Plants that didn't miss a Beat in the Heat

Connecticut has been unusually hot and dry this year. Each day has brought 90 degrees and higher temperatures with just touches of rain. With only a country well for water, I have been swept back to my California days in the 1990s, conserving garden water at every turn. Unfortunately the carefree, child-free city life of a 20-something married couple did not come with the memory. Just joking kids!

I have fretted over which plants to water and which to sentence to survive desert conditions without a drink from my hose. I don't know at what point my well will run dry, but I don't want to find out. I gave priority to the vegetable garden, potted annuals and any new plants. The following full-sun plants in my garden fared well despite complete neglect (in the order I saw them as I walked around the yard):

Lavendar
Gallardia
Lambs Ears
Roses
Cransebill Geranium
Iris
Sea Grasses
Sedum
Day Lilly
Montauk Daisy
Shasta Daisy
Penstemon
Bronze Fennel
Cone Flower
Phlox
Kent Bell Oregano
Russian Sage
Catmint

All my established shrubs fared fine without a turn at the spigot with one exception. What I belelive is a Niko Blue Hydrangea (I inherited it with the house) did not fare well. It sees little shade and now bares ugly brown blooms that droop their heads in sorrow. Oh well, lesson learned!

Spiders in Your Ears

There are three little words I long to hear: “It’s unseasonably warm.” And it is. That means the start of one of my favorite activities - spring clean up. Many think I am crazy to like the chore. Many understand my glee over spring yard work perfectly.

One of the most rewarding maintenance projects is cleaning out the dead parts of my lambs ears. No, I don’t have farm animals (yet.) I have several Stachys byzantina ‘Helen von Stein’ or Big Lambs' Ears.

Each winter, the leaves die and remain in place. The mushy, ugly grey matter serves as perfect protection from wind, ice and snow. Spiders love to hide in the self-made mulch. Cleaning out the dead leaves and revealing the new green growth can be perilous. Use a light rake and wear thick leather gloves to prevent bites from spiders hiding in your ears.

This job of clearing the cobwebs proves most satisfying. When I am through, the plants transform from ugly mounds of muck to something that resembles and poorly shorn sheep; or a lamb with a bad haircut - if lambs were green.

Do Gyms Make us Fat?

Picture from Time Magazine August, 2009.











Time Magazine published an interesting article called "Why exercise won't make you thin." The cover of this issue showed a woman on a treadmill dreaming of a cupcake. The online version shows this picture - a woman doing a back bend over a donut. The author, John Cloud, suggests that going to the gym does not make people lose weight. (See my earlier post Out of the Gym and Into the Garden under March 2009.) One of the studies Cloud points to is the "Minnesota Heart Survey." Its statistics show that obesity continues to rise in this country despite the fact that the number of gym memberships also continues to climb.

The article proposes that going to the gym makes people eat more. After a workout most people consume more additional calories than they burned off. "Whether it's because exercise makes us hungry or because we want to reward ourselves, many people eat more — and eat more junk food, like doughnuts — after going to the gym" writes Cloud.

Cloud also gives a great example from a researcher named Church. ' "I see this anecdotally amongst, like, my wife's friends," he says. "They're like, 'Ah, I'm running an hour a day, and I'm not losing any weight.'" He asks them, "What are you doing after you run?" It turns out one group of friends was stopping at Starbucks for muffins afterward. Says Church: "I don't think most people would appreciate that, wow, you only burned 200 or 300 calories, which you're going to neutralize with just half that muffin." '

Personally, I find the exact opposite psychological effect after working in the garden; I want a salad.

The article's author doesn't discourage exercise altogether. He does tout the disease prevention and mental health benefits of physical activity. "But there's some confusion about whether it is exercise — sweaty, exhausting, hunger-producing bursts of activity done exclusively to benefit our health — that leads to all these benefits or something far simpler: regularly moving during our waking hours. We all need to move more — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says our leisure-time physical activity (including things like golfing, gardening and walking) has decreased since the late 1980s, right around the time the gym boom really exploded — But do we need to stress our bodies at the gym?"

Read the Article at: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html

Perennially Behind

I am perennially behind. Often it is because I bite off more than I can chew, but mostly it is because I always find something more interesting to do than what needs doing. For example, this was my outdoor christmas decor up until Dec. 19th.









At least I knew I got all the flower bulbs in before it snowed...until I found this on the back porch.













I wonder when I will start the seeds for the vege garden? June?

If Wonder Woman was a Flower

If Wonder Woman was a flower, I think she would be a rocket snapdragon. Gorgeous, tall and tough as nails.

My statuesque annuals (zone 6 here) continue to win the battle for survival against an early winter. The first snow came a couple weeks ago and light frost visits many a night. Yet, the super hero of the garden persists, even thrives. My sedum have already turned brown, the maples have shed their leaves, but the multi-colored Wonder Women of the flower bed continue to create new blooms. Undaunted, they remain poised and beautiful in the face of impending winter danger along with their neighbor the rose "Lady Emma Hamilton." Three cheers for tough broads!

I tried to think of a clever way to include references to Wonder Woman's invisible aircraft and those great bullet-shielding bracelets...but I have nothing.

What's the Matter with Plants These Days?

Do you really know what your plants are doing when you are not at home? This is how my brother Matt and my husband caught my daffodils one day this spring when mommy wasn't home.

Man, smoking really does ruin your looks, doesn't it?

Picutures created and arranged by Matthew Berry and photographed by my husband.

A Perfect Pair

Sun shines beautifully through Japanese Blood grass. The illuminated red magically highlights the contrasting blue of annual Salvia. The opposing shapes also strengthen the marriage of these two plants; one sharp-tongued and firey, the other soft, fluffy and soothingly rounded. Opposites do attract.

Many of my plant pairings are accidents. This is one such case. The perrenial originally planted where the annual salvia now grows died. I was hurrying to get my patio garden "up to snuff" for my mother's 75th birthday since it was front and center in the party space. The blue and red decorations must have influenced my plant choice, although I was unaware of it. I chose blue annual salvia to fill the gaping hole. When I got home and planted it next to the blood grass, I knew I had another perfect pair. Never in my life have I been so coordinated with garden plants matching party decorations. Who knew!

Note: Japanese Blood Grass is considered invasive. I have a small clump that I don't allow to expand. If you own this plant, pull any thin green off-shoots.

A Little Western Flair

I used to live out West. One of my favorite things to gaze at while walking the streets of San Francisco was the beautiful bouganvillea. This warm weather climber graced the walls of many dwellings. The bold fuschias, purples and reds of the flowers fixed any blues my brain cooked up.

I haven't lived in California for years, and I miss this bright-hued baby. So I brought a little of the left coast to my house in CT. While I can't have it climb my walls all year, I can train it up a potted trellis and bring it inside for the winter months. The blooms stay dormant for most of the plant's indoor confinement. But, when warm weather returns to CT, my bougainvillea bursts with blooms and reminds me of my nightly strolls in the city of victorian painted ladies. Is it possible to feel a little home sick when you're at home?

For the Love of Leaves

Garden writers and designers have claimed for years that you can design a beautiful garden considering only the foliage of a plant and ignore the blooms. Shade plants work particularly well as foliage features.

I haven't had a shady area to plant in years. My last house had all sun all the time. Now I have just a small patch of shade by my kitchen door. I decided to plant a garden in this small space that didn't need deadheading so it would always be welcoming and never seem shabby.

I combined the lime green of Hosta 'Sum and Substance', and the blues of Hosta 'Blue Angel' for large leaves at the back. The small leaves of Huecherra 'Lime Rickey' (Coral Bell) fill in the front nicely and echo the light green in the back. Also in front is an unknown maroon and green Coral Bell that I grabbed from my mom's garden that ties in the Euphorbia at center. The top drama queen is the annual I added this year called Persian Shield. The irridescent purple and green leaves contrast perfectly with the Hosta Sum and Substance (see top picture.) This purple pleasure likes to stay fairly moist (I have it near, but not under, the gutter spout) and can join your house plants inside for the winter.

I will have to split these plants every couple years to contain them in the space. But that is not a negative for me. It means I can share them with my friends and family if they like this combination.

It's A Family Affair

Vegetable gardens are fashionable again. Seed sales soared this year. Communal gardens have come back. An abundance of articles on vegetable gardening is available this year. You can read about every aspect of this re-emergent trend from Oprah's beginner advice "From Seeds to Edible Greens: 4 Easy Vegetable Garden Rules" http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200906-omag-vegetable-garden/2 to the Wall Street Journal's grocery bill financial analysis "How much green can growing a vegetable garden save you?" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123983924976823051.html.


The growth of our own garden, beyond tomatoes and basil, began when my sister-in-law had the idea of planting a family vegetable garden 2 years ago. She got the idea from reading the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/. Since we have four family households in our small connecticut town, it was easy to pick a plot and all dive-in. Each family member, from age 8 to 74, does their part. We grow plenty of crops for all of us as well as some friends. In fact, we ended up begging people to take our Zucchini donations last year. One can only eat so much Zucchini.

We all have different skills and work preferences. Not surprisingly, the younger kids like to dig, water and pick (and eventually throw) rocks. One brother runs the rototiller and mulches. The other brother builds wooden structures such as gates and tomato trellises. My husband built the fence that keeps out the wild life (particularly our "bull-in-a-china-shop" dogs.) Most of the ladies like to weed and pick. I like it all.

At first, the benefits of a shared garden may seem obvious: cheap, fresh food. However, after just one season, other positive effects showed themselves clearly. Vegetable gardening is multi-generational project. These seem few and far between lately. One almost 80 year-old man we know and his 9 year-old granddaughter look forward to growing big beefsteak tomatoes and frying peppers together each year. Another positive point is that the “mother nature-driven” schedule of gardening provides unplanned family time in an over-planned world. And finally, the benefit most befitting of this web site, is outdoor exercise. Digging, hoeing and weeding build strong muscles. Expending more calories harvesting the Swiss chard for dinner than is actually in the greens keeps weight down.

Even if you don’t have an abundance of family in the area, you can still create the same feel. Try a communal garden with friends. You’ll grow more than just green beans.