leaf

– Bloomers

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I planted mountain laurel around the perimeter of our deeply shady back yard several years ago. Some I bought from Home Depot and some I mail-ordered from a specialty grower. In the beginning, I watered, and I fertilized. A few died; a few established themselves. The ones that lived grew and branched, yet grew only green. No blossoms, and blossoms was what I was after. After a few disappointing springs, I gave up looking. Their uneven profiles and glossy leaves faded into the blur.

Two of them surprised me in early May. I saw, through the kitchen window and across the yard, what looked like… buds.

In late May, the buds burst. They have persisted through June.

Kalmia, striped

Kalmia, pink

Is flora time like fauna time? If these Kalmia are, say, seven years old, is that akin to a seven-year-old dog being middle-aged?

I ask myself this question because I don’t think I can take any credit for these blossoms. Well, I put them in the ground, and I tried to hurry them along with water and feed. In the end, though, they bloomed when they were ready. Whether early or late, it was according to their own clock and not mine.

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Photographs by Eli.

– Trees

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This link takes you to a moving short piece on NPR by Julie Zickafoose, called “The First Cut Is the Deepest,” about her response when a neighbor decides to cut down a big, sheltering tulip tree that provides privacy between her land and his. My sister Emily, who wrote to me today about her idiosyncratic love of gravel (ok, Em) and who might consider starting a blog of her own, recommended this story to me a while ago. It’s surprising — you think you know how it’ll end, and then it doesn’t.

This picture is the view out the window that’s over the window seat and between two closets in our new bedroom. From anywhere in the room — standing near the door, sitting on the bed, hovering near the window — a person can see the beautiful, mature Japanese maple that our friend Rich estimates is older than the house.

Window seat, maple tree

Looking out, I feel like Heidi from the Johanna Spyri novel for children, which I recall loving as much as this blogger did. This is the same version I read as a child. It seems to me we owned this book, and that it wasn’t borrowed only once from the library, and I read parts of it over and over. Why was I so attracted to stories about orphaned or independent girls who lived in some sort of extreme circumstances that they eventually tamed or softened? (Other examples are Jane Eyre, Little Princess, Secret Garden, Mrs. Mike, the Little House series, all of Nancy Drew, and Tree Grows in Brooklyn.) Perhaps these are the girl versions of the same forces at work in Moby Dick, although, as I told Grace last night after she strangely asked me about the whale, the captain dies chasing his blank nemesis. Heidi, Jane, Laura, and all the rest — they live to tell about it.

– Aliens

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1. Eli is sorting through years of accumulated stuff. In his desk drawers and closet, he has found artifacts that he wants to toss, and we want to keep. This little fellow, painted years ago at Plaster Fun Time, when Brian worked there, makes a nice garden ornament.

2. On the morning (Wednesday) after a soaking rain, this creepy colony appeared. It was sudden.

Mushrooms under the hosta, in shade

3. I wondered how, and how quickly, fungi grow. I went to YouTube and searched “mushrooms time lapse,” hoping for one or two hits. There are more than two. Apparently there are lots of YouTubers fascinated by the growth (and use) of mushrooms. Weird.

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Thanks, Jimmy, for getting down on the ground and sidewalk to get the alien and mushroom images. And thanks, www.fungifun.org, for the time lapse short of mushrooms, er, growing.

– Supermarket beauties

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Gayla Trail at You Grow Girl and Elizabeth Licata at Gardening While Intoxicated both have recently reported their finds at botanical society plant sales. Why am I paying full price? Why haven’t I bumped into any of these botanical society sales? Do you have to live in Toronto or Buffalo to get perennials for a few dollars each?

Maybe not. At my local grocery store, in addition to the cemetery planters and buckets of geraniums, there were — surprise! — really nice full size perennials on sale, two for $10. (At the local nursery, the same plants are $14 each; even at Home Depot they’re $9 or $10 each.) I inspected them and found these:

Supermarket Beauties

  • Leucanthemum ‘Becky’ (2) — daisies? I should get more.
  • Aquilegia ‘Biedermeier’ (4) — I love columbine.
  • Bellis ‘Strawberries & Cream’ (6) — This was an impulse grab. I’m not normally looking for pink, but these are sweet.
  • Hosta ‘Wide Brim’ (4) — Our back yard is a mix of part and deep shade. These thrive.
  • Hosta ‘Francee’ (2) — Ditto.

Eighteen plants, $90. Not bad. Now if I could only find some cheap annuals. Hardware store, here I come.

– Verified

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Last fall’s mystery plant, which I identified as a Euphorbia, has risen again. Its leaves are limier and its bracts are yellow. (Hmm, I guess this one is not Euphorbia ‘Rubra‘ or ‘Excalibur’, as I speculated previously. )

Euphorbia Arises

Sunday I strolled the section of yellow-flowered perennials at Allandale until I spotted a twin to my mystery Euphorbia; it’s a ‘Polychroma’. Lovely — yellow in the spring and reddish in the fall. (If only all plants could pull off that color change.) I brought home the twin and planted it.

Euphorbia twin verifies

Two Euphorbia polychroma, one on each side of the sidewalk, shading the roots of the clematis that climb the arbor, seemed… stuck out there and lonely. So I went back and bought four more. (They’ll make two sets of triplets when planted.)

Euphorbia four wait

And that pretty well captures how my gardening “design” process works. Not much advance planning, it evolves one tiny decision at a time.

– Seven year wait

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This week I played hooky from life — our ongoing construction project, my piles of paper, an empty fridge, gray pants and wool sweaters — and went to the Cape for a few days with Lydia and Grace to visit my parents. We biked, ate ice cream, and, on glorious Wednesday (temperature 74° F. at the coast), lounged at the beach and walked on the jetty. With my mother and sister Sally, I went to a restaurant and enjoyed a meal that (a) I didn’t cook or clean up from and (b) lasted, over drinks and four courses, way more than 10 minutes.

One can only play hooky for so long, however.

We drove home in sunshine. Back home, even warmer, and a surprise.

The magnolia in the front yard, planted and staked seven years ago by Colleen (gardener/artist) and coaxed, watered, fertilized, and generally clucked over by me, had finally — finally! — burst into yellow bloom. I’ve been waiting.

Magnolia branch, April 25, 2008

Last year there was one bud on the entire tree: the pioneer, the advance guard, a canary. This year there are multiple buds on every branch.

Magnolia buds, April 25, 2008

The buds open at their own pace. This one begins.

Magnolia bud, April 25, 2008

This one is either next, or perhaps proudly insisting on holding out for the last moment of the tree’s spring glory.

Magnolia closed bud, April 25, 2008

Some flowers show signs of later life; petals wither and curl and droop. Green leaves unfurl.

Magnolia with leaves beginning, April 25, 2008

One doesn’t want to have to wait too long for labor and attention to bear fruit; waiting can be wearying. However, in this instance, my thrill with these profuse blooms, which arrived at their own pace, is a match for the weight of waiting, which has suddenly lifted.

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Thanks to Jimmy for the camera work while staff photographer Eli is occupied with other spring concerns, most notably, rowing on the Charles River and “erging” at Simmons College with his high school crew team. (Go, Eli!)