The Nature of Things

We call them "naked ladies" because they pop out of the ground unexpectedly with no clothes on - just a bright green stem with a bud at the top. But soon enough that bud opens up to reveal the "lady," a beautiful flower. Technically, and correctly, called Amaryllis belladonna , they grow as wildflowers in South Africa and they prefer hot and dry conditions. I can provide the hot if not the dry, but last fall I planted several of these bulbs in one of the driest beds in my garden and recently a few of them have come up to remind me of the bulbs I had almost forgotten. Not all of them have emerged by any means, but I live in hope. Later, by spring, the leaves should emerge around the base of the stem to provide nourishment to the bulb and, if all goes well, the ladies themselves will pop up again next fall. The plants have other popular names such as surprise lilies and resurrection lilies, both for obvious reasons. Some even call them hurricane lilies because they do...

Yes, fast and furious is how the flowers are coming these days. The first sunflower of the season. Tawny orange daylily. Lemon yellow double daylily. Raspberry salvia. Scarlet salvia. Blue morning glories. Blackfoot daisies. Yellow cestrum. 'Julia Child' rose, just a bit faded on its third day.  'Darcy Bussell' rose. 'Christopher Marlowe,' another David Austin rose. Orange milkweed. Orange cannas. Oakleaf hydrangea. And even more coming along every day. It's a great time to be in the garden.

Planning your spring garden? Spare some thought for the pollinators. Here are some plants that you can include in your garden to help them. Even if your garden is only a few pots on a patio, consider planting a few of these plants. The bees and butterflies will thank you.

Last week, I wrote a blog post about the dangers of invasive species and listed several species of plants that may be available at your local garden center but that you should steer clear of, never adding them to your own garden. Conventional wisdom among gardeners for a few years now has been that we should use native plants in our gardens and that we should be attempting to restore our ecosystems to their pristine state that existed before human interference. This is the view still held by most gardeners that I know. But there is another point of view, one that holds that introduced species are not necessarily so bad and that sometimes the introduction of exotic species can actually benefit natives. That view is expounded in a book that was published in 2011 called Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World . The author, Emma Marris, argues that we live in a "post-wild" world where global warming and the ecological disturbance, as the world adapts to human d...

I was idly thumbing through my shelves of gardening books yesterday when I came across this little gem. I had frankly forgotten that I had it. I picked it up and read a few random pages which were more than enough to remind me that I really, really loved this book. I had read and reviewed it back in 2014. The essays here speak to the gestalt of gardening, the thing that makes the enterprise more than just about planting seeds, weeding, pruning, harvesting. The committed gardener sees the world in the garden and sees gardening as a transcendent experience.  If you want to understand why people garden, you might want to pick up this little book and read these essays. ~~~ The Roots of My Obsession: Thirty Great Gardeners Reveal Why They Garden  by  Thomas C. Cooper My rating:  5 of 5 stars I love this little book. It speaks to my soul and to my own obsession. Yes, I admit it - I, too, am obsessed with gardening, sometimes to the point of nuttiness, but reading this book...

Our honeymoon of tropical winters without freezing weather ended last weekend. Actually, it had ended a couple of weeks before that when temperatures tippy-toed slightly to the freezing mark and a degree or two below, but this time the old mercury in the thermometer sank like a stone right through that barrier and went straight on down to the low 20s. It was territory that my garden had not visited in a few years. It left its mark. The Cape honeysuckle was still in full bloom and feeding the passing hummingbirds and butterflies when the low temperatures hit. Now its bright orange blossoms are frostbit and turning brown along with the leaves. And the bright little Sulphur butterflies that sipped from them all day long will have to find other sustenance. The clumps of lemon grass were just about to bloom, but the cold put the kibosh on that. Last year, these clumps grew right through winter, never slowing down, but this year I'll be cutting them back and letting them grow afresh from...

Laser eye surgery last week put a real crimp in my reading schedule. As it happened, the book I was reading at the time was not exactly scintillating so I didn't feel the loss as much as I might have.  I did resent the fact that I wasn't able to work in the garden for a couple of days, because before I was interrupted I had been on a roll, completing some of my fall chores such as weeding, adding compost to beds, cutting back perennials, moving plants, adding new plants, and doing general clean-up.  Even on the days when I wasn't able to actually work though, I spent a lot of time in the garden, mostly contemplating life and the garden and changes that I wanted to make in both, and being aided in my meditations by my two eager garden helpers, Oliver and Perkins (aka Purrkins).   Oliver Perkins They are six-month-old novices but eager to learn and especially good at helping me dig holes and at chasing fallen leaves. Once I was able to get back in the swing of gardening, I ...

My mother died on the first day of spring in 2004. I've often ruminated on the unfairness of that - that she should have died on the first day of the season she loved best. My mother was a gardener, you see, and she looked forward to spring as the time that her garden would begin again. She spent winter poring over seed catalogs and planning what she would plant. She was a farm wife and her emphasis and most of her energies were always spent on the vegetable garden. As a farm family, we grew most of our own food. But she also grew some flowers and other ornamentals as food for the soul. I have essentially reversed her gardening practices, growing mostly ornamentals with a few vegetables on the side. I often think about my mother when I'm gardening. I sometimes feel that she is very close, looking over my shoulder and maybe shaking her head at my stupidity. I think of her most often when I'm working on some of the old-fashioned plants that she grew.  Plants like four o'c...

I've been checking periodically on the bluebird nest box outside my kitchen window which a pair of Carolina Chickadees have claimed as their own this spring. The pair chose the box early on and started building a nest and then they paused for a while, during a period in which it rained almost every day for about a week. But a week or ten days ago, they resumed construction on the nest, and yesterday, I decided it was time to check on their progress. Well, progress, indeed! Guess what I found?    The nest, it seems, is complete and the female had already deposited five tiny eggs there. The eggs are indeed tiny - no bigger than the tip of my smallest finger. It is hard to believe that it is possible for a fully formed chick to develop in one of them and hatch within a couple of weeks. Of course, the parents themselves are among our tiniest birds, weighing no more than a third of an ounce each. Surprisingly for such little birds, they do have fairly large clutches of five to eigh...

This is what the end of March looks like in my garden. The bluebonnets are blooming. American Goldfinches in their summer dress are passing through and stopping to have a snack at the nyger seed feeders. Over the weekend, I saw my first Giant Swallowtail butterfly of the year.  And my first Tiger Swallowtail of 2015. Just beautiful! But the stars of the show these days are the azaleas. For most of the year, their shrubs are inconspicuous, but in early spring they put on a show for us. Mine have never been so full of blooms as they are this spring. This is an old plant in the backyard garden.  This is one of the everblooming azaleas that I added to my front garden last fall. They had a few blooms all through the autumn and winter, but now, in spring, they are absolutely full of these bright blossoms. Spring in Southeast Texas is typically a very brief season. Some years, we go from winter to summer in the blink of an eye. This time, our winter hardly even qualified as a winter ...

Designing and Planting a Woodland Garden: Plants and Combinations that Thrive in the Shade by Keith Wiley My rating: 4 of 5 stars Keith Wiley is a gardener in the U.K., where he is a regular contributor to horticultural and lifestyle magazines and has appeared on many television programs about gardening. Over the last ten years, he and his wife have created a new garden from a bare field and they now run their own nursery there. His book is mostly directed at gardeners in his own country, but the principles he discusses, as well as many of the plants, have applicability in the U.S. Woodlands are popular places in Nature the world over. They evoke a powerful response in people. The colors, textures, interplay of shade and lighting of such a place can impart a sense of peace and tranquillity which is extremely restful to the spirit. Thus, creating a woodland garden can mimic the atmosphere of that natural setting, which might help to explain why they are so popular. Wiley explores the c...

We got just a touch of frost a couple of weeks ago, but we are still waiting our first killing frost here in my zone 9a garden. Historically, it comes, on average, around December 10, so some of the blooms that I saw as I walked around the garden today may be on borrowed time. Not my sweet little violas though. They'll be here throughout the season. This patio table planter had wax begonias in it over the summer. They are now resting in another pot and purple and white violas rule the day. I like these violas so much that I found other places around the patio to tuck some of them into - like this pot of gerberas. The gerberas will go down when the frost comes but the violas will bloom on. I liked adding this one to its own individual pot on the side table. This Red Admiral butterfly liked it, too. Muscadine leaves are now scattered far and wide over the backyard. Although most of the leaves are gone, many of the fruits still hang on and continue to ripen.   The Cape honeysuckle is ...