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.

Lungworts and Hyacinths, or Breathing Happiness

 Post 28

Green stalks prod their way up through soil seeking... what? If plants could feel, what would it feel like, pushing your way through earth for reasons you do not know?  To break through and feel something unexpected, such as light, course into your pores as photosynthesis, energy, begins. 

It probably would feel like what we felt, when as infants we pushed our way out to take in that first gulp of air, a substance for which we had no anticipating concept. AIR!, Strange, improbable, undreamt of air. Surprise! Of course we cried out, then quieted, finding a rhythm in this new thing breath. And rhythm we knew from our mothers' bodies.

We can't remember..., but we can imagine. Nature, thriftily-extravagent, uses similar processes at different levels in different ways, allowing for some imaginative analogy, empathy in context.  And gardens,-- where skill, comensurate with sensitivity, developes, --are great places for imagining. Enhancing sensitivity and imagination is one way gardening can change the gardener.

To breathe the air, to feel light, to enter a different state of being, how did we ever survive the shock? Well, cause not everything changed, there remained the lilt of known voices, touch, being held, tenderness, states we came to know as love and trust. From these, with these, we could grow to find pleasure in strange new things such as light and air. 

Here is the beginning of the pink Lenten Rose at the crest of the old buried staircase. Only one stalk is blooming, facing down towards a Lungwort which is about to bloom.

Lungworts are usually grown in some shade and therefore aren't usually this early. But I grow grey-leaved ones in sun. Older strains have greener leaves and need more shade. 

The reason the plant is called Lungwort is because its spotted leaves were once thought to resembled lungs. The flowers are the breath, the leaves are the lungs.

It's right there, isn't it?  It's a world I hardly knew existed before gardening. As a gardener, I've learned so many things -- sensitivity and skill, patience, respect, cooperation, and something else.  Something very like an everyday ecstasy. 

“Flowers and sunlight, air and silence—‘luxe, calme et volopte.’”  Patricia Simon

It comes to different people in different ways. For me, it's after I've been working in the garden for awhile. I'm physically tired but alert. So I lean forward or back to preen this frond or that and there it is, a stillness, a lively, peaceable calm. It is like the smell of a hyacinth as you walk down a busy street when, for a moment, everything else disappears, or rather, becomes more real.

And you are a child again. A hyacinth has been placed on your windowsill for Easter. You watch it grow. At first it is a stalk of dark, deeply purple, secretive shells, like a long row of muscle shells fastened onto seaweed on the beach at tide-turn. Then the purple lightens, the shells slowly open  and they aren't shells at all, but tender, pliable flowers. And the smell, the smell is like nothing at all, or everything. It is everywhere, it is nowhere, it is Air. And as you  breathe it in, it is a delivery, an earnest, on the strange promise of that very first unremembered breath.

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How to Lungwort (another great plant that easily grows around here): If you have shade or sun, like blue, purple, pink  or almost white flowers, this is a useful plant. Lungwort, or  Pulmonaria grows from rhizomes and needs moisture, especially if it gets a lot of light. Part of its appeal is that it blooms for almost two months, its escalating flowery bits growing ever longer. The best thing to do for it is to cut the flowers back hard before they are fully done blooming. So at about six weeks clip back as much of it as you can: flowers, stems and any tatty leaves.  If you do this new leaf growth with proceed nicely and you will end up with great foliage plants for the rest of the summer. If you do not cut it back when it needs it, I have found that it can  droop, get mildew or even die, especially in sun. It is as if making new leaves while keeping up the old stuff is almost too much for it  If you want more plants, and you have a variety that makes viable seed, just shake a handful of spent stems over a moist bit of shaded earth. Next spring you will have babies to transplant as you wish.


Most writers tell you not to grow Lungworts in clay, but I have found they do fine in my only slightly amended clay soil. So just make sure they are in somewhat well-drained soil, not pure clay where the rhizomes can rot. Many of mine are on the slope of a hill, which must help.

Hyacinth a few days later

How to Hyacinth: Hyacinthus Orientalis is a bulb that has been bred from the wild Hyacinth, a native of Turkey. As with most bulbs, plant it to a depth just a little deeper than its own size in the fall. It will bloom for a short time the next spring, and if you are lucky, again the year after.  For all that bother though, the powerful sweet scent is well worth the effort. The blue/purple flower, versus the other colors, is perhaps the most treasured of all; it stands for sincerity.

Full bloom

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The Zinnias of Inspiration

Post 3



What sights make you smile?

For me it's zipping past a field of blooming zinnias at our local Maple Acres Farm. Why? It takes me back to 1960s Long Island. I'm 5 years old, in the back seat of a Mark IX Jaguar,

http://unmitigatedengland.blogspot.com/

curling sandy toes in the impossibly thick, red carpet while wondering what's taking my mom so long at the farm stand.  Salt breeze is blowing in through the windows and I can hear tractor hum far away. Time is taking forever. Then mom is back, thrusting forward a bright bundle of flowers. In one moment: happiness. Proust had madeleines; I have zinnias.

And something of that juxtaposition, that crossing of  fancy, dancy car with simple flowers has stuck with me as a sort of emblem. For I retain a taste for curvy elegence balanced by homespun beauty. It is a taste that informs my garden as much as my memory.

Here is an example of that taste, a small classical pillar topped by ... a bowling ball, surronded by sambucus, phlox, monarda, valerian and firetail. The pillar itself is part of the structure of the garden, one overgrown and partialy hidden by romantic planting. It is topped by the abstract, geometric figure of a sphere, ... sphere as trash-picked bowling ball...

And here is my favorite zinnia for this summer. It combines a touch of green in its dusky rose petals. It is the most elegent zinnia I have seen yet. It makes me smile.

So, what makes you smile?  What sights take you back to a seminal memory that is a sort of emblem of your particular taste, your sense of style in this world?  Because if you really want to make a garden, you need to connect with that deep sensibility at the heart of you. That is your seed from which all the rest can flower.

Now--forgive me, dear reader, as my love of puns makes me abit ADD silly.  A while ago Bill Moyers gave a "gird up your loins" eulogy for populist historian Howard Zinn. So,-- for any of my liberal friends who may need heartening, here is another kind of Zinnia of Inspiration


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How-to

Zinnias are easy to grow. They like sun and can be started either inside or out once the air has warmed up. Lightly cover the seeds with a bit more than a fingernail's depth of dirt, and keep moist. Here is a good link with all the official info. Zinnia 'Queen Red Lime' is the strain, started from seed, pictured above as my present favorite. Any of the Benary's Giant mixes are also good. When growing them downy mildew can be a problem in our hot, humid summers. Since they are annuals, at a certain point you can just strip the offending leaves off.