Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I wasn’t a plant slut dragging myself down the streets of horticultural whoredom searching for another roll in the beds and borders. Life would be easier. There wouldn’t be that constant lusting after just about everything new on the market. You’d think I would have learned by now. Because frequently, way too frequently, the new love turns out to really just be a one-season stand, not even worthy of being introduced to the perennial family.

At least with experience I am able to spot some of the n’er-do-well types before they break my heart – “Oh. You again. Go throw your piddly-assed blooms in somebody else’s flower bed. Just seeing something like you again makes me want to go right out and buy a 50 gallon barrel of RoundUp.” That can be especially true when I can see it’s just the straight species that somebody has tarted up with a cultivar name or a trademark like a bunch of cheap make-up from the Village Pantry. C’mon! Who the hell you people think you’re dealing with here?

But all that said, I still get all excited when the catalogues come out or somebody introduces a plant at PPA’s New Plant Forum. My cynical side is forever at war with my everything-is-roses-and-clover side. A battle of epic proportions. “This plant really could be different!” I really do believe it, at least until I fully process the info. Wouldn’t you rather think it was new and improved and impossible to live without? Ah, infatuation. Maybe it will develop into truly perennial love? Read the rest of this entry »

As Irvin so beautifully illustrated last week, winter has arrived. I have had to break out my heavy coat and glove liners for working in the gardens.  At home, I’ve had to light the furnace and there have been “three-cat-nights.”  But if I see one more Snuggie or Dreamie commercial , I’ll scream. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I think winter may have finally arrived, perhaps not on the calendar but in pretty much every other way.

Icy roads. Short days. Bitter winds. Freezing temperatures. The bloody freaking temperatures absolutely scream winter. It’s especially a slap in the face after the extremely long beautiful autumn. But that was then and this is now and winter will be what it wants to be. Read the rest of this entry »

I simply cannot get it out of my head. This fall is absolutely beautiful – from all the great color to the nearly perfect temperatures day after day. And though I wrote on a similar topic last post I must return to the gorgeousness of things again. To not go on and on about this fall would be a double sin no doubt. It should be cold, damp, and gray by now. Leaves should be brown and fallen. Even late perennials should be finished. Tropicals should have long since been put to bed for winter. But it’s not that way at all. It’s sunny and warm out. Red and gold leaves still hang on the trees. Perennials are still flowering. Brugmansias are blooming outside my office window. It’s all wrong. But it’s so all right.

I am still digging tropicals and other non-hardies at home. If the weather had not been so great I would be in deep double-dug doo-doo. As it is, I’m sort of leisurely going along – but admittedly starting to look over my shoulder for “real” November weather. Whether it was the cooler summer or the steady rains I don’t know but many plants did extra good this year. The Amorphophallus konjac got huge. Read the rest of this entry »

In the great green garden-room
There was an elephant ear alocasia
And some blue and white balloon flowers ….”

Brilliant red of the native sourwood tree with the clear yellow of Photinia in the background. IMA/Oldfields border garden near orchard.

Arisaema and sourwood leaves

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