The June/July selection for The Garden Bloggers’ Book Club is My Summer in a Garden by Charles Dudley Warner and this time I read the book! (Lately, since we’ve gotten into the maintenance groove, I’ve been able again to open a book and not just pass right out - hooray!)

Warner wrote this book in 1870 - about 20 years before the Van Wickles bought and built Blithewold’s first house - and if it weren’t for slightly elderly language as well as very elderly racial and political attitudes, it reads like I wish I had thought of it. And it reads like it was written by a gardener. Seems like every gardener I know has a similar sarcastic bent and a tendency to cynical optimism (hopeful pessimism?). On weeds, Warner says,

I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds. They grow as if the devil was in them … The sort of weed which I most hate (if I can be said to hate any thing which grows in my own garden) is the “pusley”, a fat, ground-clinging, spreading greasy thing and the most propagatious (it is not my fault if the word is not in the dictionary) plant I know.

Just last week I was talking to another gardener (Hey Pam!) about purslane and how we all have bumper crops of it and too bad we don’t think it’s super tasty. (She’s actually tried it; I don’t feel the need to) Warner goes on to say (in a way that makes this modern-day gardener cringe and that I won’t quote verbatim) that he saw an Asian man boil and eat it “with relish” and worried that if he worked in Warner’s garden, the man might “cultivate it at the expense of the strawberries and melons.” The humor at least is up my alley…

One passage that was non-cringe inducing was his rhapsody about a new hoe. We gardeners love our tools! (A tangent question to readers: What’s your favorite tool? Mine is my 15 year old hori-hori: The handle is polished from use, the blade is smooth as silk and sturdy, intimidating to weeds and fits perfectly in my back pocket - nevermind that my pockets have all blown-out) About his hoe, Warner says,

… I do not mind saying that it has changed my view of the desirableness and value of human life. It has in fact made life a holiday to me.

Nothing like a well designed tool to make a gardener’s day! Our vegetable garden volunteer, Dick, uses his mother’s tools and guards them from the rest of us. They just don’t make hoes and spades like they used to…

I’m not sure whether Blithwold’s Bessie (Van Wickle McKee) would have read or enjoyed the book. (Comments from the elves in the archives would be most appreciated!). Warner teases his wife mercilously (sweetly or meanly, it’s sometimes hard to tell), accuses her of stealing the credit of growing his vegetables and says in pre-votes-for-women days,

Here I sat at the table, armed with the ballot, but really powerless among my own vegetables. While we are being amused by the ballot, woman is quietly taking things into her own hands.

All in all, reading My Summer in a Garden is like a studying snapshot portrait of a nineteenth century gardener - it’s interesting for the view in the picture’s background of a different time and fun to find there’s a family resemblance.

This week, one of the Rockettes (Wednesday volunteers) said to me, “Kris, I finally read your blog … –You’re so chatty!”

I blushed and couldn’t think of a coherent reply…

To prove to any readers who might assume from my “chattiness” that “quiet” is difficult for me, here’s a post of pictures (mostly. pretty much.). Remember, inside every wallflower beats the heart of a social butterfly!

My morning walk took me through the cutting garden first: (hover your pointer finger over the pictures for names and click for a larger image)

A week or so ago I promised a picture of Phlox ‘Natural Feelings’ in bloom:

A hummingbird visited me in the Idea Beds and then lit in the bamboo where I shot its portrait. Can’t find it in the picture though…

Ketzel Levine in her blog Talking Plants says not to plant this. (It does have poisonous seeds…)

In the water garden, every step I took at the pond edge was accompanied by a sound like a dog’s chew toy as the frogs sqeaked and dove for cover.

Yesterday someone asked me, “what’s your favorite perennial?” and although I have a different favorite just about every day, I answered without even thinking about it, “Lavender!”It’s my all-time favorite perennial no matter what other daily favorites grab my attention. It’s got everything: a scent I love so deadheading is a pleasure (even if it does take an age — unless you shear, which I don’t…); it thrives on benign neglect - poor -well draining- soil, no fertilizer and little water, and it’s a honey bee magnet. In a nutshell, it’s my kinda plant! Anyone else out there care to share what’s your tried and true all-time-favorite number-one perennial? (Enquiring minds want to know!)

I was crouching on the pond bank at 8:00 this morning trying to get a frog shot (cute little guy, isn’t he? A pre-teen, I would guess, in that awkward phase between polliwog and voting age) when I became aware of a hum over my head. The Button bush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) was already full of bees!

Bees have been in the news a lot lately because of Colony Collapse Disorder and everyone has a different theory for the cause. Beekeepers in a couple dozen states and a few other countries have reported huge losses in their bee populations. Bees are susceptible to various mites and occasionally go through periods of die-off but the weird thing about the current problem is that bees have been disappearing. (Normally during a die-off, bees are found dead around the hive). Some say it’s caused by cell phones, some say pesticides, some say mites and so far no one has definitively hit the nail on the head.

I don’t know much about bees aside from what I’ve read in Robbing the Bees by Holley Bishop and what I’ve found online (click here for a to-the-point article). But I have been paying attention to one very active wild hive near the greenhouse and to me (and I freely admit to knowing absolutely nothing) - the bees look healthy! The only thing I’ve wondered about is why we haven’t seen them swarm. Normally when the hive gets too big for its britches, a new queen is crowned and the hive splits and they relocate to another castle. So far these bees are staying put.

One of the good things that has come out with the doom ‘n’ gloom news is that people are learning to be solicitious of bees and a lot of our visitors, rather than looking frightened when they hear a plant humming and see all the bee activity, look really reverent instead. There’s also been more press about planting for the bees and creating healthy habitats for them which involves a non-manicured approach to gardening. The recommendations are to plant a riot of flowers, avoid using heavy mulch, just say No to pesticides (avoid non-organic chemistry altogether), and let your garden “go” a bit. I’ve noticed too in terms of habitat, they also appreciate having a place to drink. We leave a little water in pot saucers for them but they also dip into the pond on a dry day. If you build a bee garden, they will come! And with a wild bee friendly garden, you’re likely to get other wildlife too - like hummingbirds and dragonflies… (and wasps… Sometimes, you’ve got to take the good with bad. And carry a sting kit.) Check out this video about planting a bee garden (it’s in Berkeley, CA - but full of good advice and info no matter where you garden).

Over the weekend I read this post on Garden Rant that caused a runaway train of thought about color. (Here’s hoping it doesn’t cause a wreck.)

I think we all have a special relationship with color. For some people bright colors are almost physically painful; for others, flash orange equals love. There have been studies that show that colors can affect people similarly. For example, yellow is invigorating, green calms and orange causes hunger pangs. And there are common associations like pink is for girls while blue is for boys. (Why?? Does anyone know how that one started??) And then there’s color theory: cool colors recede and warm colors advance; complementary colors vibrate in contrast while near neighbors on the color wheel blend in harmony. But there can be no universal rule for how you choose to color your world. When I moved into my house the living room ceiling was purple. That could be the pinnacle of coziness for some people but since I’m not one of them, I repainted. One gardener’s dazzling combination is another one’s toothache. Something that struck me in the Garden Rant article (by Michele Owens) was what she said about French Gardens. She said,

“Combinations of orange, blue-pink, and crimson seem to be popular. At Giverny, which I actually visited once while the tree roses were in bloom, these hot clashes are artful. In other gardens, possibly a sign of carelessness.”

To me, the only sign of carelessness in a garden is neglect.

With hundreds resources to choose from (books, magazines, public gardens, friends’ gardens), we can find a set of rules (or 10) that is particularly appealing and then once we come to the realization that our gardens are never going to be just like the coffee table book glossies (because no two gardens are ever alike), we can start breaking those rules and have a blast. Gardening is about coloring in your piece of the earth and whether you use all the shades of green in the box or pink, orange, and purple in concert; whether you stay in the lines or bust out, the important thing is that your garden pleases you most of all.

I noticed this morning while Gail and I deadheaded the North Garden for the weekend that I have a tendency to start at the same place in the garden and go counter-clockwise from there. Every time. Which is interesting (not very?) only because I noticed that the plants that I always start with look great! And the ones at the end of my circuit look, well, they look like they need to be deadheaded in a big way. It’s especially noticable with something like Kalimeris. I like to spend a few minutes with each plant knocking off a few done blooms just to keep the whole plant looking in-trim (deadheading every deadhead would be hours and a mind lost). But after I’ve bent over half a dozen Kalimeris in a garden full of a gagillion other things that need deadheading too, I’m done! (stick a fork in me) It’s early days in our maintenance rounds (it feels like we just finished planting - and then there was all that watering!) so I was reminded today that I should start mixing it up a bit! I’ve got to put the garden in a blender and begin the begin somewhere new and - go clockwise instead! (It’s a little like writing with that other hand) And that’s my advice for the weekend. Start weeding and deadheading in the corner of the garden that never sees your bright shiny face when you’re still feeling bright and shiny! And have a wonderful weekend! (Happy Birthday, Ruth!)

It’s important sometimes to go someplace else when unpleasant things are happening. Yesterday I was in the dentist’s chair and while my dentist leaned on my lower lip and reached fists and sharp things into my mouth parts, I did my darnedest to go back to work. (How lucky am I that one of my happy places is where I work?) I thought of the bees and swirled around the arbor in the Display Garden and tried really hard to remember, minute by minute, how we spent the morning.

The first thing I saw yesterday morning was this very large bucket truck being carefully driven into a too tight place for a morning of tricky treetop trimming.

The Deadheads shouted to eachother over the sound of the chipper and snipped and tugged the sweetpeas off the Cutting Garden fence. We might have been able to get another year out of the netting if only Mary Scissorhands (in the picture wearing red gloves) had been more careful! (You’re a gracious scapegoat, Mary!) There are a few summer vines getting going with room to grow now and the Clematis ‘Roguchi’ is still blooming away.

And do happy places usually have slugs? This one is ginormous by dry summer in RI standards but pretty tiny compared to its west coast banana cousins!

It’s raining today and that makes me happy (without having to go anyplace else) and I’ll bet GusGus is pleased too.

I’m a day late for the Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day party! If you feel like a little web crawling, click on the link above to see what’s blooming (as of yesterday) all over the country and even out into the wide world. It’s amazing to see the summer progress at different speeds!

I went out into the garden this morning with a multi-blooms post in mind and was arrested by the Cutting Garden (not really - it wasn’t a cop issuing speed-walking tickets. — But can you imagine?! — What if the garden pulled you over and said “Ma’am, do you know you just passed that rose without smelling it? I’ll give you a written warning this time. Do that again though and I won’t be so generous …”). Anyway, here’s some of what I stopped for in the Cutting Garden this morning. Hover your pointerfinger over a picture to see the name and click-on for a slightly larger image.

Here are a few choices from the Idea Beds:

In the Rose Garden: How many beetles does it take to eat a bud?

Down by the water garden I spotted these bloomers and also noticed how our rainless days are affecting the pond. I hope someone did a rain dance at Blithewold’s annual Hoe Down last night! The Hoe Down is more of a horseticultural event (there were pony rides) than horticultural or else I probably would have been there. Did anyone who’s reading this go and was it tons of family fun? Let us know!

I could have sworn I heard my first cicada yesterday. It was that kind of blazing hot day you’d expect to hear a chorus of them. So maybe I heard it through wishful thinking (auditory halucination) because I haven’t heard it again! There are a few things that herald full summer for me and that’s a major one. (The first swim in the ocean is another; first minor league baseball game… anyone else care to add to the list?)

How about a picnic on the lawn? Blithewold’s second Soiree was held in the North Garden and this time almost everyone brought supper! What a good idea - and some of it looked really tasty! Everyone sampled California wines and cheeses while listening to the smooth crooning of Jeffery Thomas, a local musician who serenaded us from the porch. His singing was so melifluous and his song choices so sweet that it seemed to me that love was in the air. For the couple of couples who looked inclined to dance (but were too shy) and the Japanese beetles picnicing and cavorting on the climbing hydrangea, the evening was definitely romantic! Since I was unaccompanied, instead of strolling arm in arm and sharing bites of cheese-n-cracker with a cutie, I wandered in search of soiree-ers with garden questions. And I found some FAQs! First question: “What kind of mulch is that - it’s so delicate and attractive!” Answer: Buckwheat hull mulch. Although it’s a bit pricey (around $12/3 cubic feet), we love it in that garden and the Rose Garden because it’s elegant, organic, mold resistant, and adds an excellent fluff to the soil as it gets mixed in over the season. Next question: “The edges are beautiful - how do you keep them looking so crisp?” Answer: Fred Perry, Groundsman extraordinaire, cuts the edge every spring with a sharpened spade and trims it weekly after mowing using a string trimmer held vertically. There were appreciative comments all over the place - everyone raved about the food, the music and the garden - it just doesn’t get better than that!

Rain was forecast for that evening but never materialized. Good for the Soiree; bad for the gardens! The Petasites (poorly sited) look like I feel after blazing days spent watering! It has stayed hot (90’s) but at least whatever system came through that night blew in a breeze and blew out the muggyness.

Here are a couple of choice bloom pics before I leave for the weekend (it’s Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day this Sunday but I might not make it in for a post - this and another on Monday might have to suffice!) Please let me know if you get tired of seeing Lotus pictures because it’s so cool I can’t seem to stop!: The second bloom opened this morning and check out the fruit from the last one! Someone told me that it’s edible - anyone have a recipe? (Not that I would harvest any of these beauties… I wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of a photo op!)

The Balloon flowers opened this week - they are such a beautiful deep french blue (cobalt with a little rose madder thrown in maybe - are any of you painters who mix colors as you walk the garden?)

And click on the picture below to blow it up - the flower is wee (a little purple on a snakey green stem). I love Stachytarpheta (porterweed) for its weirdness. It’s in the verbena family, doncha know.

It was blissfully peasoupy this morning - a sauna bath still but a welcome relief to the scorching asphyxia of the last couple of days. I love the sounds of fog - amplified birds, dripping tree percussion and fogbound ship’s blasts and foghorn echoes. The siren songs lured me on a long early ramble past dewy smokey smoke bush and a diamond encrusted spiderweb, down to the shoreline. The buildings and grounds committee met Monday night and among other necessary projects shelved for lack of funds, the salt water pumphouse and dock restoration was discussed. The salt water pumphouse was used to send baywater to bathtubs in the house equipped with a third faucet — can you imagine?!! Of course, these days the bay is slightly less pristine than it was a century ago and bathing in it holds less actual appeal… Nonetheless a rescue is necessary because the historic water’s edge building is being undermined and is in danger of falling to the beach in a heap. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen before the funds to fix it are procured! (Anyone interested in donating money to the capital campaign please click here. Another project needing fundage is a new roof for the mansion to the tune of a cool mil. Those amazing 3rd floor archives need protection from the elements!)

As I write this it’s vacillating between stinking hot blazing sun and windy fog. The North Garden Soiree (sold out!) is tonight and we’ve been madly dashing around making sure every bloom is looking-alive and crossing our fingers that the thunderstorm in the forecast holds off (at least until much later tonight - we need the rain!). I’ll update you on the event’s sure success tomorrow or the next day! Anyone else out there feeling conflicted about wanting a big rain?

What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Who do you turn to for advice? Your mom? Your best friend? Your life-coach? What if you don’t know what to do in your garden? Who do you turn to then? Over at the Garden Rant blog I found a post and a link to this NY Times article about garden-coaches. Evidently you can pay someone (big bucks) to come to your garden and tell you where your weeds are and cheer you on to “just do it” when you want to rip out those ugly shrubberies but are scared that it’s the wrong decision and you’re worried you’ll regret it forever. Personally, while it’s tempting to try to make some mad money as a coach, I think giving advice is what friends and public gardens are for! Part of Blithewold’s mission is to “teach and inspire” and we fully expect visitors (for the price of admission or an annual membership) to steal ideas from our Idea Beds (and all the other gardens) and use the property as a a living identification key and how-to book and to ask us questions. Just this morning a Blithewold member came to the greenhouse wondering how to prune his roses to keep them in bloom. (”Are they repeat bloomers?”, I asked. “ummm… errr…”, he said. But if they are, now he knows what to do!) There are gardeners and groundsmen on the property every week-day, and Sunday afternoons (starting this past Sunday with superstar Gil Moore) there are Garden Docents available in the gardens to answer questions and shoot the garden breeze with visitors. Use us!

All that said, getting a good garden coach to come to your own garden might be just the thing to kick start a passion and sometimes it’s just necessary to hire professionals. This past spring, we asked a water garden guru from Nelumbo Water Gardens in Wickford, RI to fix our cement pond and this weekend the lotus we got from them started to bloom — according to Gil, it was the talk of the day!