Ah, They're So Cute When They're Young...

Some women swoon when their loved one surprises them with roses. (I never swooned, but I was touched by the gesture once.*) As far as I'm concerned, a boughten bouquet has nothing on emerging spring foliage in terms of excitement. Inspired by Colleen's picture of emerging bleeding hearts, I went around my garden and photographed a few of my current favorites to share. My hand is in each one to give you an idea of scale.

The fronds of 'Brise d'Anjou' polemonium caeruleum (Jacob's ladder) seem to sprawl excitedly out of the ground at the first hint of warmth. This is the plant that I worried over after it made a very early appearance around the turn of the year. I had wondered whether it would survive its first winter, with the warm start and the sudden temperature plunge that followed.

The second picture shows the felty hearts of 'Jack Frost' brunnera macrophylla, each leaf no bigger than my fingernail. This plant surprised me by making me fall in love with it--I generally do not appreciate white leaf variegation in my own garden.

Maybe it was just silver enough, or maybe the eye-popping planting around it was its ticket to acceptance? Placed at the foot of a dark urn planted with carex buchanii and 'Vodka' begonias, it shared company with black mondo grass, yellow creeping jenny, 'Chocolate Chip' ajuga, scaly buckler fern, 'Othello' ligularia, 'Hillside Black Beauty' cimicifuga/actaea, and more of those cherry-flowered begonias.

Can you guess what is sprouting in this last picture? It took me a minute to remember what these little rounds of leaves could be, but the glossiness gave them away. And then I remembered that I had trimmed several ratty leaves off of this European ginger last week. When I purchased a pint of this plant at a master gardener plant sale, it was mislabeled as the supposedly hardier Canadian ginger. I bought one pot of each, but the latter disappeared a month later and has not been seen since.

I hope that you enjoyed this little tour of what's new in my garden. If you are good at identifying sprouting perennials, by the way, amble on over to Hank's place. He just discovered that he was lucky enough to buy a house where a gardener had lived at one time, and could use help ID'ing a few things...


*edited to add: When I was 17, a guy I had known for a while showed up at my door for our first date with 3 beautiful cream-colored roses. He said that they were to let me know he appreciated me sharing the evening with him and wanted it to be memorable for me, too. I was a little suspicious of his motives, but he was a perfect gentleman. Even now, 14 years later, the thought makes me smile...

A Quick Trip to the Black Swamp

I usually try to visit my parents in Northwest Ohio as April turns to May, because seeing the large-flowered trillium (trillium grandiflorum, below) and other spring wildflowers in bloom reminds me of my childhood. I won't be able to make my usual trip this spring, as I am working part-time at a local garden center to fund a few house projects... so I am indulging myself in a virtual trip here, courtesy of pictures I took in the spring of 2005.

My brothers and I spent lots of time tromping through the woods behind our house. The woods consisted of just a few acres of trees--saved mostly to serve as a windblock for the farmland behind it--but it held all of the mystique of a vast forest for us as children. We explored rotting logs, searched for frogs in the vernal pools and picked flowers for Mom. Woodland phlox (phlox divaricata) was a sweet-scented favorite. Here is a shot of it surrounded by young ferns:

I cringe a little to realize that some endangered plants like trillium were always part of our "bouquets," but since the forest floor is covered with them now we must not have done too much damage after all.

The trees in the woods are mostly tall and mature, but there are occasionally young, leggy understory shrubs and trees as well. Thanks to the anonymous emailer who helped me to identify the flowers on the understory beauty below as those of the common pawpaw (asiminia trilobia.) I have long wanted to try the supposedly custard-like fruits of this tree, so I wish I had known to go back and search for it later in the season!

I appreciate that certain woodland plants look particularly garden-worthy, like the Jacob's ladder (polemonium reptans) below, surrounded by ferns and toad trillium (trillium sessile--lower left.) Carpets of common blue violets form drifts of groundcover as well.

Other areas look decidedly wild in an appealing way. For example, this melange of ferns, woodland phlox, large-flowered trillium and Jacob's ladder, all sandwiched between clumps of huge Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) leaves:

I feel very fortunate to have access to traditional spring garden flowers now, and would not be without tulips, crocus, brunnera, and the like. But to me the spring wildflowers of the Ohio woodland will always be the harbinger of the season... the flowers that finally mean I can go barefoot for a good long while, and summer is right around the corner. I am looking forward to seeing them again in person, next year.

5 Crazy Things (A Gardening Meme)

The County Clerk tagged me for a meme earlier in the week and I am just now getting around to responding. I am to list 5 Crazy Things--things so crazy, that only a gardening addict would admit to them.

I might be overly tolerant, I might just be that comfortable in my own insanity, or I might be well over the line into delusional... but I really don't think that any of my gardening behavior is all that unreasonable.

Because of this, I had to ask my boyfriend for a little help making this list. (I'm not too sure that it's a good thing that he could come up with so many contributions, but since he hasn't run out the door yet I suppose he's not completely horrified.) Here, then, is the list:

1. Gardening at Night. This is not a new idea--in fact, REM wrote a song about it in 1982--but it still gets me strange looks from the neighbors. Sometimes I do it because I'm still playing in the yard long past sundown, sometimes I do it to enjoy the garden in relative peace and quiet, and sometimes I do it to escape the heat of the day. I admit that it's much easier to do in my new house, because there's more light pollution in the city and thus less chance that I will accidentally weed out a self-seeder that I would have rather kept.

2. Keeping "all kinds of plant detrius" on the kitchen counter. It does eventually make its way to the compost bins outside, but maybe not that same day it is created. (Note to self: I really need to get one of those compost crocks to better hide said plant detrius.)

3. Trashpicking odd things for garden use. An elderly gentleman once asked me, "What in the world are you going to do with those, young lady?" as I lugged two 12in square chimney tiles to the backseat of my car. They are now snuggled into various parts of my garden, and last year sported a couple of different kinds of mint. This year, I think I'm going to put 'Matrona' sedums or 'Little Spire' perovskia there instead. (I would love to use agaves, but even the cold-hardy ones are marginal here--I can't see them surviving in that kind of exposure.)

4. Planning vacations around gardening season. Spring and fall trips, frankly, are out of the question. All I want to do is spend hours upon hours outside during those times of the year, rain or shine. When the garden is on autopilot during the heat of July? Sure, we can take a weekend away then!

5. Garden Voyeurism. I really fail to see the problem with arranging your morning and evening dog-walks around trash pickup schedules (see #3) or according to which houses/gardens you haven't checked out lately. How else are you going to know if the greyish blue house with the yellow climbing rose decided to set out huge clumps of late-flowering yellow tulips to play off of the first rose blooms again this year?

I also fail to see how asking someone to turn around and drive back down the block slowly-- so you can determine just what that gorgeous silvery plant under someone's weeping cherry tree might be--could possibly be a pain. And, frankly, I would be amused if someone pointed out to me just how nicely someone managed to fit three pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum' into their fall landscape, set off by the acid yellow of narrow-leaf blue star (amsonia hubrichtii), as we drove by...

So there you have it. I might have a few quirks when it comes to gardening, but I'm definitely not crazy!