Bookish Gardener

Lissome lisianthus

This flower currently holds the title of Most Exquisite in my garden. It's the lisianthus (Eustoma grandiflorum) 'Echo Champagne'. I grew it from seed started in the heart of winter. Lisianthus is said to be difficult to raise from seed, which makes me want to think of myself as a Seed Startin' Rock Star, if it weren't for the fact that (a) I used special pelleted seed with an excellent germination rate (yielding enough to be able to share some seedlings with my lovely neighbor who shared her lovely lisianthus with me last year), and (b) I've actually had trouble growing morning glories and nasturtiums (nasturtiums!) from seed this year.

Lisianthus can be found in lush armfuls at the Farmer's Market nowabouts (Frank! I was there yesterday too!), and they are a cut-flower florist's dream, with long-lasting rose-like blooms, elegant glaucous foliage, and long thornless stems, but mine will be left where they look best, in the "white" bed next to the silver artemisia.

Newly blooming: Eupatorium maculatum 'Gateway' (Joe-Pye Weed).

Zucchini harvest: Magda Cousa

Photo credit: Jessamyn Roll

Hey, Mom? When are we having courgette blossoms stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies again?

Yes. I do have a very rich fantasy life. Although I do hope to have stuffed courgette blossoms (For One) a few times this summer, no arm-twisting is required when this zucchini is put on the plate. It's 'Magda Cousa', a Lebanese summer squash that's growing vigorously and fruiting generously already. It's the most delicious summer squash I've ever tasted. Preparation doesn't have to be elaborate: slice it up in thin half-moon scallops, lightly salted, and then stir it up in olive oil with a few (okay, three or four) coarsely chopped garlic cloves until soft and translucent (folks, don't undercook your zucchini!). When fully cooked, it turns a bright lime green around its edges, and has a nutty, mellow, full flavor.

Newly blooming: Panicum virgatum 'Heavy Metal' (switchgrass); Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora 'Limelight'; Humulus lupulus 'Bianca' (golden hops); Salvia forskaohlei (indigo woodland sage).

Go Postal!

This container planting outside the local post office gets my (ahem) stamp of approval. The plumed celosias, mealycup sage, pansies and violas seen here are all annuals that can be purchased or grown from seed for a modest price. There's simply no excuse anymore for institutional vats filled with crayon-yellow marigolds and fire-engine red salvias. I can't wait to plagiarize pay homage to this composition in a container of my own some day.

Newly blooming: Lilium orientale 'Casablanca'; Ligularia dentata 'Othello'.

Where's the fire/ What's the hurry about

It was day's end in the garden, and I was tromping about, bouncing like a pinball between the garden beds. That clump needs deadheading--those crowded seedlings need to be thinned out--those vines need to be tied to stakes--need to pull up more of the devil's-guts quackgrass--and is late July really too late to be sowing cosmos and zinnia?

Stop!

It's frightening how easily one can regress to Type-A behavior, even in the most bucolic of settings. Somehow I managed to administer the equivalent of a couple of slaps upside my head, and then finally I could stop and see: The garden looks great. So much is in colorful, healthy bloom, despite trying conditions of heat and drought. The back border, three years young, has filled out so much that I can barely make my way through it to garden in it without looking like I'm playing a game of Twister. All this, in my own back yard. This is what I need to store away to remember, six months from now, when I'm starved for warmth and color.

Newly blooming: Phaseolus coccineus (scarlet runner bean); Lilium orientalis 'Stargazer';  Veronicastrum virginicum 'Rosea' (Culver's root); Platycodon grandiflorum 'Fuji Pink' (balloon flower); Hibiscus moscheutos 'Kopper King' (hardy hibiscus); Echinops ritro 'Blue Glow' (globe thistle).

Eggplant harvest - 'Purple Blush'

It's been so hot this summer (How...hot...is it?)...anyway, it's been so hot this summer that this early eggplant fruited in record time, even before the tomatoes. This is the eggplant hybrid 'Purple Blush'. The days-to-maturity figure listed for this variety is 62 days (why not 61? or 63?), but it's been only about 6 weeks since it was transplanted into the raised beds. This beautiful little specimen has an all-natural gloss (no paraffin required!), but pricks the unwary with tiny sharp thorns at the base of its stem.

This eggplant is said to have a mild, sweet flavor. I'd like to try it in eggplant pakoras, if I can find a recipe that doesn't require 768 ingredients, 99% of which consist of spices and condiments that can't be found in my cupboards. Don't get me wrong; Indian food is my favorite non-Western cuisine, but when I weigh the prospect of "hours in the kitchen with the mise-en-place spilling off the counters" against "hop in the car to the lunch buffet at Maharajah five minutes away", there's not much of a contest.

Newly blooming: Liatris spicata (blazing star); Dracocephalum moldavicum (dragonshead); Hydrangea paniculata 'Grandiflora' (PeeGee hydrangea); Celosia plumosa (self-sown); Coreopsis rosea (pink coreopsis); Papaver rhoeas (Shirley poppy).

Snap pea harvest

Photo credit: Jessamyn Roll

These were the final harvest of the Amish sugar snap peas (Pisum sativum), which bore pods for over a month after blossoming in scentless white pea flowers right around Memorial Day, and twining all the way up a six-foot chicken wire trellis set up like a volleyball net across the raised bed. The peas never quite made their way into the kitchen, though; the pea stand was an outdoor snack bar for my husband, me, and those of our children that eat vegetables. We gobbled up the young peapods (which were crisp, tender and stringless) for a couple of weeks before catching on to the fact that a sweeter treat would be in store if the pod were left to mature just a bit. (Waiting until the pod begins to bulge ever so slightly gives time for the peas inside the pod to contribute to the flavor with no need to shell them.) My twelve-year-old's special snacking technique: split the pod open at the seam, scrape out the peas and eat them first, followed by the pod. (Works great for Oreos, why not for snap peas?) Even with premature hot weather, the pea plants were only just beginning to slow down before I yanked them out to make room for the expanding soybean plants, which have just started blossoming in tiny lavender flowers. I look forward to planting the snap peas again, this time in double rows, next spring.

Newly blooming: Buddleia davidii 'Black Knight' (butterfly bush); Phlox paniculata 'Franz Schubert'; Datura stramonium (jimsonweed, self-sown); Melampodium paludosum 'Melanie'; Origanum laevigatum 'Herrenhausen' (ornamental oregano).

Beat the beetles

The Japanese beetles didn't wait for the Fourth of July to get their party started this year. The first wave of the invasion began in late June. Last week I noticed that the hollyhocks were looking especially tattered, leaves skeletonized, and petals chewed down to nibs. At high noon, under glaring sun, visible hordes of these scarabs from hell fly in like clumsy zeppelins toward their targets, with a dull buzz.

I abandoned my preferred beetle extermination technique of last year—the forefinger-to-thumb squish—after getting squirted with black beetle gut juice. (Which has also put me off squid ink pasta for quite a while.) Besides, this year there seem to be thousands of the filthy beasts. My heart sinks when I see a half-dozen of them massed on a single rose bud in a configuration approximating a dysfunctional corporate org chart.

In desperation, I tuned into the internet recently and read about someone who uses self-rising flour against the beetles. When ingested, the leaveners supposedly cause explosive, terminal gastric distress. (Ah, such a lovely thought.) I've given it a try, and haven't yet found evidence of its efficacy, but I can tell you that it really annoys a Japanese beetle to have a load of flour dropped on it, which alone is well worth it.

I'd also read that crows eat Japanese beetles (both the grubs and adults), but I haven't been able to persuade Heckyl and Jeckyl to take a break from their tire-seared squirrel carpaccio or their Wednesday-morning curbside garbage bag potluck.

But a momma house finch has come to the rescue. She swoops in from the neighbor's tall evergreens, scans the landscape, then bustles into the thicket of hollyhocks to go after beetle after beetle, a snack for which her seed-crushing bill is ideally suited. (Next time, bring your friends!)

Our heroine:

Newly blooming: Dwarf canna (red); Eustoma grandiflorum 'Echo Champagne' (lisianthus); Agastache rugosa (Korean licorice mint); Centaurea cyanus (cornflower); Thalictrum rochebrunianum (lavender mist meadowrue); Adonis aestivalis (pheasant's eye); Phlox drummondii 'Tapestry' (annual phlox); Coreopsis tinctoria 'Calliopsis Tiger Stripe'; Lavatera trimestris 'Silver Cup' (rose mallow); Monarda didyma (bee-balm, rose-colored); Antirrhinum majus 'Liberty' (snapdragon).

57-variety catch-up

The garden is setting off new blooms these days as fast and furious as the finale of a fireworks show. I can't keep up! Lots of new things have come into flower since my last "newly blooming" post-end postscript (not quite fifty-seven of them, but close):

Eryngium (blue sea holly); Phlox paniculata (white with purple eye, lavender, and 'David'); Cosmos bipinnatus (white, self-sown); Asclepias incarnata (pink milkweed); Lysimachia ciliata (bronzed-leaved fringed loosestrife); Veronica spicata 'White Icicle' and 'Red Fox'; Platycodon grandiflora (balloon flower); Hemerocallis ('Elegant Candy' and a half-dozen others); Delphinium grandiflorum 'Blue Butterfly' (Chinese dwarf delphinium); Salvia officinalis (common sage); a perennial catchfly (Silene), I think, with phlox-like heads of recurved, highly scented white-pink flowerets; Achillea millefolium rubra (red yarrow); Allium sphaerocephalum (drumstick allium); Papaver somniferum (a frilly lettuce poppy); Calendula officinalis (three different pot marigolds); Cleome hasslerana (white spiderflower, self-sown); Verbena bonariensis (Brazilian verbena, self-sown, did it ever); Clarkia ameona (Farewell-to-spring); Vernonia (ironweed); pink orienpet lily; yellow asiatic lily; Alcea rosea (pink, salmon, and white hollyhocks); Coreopsis tinctoria (calliopsis in yellow/bronze and burnt red, self-sown); Malope trifida; hostas ('Sagae', 'Blue Cadet', and others); Astilbe x rosea 'Peach Blossom'; Agastache x 'Desert Sunrise' (hybrid hummingbird mint); Petunia integrifolia; Wave Petunia (white); Foeniculum officinale (fennel); Agastache foeniculum (anise hyssop); Gaura lindheimeri (pink wand flower); Eupatorium fistulosum (hollow-stemmed Joe-Pye weed).

But perhaps a picture's worth a thousand lists.

Cichorium emporium

If the chicory of our roadsides is divided in the spring, it blooms in August rather than early July, and its sky-blue daisy flowers are to my mind quite beautiful.

Henry Mitchell, The Essential Earthman.

Chicory one: I'm not sure whether this is Cichorium intybus or Cichorium endivia. It has dandelion-like, medium-green leaves, not quite as curly as escarole, but suitable (in small doses) for including in a salad green mix. The flowers are the classic ice-blue of the roadside chicories.

Chicory two: This is Cichorium intybus of the type that can be forced into Belgian endive heads. The foliage of this plant is thicker and a deeper green than that of "Chicory one", and although the blue of the flower is only a notch darker, it's almost periwinkle against the deep green leaves (this photo doesn't quite get the color right, alas).

Passengers in my car were getting impatient with my habit of craning for a closer look at flowering chicory along the highway, and I really wanted the chance to be able to look at chicory flowers up close without convoys of semis whizzing by, so I introduced these into my vegetable gardens last year, starting from seed. Cichorium intybus is perennial, and Cichorium endivia is annual or biennial, so these grew like leafy salad greens last year, then overwintered and put up tall stalks this spring that began to flower a few weeks ago. The flowers open by the dozens along knobby-kneed stems first thing in the morning, and close up by early or mid-afternoon, followed by masses of new flowers the next day.

Chicory is known as a weed just about everywhere, but is also called "blue sailor weed" in some parts, a nod to botanical folklore that claims that the flower is the avatar of a lovelorn lass whose heart was broken by a sailor who returned to his true love, the sea. I think her name was Brandy.

He came on a summer's day
Bringin' gifts from far away
But he made it clear he couldn't stay
No harbor was his home.