Coming Attractions: Next Spring in Josie's Garden

Bulbs arrived from John Scheepers last week and I have a bunch of them in the ground already, with the rest slated to go in tomorrow. I was really happy with my bulbs from Scheepers last year, so I'm looking forward to this year's bounty. I have three main gardening goals for the fall-through-spring.

• Pull and store dahlia tubers. I had a really depressing dahlia crop this year, which is totally my fault for planting them in less than ideal sun, but I am hoping I can get some tubers out of it and try again next year. Thinking about planting them in a new garden bed
  
• Plant spring bulbs closer together. I'm really bad at estimating distance and length, so I planted my bulbs too far apart this year. I have a better idea of how close I can put them and I think it will produce a better result. All the blooms were very pretty, but I saw a lot of my neighbors and my Mom planting much closer together and I liked that look much better.
  
• Actually pruning the shit out of the wisteria this winter. I often forget to prune it, and it's completely out of control. I'm mildly concerned about it hauling off our house or an unsuspecting neighbors' to the woods to digest it.

First up is a lovely pink narcissus called Precocious. It's a Grant Mitsch hybrid and is quite large for a narcissus. I think I will put this in front of the rhododendrons (which got a righteous pruning this summer - they were getting quite clogged up) with the light white ones I have there already.
On the tulip front, we have this peony flowering tulip called Yellow Mountain, which is a variant of another one I ordered called Mount Tacoma. It's this lovely butter yellow with distinct green stripes running up the outside. I love these peony flowering varieties!
This is one that my Mom turned me on to. It's an Emperor (also fosteriana) tulip called Sweetheart, which Mom bought after our cat Sweetheart passed away at the old age of 18. She planted them in the front yard and they were so striking that I just had to get some. They're very tall and have YOOGE blossoms. The coloring is interesting, too - a very soft blend of yellows and whites.
Of course, it's not a Brown Family Garden without some Perestroyka. I believe these are Darwin tulips (there are a couple breeds in the single late tulip category), but regardless of their genus, they are gorgeous. I think I like them most for their incredible range of color throughout their blooming period.
Here's the peony flowering tulip Mount Tacoma that I mentioned above. I bought this one partly because it's gorgeous, but also because the name reminded me of my friend Celia, who grew up in Tacoma, WA. This has the same light green striping as the Yellow Mountain variant, but on a creamy white petal instead of yellow.
I always plant some orange flowers because it's Rich's favorite color. I had planted Emperor's Orange before, but I liked the variations in color on this one, a Triumph tulip called King's Orange. This one also provides one of those wonderfully dippy descriptions that one only finds in flower catalogs, to wit: "Not for the faint of heart, King's Orange delivers vivid color with dark coral-red petals which blend to marigold-orange edges with a small canary-yellow center and an exterior yellow base." I really love the idea of some wizened little plant whisperer type sitting in their potting shed thinking "whoa! Just think of what these babies will do to the hostas!" then checking to make sure they have their heart medication handy and furtively circling King's Orange on their order form.
This parrot tulip is another tip from Mom. I had misidentified it for a friend who took pictures at my graduation party, confusing it for a variety with more white, but Mom set me straight before orderin' time. This one is called Estella Rynveld, and thought I don't usually love variegated petals, I am helpless before her.
Carnavale de Nice is my other variegation weakness. I had these last year, and I was thrilled with them. I actually think this shot of them is pretty lame. Last year, mine had much stronger red coloring and more of it, though much less yellow. This is another peony flowering variation.

Sometimes the Understanding of "Garden Center" is a Little Foggy

Lots of gardening this Memorial Day weekend, beginning with the installation of the long awaited raised dahlia bed:
It's an 8'x5' bed made out of untreated wood (for better flower health), constructed by the crack construction team of Brown & Brown, Inc. Dad helped me go to Lowe's, where we got a bunch of wood and some nails, then we went out back and went to town using Pioneer Woman's advice on building a raised garden bed, which was very helpful (though I think Dad probably could have winged it). Some stakes remain to be screwed in, but that's a quickie job. The tough part was leveling everything and getting it situated. I still need to get some dirt for it, but I will have to run out tomorrow. Then we will have the planting!

Mom and I also went over to a nearby nursery to pick up some plants for my back garden. Now, I don't run a garden store or anything, but I'm just saying that MAYBE if I was going to open one I would hold off on the order for "the jive-talkin', stereotype-livin' Jim Crow crows from Dumbo in lawn ornament form," you know?
Then again, if you're already making room on your shelves for the "Water Worm" then I guess there isn't much reason to hold back:
Umm, that is a dildo. I understand that they're trying to say it's something that indicates when your garden needs watering, but...it's a dildo. I mean, an epic, somewhat terrifying dildo, but still. Moreover, it's one of those completely useless items that is a redundancy to something that comes standard on your body, because the best way to tell if you need to water your garden? Is to touch the soil. With your finger. [NB: Most humans come equipped with ten of these highly specialized tools.] You're supposed to put this thing on your soil, and if the terra cotta is dark, the soil is okay. If it's light, you need to water it. I am amazed I haven't seen a deranged infomercial for it.

On the other hand, we did get several nice plants and we saw both my accompanist and a hummingbird:

Garden Update: Dahlias...Alive, Planter Planted, Epic Weeding

So about three years ago I went to the nursery with Mom and Dad for Mothers' Day, which was notable not only as a demonstration of why our family can't really be trusted to behave in public (we downloaded the lightsaber app onto Dad's iPhone and promptly became completely unmanageable), but also as a total giant planter score. Big dramatic planter pots can be pretty pricey, and certainly more so than I'm willing to shell out when I have lots of excitingly plantable dirt surrounding my home. When Mom and I stopped for a bathroom break, we had to walk through the sale zone, and found a gigantic white clay planter with handles marked down from $65 to a practically-free $30. I was stoked and hauled it right out of there.

And then it sat on my driveway for three years.

In the spirit of the Getting Stuff I Like Doing Done Summer, I put it on my list of gardening things to accomplish. I got a $100 gift certificate for our wedding last summer, so I rounded up my Local Plant Advisor - Mom - and off we went to Southern Exposure in Rutland, MA (run by one of my neighbors, as chance would have it) to find some plants for my planter. I wanted at least one traily plant and one to give it some height, accented with some great color. Here's what we came up with:

From top spiky left: "Red Spikes" Cordyline, "Survivor" Geranium, "Margarita" Sweet Potato Vine, variegated golden sage Salvia, and Million Bells.

The Red Spikes will get nice height, and I just love the combo of foliage. I really like the Salvia because it looks like a lizard (....is that weird?). We came home and potted the whole thing right up, and it looks awesome. I can't wait for them to fluff out and really develop. We got a bunch of other plants too, and I'll have to write about them some more later because I want to take pictures of everything to go along with the descriptions. Mom is such a wealth of knowledge that I'd like to pass it along.

Oh, and also, there were chickens:
Maximum cute factor!

I went on a weeding binge, which was long overdue. The dandelions have been freaking epic this year...I assume they're colluding with the chipmunks, but I can't prove it. It seems like they're knee-high as soon as James the Lawn Guy pulls out of the driveway. (Side note: When James started mowing our lawn, he was in high school and using our mower to mow our lawn. Now he has a trailer and a ride on mower and the whole thing. It hasn't been that long. Why am I working a desk job again?) There is now a heap of murdered weeds on the driveway waiting to be carted back to the mulch zone...I'm going to let it stay there for a day or two as a warning to the rest of the dandelions.

The dahlias are mostly potted up and growing. My Memorial Day project is the installation of a raised garden bed in the back to house said dahlias, so they should be in the ground this weekend. Mom paints her dahlia stakes this great purple color and I'm thinking about painting mine as well - they just look so festive! The bed will be 8'x5' and it will be a great chance to provide the dahlias with nice loose, healthy soil from the get-go. Can't wait until they start blooming!

Some Treats from the (Future) Garden

I've already spoken about the glorious dahlias I will be putting into the garden this spring, but I've just started my spring planting. I will now enter a permanent state of Christmas Eve-itis. I always - always - get completely overexcited as I order bulbs, only to realize that I have to wait until SPRING for them to materialize. It's like someone promised me an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle and then hung the wrapped package from the ceiling just out of my reach. In any case, I would like to share a bit of this disorder for you with a preview of the items I put in, all of which are from John Scheepers' Dutch Flower Bulbs.
I thought about ordering the more common tightly clustered hyacinths you see, but Mom recommended these airier festival hyacinths. I'm really excited to see how they come out. As long as they have that wonderful hyacinth scent, I'll be happy.
Mom planted some of these Perestroyka tulips a couple years ago, and we were all blown away by their supreme grace and spectacular color show. They are quite tall (up to 30"), and their color changes throughout their blooming period. The coloring in the picture above is the high point, and they get paler as they go by until they have gone all the way to a pink that's just barely a step from white. They're so dramatic! I got two bags of these.
I ordered some of these Orange Emperor tulips last fall because Rich LOVES orange, but they're so beautiful that I ordered them again this year for me (he responds to most floral developments with a shrug and an "okay"). These too have some shift in their color, and pale as they go by.
I'm trying these Cum Laude tulips this year...hopefully they'll be blooming as I graduate at least cum laude and hopefully above! The deep purple will be fantastic with the Orange Emperors and the orange hints in the Perestroyka.
I'm not usually one for variegation nor for fluffy tulips, but the rich red and clean white of these Carnavale de Nice double tulips was too much to resist. I hope they come out like this picture!
Finally, some Allium Ambassador. These are very tall and have GIANT globe flowers. I cannot wait to see how they do!

Gardening with Matisse

Henri Matisse's art is not always necessarily my thing - the above Blue Nude (one of a series) is really the only one I enjoy beyond simple art appreciation - but his approach and his fervor do resonate with me. Painting was what he loved, and what drove him, and his stubborn refusal to knock it off and get serious is something we could use more of. Enough of what we should do and people say we must do. Let us do what truly brings joy to our lives! So much of doing what we think we should do is motivated by fear - fear of the unknown, fear of insecurity, fear of judgment. That's no way to live; no wonder people are so full of neurosis and confusion.

Matisse got a lot of criticism for painting "frivolous" things like flowers; people said people wanted "serious" subjects and that the world didn't have room or time for his kind of compositions. To these critics, he replied that "there will always be flowers for those who want to see them," and that's the very crux of the matter - maybe we "shouldn't" waste our time on pointless art in small galleries or bother with any piece not displayed in the Louvre or the Guggenheim, or with anything painted this year...but what kind of life would we have if we didn't make time for the flowers? There will always be people who want to look at flowers without worrying about what they should do, and I hope there will always be flowers to see for those people, because they are doing it right.

All this is a very long way of saying that I am planting these next spring for a glorious midsummer and I want to see flowers at all times.

Name the Bunny

And now to swing violently back to inanity, there is a bunny in my yard:

There were originally two bunnies who very much enjoyed the ice storm refuse that we had dutifully dragged to our curb, foolishly believing that the town meant it when they said they'd pick it up in a week, where it instead stayed for the better part of three months in a somewhat beaver-dam-like configuration, slowly killing our grass. I usually saw said bunnies in the morning and because I am a crazy person usually said good morning to them, but now I have only seen them in single servings and I am concerned Bunny Number Two may have entered the downslope of the circle of life.

Let us not linger.

I came home the other day and VOILA! Bunny! I took these pictures of him, which mostly look like pictures of grass and my garden. This is because he is using his bunny camoflauge to blend in with the brown rock in the middle of the garden edging. I have decided I should name said bunny so as to be even creepier in the morning. I am too lazy to figure out how to embed a poll so I'll list a couple names here and you can vote in the comments.

a. Clyde
b. Lennie
c. D'Artagnan
d. Mickey
e. Karl
f. Other