Ferocious winds all day Monday left the poppies leaning, some struck down entirely by Tuesday morning. I was clipping off broken branches and thinning, trying to trim their sail should the winds return, when Marty walked through noting, “Hey, that poppy opened.” I looked up at a couple still standing upright, saw some new blooms [...]
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My birthday took up just about every single day last week, and more days on the weekend, which is how I rationalized a trip on Saturday to find that hitherto unknown-to-me, unmet, spectacular plant that would forever after be marked as my, gollum gollum, birthday present. (Because we wants it.) At our house we always [...] If it weren’t for the few stems of Scilla peruviana in bloom I’d feel completely out of step this March Bloom Day, when so many participating gardens are sending forth crocus and iris and so many other traditional spring bulbs and blooms. We may have flowers every month of the year, as Carol’s Bloom Day [...] The garlic passionflower, P. loefgrenii, is supposedly one of the smaller, less-rampant species, described as a 10-footer, but that’s the size it’s reached in just its first year in my garden. The vine is planted against the eastern boundary fence, facing west, soaking up strong but coastal afternoon sun. It’s new to cultivation, so not [...] Work has piled up, so there’s little time for much else. But something I can always squeeze in while under deadlines are small breaks to read catalogue descriptions of plants. And with impeccable timing, a great Australian plant nursery catalogue was introduced recently by Studio G, so I’m actually looking forward to two more days [...] Passiflora loefgrenii, also known as the garlic passionfruit vine from Brazil, is making an unlikely, late-December flowering debut in my garden. This December show is probably a one-time fluke for a summer bloomer that will settle down to a more predictable routine after its first year. Then again, it may actually prefer to bloom in [...] I was skimming through the design archives of the Wall Street Journal online yesterday, a wonderful trove of good reading, and recognized the pressed leaves of Macleaya cordata, the plume poppy, used by the shoe designer Christian Louboutin to decorate the walls of his “shoe archive” in France. Mr. Louboutin was mischievously photographed here in [...] The tulips are planted, and now the vegetable bin in the fridge is once again restored to its rightful purpose of chilling vegetables. I went beyond the required six weeks of prechilling this year, but overchilling is not the problem that underchilling is. I think this year is a new record, 12 pots in total, [...] I’m still puzzling over the winter exuberance of the nicotiana I sowed from seed early last spring. Now over 5 feet tall, the seed came from ‘Ondra’s Brown Mix,’ a selection made by Nan Ondra from her garden Hayefield. Annie’s Annuals sells something similar called ‘Hot Chocolate,’ which she feels has some Nicotiana langsdorfii blood [...] |
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