence section isn't too hard, but I have only two tools in my home repair arsenal: a hammer and a MasterCard. If I can't fix a problem with one, I fix it with the other. Life's just too short.