Two Kindly Weeds: Morning Glory Grandpa Otts and Gloaming Mistflower

 Post 51

Early Fall is when the air freshens up and it is pleasure to go back into the garden, a pleasure, that is, until you notice the weeds.

As you start to clear stuff out: weeds and dead or rotting matter, mildewed stems and spotted leaves, you realize that there is less blooming than earlier in the season. Annuals, the ones that did not burn out in the heat, are still strong but most perennials are done.

If you are lucky some perennials will look good as they age , such as the cones of the Pee-Gee hydrangea, above right. Still, if it were not for two late-flowering, beautiful, rampant things,  much of the garden would loose luster well before its end.

Here is my hell strip with some pink asters and the two kindly weeds: Granpa Otts Morning Glory and Wild Ageratum, or Mist Flower.

Though they spread like green rampage, they can work well in a wild garden

And why would I call a Morning Glory a weed? Well, because this one acts like one; it's hard to kill, overpasses its boundaries and, if allowed, can strangle other plants. Nevertheless, it is a kindly weed because it does not get its full growth till late in the season when you have the space and need the color. Best of all, it is easy to yank or hoe out, you do not even have to dig.

Here is what the Seed Savers Exchange says about it--

"(Ipomoea purpurea) One of the original Bavarian varieties that started SSE. Given to Kent and Diane (Ott) Whealy in 1972 by her grandfather, Baptist John Ott, who lived on a 40-acre farm near St. Lucas, Iowa. Beautiful deep purple flower with a red star in its throat. Reliably self-seeds each year. Plants will climb 15' or more, if given support. Self-seeding hardy annual at Heritage Farm (zone 4)."

 So, buy one seed packet once, and you will have this forever. Because it is dark, and has a cool navy purple with streaks of hot violet, its flower, though small, looks  dramatic and dynamic.

 Mistflower, on the other hand, is a receding blue grey that looks best at twilight, when the blue takes on a weird, delightful glow. It is a bit of a filler since it looks best highlighted by bolder plants.

The way I handle its invasiveness is that every year, once bloom is done, I pull it out by its shallow roots. Yet, by June of the next year, it starts to pop up again. This is good, cause this is an area where I have had a lot of bulbs and spring ephemerals.  With this late riser, I get two seasons out of one patch of soil. 

For me, it's less effort to restrain vigorous plants than to cajole fussy ones. And I like the balance of wildness to tame that they engender. This is probably more of a reflection of my particular inner balance than of any practical gardening wisdom. 

Whatever it is that gives personal style to the garden, or any other aspect of your life, it comes from inside you.

 
All the tips in the world, books, quotes, guides, are just fodder for the deep part of yourself that creates.

That creates out of love. 

A Jubilee Parade for Labor Day: Zinnias

Post 50

I love zinnias. They are tough yet easy-going; sweet and exuberant; individualist yet cooperative  determined and brilliant.  And they get the job done.

Even though I have time, money and land, I can only create a garden because Nature (or Nature's God) has created life-- my own and that of plants.

My job is choosing the plants that will thrive and create beauty. But it's the plants that make it happen. You could say they are dependent on me,-- but only if you add that I am dependent on them.

So Happy Labor Day to all the zinnias of this world. May they (we) be properly paid for our honest labor that keeps this world functioning.

It is our productivity that produces value,

A fair portion of which value we have a right to,

And a duty to use that value,

So that we ourselves help create a better, more functional, more sustainable, more beautiful world.

We are all sub-creators, whatever our position in life.

Even when we think we do not have the power,

Even when we seem done,

 Until we return from where we came, and truly learn what our imperfect efforts,

 What our imperfect love,

Has created.

Happy Labor Day

Valerian or All-Heal, A Calming Pause

Post 40

Roses and rhodos crown spring.  But after roses, what can  follow? Usually there is a pause.  In a normal year, which is not this year, most perennial gardens are a bit bare before the midsummer eyeopener of daylily, daisie, coneflower and monarda .




                        
Which is why valerian, a perennial herb that looks like a giant Queen Anne's Lace, is such a useful plant. It steps forward as the roses end and then recedes as midsummer color takes over.

It is a tall, leggy herb with uplifted hands and head. Emerging out of a rosette of leaves the stems can grow up to 4 feet high. On its own the flower is pretty but lacks pizzazz. However, team it with some non-green ground covers and interesting flowers as they come and go, and it carries the garden through. Also, because it is tall, it is great behind smaller, denser plants. After bloom it can be cut back down to its nondescript green rosette. If you leave it standing after the peak of bloom seeds will set and you should get baby valerians, perhaps all over your yard. The seeds are light and travel in the wind. It is an easy plant to dig up and put elsewhere or give away.

It is not always an easy plant to buy. For like Corydalis lutea (Post 15,)  it has not been modified it into a patented commodity that warrants a marketing campaign. If a nursery carries Valerian, it is usually in the herb section, but since it is not a cooking herb you may need to ask for it. Or buy some seeds. Then, in two years you will have tall, lovely plants.


It's full name is Valeriana officinalis.  It can be called garden heliotrope, which is really another plant (cherry pie,) and red valerian, which is also really another plant (Jupiter's Beard.) Valerian has been called all-heal since medieval times because there is a medicine made from its roots, which, when properly prepared and administered, has a gentle calming effect.

So, if you have a space in sun or semi-shade that gets adequate water and needs some sprucing up this time of year, -- consider adding the sweet-smelling presence of this plant.

Roses: The Which and the How, No Need to Explain the Why.

Post 38

Happy Rosetime.

I grew up scared of roses.

Out on Long Island in the 60's, roses were either beautifully wild at dunes' edge or hybrid tea roses that needed to be fussed over, if not fussed over they decayed. Plus, the white ones my parents grew were old sock white by the second day of their 5 day, once a year, bloom.

I had no idea how easy it would be to grow these reblooming beauties ( including the rose at the top of the post. (And yeah--both readings work.))

These are not my best roses.  These are the dead-easy roses that gave me confidence to try other roses. These are all Knock-Out Roses in blush pink, yellow, coral and red. They are as likely to be sold at box stores as at nurseries. They have been joined by a new series with "carpet" in the title, and I have high hopes for pretty 'Amber" below. All these need is 5 hours of sun a day, average water, a wack back in March, followed by another after first bloom. If you throw in mulch, compost and/or Rose-Tone, you will be amply rewarded

A slightly more difficult but lovey climbing rose came with the house, though she was growing in a part of the back yard that no longer gets much sun. I transplanted her to the side of the house and still do not know her name. She gets black spot every year as summer turns humid, but my lack of fussing and spraying has not lessened her ardor. She remains a doer.

So, after these,  was I ready to advance into higher rosedom?  Well, ready or not, I did. And Anglophile that I am, it was, of course, right into David Austin Roses.

One day, end-of-season, I saw a droopy, neglected rose on sale called Christopher Marlowe. Taking him home, I gave him as much amended Golden Rule love as I could, for which he thanked me eloquently with blooms like this--red at bursting, then pink with golden tangerine tinges, sorta Elizabethean psychadelic.  

And--after I saw that I hadn't managed to kill Kit ( he can suffer from non-lethal blackspot thou,) I added Grace, and at full price too. She is achingly comely.

She goes well with Kit, who, lets face it, always needed some kind of Grace. I'd like to add Will soon.

And those roses I mentioned earlier, the ones at dunes' edge that I'd loved as a kid? They were/are species Rugosa Roses, which are hardy and easy. They will grow almost anywhere--including this cultivar in my yard.

So--that's almost all my roses for now. 

Well-till at the Ned Wolf Plant sale I saw Theresa Buget, a Canadian rose without real thorns but with almost ferny foliage and spun sugar blooms (see left.) I'm trying her in the sunniest part of my backyard, since I'm running out of space in the sunny front yard. Which only means I need a bigger sunny front yard! 

I hope I have quieted any rose fears. Roses are really no more difficult than most plants, slightly heavier feeders maybe, but that is easy to provide. And one last basic but important rule: when you are pruning, always cut just above the node of a stem that has five leaves on it: never 3, always 5. Do that and all will be, not only hunky-dory, but also more sweet-smelling than you could have imagined.

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.