A sigh of relief

It has been so hot and so dry that for most of August the garden kind of curled up on itself. We've had a little bit of rain and a few stretches of cooler days, and I almost think I heard the roses sighing as they bloomed again.

The Dame de Coeur is the most intense red and has bloomed valiantly in the last two weeks. I've brought several blossoms in the house, but it's so lovely, drawing your eye before anything else in the garden, that I've left most of the blooms on the rose!



The dahlias continue to amaze me. All of the plants are heavy with buds right now, and over the last month they have produced a few spectacular blossoms and quite a few misshapen ones. I'm guessing the imperfect ones are due to the heat and lack of water (I've been firm about watering thoroughly just once a week). With days growing cooler, I'm so anxious to see how these do. Mama has been to High Hampton and says she's a convert now to dahlia's almost-gross exuberance. She found a wonderful way to bring them in the house - float them instead of letting them nod their heads (as mine want to do) in an arrangement. I've been putting them with Genovese Basil in a bowl and Pete says they are his favorite flower now!

The hibiscus is about to bloom again, too, a survivor of the heat and the Japanese beetles. This is another of those plants that command your attention in the garden, with its enormous red flowers.





My friend Cheryl gave me another "Jack and the Beanstalk" (hyacinth bean) vine this summer and I failed to do anything - I mean anything - with it except stick it in the ground. It has thumbed its nose at me and proceeded to adopt the air conditioner as it's trellis. That spot in our garden is so problematic - definitely an addition design flaw to have the air conditioners where they are. It's a sound and sight camouflage challenge that I know I need to take on. I didn't this summer, so I'm grateful for that intrepid little vine!

Two other spots in the garden are definite keepers through the hot and dry times. The herb garden, with the salvia microphylla shooting out through the basil and rosemary, has flourished in the heat.

Black and blue salvia has finally taken off and the hummingbirds love it. I like this one, especially with the Perle d'Or rose blooming behind it. It's just as evil smelling and "black and blue" as that rose is sweet. I didn't think it through when planting, but I think they compliment one another beautifully.

What didn't do so well this summer? The Zephirine Drouhin rose was absolutely devoured by Japanese beetles and so stressed that I didn't fertilize it after it bloomed in early July. Unlike the other roses, it doesn't seem to have recovered. I'm planning to prune it gently today, clean up around it (it looks like a rose battlefield with all the dropped leaves) and try some water and Rose Tone to see if it will come back for fall blooming now that it's not so hot. I also lost a couple of ferns and ginger that Mama had brought from Athens this spring. Maybe related to the weather, but probably having more to do with the severe pruning we gave it in late winter, the chaste tree has not bloomed much and is just looking very tall and spindly. I miss it's old plump and informal shape, so I think we will leave off with the drastic pruning!

Mystery plant

Mama and I chose this plant and several others from the Farmer's Market (a very nice retired school teacher was selling) and we failed to get her to write down the name. By the time we got home and got everything planted, neither of us could remember what it was! It bloomed for the first time last week, and I'm so happy with what I think is Coreopsis tinctoria (golden tickseed). A happy surprise.


There was another wonderful surprise waiting for me in the garden this week. I had attempted to move a mature gardenia (Chuck Hayes) in the late winter as it had outgrown its spot in the garden. I loved that gardenia, which bloomed all summer and stayed green all winter. But after the big move I didn't see anything but stumps until....
In April, as I was relating my sad gardenia story, my Aunt Betty told me you should always prune something severely before moving it so that the root system, which is bound to be shortened by transplanting, won't be trying to support a larger system above ground. Chuck Hayes triumphed despite my poor planning, but next time I'll prune first.

Climate shock

We returned from a week in San Miguel de Allende late Friday night, and the heat here is nearly overwhelming after those days of mid-70's and high blue skies. At 6500 feet, San Miguel really has the perfect summer weather: thunderstorms nearly every night, with clearing, beautiful days. As the summer goes on, the weather becomes drier and seeing the lake at EL CHARCO DEL INGENIO Jardin Botanico made that so clear. This was higher than we had ever seen the water at this wonderful botanical garden.

My favorite plants there? The "pussy toes," (pictured here) which were all in bloom and the amazing, seamed agave cacti. The greenhouse there is a marvel - it is terraced with a stream meandering through from the top left to the bottom center. The stream narrows to be just a deep canyon (charco) in the terrace below the greenhouses, but is still wide and deep enough to accommodate many little fish and frogs. I think it's a brilliant design and I always want to linger at this spot in the garden.

We had an overcast morning for this hike, which was fine as it is a pretty long, steep climb from El Centro to the botanical garden. Narrow cobbled streets filled with shops and children rushing off to school give way to the "Balcones," an area of opulent homes that overlook the city. It was heartbreaking to see how those excessive, (probably American) homes were encroaching upon the botanical garden. Sadly, the gardening at those homes seems to be limited to bouganvilla and trumpet creeper to cover their privacy/security walls.

There is this one, which I can't help but admire.




The real garden magic in San Miguel, however, is all about pots and containers. The town is full of rather flat, forbidding entrances, but if you are lucky enough to pass by a home when someone is coming or going....oh my goodness!

The house where we have stayed is no exception. Here's the face the house gives to the street.




Now here's what is inside. I once counted over 100 pots rambling about the terraces at this house. The effect is pretty amazing - color, depth, activity (lots of nesting birds and crickets), sound and even produce. We had an orange from the orange tree while we were there and went to sleep every night listening to the fountain sounds.









I tried to start the pot magic at home with some Talavera pots from Delores Hidalgo, but I've got a ways to go...

Back in Virginia, my Farmer's Market mystery plant is blooming, the hibiscus is poised to bloom, the foxglove is just about finished, and the butterfly bushes and chaste tree are about to take over the garden. It seems that in one week our garden leapt to its midsummer show. The garden is bone dry, but everything does seem to have survived.

As a nod to the heat that is really here for a while and the resignation to air-conditioning while it's here, I took the screens down and washed windows yesterday so we could really see the garden.

Now if I only had that fountain burbling....

Dahlias and more dahlias

The package called this one "Sight of Summer" but I'm not finding that variety online. The Connecticut Dahlia Society website claims there are as many as 40,000 named varieties of dahlias. Some of them are pretty hideous to me, looking more like plastic flowers than real flowers, but some of the forms are so elaborate that you can't help but admire them!

New camera!

Keeping a photographic record of the garden inspired me to spring for a decent camera today. So, four years and many meals later, here's the finished patio.

I've been rushing home each day to inspect the progress of four plants that are about ready to flower: Crocosmia Lucifer, "Black and Blue" salvia, a hollyhock I have no recollection of adding to the garden and the first of some cheap dahlias I bought this winter. Finally, one lone dahlia bud began to open. I am so pleased and relieved about its color. It looks like it will be a wonderful crimson and gold echo for the Crocosmia in front of it. Now, if I could just do something about that magenta Bee Balm lurking behind!

The "Black and Blue" is from the Farmer's Market last year. I bought some after seeing Mama's plant blooming like crazy (even in semi-shade) by her cobalt blue glass bird bath. It was such a gorgeous sight, I had to have some. Right now it is competing with all of the Larkspur that just doesn't want to give up early summer. As soon as it really blooms, I think I'll pull out the nearby Larkspur.

The hollyhock is adorable! It looks like lots of little party dresses. I wish I could remember how I came by it and what it's called. I'll add it to my "research list!"

I bought tomatoes at the Farmer's Market this morning, and can't wait to harvest the first basil tonight and have a caprese salad. The dill has grown by leaps and bounds this past week, but the Lavendula Grosso that Becky suggested isn't looking very "grosso" yet. I'm hoping this variety will change my luck with lavender. We saw fields of it in Michigan last week, and beautiful little pots (like we get African violets) of it in the grocery store. Darn it all.

Also note the Dianthus that just won't go away. They were from centerpieces (bedding plants wrapped in plastic, then tissue paper) at a conference in the spring, and what could I do? I had to give them a home. My friend Pat took two and I foisted more off on my newlywed friends.

Now for a confession. I had been fretting over the climbing rose, Cecille Brunner, that I've had for five or six years. It is so aggressive that it was shading the hisbiscus, the peonies, the foxglove, and it was like a war zone getting in there to weed (terrible, tiny, numerous thorns). Two weeks ago, I put on heavy long sleeves and jeans, armed myself with a staple gun, twine and pruning shears and "went under." Before I knew it, this is what I had done! Worse still, I was so horrified by my pruning spree that I couldn't do the right thing and finish the job - take off the length of it along the fence. I know if I don't I'll never have any real growth in the middle. What a mess. I may have to ask Kurt to jump in for me. He likes to prune and see what happens (I'll post a photo of the chaste tree some time soon).

Caroline is looking into climbing hydrangeas, so I've been studying mine this week. One of them is lovely right now. It was actually a mistake purchase. I was on a garden tour in North Carolina and meant to buy the "Moonlight" variety of this plant, which is beautiful with lightly shaded edges in silver. I saw it in Elizabeth Lawrence's garden in Charlotte. It's funny the plants and plantings you remember. Three more from the garden tours Mama and I took stand out to me: Elizabeth Lawrence's bamboo screen RIGHT outside her breakfast room window to block the neighbor's close house; the George Tabor (maybe) azalea surrounded by holly fern in a Charleston garden; and the Muhly grass in another Charleston garden. I wonder which ones Mama remembers.


Back to our hydrangea. Even though it isn't Moonlight (or maybe Moonbeam), I love the flowers on this. They remind me of a Calder mobile.

Our other climbing hydrangea is such an effective cover for the neighbor's fence. It looks a little prehistoric in the winter, but I like that about it too.

I'm doing battle right now with Japanese beetles - discovered this morning when I noticed one of my roses looked a little droopy. I just plain despise those things. But I have found a satisfying way to deal with them. Take a small plastic bag and hold it under the beetle. Tap the leaf. They fall into the bag. Gather as many in the same bag as you can - they are too stupid to fly out. Tie a knot in the top of the bag and step on the whole thing. (OK - I do feel kind of badly, but I can't believe they have any natural predators in this country except ME!)

Garden records

I've tried diaries, files, blank books and scraps of paper stuck in gardening reference books as garden records, but I always end up wishing for a photographic record and the text ends up being sporadic. April 2002 followed immediately by April 2007. This should be different....

....but here I am browsing old and new photos to decide how to start and I'm meandering again. I'm missing Byron and Peter after our weekend in Michigan, and I found this picture of Byron laying the brickwork for our patio three summers ago. He designed it and built most of it himself, and we love it. Bits of mazus and lots of moss grow between some of the bricks now. I know I should pull them out, and I do periodically and replenish the sand, but it pains me to do it.

More recent garden construction here: the dreadful sod project this spring. Frog Hollow Farm does make the best sod though. The grass is still weed-free and thriving in the back and along our impossible utility strip - even in the shade.

Kurt is faithful about recording progress in our garden, with a crummy little camera. I am so grateful for the photos. It's staggering when you see the contrast between winter and summer and the difference four years makes to a camellia.

I can't wait to get out with the camera tomorrow and record the progress of the daring Crocosmia Lucifer!