Bookish Gardener

Come on and dance with me

Lathyrus odoratus..."He said that her friends just call her 'Sweet Pea.'" Oh, it's January, the month of seed catalogs, and my eyes will be bigger than my stomach—that is, the contents of all the packets of sweet pea seeds that I'll put in the shopping cart will overcrowd the modest four-foot trenches allotted to them alongside the undulating arched trellis that bisects one of my three raised beds. The heirlooms, the Spencers, the one from the monk, the new varieties and hybrids—they are all irresistible.

I've made my share of mistakes in tending to my sweet peas over the seasons, though not the obvious one of letting the Midwestern summer heat and humidity get to them—as long as I'm diligent with watering and feeding, and happily, obsessively picking off the buds as soon as they're on the wane and before they form...peas...they'll chug along through the first touches of light frost and beyond. No, the mistakes I've made have been unforced errors: waiting (i.e. procrastinating, then letting time slip away) later than I should to get the seeds in the ground; forgetting to soak or scrape the seeds before getting them in the ground; pinching the seedlings to encourage branching when they are crowded enough already and this will only delay them reaching the trellis; noticing too late that they've grown so vigorously and thickly that the trellis is about to...too late! topple over.

But each growing season, the sweet peas manage to survive that season's malministrations and reward the garden, and the gardener, with their beauty of form, color, and especially scent, like no other. From the first signs of successful germination, to how could these things have grown three feet already and where is the twine to tether them to the trellis, 

Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight:

With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white,

And taper fingers catching at all things,

To bind them all about with tiny rings.

Keats, "I stood tip-toe upon a little hill," 1817.

 

Elb-OW

I looked up this morning, and this summer's gone

(Aaand TIL upon verifying the lyrics that that's a mondegreen that's happily resided in my brain all these years, in the stead of "I looked out this morning / and the sun was gone.") But yes, today is the autumnal equinox. Hello fall, goodbye summer.

There's still some juice, and color, left in the growing season. My garden's Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus 'Blue Bird'), insulted but not felled by the last harsh winter, and finally unmolested by Japanese beetles, unfurls perfect blooms in a perfect hue every day these days. Also happily beetle-free, at last, is the self-sown Kiss-Me-Over-The-Garden-Gate (Polygonum orientale), casually elegant in cerise. Enabling the illusion that all won't be quiet, and brown, and then white, by the next quarter-turn of the calendar, are a half-dozen stolid and florid late-blooming daylilies, and the wildflower mix bounty of white, pink, and magenta cosmos and orange marigolds, still chugging along.

But I can only avert my eyes from the (so many) weeds making their late-season resurgence. And cry "uncle," and wave the white flag of surrender, with my non-dominant hand, since my dominant hand, and arm, and elbow are on the injured list, after overenthusiastic weed pulling sessions in early summer. The technical term for it is "tennis elbow," they say. Yanking hurts, pulling hurts, gripping hurts, lifting my coffee cup hurts. I fought the weeds, and the weeds won.

Yaass Queen

Some plants were whupped by last winter: the 6-foot burning bush (Euonymus alatus 'Rudy Haag'), now down to a handful of new growth from a nub of whatever-didn't-get-felled by the -27ºF polar vortex; the Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus 'Bluebird'), same; and the more-than-a-decade old climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris) now wending up the chimney with only sparse foliage surrounded by dead twigs.

But others liked it cold, apparently: the peonies bloomed by the hundreds; all the daylilies are punching above their weight and setting multiple buds upon multiplied stalks; and I have never seen the Queen-of-the-Prairie (Filipendula rubra) hold court like this. The blooms are the purest deep pink, just this side of classy without taking that short walk to brassy magenta. Up close, you see the sewingpin-head-sized pink pearls of the fluffy foam blooms to come. From afar, the grove of the Queen's blooms outshines everything else around it.

As with every season, timing is everything. The pollen-heavy blooms of the Queen are irresistible to insects, especially (or most disgustingly visibly) the Japanese beetle. This year, the Queen bloomed early, and the Japanese beetles are late, though they'll have their way with the Queen soon enough.

The Queen moved herself toward the front of the bed, now in a sightline of other reds: scarlet beebalm (Monarda didyma), and a dun-reddish daylily on her side of the bed; and, across a strip of lawn to another bed, Monarda 'Raspberry Wine,' the color of a sophisticated lipstick, and too-red-to-be-orange and too-orange-to-be-red Maltese Cross (Lychnis chalcedonia). All these reds don't go together in the most wonderful way, like the so-wrong-it's-right chords in a Monk tune:

"Ugly Beauty," indeed.

 

Die schöne mullein

Oh, how I wish the common mullein (Verbascum thapsus) were more common in my garden. I've heard that our subdivision (developed in the '70s) sits on land originally planted to pasture, so the woolly rosettes of farm weed mullein will show up once every few years or so, most often in the inconvenient path of the power mower.

But we have a gift this season: a flowering mullein that has sat itself down right next to a five-alarm fire red Lychnis chalcedonia (with many aliases, including the better known "Maltese cross," or my favored, "Burning Love"...a hunk of, hunk of burning love...aahh). The mullein's just begun to flower with a yellow whose clarity is outdoing that of the Carolina lupine and even the short, medium, and tall Oenothera around the garden. It's a sight to see. Come back soon.

Amo amas amelanchier

Spring's imperative: to visit all the amelanchiers at the Arboretum when they're in bloom once a year. Their finery is on display for only a short time, and this week is that week. Amelanchier is a delicious-to-say botanical name; Wiki-know-it-all puts paid to the urban legend (well, a legend, probably not urban) that its common name of "serviceberry" comes from its bloomtime coinciding with the time when the frozen ground has thawed sufficiently to allow digging of burial plots. Serviceberry, shadbush, Juneberry: they're all lovely. The delicate white blossoms drape like Chantilly lace over deeply colored, athletically sinewed limbs and branches. Even those with abstractly improvised branching pose artfully (although I just saw one in a commercial landscape hedge-trimmed into a lozenge; don't do them like that). With some, the white raiment shines bright against the emerging lime green foliage; with others, the flowers and leaves merge into a sepia haze that somehow tints their surroundings too, and transports you, wibbly-wobbly, to a past time not your own. Glimpse them while you can; it won't be long until the amelanchiers change into their street clothes and recede into the crowd.