September 2005

If you respond to animals in a completely sappy, anthropomorphic way - like I do - it’s hard to see them in captivity.  Thankfully, these days zoos provide kinder habitats for the animals, and it’s not so heartbreaking to see them.  My sister and I had a terrific visit to the National Zoo yesterday and were at least as delighted as the kids.

The zoo’s undisputed megastar right now wasn’t available for viewing, but he’s right here on the Web and we can watch him 24/7.  Of course I’m talking about our 11-week-old panda boy, not yet named but well known to the entire metro populace.  Check him out on the fabulous Pandacam, but you’re warned: If he and his mom and awake and doing anything, you won’t be able to stop watching.

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Merry Olde England has always had a lot to teach us about gardening, and their newest, hottest instructor is a cute young thing named Matt James.  At 10 a.m. Sundays, Matt takes the scruffiest-looking trash heaps of back yards he can find in ugly English cities and turns them into works of art.  And not the same colorful, naturalistic border gardens we see in our gardening magazines but high concept works of modern design.  More than any other garden make-over show, this one creates the sense that a miracle is taking place - and in a mere half hour, no less.  Like the Chelsea Garden Show that showcases much more innovative gardens than anything in this country, HGTV’s newest import inspires, big-time.

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I’ve decided to start my rants with a pretty picture to soften up my readers, and this one is fresh off the old digital.  It’s a lovely blue plumbago, the airy foliage of amsonia (lower left), cross vine foliage, and some mostly spent butterfly bush flowers.
   
Now for the rant, which is about some folks I know who say, when asked if they’ve checked out this blog, "Oh, I never read blogs."  So I ask you, blog-readers all, why do some people feel such aversion?  I liken it to people who dismiss all of television - including public TV, HBO and the Daily Show, for crissakes.  I say yeah, most people would be bored by most blogs, but if something important is happening on them (the major political ones) or someone you know is expressing herself through one, isn’t it worth a look?  And as blogs become a more entrenched part of our culture, do you think some of these stalwarts will come around?

So now to praise the (sometimes) mighty blog.  After a bit of writing for print and for static websites, I’m totally enamored of this medium.  I love the cumulative nature of it, especially when you can file posts away in categories for future reference.  I love the comments and the community that they foster.  It’s also a great place to display photos.  And the experience of posting daily, or trying to, means that the photography, the writing and the posting  all become parts of your everyday life, so you’re stretching those little muscles daily.  Not to mention just thinking of something to say.  And say you?

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These asters started their life in my garden as the 8-inch cultivar "Purple Mound," but their offspring were all 3 feet tall.  Then the next generation took a new tack and appeared in the usual purple and a new color, this lovely pink.  If this is their way of telling me I’m not in charge, I get it.  In fact, I can always count on my garden to make me feel insignificant.

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Just one more thing about lespedezas. There’s one in this photo just starting to emerge in front of the azalea, still short enough not to block my view of the azalea when it’s blooming.  Now I bet you all know what happens to the azalea next - it holds onto its ugly dead flowers for a good 6 weeks before finally dropping then, after which it just looks boring the rest of the year.  But here’s a solution.  The lower photo shows the same spot in September with the lespesdeza now tall and blooming in front of it. I love this plant combo.

Now I don’t know about where you live but here in the Azalea Belt, my occasional dissing of azaleas doesn’t win me any friends.  My town’s nickname is "Azalea City" - oh, dear.  Many residents have nothing but azaleas, even in full sun.  So I’m constantly pushing alternative shrubs (or companions to azaleas) like pieris, nandina and leucothoe - my favorite shrubs for the shade.  For sunny spots I suggest a combination of evergreens and such flowering beauties as spirea, weigela, and small viburnums.  Come on, people, let’s at least diversify.

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I’m happy to report that anti-war demonstrations are as much fun today as they were in the ’60s and ’70s, and great theater.  There were lots of people in costume, like the Bush and Cheney faces here and the popular Billionaires for Bush troup.  And there were a few famous faces, like Jesse Jackson here with the "Justice for People of the Gulf Coast" sign and a rush of photographers around him.

And finally here’s a shot of me chatting with one of my heroes, the ever-handsome John Conyers (D-MI).  If you saw "Fahrenheit 9/11," he was the interviewee who revealed that Congress had voted for the "Patriot Act" without reading it.  Formerly chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and now its ranking Dem, Conyers has been more vocal than anyone in Washington about abuses in the last two elections. 

One photo I’ve spared you all is of the bare-breasted women and I was probably the only person nearby who didn’t photograph them.  Bare-breasted women have been a staple at women’s and gay rights marches for a long time and for the life of me I just don’t get it.  I’ve been told they do it because:  A, why not, and B, it demystifies women’s breasts.  Well yeah, seeing regular unPlayboyesque breasts sure does that, especially the triple-D-cup examples on display today.  But I still doubt that it accomplishes anything except giving guys something to tell their friends about, or these days maybe blog about.

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Well, I promised a shot of my sedum collection blooming and here it is.  As much as I love the way they look, the best part is how seldom I have to water these guys, even in the extended drought we’re experiencing right now.  I give the taller ones a haircut by about half in June to prevent flopping and it seems to work, in addition to making them a bit bushier.

Next is a shot of mainly low, creeping-type sedums in homemade hypertufa planters. Hypertufa is a combination of Portland cement, perlite and peatmoss, which makes it resemble stone but weigh and cost considerably less. Hypertufa planters are sometimes called "troughs" because the formula can be used to replicate the old stone water troughs so valued today in England as planters.  Planters are formed either inside a mold of some kind - in this photos a bucket and an ice chest were used - or on top of an upside-down form, like the wok top used to make the planter on the far left. 

These guys were made at several Hort Club workshops and they’ve survived outdoors for two winters now.  They’re great for plants that need good drainage.

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Daylily-lovers should just click off to another site because their love object is about to get dumped on.  After years of devotion to these guys and the gradual winnowing down of 30 kinds to the best six, it’s still a dud in my garden.  Why is that, you ask? Because with blooms lasting only a day each, there are never enough blooms to really have an impact.  And just as importantly, because the foliage is ugly. The large ones looks like corn stalks and the small ones, though better, look like ratty liriope.  This photo shows a couple of blooms but basically the area between the red-twig dogwood and the spirea looks empty of anything but slovenly old foliage.

With this photo in mind, I was a tad surprised to read today in a book I won’t name that "The foliage of all daylilies is extremely graceful" and again "When massed, it looks particularly graceful."  Here’s my reaction:  Proof positive that we can’t believe everything we read about plants.  Fortunately, when we’ve grown them ourselves and observed them over time, we don’t need to. Seeing is believing.

But back to daylilies, there’s one more thing I’m going to try before I dump them all at next fall’s plant exchange.  This summer I visited Fenwick Island, Delaware while they were blooming and saw them used perfectly, to my eyes.  Most of the homeowners had used professional landscapers and from the looks of it, excellent ones.  What they did was to mass daylilies so tightly they looked like, or actually were, a few very large ones.  So they had punch, which is what mine had better have next year after they’re rearranged in bunches, or they’re out of here.

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I’ve been coaching gardening newbies for a year now and I’m learning lots of lessons about people.  Like the realization that nobody wants to weed.  They want to fix things so that somehow the weeds won’t appear.  Now as any long-time gardener knows, the answer is concrete, right?  Or maybe a deck covering the whole yard.  Black plastic covered with mulch?  All reasonable options for the weed-averse, but not exactly gardening.  With coachees I give what I consider very doable estimates of weeding time required, like a half-hour a week during the fast-growing months, and I see the grim faces of despair.  I honestly don’t know what the answer is for people who A, want a yard that looks nice, B, don’t want to spend any time caring for it and C, can’t afford to pay someone else to do it.  I still say hardscape the whole thing.

If only I could turn people on to the practice of weeding, excite them with the notion of weeding as a meditative practice, as lovingly tending to a garden, as the beautification of their creation.  Sounds great to me but maybe I’m weird about weeding and I think I know why.  My mother used to beg me to let her weed my garden after she moved into a condo, just like I do weeding around B&Bs when I’m on vacation.  The very definition of addiction.   

So I have a new tack and I call it selective weeding or designing with weeds.  It’s about rejecting labels and looking at volunteer plants as freebies, not as weeds.  I love the weeds in this photo - the tapestry of smartweed, creeping sedum, clover, violets and something else I haven’t identified yet.  Sure, I’ll always eject the odd plaintain, crabgrass or dandelion because they’re butt ugly.  But allowing these guys to stay in my garden just makes sense - more biodiversity, less maintenance, and a move toward that worthy goal - sustainable landscaping.

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