Lovable Ruffians

This is my very first contribution ever to the advice column genre.

Not to worry....I'm not planning to critique wedding etiquette, offer comfort to the lovelorn, or solve your issues with troublesome faraway relatives.  No, this is my version of the infomercial that promises to clean your glasses, answer your phone, and make you disappear standing sideways to a mirror.

And it has to do with two troublesome but overlapping topics: 1) that awkward but unavoidable season between real summer and real fall...and 2) the ugliness of one's garden in said awkward time period just when the weather is finally becoming agreeable enough to brush the ubiquitous cobwebs off the lawn chairs and drink your morning coffee.

It's just not right.

But wait!  There's a solution!  I call these ''lovable ruffians", but someone else might call them "weeds".  And some of these plants are indeed vigorous, uncontrollably so.  Obsessively neat gardeners tend to classify plants out of bounds as pests, but more laissez faire backyard artists soften that pejorative and hail them as "volunteers".

Whatever your outlook, these flowers come up all by themselves, bloom late in the summery season and, in my garden, cover a multitude of sins.

Let's take a look around.....

Chief among these wildlings is the autumn glory clematis, a hardy perennial also known as Japanese clematis.  Small white star shaped blooms blanket the silvery leafed vine by the thousands and give off a pleasant scent.  Butterflies like it OK, but other pollinators are so attracted that the entire plant seems to be vibrating with activity. It is reliably hardy and carefree and fast growing and will cover a trellis or pergola in a season, no problem.  That's the upside.  Now for the downside.  Autumn Glory will also cover your porch railings and your rosebushes.  It comes up anywhere thanks to the poofy parachutes of seed heads produced after bloom.  In other words, it can be a pest.

Unless....unless you fall in love with a frosting of white woven amid your other vines come Labor Day...unless you allow it to duke it out with rogues like trumpet vines or black spotted defoliated climbing roses or the faded foliage of shrubs like spirea or lilacs.  I leave a certain number of these sweet invaders to clamber over my dusty fall garden like a wedding veil.  When it gets out of bounds, I will whack it off ruthlessly with my mower or my pruners. I know I won't kill it!

So fighting the good fight year after year doesn't appeal to you?  Can't say that I blame you.  How about something less permanent that still comes back...more or less...every year...with an element of surprise to boot.  Some untold number of years ago, I planted four or five kinds of annual morning glories alongside the cattle panels that pass for my garden fence.  They grew...(of course they did...unimproved morning glories are bona fide weeds in crop fields), but remained disappointingly green and leafy for most of the summer.  No rose picotee, no heavenly blue, no icy white.....

I was hasty with my judgment.  As the rest of the garden succumbed to various unpleasant leaf diseases and old age, the morning glories threw out long candelabras of twisted buds until, one morning, every single bud unfurled into a banner of brilliant hue, so thin as to be translucent, so numerous one forgave the months of green before. Morning glories do shut up shop and droop drastically on a hot afternoon, but they are refreshed overnight and give a little caffeine free kick to one's morning when they open anew.

I haven't planted a morning glory since that first year.  They sprout all by themselves from last year's fallen seed pods: the deep blue ones with the shiny heart-shaped leaves dominate one fence line while the rose blossomed vines with twining fuzzy leaves appear willynilly amid cannas or coneflowers or hibiscus without smothering any of their supporting cast.

Yes, it is fall and cooler weather beckons. Enjoy the great plumes of ornamental grasses.

 Anticipate the season of colored leaves.  Don't let me discourage you from acquiring such fall stalwarts as mums or kale or lovely fragrant pansies.

 Just be assured that a little benign neglect has its upside too!  Go a little crazy and let a wild free and reckless vine give your fall garden a fresh facelift.....

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

Henri Matisse

The Plague

 There it is...and if, as a gardener, you haven't become acquainted with this plague, count yourself uninformed or lucky.  This is downy mildew, only the latest virulent scourge to hit the gardening public.  Shade gardeners accustomed to choosing a carpet of blooms in any hue of their dreams are suddenly facing a paintbox with a lot of holes in it.

That's what I mean.  The photos above are blasts from the recent past, swaths of thousands of small impatiens grown in our greenhouse, waiting to share their colorful wealth in gardens all over the Corn Belt. They weren't the least finicky of infants in the nursery; too much water, too little air, too much cold, too much heat could lead to a host of maladies, but they were the most eye-popping, the most versatile, the most economical means of covering a shady area.

And for that, the horticultural version of an outdoor Oriental carpet has received no ceremonial tearing of the robes, no requiems, no candlelight vigils.  Rather, the gardening poobahs and opinion makers have shown little regret about consigning impatiens walleriana to the compost heap of history, calling them "insipid", or "boring, and not all that pretty."  True, impatiens are prone to wilt in the midday heat of a summer's day.  But to describe the myriad blossoms as "flat"or "dull" is simply inaccurate.   

Some impatiens are nearly iridescent, some pearly, some sprinkled with glitter.  They have been bred to be striped, starred, and picoteed.  If one chooses a boring color, then I guess it is because one wants to play it straight. 

Alas, if our plant orders are any indication, there will be fewer flats of impatiens grown in not just our greenhouse this spring, but everywhere.  Garden centers and landscapers are scrambling for alternatives for shade...there are new shade coleus introduced; as a coleus lover, I cannot argue their star power in the foliage department, but let's not pretend growing coleus is ironclad protection from the assorted rots and fungi associated with shade gardening.  And dare I mention slugs? We have noticed an uptick in orders for torenia, but don't kid yourself that the wishbone flower packs any kind of color punch from a distance no matter how adorable it is in a pot.  Obviously some folks are turning to impatiens of other heritage: New Guineas raised from cuttings or seed.

Finally, let's admit what the bread and butter flower of last resort is going to be for most gardeners of the shade variety: the begonia.  By all means, plant your red and pink Dragonwing begonias from sea to shining sea; enjoy their cascades of  blossoms and sturdy shiny foliage.  Mix them liberally with lysimachia, or various shades of torenia; they will fill a pot, a basket or an empty space under some hostas.  Take advantage of the recently introduced semperflorens types, the vigorous Whoppers or Bigs.  But, if you do this, don't get on your high horticultural horse and look down upon the fallen comrade, the impatiens.  

After all, is there a bigger horticultural cliche in all the Midwest than the corporate planting of a thousand fibrous begonias?  They may be named with exotic monikers like "Nightlife", or "Yin"or "Yang", "Super Olympia", or "Cocktail", but green leaved or bronze, straight or mixed, they still only come in red, white or pink.  Far be it for me to diss a plant that pays the bills, but hardly anyone sees a flat of begonias and says ...oooooh, aaaaah.... 

So, allow me to regret the passing of an era and hope that the geniuses in the breeding labs will sooner rather than later bring a new improved healthy impatiens back to color starved shade gardeners.  Arrest me and take away my trowel, but respect my opinion that a world without impatiens will be far duller than a world with them.

Waiting for Wisteria

I had never seen anything like it and, after all these years, still haven't.  I asked my parents what on earth the vine was smothering the trees in leafy abundance and streamers of lavender blossoms strung like a lei.  The vine romped along the tree tops and strained the verticality of the electric pole supplying the pump house for the well.  The farm house was long empty and the farm stead had been abandoned to the persimmons, the sassafras, the mulberries and other early invaders of unmown central Missouri land...but even a novice like me could tell the monster in the trees was no newcomer.  My father has taken on many an unkempt landscape in his time, cedars, honey locusts, multiflora roses, and restored them to the pastoral design envisioned in his mind, but he could recognize and appreciate a force of nature akin to a volcano, a redwood, the tide, or a prairie wildfire.

This is the general idea but a mere echo of the vine I recollect

Not all wisteria is the blooming equivalent of kudzu.  Across from my parent's house in Jefferson City was a different breed of the plant, tamed, structural, sculptural.  With a twisted trunk like a Monterey cedar and a mop of bloom like a Japanese cherry on 'roids, the standard was clearly a human contrivance, but still evinced a sturdiness  beyond the brick and mortar of the neighborhood.

Again, alas, not the exact specimen, which was broader, taller and trimmed into a bowl cut by its caretaker.

Blake making sure it is true; Ann making sure Aaron doesn't eat any dirt

Ben on the business end of the spade; Aaron using more primitive means.

Perhaps I exaggerate, but it seems to me that it rained an inch a week the summer of 2004.  At least my photos from that summer reveal a lush green landscape with flowers that rival the gardens in Martha Stewart and other fictitious constructions.  Speaking of construction, I decided our backyard needed a "focal point", something to look toward from back door or the second floor. 

Blake said he would build me a pergola...a shade structure under which we could sip cool beverages, read weighty tomes and have civilized discussions.  Or....at the very least, rest our eyes.

With Ben's help and the sacrifice of several hours of weekend, we soon had a structure.  Now...all we needed was the shade.  

I had a dream......

Easier said than done....

We bought a whole baker's dozen of clematis later that summer.  They have bloomed faithfully every year, creating pillars of blue violet or fountains of sky blue or occasional winsome stars of pale pink depending upon their vigor and character.  But nary a one has ventured as far as the rafters.  None have provided actual shade.

Each year I hang massive mossy bowls of blooms in the 'windows' of the structure.  It is more than sturdy and bears the burden of 20"moss baskets without failure.  These big balls are worth the daily trips dragging the hose out to water, but they suspend between heaven and earth...not above.

Summer 2013

Finally, one of the employees at the Lincoln Earl May sent Blake home with a broken wisteria in a 2 gallon pot.  Every once in a while we've gotten bonus plants like that: alive but damaged and unsalable.  Hey, what the heck?  What was the downside?  Who turns down a freebie?

Let me tell you what I already knew about wisteria.  In addition to my past observations.  

1.  Wisteria is sold two ways: Either as a young plant grafted on an older rootstock, or grown from seed on its own roots and stem.  Garden experts point this out because a seed raised wisteria can a)be  variable in color and b) can take up to twenty years to flower from seed. (!)
2. Wisteria is very long lived. Consequently, choose wisely.  Be certain your grandchildren will bless and not curse you.  Beware lest your garden structure prove inadequate to the task of supporting the kind of vegetation that surrounded Sleeping Beauty's castle.

So....we waited. And the vine grew.  Kind of.  To be truthful, it didn't actually grow.  It just didn't quite die all the way.  Each spring a tendril would eventually sprout from the twisted gray stem.  It wended its way through the much larger and impressive clematis.  And that was it.

Then, four years ago, the wisteria made it to the rafters by the end of the summer.  And three summers ago, it produced a number of blossoms in the spring.  And two summers ago, it began to weave an impenetrable curtain of glossy leaves across the northwest quadrant of the shade structure.  

And this summer?  This summer I bought two colorful Adirondack chairs to set between the pots of banana among the moss baskets of wave and Vista petunias.  Because THIS summer, a good solid quarter of the pergola rafters are green leafy ceiling, home to robins and mourning doves and buzzing bees.  A person could almost feel secluded, nestled out there.

Wisteria is not a passing fancy, a flirtation, a whim, like a fad diet or new pair of shoes.  The reward comes many years after the initial investment.  Wisteria is more like a retirement plan than day trading.  It requires the type of patience that is measured in decades.  And if you are willing and able to grow those kind of  roots, you can grow old reveling in the amazing juxtaposition of the freshest of lavender blossoms with a trunk the hue and texture of elephant skin.  

Patience, grasshopper.  Wait....

Doldrums

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody Sun, at noon,

'Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, no breath no motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean......

Samuel Coleridge, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

The colloquial expression was used in Norman Juster's children's book Phantom Tollbooth, in which a place called "The Doldrums" is inhabited by the Lethargarians who follow the same list of activities every day.


"And the KMAland weather forecast...." comes on most days just after the 5 minutes of national news at 6 a.m.  This day there is no local sports profile to snooze through, no recap of Corner Conference baseball, no fishing report from local lakes.  There's a meteorologist, and when the weather speaks, sleep flees. "High pressure entrenched in the southwest will spread north and east...."

Words to chill the blood and stop the heart.  High pressure.  Sun day after day, evenings quiet and warm, temperature and dew point exhibiting bracket creep until, like the apocryphal toad in the pan of water, we are parboiled and senseless.

Senseless...but not numb. July's routine: early up, pour the water through the Bunn, out the back door to pull the hydrant up, hear the sprinkler splutter to life and water arc through the morning air for an hour before we leave to spread more water.  Breathe in. Gauge the first rays of sun for their sear potential later on: is it a high 80s day? 90-92? The blistering side of 95? On which morning will the last faint vestige of cool be undetectable?  It will happen....just like there will be a morning when it reappears....in a month or two...

The doldrums are defined by fronts that pass far out of radar range, too far for the cloud tops to peak over the horizon or the lightning strikes to flicker: no pillar of cloud by day nor  pillar of fire by night.  The gravel road is ground to moondust; each passerby leaves a plume like the US Cavalry in an old Western. The last clover blooms crunch; I deliberately walk through each small flourishing patch of soft blue buffalo grass on the way to the mum patch.

Weeds still grow where water flows; watering the mums requires stoops and bends to pull crab grass and purslane from the moist circles under the pots.  The weeds that grow amongst the mums are often sown by the emitters themselves and sprout just where we dropped the lead topped leader in June.  The black ground cloth warms quickly but that doesn't deter a multitude of toads from living in the mum pot jungle...whatever else toads eat, they don't digest cricket shells. The soundtrack of pump motors is punctuated by the killdeer cries as the dog wanders through the corn; too close, too close!

Top...bugs.  Bottom...no bugs

Eternal vigilance is...the price of growing mums.  Doesn't have the same ring as "liberty", but, as a gardener, Thomas Jefferson probably wrote that too.  You may not want to spend all morning with your nose to the ground but if you read Facebook instead, you may miss the first signs of an impending caterpillar invasion. There are more worms in heaven and earth, Horatio, than there are dreamt of in your philosophy. And they are voracious. In the war between the species, fastidiousness goes out the window; less than a critical diameter, the fastest way to dispose of a caterpillar is to squish it between one's fingers. Above that squish  threshold, pick the creature off and grind it beneath your heel.  'Crush its head', you know, before it 'strikes your heel '.  I realize caterpillars are not snakes, Biblically, but they do creep on the ground.

What caterpillars hath wrought

Mum watering complete, one does what one can to escape the doldrums.  There is hope in the potential bounty of our summer gardens, edible and ornamental.  The first wedge salad, the first BLT, the first cucumber dip, the first bruschetta: all these delicacies await the advent of the doldrums.  The ineffable essence of charcoal and beef sizzling on a Weber flutters on the capricious air currents, first north then south, changing directions without detecting a breeze.  Suppers are grilled meat, crunchy salad, juicy fruits; all without heating the stove and kitchen.  Thanks, endless days of heat and spreading fan of water.

Finally, the doldrums gives us the most carefree, careless, graceful and forgiving denizens of the garden.  The coneflowers, balloon flowers, and daylilies shrug off the white bright hot days like they would a passing shower.  They stand as fresh in late afternoon as they were at sunrise, the hour I stepped out that back door, after I poured the water through the Bunn, ready to start the sprinkler, after hearing the weatherman give us another day of .....the doldrums.