Winter Garden

Photo courtesy of my pal JoAnn

"Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, are then prepared to ignore them until the spring.  I am quite sure that a garden doesn't like to be ignored like this.  It doesn't like to be covered in dust sheets, as though it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter.  Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful it can be, even in the very frozen heart of the winter, if you only give it a chance."

-  Beverley Nichols

Golden November

"I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colors are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and its content."~~ Lin Yutang

(Image via Pinterest, quote from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett)

September Morning

“The little things? The little moments? They aren't little.”~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Garden Moments

"Sometimes the most memorable garden moments are the most fleeting, as when a single leaf, backlit by the sun, is transformed from opaque to a translucent tracery of veins more beautiful than any stained glass. I hate to leave my garden for any length of time because it means I miss these moments, or the more predictable blooms of favorite plants."

David Culp, The Layered Garden

My Garden

"My garden, with its silence and the pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars. Among my flowers and trees Nature takes me into her own hands, and I breathe freely as the first man."
~~Alexander Smith

Hoeing the Garden

St. Francis of Assisi was hoeing his garden when someone asked what he would do if he were suddenly to learn that he would die before sunset that very day.

"I would finish hoeing my garden," he replied. 

Unlovely Marigolds

'African marigolds have about as much freshness as the leather of a new football, without the quality of being easily kicked out of the way'--Christopher Lloyd in The Well-Tempered Garden, 1973

I don't always get my pots and flowers just right.  I am disliking this pot of yellow marigolds more and more every day. We all bought these marigolds up in Lancaster County on our plant-buying trip, when they were small and had the cutest lime green centers--and we all thought they were something special. But alas, as they have grown they have just turned into these big garish puffballs and I really can't stand them. These may be coming out of the pot and going in a far corner of the garden sometime soon.

Spring?

'O Wind, if Winter comes, can spring be far behind?' ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Winter Garden

"Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, are then prepared to ignore them until the spring. I am quite sure that a garden doesn't like to be ignored like this. It doesn't like to be covered up in dust sheets, as though it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter. Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful it can be, even in the dry frozen heart of the winter, if you only give it a chance."   ~ Beverley Nichols

Friday Fleurs: Zinnias

"Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day--like writing a poem or saying a prayer." ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Lazy Days in the Garden

'There is a brief time in July when the gardener has nothing to do but enjoy his flowers. Oh, there may be a few  things, like tying in the dahlias, discreetly staking the chrysanthemums, picking off the dead water lilies, keeping an eye on the roses for black spot, soaking the azaleas and camellias, cutting the grass, tying in the huge new canes of climbing rose, and like that.' -- Henry Mitchell, in The Essential Earthman

I appreciate that passage from one of Henry Mitchell's books, The Essential Earthman. These hot and humid days in July are really easy times in the garden,  with not that much to do except pull the occasional weed, do some deadheading, and maybe cut back some perennials like (perennial) geraniums. It's nice things work out that way because it is just too hot to be working outside these days. And everything is so lush right now, because we have had plenty of rain so far this year, unusual for us it seems.

However, for a garden blogger, it's not easy to come up with things to write about right now. Real life sometimes interferes with my garden and photo routines, with travels, moving children, out of town guests,  chaos at work. But this is a good time to sit back and enjoy the garden, especially in the cooler evenings with a cup of tea or a glass of wine and a friend or two. I also like to sit back and try to look at my garden objectively, to see what needs improving, what could be moved, what I could change. There's always something.

And then there is the fragrance. The other night as I was walking past my garden I was stopped short by such strong fragrance and realized it was all my phlox-- 'Miss Lingard,' 'David,' 'Franz Schubert,' and a few other varieties. I was mesmerized by the scent, not wanting to leave it. I wanted to get a chair and sit right in the middle of it. On a hot humid evening it was so strong and lovely and surprising.

'But by and large it is a time of leisure, different from the panic of the great fall planting season and free from that sense of frantic tidying up that afflicts the spring.  If you have planned ahead, in fact, this respite can last even into August and Steptember. A garden planned for late August (and for January as well) will give the greatest pleasure, because spring and early sumer tend to take care of themselves. Even a little thought for these too neglected months will go far in keeping the gardener from uttering and snapping. But the average gardener pays too little attention to August and September, and it may be safely said that the average garden goes to pot on July 16 as regular as clockwork.'

I'll have to be attentive and see how my garden fares on July 16!

Drink Your Tea Slowly

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh

Hope From Mr. Rogers

There was an article in the Post this morning about this quote from Mr. Rogers,  which is apparently making its way around the social media universe. I hadn't seen it, so I thought it was worth passing on. I always liked Mr. Rogers, and appreciate his gentle words.  

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world.” — Mister Rogers

My Grandpa C.

"Whatever a man's age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his buttonhole."--Mark Twain

When I saw this quote in a book recently, it immediately made me think of my Grandpa Camplejohn. When I was growing up, he came over several times a week to our house for dinner, and in the spring and summer he would often arrive with a rose pinned to his shirt or jacket. He loved flowers all his life and, in my memory, had a glorious garden full of vegetables and roses, pansies, and hollyhocks. My earliest memory of gardening is at his house, where I would pick little bouquets of pansies and put them in a glass jar on the back porch for my grandparents.  He planted pansies along the borders of his garden and I always plant pansies today because of him. I loved his hollyhocks which bloomed along the side of his house and which you could see from the dining room windows. I have tried and tried for years to grow hollyhocks because of him, but with limited success. I like to think about him when I am gardening, I like that continuity.

I was lucky to get my Grandpa's gardening book and a gardening basket he used, too. I love looking through the gardening book (Better Homes & Gardens New Garden Book, copyright 1951) and seeing the scraps of paper, lists, and newspaper articles he had kept inside. I had totally forgotten he had clipped an article about growing paperwhites in the winter! I love coincidences like that, here I am growing paperwhites 60 years later. I keep my gardening gloves in his garden basket. I'm lucky to come from a family of gardeners. My mom and dad both enjoyed working in a garden and my dad really got interested in it after his retirement, starting his vegetables from seed and making compost that was the envy of any gardener. Both my sister and brother are gardeners. I'm hoping it continues down the line!

We all loved his handwriting!

He was interested in Paperwhites!

His list of tomato varieties to try

Grandpa C's garden basket

MLK Memorial

 A busy weekend, beginning with my book group meeting here on Friday night to discuss The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman (mixed reviews, I didn't really like it). After a lot of discussion, we picked our next two books, Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, and Nightwoods by Charles Frazier. On Saturday night we went to see Iron Lady with the Bensons and the Rubards,  and what an awesome performance by Meryl Streep. She's amazing. It was a great movie, definitely worth seeing, as we all liked it. 

Sunday was cold and chilly, but clear so we decided to go into DC and to the National Gallery. On the way we decided to stop at the new Martin Luther King Memorial, which was dedicated last year. I'm so glad we stopped because we really liked it-- the figure of MLK is carved into a gigantic piece of granite, which is emerging from 2 other gigantic pieces of granite. The inspiration for the design was his quote, "out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope," so in seeing it, I better understood his emerging from the mountain (of granite). It's very powerful. Seventeen of his other quotations from speeches throughout his life are engraved on granite walls surrounding the statue.

The controversial quote that is going to be redone

The MLK Memorial is right on the Tidal Basin and faces the water. We walked around the Tidal Basin for awhile--it was so nice to be there in non-cherry blooming time, because there was nobody there!  I loved how the cherry trees look in the winter. You can really see how old they are and the shapes are amazing,  bending gracefully towards the water.

The FDR Memorial is nearby so we walked over there too, because it's one of my favorites. I was happy to see Eleanor!

We did eventually make it to the National Gallery, and here's proof, one of my favorite paintings, White Roses by Van Gogh. There was even a concert of 18th century French music being held in one of the garden courts, which we sat and listened to for about a half hour. We had a nice day in DC.

My New Motto

One of the many reasons I love Julia Child.

Helen Van Pelt Wilson

"Trivial annoyances slough off in a garden and problems often solve themselves there as you weed and plant."--Helen Van Pelt Wilson


One of the first gardening books that I read back in the day and that I really loved was Helen Van Pelt Wilson's Own Garden and Landscape Book, published in 1973. I think I first found it in the library in the 1980s and later ordered it from Alibris or some other online used bookstore. (We had no online then, so how did I get it? I have no idea.) I was absolutely fascinated with her account of how she acquired and planned and planted her property in Westport, Connecticut and I just loved it. I wanted to have a garden exactly like hers. I pored over her diagrams and photos, examining the paths she made, the edging on her garden beds, loving how she planted different gardens and named them-- the Look-Into Garden, the Apple-Tree Garden, the Fern Garden,  the Dooryard Garden. I wanted a Look-Into Garden. I think it was from her that I first started thinking about perennials, as she wrote mostly about the permanent plants in a garden, the trees and shrubs first, then the perennials and bulbs,  and she gave me a lot of ideas for the best perennials to plant.


 I also liked how she created gardens thinking about the views from her house. She would place flowering trees where she could see them easily from the windows inside her house. She liked to plant special little gardens around doorways (Dooryard Gardens) with her favorite flowering and fragrant plants that she could admire every time she entered the house. She wrote from a very personal perspective, so that I felt like I was following her around her property. I felt like I knew her. And best of all, she has a chapter at the end titled, "My What To Do When List," with monthly tasks for the garden. Right up my alley.  Here is what she says for December:

This is a time to be complacent. With all possible outdoor tasks completed--or forget them if they aren't--let's enjoy the winter views from our windows, the silhouettes of trees, the dark hues of evergreens, the nice property design we've worked on. 

Many of the perennials I have today were recommended by HVPW--hellebores, anemones, coral bells, candytuft-- and several  of my shrubs/trees were recommended by her--mahonia, snowbell, serviceberry, fringetree. Foliage was more important to her than the flowers. Of course some of the book is kind of dated--she used a lot of pesticides back then, but much of it remains true.  I googled her the other day and found that she died several years ago at the age of 102. She was one of those people I sometimes wish I had written to, thanking her for her writing which had such a big influence on me, and really inspired me to be a gardener.

She also wrote The Joy of Geraniums, The New Perennials Preferred, Fragrant Year: Scented Plants for Your Garden and You,  Houseplants Are For Pleasure, and a few others. All are out of print, except maybe the Perennials Preferred, but you can still find the old ones from used book dealers. I have several of her books.

I love all my old gardening books, but this one is my fav.

It's Almost December?

"Love your garden, and work in it, and let it give you what it surely will of sweetness and health...and let no one feel that the benefit is all on the side of the garden. For truly you will receive more than you give."

--Louise B. Wilder (1879-1938), American writer

Rosemary

It was such a beautiful weekend that we worked outside quite a bit. I even washed the cars and then drained the hoses and put them away for the winter. We mulched and raked the leaves one more time... will these leaves never end? The only tree left is the Zelkova and this morning they are mostly down, of course, after the two days we spent mulching and raking.  I cut down my baptisia, as it was all blackened, and the rest of the phlox.  It's always a dilemma what to keep in the garden, because I like to see a little something of interest in the winter. But all in all, things are looking good. Most of my herbs are still doing well. A lot of our neighbors spent the weekend putting up Christmas lights, and it was quite a display walking down the street last night! It's a little hard to feel Christmasy when it is 70 degrees outside. It's nice to be able to do garden cleanup in warm weather, but I am ready for some cold.

Italian parsley

Thyme

'There's Hope in Daffodils'

Narcissus 'Geranium'

"There's hope in daffodils. That's a dangerously fragile commodity at the best of times, but now is the time to indulge it." -- Anna Pavord, in The Curious Gardener (2010).


I had to plant some bulbs after reading that. Also, even though I have a lot of daffodils already, mostly old varieties that I planted 20 years ago (Carlton, Ice Follies, Flower Record, Thalia, Mt. Hood, Cheerfulness), I like the idea of planting a handful of a new variety every year. Most of those daffs still bloom, too. How amazing is that, 20 years later? A good investment for sure.

I finally got my bulbs this week. I have been determined to get some in the ground this fall, and the way I see it, I have until next week (Thanksgiving) to get them in the ground. That is the deadline.  I bought some Narcissus 'Geranium' which has white petals with orange centers and 'Cheerfulness', which was Henry Mitchell's favorite. I have some 'Cheerfulness' already, but I figured I could always use some more Cheerfulness.

Narcissus 'Cheerfulness'

Bulbs at Merrifield

I have to work all day today and tomorrow, so I hope the weather is nice on Sunday so I can finally get these bulbs in the ground. The problem is finding an empty space to plant them, but I think I have somewhere in mind...