Loni: My Garden Beauty

I know that I gush about a lot of a few plants on occasion.  I could wax poetic for hours on the delights of the oakleaf hydranges, heucheras, and sedums, for example.  But few other plants inspire the delight that my lonicera sempervirens, a honeysuckle native to the U.S., does. 

This plant has a beauty and presence in the garden that few other plants can boast.  With such a vivacious personality, you know it was only a matter of time before she became one of the few plants I tend to acquire a proper nickname.  "Honey" seemed too sweet... but I remember watching M*A*S*H with my mom when I was a kid, and Loni Anderson played the blonde bombshell (with brains and a big heart, to boot) on a show that came on right after M*A*S*H.  So "Loni" seemed a much more fitting name for my garden beauty:

I occasionally take some of Loni's longest limbs and weave them in and out of the tops of the pickets.  Even without my help, she drapes herself elegantly along the fenceline:

My favorite way to view her is backlit.  In the morning, when I look out my picture window, she is backlit by the morning sun.  In the slanted light just before sundown, she smolders:

Even the leaves look amazing, with their blue-green shades in flat light, and the bright green glow that pops out with a little backlighting:

And on top of all that?  She's easy to grow, and doesn't require a fuss.  In fact, she's so perfect that you wonder what all of the other plants must think of her... and determine that even though they probably all WANT to hate her, and are a little bit envious, they can't help but love her, too.

A final warning:  This will not be the last Ode to Loni on my blog.  The number of blooms waxes and wanes throughout the summer, but... well, in spite of being a vine, Loni is not really a wallflower.  She isn't afraid to strut her stuff, and the show often lasts until the first frost.  Expect even more pictures as the show goes on!

Remembering the Voice of Summer (RIP Ernie)

When I was growing up, summer meant rambling through the woods, setting up "dirtbike trails" and constructing various ramps for bike-jumping contests.  It meant swimming at one grandma's pool, and heading to the other grandma's driveway to shoot hoops games that started out as P-I-G and ended an hour later as P-I-G-G-Y-F-A-C-E.  Summer meant fishing in the neighbors' ponds, figuring out how high we could pile toppings on a Chef Boyardee pizza, and chasing long fly balls for miles (or so it seemed) if a hit went past the 3 or 4 kids we recruited to "play baseball" in the field across the street.


And summer nights?  Those meant listening to the gentle twang of one William Earnest Harwell, accompanied by the occasional crackle of static--or Tiger Stadium background noise--on the radio.  Ernie used to say that TV was the movie version of a baseball game, while radio was the novel... an amazing storyteller, he seemed to effortlessly transport his listeners to whatever place or time he had on his mind.

Ernie Harwell's statue at Comerica Park.

Flickr Photo from cplater, reposted here through Creative Commons permission.

In truth, Ernie was a hard worker with a complicated filing system of trivia.  He spent hours doing his homework, so that he had plenty of nuggets to dish out in the course of a broadcast.  And his mind was so full of the minutiae of his sport that you couldn't help but wonder whether any event dared to occur on a major league baseball field without notifying Ernie first.  Until I was old enough to pick up on the joke, I truly believed that Harwell knew which city was home to every single person who caught a fly ball or home run in the stands.  (Why not?  He knew everything else, it seemed!)

Here's a bit of trivia that would probably not have been mentioned by the humble Mr Harwell on the air:  Ernie was the only broadcaster in the history of baseball to be traded for a player.  The Brooklyn Dodgers traded a catcher to the Atlanta Crackers in return for Harwell in 1948 when their regular announcer, Red Barber, was hospitalized.  A consummate professional, you heard nary a peep from Ernie when he was inexplicably fired after the 1991 season--but Tiger Nation roared in protest, and the club's new ownership brought him back into the booth in 1993.  His 2001 retirement happened on his own terms.

From Flickr: The old Tiger Stadium. Ernie offered up his entire collection of baseball memorabilia, amassed over his long lifetime, if only Tiger Stadium could be kept open as a museum.  But his attempt at salvaging the old park was in vain.

Photo by josephleenovak, reposted here through Creative Commons permissions. 

"He stood like the house at the side of the road and watched that go by."  That was one of his signature lines (for a called third strike) but definitely not the way he lived his life.  By all accounts an active, engaging man, the way he announced his terminal cancer to Tigers fans last year still brings a tear to my eye.  We should all live... and die.. .with such peace and grace.  But clearly, to borrow a phrase from my grandmother, they broke the mold after Ernie.

Flick photo by mwlguide and reposted here through Creative Commons.

Rest in Peace, Ernie.  For me and countless others, you will always be our Voice of Summer. 
And you will be missed.

May Surprises & Rookie Mistakes

May is the Month of new beginnings in the garden, colorfully illustrated by the 'Key Lime Pie' heuchera that is emerging from its cast-off fall foliage in the photo above.  It's also a month of surprises, like this flowering stem that's sprouting from the red cabbage I neglected to harvest in the fall:

And then there are the surprise seedlings, like these baby hellebores that are popping up all around the peach tree:

Speaking of the peach, it was covered in blooms last month.  I was a little worried because I didn't notice any pollinators hovering around it while it was flowering... but apparently they were just being a little circumspect with their activities.  I now have evidence (YAY!) that they were there:

My friend Alli gave me a bunch of extra allium bulbs back in... 2008?  And I was bummed when I didn't see any luscious, large purple allium balls bouncing around on the wind in 2009.  I couldn't even remember where all I had placed them, but it seems like a few made it to the ground beneath the cherry tree:

A chartreuse-colored, miniature hosta (labeled 'Dawn' and purchased at a master gardener sale the first year I moved to my suburb) almost melted out of my garden last year--I think that a nearby ligularia was stealing all of the moisture from them.  'Othello' met his demise this spring (insert Shakespearean tragedy joke here) and I now have FOUR new 'Dawn' hostas happily sunning themselves as the feet of a 'Looking Glass' brunnera:

That's the end of the good surprises.  So here's where I confess to my rookie mistake.  Wait, before I confess, you tell me:  What do you think is wrong with the photo below?

If you asked why on earth a 'Striptease' hosta is... er... getting a little fresh with (yeah, I couldn't resist) the recently transplanted variegated liriope, that's a very good question!  And the answer is:  I made a rookie mistake.  I transplanted the liriope a few weeks ago, not remembering that I had planted the rescue hosta in that spot last fall.  And since I don't have a current, accurate garden plan to remind me, I'll be relocating the liriope again very shortly.  Ah well.

Let's not dwell on my mistakes, though.  Instead, let's end this post with a few more photos of the beauty that is May in the garden.  First, the regal 'Queen of Night' tulip, with various companions:

Second, the lovely smush of 'Hillside Black Beauty' bugbane sprouting up around the edges of 'Zweiweltenkind' goatsbeard--don't worry, I cut the goatsbeard back hard after it flowers, which gives the bugbane more room:

Last but not least, what would spring be without the sweet scent of woodruff?  I know that this groundcover can be a little aggressive for some, but I adore it.  Here you see it marching up to 'All Gold' hakonechloa, while some 'Pine Knot Strain' hellebores (the parents of some of the babies mentioned above?) stand sentinel above:

That's all for today.  (But expect a drool-worthy post on the obscenely gorgeous lonicera sempervirens tomorrow!)

 

Happy May!