A Phlox of Confessions

Post 45

Phlox of Confessions

Now is the time for tall garden phlox,(Phlox paniculata.)  Just as summer  turns up the heat and regular life droops, up springs these wide clouds of white, pink and lavender, to drift through the garden and lull us into the dog days.

Full summer, like long winter, slows down time. Confession -- slows down to such an extent that I can't seem to wax lyrical in my wonted way. See-- its not quite turning out right, is it? Even though phlox is a plant I really like and which grows great around here.

Confession--this might be partially because my camera woes continue. Thou my lost camera was returned, all the packing and unpacking resulted in a broken battery recharger. And since my camera is not spanking new, both proper battery and recharger are hard to find and cost enough to make me think twice. Twice, and then forward dreamily to a spanking new camera for Christmas. So for now I'm using a cheaper drugstore camera that does not have as good picture quality. --But, ... I draw inspiration from pics that are able to suggest the garden's reality. Bright, clear pics like this one.

Better pic than the two recent ones at the top of this post, right?

And Confession-- I just realized another reason why I might be blocked--camera,.shamera -- I'm evading an issue.

 I Do Not Really Garden Between the 4th of July and Labor Day.

My garden has its own seasons. Bare Bones, Emergence, Flourishing, Rampant, Rank, Late Beauty, Scenic Decay, and Wow, Is That Still Blooming?

We are now at Rampant heading into Rank. And it's a jungle out there, a beautiful, hot, teeming, beneficent jungle. O.K., on maybe one or two almost cool mornings I will grab a machete and hack out some of the seething undergrowth. But on a whole I figure that the garden is best experienced from somewhere comfortable, somewhere with air-conditioning and cool drinks. Like inside.

Hate Philly summers and hate being out in them. So here is my garden blog, based on my love of gardening, that admits to not gardening all summer. And penultimate Confession--I doubt I am the only one of whom this is true. (Final Confession--I am not sure I used 'whom' correctly in the last sentence, but 'who' sounds wrong. The "only one" is linked to "I" and therefore the subject, but the "I doubt" undoes the link? Or what?)

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How to Phlox--  First tip, not with white string. The secret of beautiful Phlox is to find cultivars that are mildew resistant.

"David,"which is white, and Katherine, which is lavender, work well for me. I also have a tall hot pink one that is nameless. Long ago and far away, in Stowe Vermont, there was an alright but not great restaurant called Whiskers, now defunct. Set in the valley before Mt. Mansfield, it had a large outdoor deck that bordered on a wonderful, rampaging, wild garden(which, sadly, is now abandoned, neglected and slowly going to weed.) I was allowed a small bit of phlox, which I brought back to Philly, not sure it could take our humid furnace of a summer. Well, it can and it does, bountifully. The woman who created the garden said it was a native, and that is all I know.

So, if you have a mildew-resistant strain, plant it in full sun or almost full sun in regular garden soil. It likes some water, but aside from that is easygoing. If you are lucky it will spread, but not too quickly.

 

Roses in February

Post 25

It may be warm,  but it is bleak and the garden, well... see what I mean.

I need a rose.

Yes, that helps. It is not easy to write a gardening blog in these months, especially if you want to avoid the usual winter cliches. Looking at the local architecture that holds up our gardens, cradles and rocks them, is a partial solution, but not an entirely gratifying one. The light is hard, the buildings unsoftened. I need more roses.

Yes, better.  One of the drawbacks of bleakness, which feels like nature's boredom, can be a lack of solid inspiration. And without real inspiration I may start to extravagate (no, not a word but should be (OED--pay attention! (Like Auden, one of my dream aspirations is to coin a new word and get it credited there; unlike Auden, it's a dream aspiration.))) To clarify, to extravagate means to unthinkingly exaggerate to a point almost past truth (though a kernel remains.) It lacks malice but remains an easy temptation for those of us who are of imagination a bit too compact. Itself an example of extravagation, it is a word that I made up in High School without realizing I'd made it up. I extravagantly extravagated exaggeration into extravagate. 

In short, in my last post I extravagated. I dissed mansions and castles. I do not really dislike them, just the more money than taste ones. 

And now, keeping on theme,(yes, there is a theme,) I am going to slip back towards an earlier post, "Roses in January," and fill in some information I did not include in the earlier post on The Red Rose Girls.

Below is a picture of Cogslea that shows more of the house and less of the caryatids.

And here's one of Cogshill from the back

The pergola at Cogshill.

And here is a relevant illustration from Elizabeth Shippen Green's scrapbooks at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Last of all. I want to credit the source of most of my information on The Red Rose girls. It is the book,  The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love by Alice A. Carter, ISBN 978-0810944374.

And I also want to add a caveat, that this is an informal blog. Like informal correspondence and other forms of informal writing, such a blog is not meant to be read as a solid reference source. I try to be accurate but I do not fact check everything. For instance, I made a mistake about Edith Emerson in my earlier RRG post. I have gone back and corrected it as I value accuracy.  At times however, I can find even myself a bit too transported by the act of writing, and end up extravagating reality's rose into a slightly stranger flower. So please, take this with a grain, though not a bucket, of salt. I know I do.

Advent and the Calla Lily's Call

Post 17

Bare Tree, Bright Tree

Hello and welcome to Advent, the last part of the darkening year, the first part of the yet-to-be-born year.  Traditionally it's a time for quiet and meditation --after the garden's bounty, after the harvest and feast, before the light.

"God beyond answers
Lord beyond words
Spirit beyond imagining
Move us today. Amen"

This prayer, from the Church of Scotland's website, greatly moved me when I read it.  Unbidden, there arose in my mind's eye a globe, alight and vibrant with uncountable,  invisible connections.  And accompanying it, a bit like an inaudible trumpet's call, was the urge to write this...

"What if you could thank everyone who has ever prayed for you or blessed you or wished you well?

Who would you meet?

The stranger who once saw your stricken face through a car window?


The cashier you were impatient with?


The patron you were able to cheer?

Your spouse, in mid-argument? Your spouse, in mid-pleasure?

A teacher you can hardly remember?

Someone who read something you wrote, or heard secondhand something you said?
 

The atheist who wished you well?

The person whose dog played with your dog in the dog park?

The child or sibling or relative who never understood you, or whom you never understood? The child or sibling or relative you think doesn’t understand, but understands you too well?

The friend who sympathizes?  The friend who has outgrown you?  The friend you have outgrown?

The enemy who wishes you were not so easy to despise?  The enemy who wishes you were not so hard to despise?  The enemy who is no enemy at all?

The parent who wishes life could teach you more gently?  The parent who wishes life could teach you at all? The parent who wishes love had more power in this world? The child who wishes they could save their parents?

What if everyone you had prayed for, or blessed, or wished well, could thank you?

What if we found out we had all prayed for each other or wished each other well? Wished each other better?

What if we all forgave each other?

What if we were all grateful?

Would, even could I?  Would, even could you, any of us?

Or is that what something like heaven is for? I do not know, but I wonder."

If you think it's a bit treacly, well yeah, it might be. But why are we so overly afraid of treacly in our culture?  Cool is like a gangster boss inside our souls demanding cash for not much of value.  I chose not to give in to that.  So while I'm not much for mortifying my flesh; I am for mortifying my cool.


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How-to Calla:  The white and maroon trumpeting flowers you see above are scientifically no longer either Calla or Lily, but thankfully, such a melodious name for such a fetching plant remains. Their flowers remind me of the elongated instruments played by etoilated angels that brighten Medieval manuscripts.


Zantedeschia aethiopica, originates, as you can guess, in Africa. As such, our climate is a bit too cold and wet for them to overwinter. You can dig out their rhizones in the fall and overwinter them as you would a Dahlia. This means dig up the gnarly rootstock after cold has damaged the leaves, dry the rootstock out, then pack up in moistened perlite. In spring plant back up with plenty of water. Callas like some shade and water, while good drainage and rich soil is a plus. But all, in all, they are easy. 


They can be expensive though, which is why I only grew them one year.  (Should have overwintered them.  Should have overwintered them.)  I found the two varieties pictured above at Produce Junction, for a price too low to resist. (Produce Junction is a thrifty grab-bag of whatever they can pick up, fruits, veggies, plants, garden supplies--you never know week to week.) There is something fun about not knowing what pleasantly surprising plant you might find. And these Callas took my breath away.
 

 

Fire and Snow, or Impossible Beauty

Pastorius Park

Post 13

Mid-storm in the garden

Post 13 was going to be about bringing in the pots. But it seems the unexpected can happen with # 13.  So,  cold, wet winter snow overtook dry, crisp, and still-blooming autumn. Snow and fire. We never get snow before late November, early December, never that is, till now. So, any pots should have been in long before their usual date. Who knew?

First came the storm, darkening the day with clouds, brightening it with snow, but snow illuminated by bursts of color.

Morning on the road

Then the aftermath, a bright, cool sunny day with the ground and sky both blue and white, and the mid-horizon blazing with turning leaves. 

Pastorius Park

It would have been easy to have gotten upset, pouting over early cold. But it is hard to pout when surrounded by beauty.

Pastorius Park, -- Run Lassie Run

And oh, what beauty.

What unusual, surprising, impossible beauty

Pastorius Park

We were lucky to get just enough snow for beauty, not enough for damage. It was a good balance of opposites, for which I am thankful.

Hostas and the Funkia of Scenic Decay

Post 10


It is easy, but unproductive, to imagine the garden as an idyllic Eden beyond time's throes.  There is no garden without time. Gardens are made of time

How I wish I had taken pictures a few winters ago when a heavy frost hit the uncut-back garden. A pale hosta, which had remained in leaf, wilted overnight, its fronds decayed into ghost leaves. The limp leaves, which fell away from their roots to splay out in a circle, had gone greyish white.  Unhappy at the time, I'd gathered them up and hung them from the bishop's hooks behind the Buddha. For a day or two they dangled there, tokens of decay, translucent, beautiful and properly sad.

In my carpool this week, I told a colleague how I like to let some plants visibly decay, while removing others--it all depending on how attractive the decay is. Since she is a new gardener, she asked me when to cut back her plants, most especially her hosta. It made me remember the ghost leaves, and note how a popular 19th century plant like hosta, once called funkia, remains perpetually in style. Every year there are new varieties while the old ones remain ubiquitous. Everyone, it seems, has some funk.
  


What other factors, I wondered, can make for good garden funk, a bit of scenic decay?

A surge of fresh roses blooming beneath a turning tree.

A scattering of fallen rose petals on a stone staircase.

                                 

"You love the roses - so do I.  I wish the sky would rain down roses, as they rain from off the shaken bush.  Why will it not? Then all the valley would be pink and white And soft to tread on.  They would fall as light as feathers, smelling sweet; and it would belike sleeping and like waking, all at once!"  -  George Eliot, Roses 

The froth of spent flowerheads nuzzled by a strand of Kiss-Me-Over-The-Garden-Gate

Fading flower of Oak Hydrangea against turning leaves and an Autumn Joy sedum blooming in a cute thrift-store vase .



Or how about the sight of zinnias with new blooms, mature blooms, and old blooms all in one gaze?





Pastorius Park

 In our culture such a huge amount of resources: time, money and effort, is spent erasing time. And to what end? To deny that in the long run there is only one end for mortal creatures?  One cosmetic company is now developing a pill to keep your hair from turning grey. Only drawback--you have to take it for at least 10 years before your hair starts turning, and then, for how many years after? What's next, some soil additive to keep tree leaves from turning color and falling in autumn? To erase time erases life, erases change, erases us.
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Pastorius Park

My perennial question behind this blog -- how does gardening change the gardener? --has perhaps one answer. Gardening embeds us in time. Most of our common culture does the opposite--it disembodies us into spectators while erasing time. By gardening we partner and co-operate with time.


Hence we learn through our bodies' labors that sometimes it is better and more graceful to accede to time's reality. To trust to something beyond our self-gratifying egos.  And so to let the leaves, all the leaves, fall where they may.

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How-to Hosta:  Hostas are originally native to China.  From there they were brought to Japan and Korea, and then, from there, in the mid-19th-century, to the Western world. Older versions make great groundcovers for shade and semi-shade. They come in all sizes, from smaller than an unabridged dictionary to bigger than a multi-cushioned sofa, but most end up at about 3 X 3. They also come in all shades and varigations of green, white, chartreuse and a waxy blue-green.  Some of the newer varities can take sun: most others will get leaf burn. They love our local clayey soil, sending down deep roots to deal with dryish shade. To make more plants just divide in spring or fall; small plants will fill in quickly. Be sure to keep watered for a few weeks after transplanting. Hosta are tough, adapatable, low care plants. So --  Enjoy your funk ( just, as they say, don' impose it on others.)