Cold Climate Gardening

Variegated bulbous oat grass, sweet white violet, and a bit of ‘White Nancy’ lamium in the lower left cornerBecause of the warm April, a lot of the daffodils that were still blooming last year are done for this year. This is the “gap” time between the early blooming spring flowers and the big June extravaganza when all the experts say I should have lots of tulips blooming, but I don’t. I love tulips, but they prefer better draining soil than what I’ve got, and the plentiful rodents like to eat them. Instead, I seem to have a lot of green and white vignettes, such as the one above, and the one below.

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Mother’s Day is fast approaching, and many retailers who normally don’t feature gardening products have potted flowering plants and other quasi-gardening gifts prominently displayed. I thought I’d take the opposite tack and share with you my favorite non-gardening garden “thingies.” Most of them don’t qualify as tools. Some of them, quite frankly, would look like garbage to most people, and I am always a bit anxious that some of my favorites might be thrown out by mistake.

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I suppose there exists, somewhere on this planet, an ornamental gardener who has never grown a plant that they had been given from someone else’s garden, but it is hard for me to imagine it. Before I even knew myself to be a gardener, when I was just a kid, I tagged along behind the lady next door as she planted annuals, despite the fact that our game balls were always flying into her garden, and she was always yelling at us, and I thought she hated all us kids. I don’t remember the conversation between us that day, but I probably pestered her with questions without realizing it, because she gave me half a dozen dwarf marigolds from her flat to plant in my own yard.

I wasn’t even out of grade school yet, and I had my first passalong plant, sort of.

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This looked spectacular earlier in May, but the narcissus were already done by the time Gardeners Bloom Day came around.

Those orange-cup daffodils were blooming at my neighbor’s, between her house and the brook, but too far away from the house to be noticed. I marked them and dug them up and got half for myself for the labor of digging and replanting her half. The hellebore came from Seneca …

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Yes, I know the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day was yesterday the day before yesterday. I didn’t get finished in time. So just pretend this is May 15th, okay? (As always, hover your mouse over any thumbnail for a caption, and click on any photo for a larger image.)
Narcissus
Let’s start off with the narcissus. The early daffodils are all gone, but the later ones are in their prime. Do you remember those new ones I told you about? Let’s start with them.

Left to right, the most recently opened first: Malin Head, Achnasheen, Rimmon, Eland, and (second row) Vernal Prince. Angel doesn’t look like it will bloom, as Mr. Burdick suspected. It’s been a cool spring–until today, when it got up to 88F–and many of my daffodils have remained good looking for a long time. Here’s more that are blooming right now:

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And what is retirement for, if not to make a few dreams come true? And what is a garden for, if not to satisfy the longings of your heart?

I have learned a lot from watching the garden of my best garden buddy, Bub, develop. The most satisfying garden, for the gardener and for others, is one that grows out of the desires of your heart. Bub’s garden is filled with hellebores, daylilies, and even trees that she grew from seed, musical instruments she can play, birds, chipmunks, and squirrels she can watch and feed, and a labyrinth through which she walks.

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Time to put my money where my heart is

When I was in college, I lived in a third-floor walkup with two fellow students. Whenever anyone shut the front door to the building, all the tenants felt the resulting vibrations. And we subconsciously monitored the sound of footsteps on the stairs, calculating in the back of our minds how likely was the prospect of company. Consequently, my roommates and I looked at each other inquiringly when footsteps going at a dead run did not stop at the second floor but continued up to our landing. Was the stair climber for us, or for our neighbors? Are you expecting anyone?

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