The Seasons of Autumn

Post 9  

                              

 First the orchestra tunes up. It is late Summer, when sweet Autumn clematis blooms up into an already fading dogwood.

 

Then the introduction sounds.  Early Autumn mutes the garden into dusty shades almost as beautiful as a second spring. Faded hydrangeas, not just the Mopheads but also the Pee-Gee, with its extravagant chatreuse and russet plumes, flop over, as fluttery layers of hardy begonia cascade down.
 

Woodland aster merges slate blue petals with coleus. And receding from the eye, shaggy periwinkle blooms of wild ageratum tease your gaze back into shadow. It's all a quieter beauty than spring's blaze, hushed, tranquil as dusk.

But slowly this twilight stirs and exhales, resounding through the air.  Then it is truly Autumn.

Pink chrysanthemums, cobalt purple aconite and white Montauk daisies will burst out in clear colors. The red maples, now a moody greeny orange will one morning flame red, the kind of backlit red that only nature can produce. Then  leaves will start to fall before most everything else edges into brown: red browns, mauve browns, maroon browns, bronze and golden browns.

The last to go will be the groundcovers-- bugleweed, epimedium and corydalis, which each year seem intent to prove they are really evergreens, while the evergreens stand smugly off, laurel and rhodo.

And all the while the roses will hold out, well into November, maybe even a bloom or two in early December, as if to connect, --if just by one bloom or hip--, to the February Camilla, as the year starts up again.

Midsummer and midwinter are long, closed seasons, but fall and spring are many seasons, open and mutable, which is why we always think they are too short. As they are

Stewardship

Post 8

I approach writing this post with trepidation. This blog was about looking at gardening from many viewpoints, including the spiritual. Intent on avoiding  the worn out baggage of sectarianism, I wanted to show the influence of my particular spiritual tradition (liberal Episcopalian Christianity,) through implicit, rather than explicit, values and themes.  However, the pastor at our church just asked me to write a prayer about cheerful stewardship...through garden imagery. How could I resist? And how can I resist posting it here, with suitable pictures. Spirituality is an important part of the garden and several spiritual tokens are half-hidden amidst the foliage. The pictures in this post show a few of the Christian ones. Therefore, if you are offended by liberal Trinitarian Christianity, or religion in general, please stop reading this post here. I have no desire to offend any of my siblings on this earth.  But if you are not offened, thank you and read on.

"Dearest God, who created us here on this gardenearth, while putting in our hearts a perpetual longing for the lost garden of shared delight, guide us to be good stewards of both our soul’s longing and this gardenearth. As a good gardener feeds the soil, and does it with delight, let us feed our souls and gardenearth, and do so with delight.  

Guide us to do this here, to honor where we worship, to contribute where we congregate and to nourish where our hearts are open to your love.

God, Friend and fellow Gardener, thank you for letting us share our delight in your gifts, with your delight in our imperfect, but heart-felt response, through the grace of your Son Jesus Christ, and the blessings of the Holy Spirit. Amen"

The truth is, whether we like it or not, or, at whatever level, believe in the story in Genesis or not, we are stewards of this earth, our island home. It's future, our future, depends on what sort of stewards we chose to be.

Garden Story with Hydrangeas

 Post 7 

If Cleome is for history, what is for story? And, how are garden and story alike?

In literary works, it's often the atmosphere, the mood of a piece that is remembered. An atmosphere, created as much by the author's prose style and choice of metaphors as by plot, theme or character, is like a visit into an exteriorized consciousness. It can be what can makes us love an author's work even if it isn't always successful.  How stories are told is what matters.  Gardens are like that too. They have moods, modes, spirits, that self-reveal within their larger context, so that gardens experienced become like stories told, poems recited, songs sung.

Below is my garden's story. Garden design-wise, what my garden lacks in planning, lists and drawn-up diagrams is make-up for by a fable.  Changes made in the garden work if they are congruous with the story's vision. It gives me, and the garden, a flexible, open structure, around which to grow

  "Once upon a time there lived an old woman in an old, stone house in Northwest Philadelphia.  On weekdays she would take the train to East Falls, where she taught Baroque Literature at Wissahickon College. But on weekends, vacations and those long summer evenings when the light wouldn’t go away, she made a garden.    

Mophead Hydrangea new, with Cranesbills and Ladies Mantle 

And what a garden it was. She packed it with every possible flower. She induced the plants to flourish so that they grew, climbed and tumbled into intersecting layers, too complex for the eye to take in all at once,  so that, by overfeeding the senses, it simultaneously quickened consciousness. It was so beautiful in growth or decay that it made you feel that somehow our world was more wonderful than you had previously imagined it, all meadowbright with possibility and discovery.  It was a magnificent garden, and as you may have guessed, it is not the garden that you now see.



Mophead Hydrangea old

For one day the lady, after decades of being old, went away. No one saw her again. New people came and lived in the house with its garden, and then even newer people. None of these people have gardened like the old lady. Still, the garden, messy and half-wild, has thrived. Though not as beautiful as it once was, it has persevered and so, prevailed.  It has continued, much like an old hydrangea blossom, its early sunburst of unearthly blue muted into petals mottled by mauve and green and aqua-like light.

Mophead, old, with Acanthus and hardy Begonia

A girl who had grown up int he house and played in the garden knew there was something unique about the garden and that it had to do with the garden’s shape. And love of course. Because a child would say that love was involved. That somehow the old lady’s love had seeped into the place.

And indeed, the garden, beneath its wild plantings, does show a distinct pattern. You can see it most clearly in winter. At the center stands an urn that is surrounded by four, sphere-topped columns arranged in a rectangle. A plaque on the urn read, “Quincunx/Lambda.”

No one knows exactly what that means. The first word is Latin, the second Greek, and few even try to guess why these words would be put together.  The child has grown up, and now lives in the house again and tends the garden.  And when she gardens she feels as if, time and again, she is bumping up against some invisible, solid, buried form, that is revealing itself, slowly but ineffably, a sign of she knows not what. 

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How-to: Mophead, or Hydrangea macrophylla, is one of the most popular members of the hydrangea family ( Oak-leaf, Lacecap and Pee-Gee are also much loved and thrive in our area.)  Historically called Hortensia Hydrangeas, French Hydrangeas or Penny Macs, Mopheads are originally from Japan. They make a big-leafed, water-fond bush of about 5 feet that is happy in sun or semi-shade.


One of the fun things about Mopheads is that many varieties (though not all,) can bloom  pink, blue or purple, depending on the pH of the surrounding soil. To get the blue end of the spectrum, you need very acidic soil with aluminum in it. This is not too difficult in the Wissahickon Valley, since most of our soil here is naturally acidic. This is often not true, however, around the foundation of our houses, where leaching from cement and other building materials can over sweeten the soil.  I have 2 Mopheads up against the house and use Espoma Soil Acidifier to blue them. If that dosn't do it --try throwing some cheap aluminum nails into the soil around the bush.

If you want pink you need to do the opposite. Add lime to sweeten the soil, then--if you use chemical fertilizer, use one with a high phosphorus count; phosphorus blocks aluminum intake. I have less experience with this -- for me, the bluer the Mophead the better. One year I had one that was almost turquoise and am still trying to duplicate it.

Most hydrangeas tinge towards russet as they age. Some then pale into beige and sand.  You can also trim the heads off when they're still fresh and hang the heads upside down in a dark place to dry. They look good in dried arrangements. A spritz of hair spray will keep them from crumbling too soon.

It used to be that all Mopheads were prone to losing buds to freezing and thawing in winter, and therefore might not bloom come summer. "Endless Summer" and other like varieties have put an end to this problem, since they bloom from new spring buds and are dependable. They cost a bit more, but are worth it.

Chicory and the Flora of the Imagination

Post 2

Roadside Chicory and Queen Anne's Lace from wildeherb.com


Right now, in this heat, the flora of the moment is Chicory, that supposed weed, a lavender blue dilly blooming along roadsides, robustly blooming because its long taproot descends down into the water table.

The Bookish Gardener has a wonderful entry on this flower, quoting gardener extraordinaire Henry Mitchell, which confirms my suspicion that this is a weed worth reckoning with. It is beautiful, it is edible, it can be made into coffee. But because of that long taproot, it dislikes being potted up, constrained and commodified. It must be grown wild from seed or it perishes.

You have to admire a plant like that -- though there is none of it in my garden. Because my garden is a real garden and has constraints. It's a small garden and chicory likes a wide swathe to spread out. So it only thrives in my imaginary garden, one I garden just as resolutely as I garden my real one. For in my imaginary garden go all the ideas, plants and opportunities for which there is no room in reality.





The Secret Garden, from Project Gutenberg

  

This secret dream garden is important because it is the backbone of the real garden. From it you can draw out a wisp of an idea, a possibility, and tend it into fuller reality. Like a real garden, you need to cultivate its soil, achieve tilth, find fertility. Without an imaginary garden, your real garden will be a collection of plants skillfully arranged.

 Some gardens seem to have an extra shot of life in them, a vibrancy. It is a quality hard to describe and even harder to achieve, but, like pornography--you know it when you see it. Great gardens have it. And part of that greatness comes because you can catch a glimpse of the dream garden within the real one.

So now, the more I think about it, maybe I should  try a stand (no room for a swathe,) of chicory next spring out along my hellstrip. I imagine it would look mighty good come next midsummer's heat. and it would make my dream garden that much closer to the one I actually tend. Which would make me happy. And that is another secret identity of the garden.  That it makes you happy.



Dream Garden by Maxfield Parrish and Louis Comfort Tiffany



Cleome, History's Muse

White Cleome

Post 6
Clio is the muse of history, but what does that mean? What inspires history, moving us to remember and commemorate the past, especially the good of the past?

Every gardener was once a child and as a child wondered through a garden or gardens, leaving vivid snapshot memories. Old fashioned flowers may call up scenes of a patio bordered by swaying lilies, or a porch swing near an unknown flower.



Cleo and Nicotiana alata



One difference between many present plants and ones we think of as old-fashioned is that the old fashioned plants reproduce.  Because modern taste has gravitated towards more and larger blooms that last longer, this has led to hybridization that keeps plants from setting seed, or setting seeds that reproduce unpredictibly.

 Select Seeds, one of the companies that specialize in old-fashioned seeds and plants,(Perennial Pleasures is another, Seed Savers' Exchange another,) gives these older plants this definition:

"Antique, or heirloom flowers are open-pollinated varieties that originated fifty or more years ago. Open-pollinated flowers are fertilized by insects, hummingbirds or wind, and the resulting seeds will produce plants that are identical or very similar to the parent plant." 

Cleome,  which makes me think of a voluptuous sylph in a silk dressing gown, manages to look blowsy and delicate at the same time. Originally from the West Indies, it is a repeating annual in our area -- by repeating, I mean that it reproduces every year from seeds it sheds the year before. Because it so easily reproduces from seed, once you have some you will soon have more. If it spreads too much, it is easy to pull out and transplant. Or give to a friend, which is how I acquired my first stand.

It starts blooming in July and often keeps up till frost.  This is because its flower turns into seed pods as the plant rises, making a sort of spiraling ladder.  The seed pods, which are like steps,  are easy to gather and spread where you would like. It is as if Cleome were writing its history in unwinding seed posd.

“All things are engaged in writing their history.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

So, my tentative answer to the opening question -- what is history's muse?-- is this. Though history, anyone's history, includes repungnant, not to mention sad and difficult incidents as well as happy ones, all  these incidents have been experienced by the self. And what has formed this self? On the most mundane level, it is love. For a child who is given no love or care at all dies. The baby's earliest sense of self comes from interaction with love.

" One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering."  Jane Austen



Clio, from www.oberlin.edu/history/Brown.

 

Perhaps, because love sets the structure of self, that structure brings a kind of love to what the self experiences. And so the past, and its path, acquires worth.

Cleome, tall, fertile and full-blown, self-seeds itself around the garden like memory, framing new vistas amidst old-fashioned plumes. It is a good flower to plant in a place that you love, there to perhaps bring history's best gifts,  good report and peace.

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How-to: Cleome hasslerana is an easy self-seeder. In fall throw seed pods or seeds where you want it, then thin in late spring. I've seen it colored white, pink and white, bubblegum pink, lavender, lavender and white and purple. If it starts to fall over or gets too gangly, lop it off and two flowers will grow back lower. It like sun and lots of water or semi-shade and less water -- it looks piqued if allowed to dry out.