A November Project

Here’s that Christmas cactus, in full bloom in the kitchen window.   It seems a little unlikely, since it bloomed in March last year, but it could be the poor thing’s a bit confused, schedule-wise, as it was possibly forced to be in bloom for last year’s holiday season.  Anyway, maybe after this bloom it will settle down into an annual cycle, but if it continues to bloom more than once a year, I can’t say I see any problem with that.

As is often the case hereabouts, we have been gradually working our way into the winter season, in a way that seems almost like a saw working its way into a tree trunk.   We’ve had cycles of cool – cold even – rainy weeks (although still no hard frost yet), with glimpses of sunshine and nicer temperatures in between to tease us…or perhaps to gentle us into the cold and dim reality of the winter months ahead.

Whatever.  The upshot is that we’ve had some nice bits of weather here lately, to temper the more traditionally seasonal aspects.  There’s been sunshine for walks with visiting friends and I’m happy to say that Mister Purr and I have been averaging a short catwalk almost once a week or so, which has been fun.   These past two days – with temps in the  high 60s and then today, low 70s – have been delightful and perfect for the gardening plan I had in mind, but not until I’d manage to schedule in some nice long prowls around the property for my otherwise housebound pal.

The project I had in mind was about irises.  Particularly these stunningly beautiful antique irises that appear magically out of the overgrown bed against the front foundation of our house.   I have it on good authority that these irises have probably not been divided in twenty or thirty years.

While I’m always happy to have a new poster child for Benign Garden Neglect, it’s still a good idea to dig up irises a little more frequently than this to keep them from getting crowded and unhealthy.  Not to mention being able to spread them around a little more and propagate such a fantastic variety.

I’ve been thinking about this project for a while.   Irises can be safely divided after they’ve bloomed each year.  However, since they usually finish blooming about the time the summer’s heat starts to show up for real, it’s often less stressful to wait on dividing iris tubers until the cooler days of August.   And I’ve been thinking about these guys since about that time, but for a variety of reasons, hadn’t gotten around to  properly motivating myself  and finding the proper amount of free time to take on the project.

So yesterday, with golden sunshine everywhere, some coffee under my belt and the Gray Catsby satisfied with a nice long walkabout, I gathered up my garden tools, put on some old clothes and started digging.   This long bed held primarily two kinds of plants:  these irises, and the traditional orange daylilies you see pretty much everywhere around here come summertime.

Being more shallow-rooted, I tackled the iris end of the bed first, using my long-handled garden rake to tease the clumps of irises out of the ground.   It wasn’t such tough work, particularly, though pretty interesting.   In many places, the tubers were piled on top of each other under ground, with two and three layers of them.

The bottom layer was dead more often than not and apparently fueling the upper levels of the tubers as they decayed.  Kind of a creepy, cannibalistic vibe going on there, but I can’t fault such a beautiful plant for any means it might stoop to to ensure its survival.  But even with some of the tubers hollow and dead, there was a great abundance – two pickle buckets full by the time they were all up and I piled them off to the side.

I wanted to give them some attention before replanting, and anyway, I still had the daylilies to face and this time of year, the shorter days always give a gardener a sense of working against the clock.  I knew the daylilies might be a little more complicated, with their deeper, more aggressive, root systems.  In this part of the bed, there were also lots of little wild onion bulbs and a few plants of deadly nightshade which I was hoping to eradicate, or at least minimize, in this particular bed, so that meant working a little more carefully, too.   (It’ll also mean remaining vigilante for new seedlings of both come next spring, of course.  No job’s ever that simple.)

In working with the daylilies, I was quickly reminded of Mickey and the Broomsticks in Fantasia, as they seemed to keep multiplying with every inch the sun slid further into the western sky.

I’ll admit I was getting a little tired, as it had already been a long and tiring weekend, but I was enjoying the digging, which was not as slow-going as it sometimes can  be.  Plus, I was enjoying the lovely afternoon outside and starting to  really imagine what this bed could look like next year.

I was glad that the work had been fairly easy so far, since one of the later things I needed to do was to dig out the hydrangea you see below for relocation.   When it was much smaller, it was planted pretty close to the front door and also to the foundation.  Now that its grown larger, it needed a little more room to grow, without it feeling like it was crowding our front entrance.

It was just a matter of about two feet worth of move, but this was still the most strenuous part of the day for me.   It went well, but left me breathless and I did wisely take a little time to rest after the bush was shifted before jumping back into the fray.

You can see in this pic the hydrangea’s new location, as well as the replanting of the daylilies.  I decided to replant many of the divisions on long diagonal lines throughout the bed, so that when you look at them from a distance, they’ll appear to fill the whole bed when in bloom.   The irises, to be planted in corresponding stripes, should have the same effect when they bloom a few weeks earlier.  For a little additional interest in other parts of the season, I also added in some honesty (money plant) seedlings and a few divisions of shasta daisy.   To season the bed, I also sprinkled around a variety of coneflower and coreopsis seeds.   We’ll see what comes of all that.

It turned out it was very smart of me to take those moments to catch my breath after the bush move, since I enjoyed a whole fresh set of heart palpitations and breathlessness when I turned around and spotted THIS damn thing on the ground by my feet.  No doubt the shriek I couldn’t hold back echoed up and down the neighborhood.   I knew it was plastic right off, but it still took me about fifteen minutes more to recover from that enough to even snap a photo of it.

The Downstairses assured me – when they returned from their walk -  that this was not part of some plan to kill the Gardener and re-rent the Nest to someone with more dough (although I thought I saw a glimmer of “Hmmm, interesting idea, though.” in Mister D’s twinkling eyes) but was, in fact, a sort of time-release prank.

The spider, it turns out, had been planted long ago to gaslight the previous tenants, but the gag had sort of fizzled and been forgotten.   Apparently it lurked in the garden for years and was shook free from the hydrangea when I moved it.  Instead of bothering the girls who no longer live here, it gave me a case of shivering fits instead.   Weeee!

When I’d fully recovered from all that and finished working on the garden layout, I found that I still had enough daylilies for another impressive stand somewhere else and quickly decided on a bit of earth not far from our roadside mailbox.  Not only is this a somewhat barren part of the yard in need of some flowering, but also, it’s right under a streetlamp, which meant I could actually continue digging for a little longer, rather than throw in the towel for the night and leave the daylilies unplanted ’til morning.

Morning found me enjoying coffee and crystal-borne rainbows in the living room upstairs, where I sorted through all the iris divisions, cutting off the dead hunks of tuber still attached to the younger, healthier ones.  Additionally, I cut off any long foliage remaining from the summer (always cutting at a sharp angle, so water can’t gather on the raw cut edge after replanting) and then trimmed back the long thready root hairs for easier replanting.

By the time I was finished with that – it didn’t take more than an hour – I had two such baskets like the one pictured above…and off I went to get them replanted into those stripe formations I mentioned.

Most of them fit into the allotted space…and another new space.   But there’s about a dozen small tubers  which I still need to sink into another (as yet undetermined) part of the yard.  Plus, I saved aside a few to share with a couple of friends.

To expand a little further on the varying seasonal interest for the bed, I finished things up this afternoon by digging in some spring bulbs.  I found a fun color blend of grape hyacinths which I think will be very pretty by the front door, which I planted with some daffodils.   A few more daffodils were planted around the foot of the Fritillaria Imperialis, and then I added a couple small drifts of these pretty purple snow crocuses.

Now all that remains is to sit back as rains and cold Canadian air move down over our region…and dream about what the bed will look like when spring comes back again.

Fall Colors 2

Fall Colors

Having Great Time; Witch You Were Here

Happy Halloween!!!

In Autumn’s Garden

So, the recent frost hasn’t ended things just yet.  In fact, some things have only just decided to give blooming a try.  Case in point, the seashell cosmos.  Ain’t it purty?

Some of you may recall I tried growing these in the garden in Harwich last year, with no success.   But I’m so enamored of the look of them on seed packets that I tried again this year, and now I understand why none of them bloomed for me last year, if they are only just beginning the show now with the threat of a killing frost around any corner.

Still, you must admit they make a fabulous and frothy flower, at that.  I’ll certainly grow these again, but I think next year I’ll start them inside ahead of season, so I can enjoy their flowers a little longer.  And knowing that cosmos thrive in poor soil, I try to remember to segregate them from other annuals whom I usually give some fertilizer sprinklings throughout the season.

It’s certainly been an odd growing season.   The shasta daisies I featured yesterday are usually done blooming by mid-July, but this year are blooming their sweet heads off now, in October.  And the bachelors buttons – who were such chatterboxes with so much to say to the Gardener last year – are keeping their own counsel this year and have barely bloomed at all.  I think this one is the fourth.

But what a treat to find so much still merrily blooming after such a frosty start to the week.

Unimaginable Future

“The visitor to the garden sees the successes, usually.

The gardener remembers mistakes and losses,

some for a long time,

and imagines the garden in a year,

and in an unimaginable future.”

“There are young trees in the ground.

The days are much too short, they go by too fast,

and we wish for rain

and the sound of water among the rocks.”

M.S. Merwin, “A Shape of Water”

Frost and Fire

Autumn Garden Report: The Big Chill

We still haven’t had a frost yet.

But it has been darn cold lately, so I haven’t been standing around a lot outdoors, admiring the newly unfurled flowers of the imperial chrysanthemum.  It’s putting on a pretty amazing show this fall, whether I’m looking or not.  I will have to get you a long shot of it, as it’s making a great drift of these pale orange beauties.

This is the first year I’ve been especially diligent about pinching this plant back in the spring months about once a week until the Fourth of July and the results are remarkable.   But I think the profusion of flowers here owes something to those sad rainsoaked days of June, since I was pinching steadily as the plant was growing so quickly in response to the weather.  [I do think the plant's a little floppy, though, so perhaps next year I'll pinch back into mid-July or so and see if I can keep it a little lower and sturdier.]

The button zinnias on the porch are putting on more and more flowers as the season winds down.   It seems like it ought to be the other way around, but I think the cold weather (which is coming just a might early this year, it seems…)is actually cueing the plant’s reproduction cycle with the threat of a killing frost.   Annuals are such drama queens, eh?

No matter why, they are pretty little flowers.

And speaking of pretty, on a walk about a week or so ago, I finally met the tender of one of the gardens I’d been admiring on my summer walks, and she spoke to me of a chrysanthemum that grew with abandon, that sounds a bit like my imperial, only in a different color.   Here’s her pale pink version.   Perhaps I’ll talk with her next spring about maybe trading a couple of roots.

When last we spoke of it, Badum’s and my nightly catwalks were dwindling some in frequency, owing to earlier darkness and varying work schedule.  However, to combat that, for a while, we were taking longer walks, if fewer.

My buddy seems to share my fondness for hydrangeas, although I suspect he doesn’t sniff them for the blossoms so much as the scent of other creatures who may’ve brushed up against the bush.   Still, cute pic, no?

He definitely likes to know what’s going on and left to his own devices, would no doubt be one of those cats who makes daily rounds of a neighborhood, checking up on various residents.   I’m glad it’s the off-season and no one’s around, especially when he drags me up on someone’s porch for a look inside.

I have now learned that there is a very definite season for cat-walking.   Last Tuesday, with a temperature of 48 degrees, we headed outdoors for our walk.   My Purry Pal led me out the door and across the lawn to the corner of the barn, one of our standard opening trajectories.   We sniffed some grass and looked around a bit, then turned and headed back for the front door and ran upstairs to the Nest.  It was the first time he ever called a walk to an end and since it’s not warmed up very much since then (except when it was raining), hasn’t made a sound about going out again.  We’ll go whenever our next warm day comes.

Here you can see the look of disgust as he realized how chilly it was.

As October rolls steadily along towards its Halloween conclusion, decorations are beginning to pop up here and there, including at this cool house in Wellfleet, where every year they turn the yard into a monster mash of zombies and ghosts and ghouls and such.

The display was only just being carted out of storage and arranged around the yard the day Heather and I stopped for a few pictures.  I was amused to note Michael Jackson as a thrilling new addition this year (as well as the glue gun in the foreground) and made sure to sign the ghost book, which is kept under a glass dome on the table in  the yard.

And it reminds me that I wanted to tell you about a new videogame I discovered recently, called Plants Vs. Zombies.  The trial is a free download from PopCap and riotously entertaining.

The playing field is your front lawn.   With a zombie hoard shambling across the street toward your yard, you have to choose just the right plants for their defense capabilities:  pea shooters, potato “spud” bombs, cherry bombs, wall-nuts, and sunflowers all help protect you and your home from the invaders, who mean you no harm.   They only want to eat your brains.

Anyway, PopCap’s not paying me a red cent for saying so, but the free trial alone has brought me the gift of great laughter and hours of breathless entertainment.  I have just three words for you:  Zombie Bobsled Team.   Go on, you know you wanna check it out.  Plants Vs. Zombies.

With the weather so precipitously giving us The Finger, I’ve been turning my attention to the plants inside, who are sometimes neglected during the summer season, when so many others call for my attention outdoors.   This year, I’m happy to say I’ve got a pretty good crop of houseplants getting their groove on.

Here’s the hibiscus, repotted and moved indoors from its summer porch perch.

I recently gave all my indoor garden a bit of attention with dusting and misting and repotting and pruning and such the order of the day.  In the process, I discovered that the March-mas Cactus (a Christmas cactus which had bloomed in late March) was sporting a whole plant full of flower buds.

This plant spent the summer in a northern exposure window and as such was the first to feel the waning seasonal light, which is the cue to flower.  I’ve moved that plant in to the kitchen window, where the late day sunshine will encourage the buds to their best…and put the yellow flowering Christmas cactus out in that northern window in it’s place.

My plan’s working, too, as that plant has now begun to produce flower buds.  I’m an evil plant genius, eh?

Both of the marine heliotropes from the summer porch have been brought indoors for the winter.   Look how the flowers lose their purple color out of the direct light of the sun.   They’ll flower less frequently in the winter, but will still try every now and then.  The tiny blossoms lack the color punch of summer, but the sweet fragrance remains.  I’ve pruned both of these back now, to try to encourage a more compact, shrubbery growth for next year.   We’ll see how they respond.

Here’s something that looks like an accident, but is actually another evil plant genius plan in progress.   Behold, last Christmas’ amaryllis bulb.   It flowered memorably last winter and has since simply supported a beautiful array of green strappy leaves.

And then I remembered the secret my dear friend Alta Johnson taught me.    When the amaryllis has finished flowering and you’d like it to think about doing it again, you stop watering it and tip the plant over carefully on its side.  Eventually, the leaves die back, as the bulb absorbs the energy the leaves have been storing back into its bulb.  Once the leaves have dried out, you can remove them and stand the bulb right side up.

My bulb has only two leaves left on it now.  Once those have gone, I’ll give the bulb a little rest in a cool dark place and then bring it out into the light and start watering it again.  I figure six weeks from first watering is when there might be a blossom, and so I’ll try to time that out to happen around mid-December, when I’ll welcome the festivity.  Of course you’ll see how that works out.

Meanwhile, with no frost to stop it, the purple allyssum just keeps blooming and blooming.

Provincetown Holiday

This particular week has turned into a cold and blustery mess here on the Cape.   I’m grateful that we seemed to be one of the few places in New England where snow was not spotted yesterday, although I did look out the window a bunch of times last evening to make sure.

But the nice thing about the blog is I can make it look like a sunny day, by ignoring today.  So please, join me in denial as I share with you some pics of how the week got started.

Monday was Columbus Day, so while the first day of the week is often a day off for me, this meant it was also a day off for my pal, Heather, who came across one of the bridges for a visit from the mainland to what she likes to call the “Florida of Massachusetts”.

Monday was not the warmest day we’ve had; long pants and several layers of clothes were the order of the day, but it was a comfortable day for strolling along Commercial Street and we certainly found some lovely patches of sun to bask in throughout the day.

We started off with lunch at the Portuguese Bakery and then ambled into the East End, stopping here and there to admire the town’s delightful gardens, enjoying their season-end shows of spectacular blue morning glories and stunning dahlias in all shapes, sizes and colors.

Heather and I got together for a day back in April – you may recall – when we bought yellow violas together in anticipation of the summer to come.   Quickly, as always, did the season come and go,  and we had plenty to catch up on from the months intervening.

As we talked of Heather’s travels to Yellowstone and elsewhere, my own summer adventures and news of our families and mutual friends and all that stuff, we also crawled through a delightful array of galleries, whose doors were propped open invitingly on this warmish afternoon.

There are such wonderful artists in and around Provincetown and there’s always a delightful array of art to admire, to show us the world through fresh eyes, to annoy or delight, confound and inspire us.  You know, all the things one generally hopes for in a bit of art.

At the Schoolhouse Gallery, we saw some especially interesting things, including a series of these unique, upholstered trophy head wall-hangings.   I was a poor blogger in that I didn’t make note of the name of the artist or the name of this particular piece, but it completely tickled us both.   I think of it as a Divan-osaur, and I’m pretty confident that my pal The Catsby would LOVE one of these as a perch to survey a room.  The folks at the Schoolhouse said cat lovers often had comments about those, actually.

It was a treat to spend the day with Heather, especially since we had missed connections back in the first weekend of August, when she was planning a visit to Provincetown and I had already made plans as far in the other direction as one can get on the Cape, leaving me unable to get there in time to have much of a visit with her.

During that visit, Heather got a personal tour of town from a guide friend of hers, so we also traded Little Known Facts throughout the afternoon as we wandered about.   As we headed west in search of some good coffee, Heather also surprised me by showing me a hidden garden she’d learned about of which I knew nothing.

Hidden behind the Commercial Street store, the garden at WA was an unexpected treat of gentle fountain sounds and simple music and delightful sculptures.   [There's some issue with my inserting a link to the store website, so just do a search for "WA Provincetown" if you're interested in more information.]  Although it’s not the time of year when we are looking for a shady oasis, it was still fun to stroll around and admire the statues and birdhouses and such offered for sale.

The days end too quickly this time of year and before long at all, it was time to pile back into the car and head home, the sky filling up with the clouds of the week to come.

Thanks, Heather, for the visit – it was a treat to see you and have another afternoon to pal around and book-end the summer season, while we gathered sunny photos to enjoy on less delightful days.

A Garden’s Rainbow