What's Blooming Today

I've been too busy at work to get anything done in the garden except a bit of clean up this week. But it does not need me right now as it continues to come into its own.

The geraniums bloomed yesterday - not the annuals that we call geraniums, but the domesticated "field" geraniums. I brought them from the old house, where they were a great groundcover in a shady area. I have them in a sunnier spot now and they are not as prolific, but I am really liking the way they have filled in. They have also spread themselves around a bit - as flowers tend to do! - and I have a small clump growing among the Pacific daisies. The contrast between the pink geraniums and the silvery foliage is just lovely. I want to move a few more into that bed to encourage that combination.

The evening primrose also bloomed yesterday. It's a lovely pale pink and I think I need more somewhere. And the Japanese iris are blooming, too. They are the lavender and would be prettier is there were some variety of color. I need to get some dark purple and some white to mix in with them.

But the big news is the peonies - they are gorgeous. Last fall I gathered all the plants I had into one spot to make a big bed. I did it partly to fill a corner and partly because I thought it would make a better presentation in a big drift. I was so right. I have mostly pale pink, but one white with a red fleck and one dark pink. I truly do want a "red" plant, so will try to add one this fall. I pinched out the side buds as the peonies grew to get bigger blooms and it really worked - I have many that are 8 - 10 inches across. It's a truly lovely corner. Of course, the Murphy's Law of peonies is that it will pour down rain this weekend and beat them down. It always happens. I brought a big vaseful into the house today so that I can enjoy them. They remind me of Grandmother. She loved them and I always took her a vase for Mother's Day - and they bloomed right on time for me this year.

May 11, 1984

What do you say to the man who has been your partner, friend, and lover for the past 25 years? "I love you", for starters.

I love you for sticking with me thru the thin days as well as the thick. For 14-hour days carving in the basement and driving from Virginia to Florida to Texas to Massachusetts and home again - with a dog and a trailer full of ducks. For canceling birthday parties and then rescheduling them. For finding a trailer to live in when we needed to leave Richmond. For being my rock when Dad died.

I love you for being there in the better days, too. For not insisting on your way, but being willing to wait until we can find a solution that fits us both - and teaching me to do the same. For nine wonderful years in a home that fits us like a glove. For road trips around the state and across the country. For showing me the glory of coral reefs, pinnacles, and black coral. For seasick days on Olympus and glorious days on Cat Ppalu. For skinny dipping on deserted beaches and walking on Hilton Head. For books shared and movies rented.

I love you for loving my family - sometimes more than I do. For embracing my friends and for sharing yours. I love you for our time with Jack, Buck and Mocha, and for adding the fish to the mix. For bicycling, tennis and diving. For diets shared and pounds lost - even when the were regained.

I love you for all the times you knew what I was talking about before I said a word, and for all the days we get to spend together now. I love you for telling me you love me every day. Twenty-five years has flown past like a few weeks. I am ready to sign up for another year.

Happy anniversary. I love you.

Garland's Gardens

For the past four days I've been visiting gardens. Got a lot of ideas and thoroughly enjoyed myself. First kudos to the NCDOT for their continuing program of planting wildflowers on the highway right-of-way. There are huge swaths of red, purple, blue, pink, white and yellow flowers all along I-85 thru the central part of North Carolina and on into the foothills of western North Carolina. In addition there are nice plantings of shrubs at most of the interchanges. But it is the wildflowers that are breath-taking in many spots. Let's hope that by good cutting practices - that is, not cutting until the wildflowers have seeded annually - that they will continue to spread. I wish I could have taken a good photo to share with you.

The big gardens that we visited were at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville. There are all sorts of gardens - from the most formal English-type planned garden, to kitchen gardens, to shrubbery, to seemingly "natural" hills and valleys of native plants, trees and shrubs. All of it planned to the ninth degree and all lovely. I found that while I really liked the formal gardens and enjoyed seeing them, it was the open areas and natural glens and hillsides that really spoke to me. Somehow the planned, measured formal gardens seemed too perfect, too planned and lacked the fun and spontaneity that I really like. There were no surprises. Instead, I found the banks of native shrubs - azalea, rhododendron, and mountain laurel - just gorgeous. A bank of bamboo appearing around a bend, perennials blooming among the rocks along the bass pond, and mounds of perennials at the winery all made me happy - even on a rainy day.

But the finest garden I saw belongs to my friend, Garland. She moved home to western North Carolina nearly five years ago and started renovating the property to create the kind of garden she loves. She has cleared out old dying trees and acres of brambles in the fences, pulled weeds and poison ivy. She has cleaned out and restored the vegetable garden. But mostly she has added new beds and greatly enlarged the existing beds while planting hundreds, perhaps thousands, of flowering shrubs and perennials in colorful swaths on all sides of the house. Wherever one looks out, there are beautiful flowers to see.


Step out of the front door and there are shady beds filled with helebores, ferns, and hosta, and a sunny spot with herbs planted among the patio blocks. Look down from the porch and there are sunny beds with iris, peonies, and sedum. Many plants she moved with her from her Richmond garden, and many are native to Translyvania County. There are evergreens, rose beds, and even a 90-foot asparagus bed - all laid out in a pleasing way, each with a little surprise to be found as you wonder around the nearly seven-acre yard. Right now the rhododendron are in full bloom along with many azaleas, so it is a riot of pinks and purples with the occasional bank of white, and way over "there" a patch of bright orange as a surprise.

I took her some variegated Solomon's Seal and she sent me home with a sedum, so a bit more of her will grow here with me and a bit of me will grow in her garden - if the deer don't eat it all!

Mitchell's Plants

Today is the day to celebrate those things in the garden that are there because Mitchell loves them. He is first and foremost a fan of foliage that is anything except green! He loves coleus and crotan and all those red/brown plants, so over the years we have worked them into the landscape as fillers. Fortunately, they are lovely with the blues, purples and pinks that I love so much. And then there are a variety of plants that he just likes.

Like the little dogwood in the front yard. It is currently growing in what we call the "boomerang". When we first moved in we planted a weeping cherry tree in the front corner of the yard. He watered it devotedly as it got sicker and sicker. Finally after a full summer of dying, it was gone. When we pulled it out we discovered that it was sitting in the equivalent of a terra cotta bowl filled with water. That was how we learned that it's impossible to plant anything in our yard without first amending the dirt - and I do mean amend! We decided that we needed the equivalent of a raised bed, but we did not want the obvious raised border. So, we got a load of topsoil delivered and shaped it into a boomerang and left it higher than the yard. We amended the heck out of it and over the years it has sunk some into the yard, but remains an excellent place to plant. Last fall we moved a small dogwood there. It had been growing too close to the house, so we took a chance and dug it up. We watered loyally over the winter and it is growing like topsy this spring. I believe it will be a keeper.

Mitchell's red tree tho is a beautiful plum [Thundercloud] that shades the back deck. After the disaster of the weeping cherry we got another load of topsoil and dumped it on the west side of the deck before we planted another tree. The plum was the tree equivalent of a 98-pound weakling when we planted it - about five feet tall with skinny little no-nothing twig branches. Today it is 25 feet tall and shades the entire deck all summer. Mitchell has kept it well pruned, so it has a beautiful vase shape and when it blooms it is covered with tiny pink flowers. It's truly a gem.

Underneath is a field of Ajuga reptans 'Burgundy Glow' - another non-green plant. It actually changes from more greenish to more redish over the growing season, and blooms with a pretty purple flower on a stalk in the spring - like now. In addition to the field under this tree, we have used it wherever we need a little filler, like around the pond. It is helping to fill in among the stones that surround the pond. It likes a bit of shade, so it has not done as well as other ground covers in some of our sunnier spots.

Around the side is a Japanese maple. In twenty years it will be stunning! Since we bought it, it has filled out and now has a lovely fountain shape and the leaves are that beautiful red that one expects, but there are two things that we did not know about Japanese maples when we added it. First, they grow incredibly slowly - like an inch a year or less. Ours is still less than three feet tall, so we have lots of shrubs that would kick it's derrierre in a fight, and 2) in our climate it turns green! Apparently it is not fond of our hot, humid summers, so by August every year it is a lovely green maple! Then from November to June it's red again, before starting its color change. We love it, but will probably not live to see it full grown.

I've mentioned the Harry Lauter's walking stick [Corylus avellana 'Contorta'] before, but it is another of Mitchell's interesting choices. In the summer it is a pretty screen of bright green leaves - like now - but in the winter it is one of the most interesting specimens in the garden. It loses its leaves, but keeps its catkins all winter among its twisted branches. It's large enough now that I could use some of its branches for flower arrangements, but I have not touched it yet. I think it is about three-quarters full grown. The birds love it and so do we.

Finally, I always make him at least one planter with shade plants including coleus. Am running a bit behind this summer, and do not really have the planters done yet, so that is yet to come. We have a bench in the shady part of the garden that nicely holds two or three large pots, and I like to put a variety of coleus there along with some annual flowers. From that garden bench one can see both down the side - the bowling alley - to the street and back up the hill to the main garden. It's a lovely place to read.

So Mitchell, it's all about your plants today - happy anniversary!