Varying Levels

When Hurricane Irene headed for the East Coast of the U.S. last weekend, I had to take my hanging baskets and wind chimes down. It was really just a precaution since we only had a bit of bluster; the forecasters said that the winds would gust up to forty mph. However, we’ve had as much as eighty mph since we’ve lived in this home with no problem—that’s not to say that others didn’t have problems with their trees or that it wasn’t scary, but that my garden and home were fine.

Though very crowded around my feet, without the hanging elements, the garden looked barren above—like a big gaping hole. I realized again how important it is to me to have a garden that surrounds me on various levels. I’ve never been satisfied with a flowerbed with ankle or knee-high plants that I peer down at. In art classes, we artists are always told, that we need to vary the view in our paintings in order to keep the eye interested, “Never make any two things (or lines), even if they are like things, exactly the same.”

My husband and I bought the wind chimes at a Renaissance Festival in 1979; they’ve held up remarkably well all these years. Still, I decided to restring the pipes before rehanging them; they’re strung with monofilament. I’m glad that I learned to tie knots in Girl Scouts and that my troop leader wouldn’t put up with “granny knots”!

Monofilament is a wonderful product; I use it a lot to hang things. It’s inexpensive, strong and nearly invisible.

Rose of China

It’s another Two-Red-Hibiscus-Day! Since I enjoy it so much, my hibiscus bush is my most photographed plant ever. In Spain, I discovered that it’s called “Flower of Peace”. Now I’ve found that it’s sometimes known in other places as “Rose of China”. Intriguing.

I discovered the name in a beautiful houseplant book by Reader’s Digest: The Complete Guide to Houseplants—The Easy Way to Choose and Grow Happy, Healthy Houseplants. It has large beautiful pictures and clear instructions. Information in books on houseplants often readily applies to outdoor container gardens as well.

I’m also pleased to read there that hibiscus bushes can live (indoors!) up to twenty years!

A Good Home

My indoor garden has expanded to include several of my neighbor’s special plant “babies”. I assured her when she couldn’t take them with her in her move last weekend that I would take good care of them—I am a plant person. We have lots of windows here with good light—that’s one of the reasons we moved here. I’m carefully determining the best spot for each plant.

This one is a Dracaena warnecki.

Thanks for entrusting them to me G.; I’ll give them a good home.

Pressed Down, Shaken Together & Overflowing

A friend asked if I grow herbs. Always. They’re easy enough and I enjoy them on my avocado sandwiches. I grow basil, chives, pineapple sage (this year I found some!) and oregano. When I mentioned oregano, my friend exclaimed, “Oh, that can sure take over!” The picture here of my Golden Oregano confirms its abundance. In a pot, however, that exuberance is “contained”.

Mexican Petunias can also turn up most anywhere if planted in a flowerbed. I don’t know if it spreads underground or by prolific seeding. My potted one has better manners--yet another benefit of container gardening.

Another Fleeting Beauty

At last! My Mexican Petunia has bloomed at last! The blooms only last a day and the delicate petals are already shriveling but they’re pretty, especially when a plant is covered with them. Happily, there are more on the way.

The plants didn’t seem to “feel” the earthquake but apparently the water main did…it’s broken again. At least the plants got their water since we fill jugs with faucet overflow—I rarely use water straight from the faucet for the plants, which benefits both the environment and our budget.

The Mexican Petunia has competition from the red hibiscus today. Thankfully, the glamorous hibiscus lasts longer. However, contrasts are unfair as they each have their own beauty, doing what they were created to do.

Room to Grow

My plant purchases from two weekends ago finally have bigger pots to help keep them from drying out and to give them room to grow. Lack of potting soil caused the delay. I finally got out to the largest corporation on earth, hoping to find plain potting soil. Unfortunately, every bag had fertilizer in it. I have my own, organic fertilizer—I didn’t want all that. At last, I found one that didn’t have fertilizer called “Moisture Control”. It’s supposed to keep the soil from being over or under-watered. I’m skeptical. It was all they had. We’ll see.


I potted the peppermint and a heliotrope. If you’ve ever wondered what the color fashion and interior design call heliotrope looks like—here it is, a medium violet/purple.

We had a pretty strong rare earthquake tremor here yesterday but I didn’t feel it and none of my pots look out of place, so they don’t seem to have felt it either.

Mystery Singer

This morning the air was so cool, the four o’clocks were still open. What a bonus! Last night however, when I opened the garden door to see them I was surprised to find the answer to a mystery!

Our attention (my husband and my) was diverted to a small, round green frog sitting on a green garden chair—I need to be careful when I sit! I had heard a frog “singing” on the balcony for some time but my diligent searches hadn’t found it. Night or day, we’d hear a high- pitched croak--not from a large bullfrog (thankfully!) but from something smaller. Yet it seemed bigger than the other two tiny frog residents of past seasons since the sound could be heard even indoors! This frog’s length is about the diameter of a half dollar.

My husband ran for the camera but by the time I got it set up, our frog friend had jumped away. I followed it but it jumped again to cower under a plant saucer. It’s nice to meet you; I really won’t hurt you…

Late Bloomers

“Four o’clocks” remind me my first apartment. The old house, which had been divided into apartments still had a little strip of “yard” beyond the
parking lot, filled with the afternoon and evening-blooming flowers.

A few years ago, I bought a seed packet to grow my first ones but they’re such heavy seed producers and ready volunteers (though I often direct a few of the seeds into the soil to make sure)that I haven’t needed to buy any more.


My four o’clocks tend to get leggy and “cascade” (the “in” word), down the balcony. At first I thought that was a good thing so that they could be enjoyed from below until the night I remembered to go out to see them. I discovered they were in total darkness where no one can see them; so I pulled them in and propped them up on a rail where I can see them.
Now I can readily see their pink and peppermint-spotted white night blooms. Unlike morning glories, the flowers can reopen for a second performance.

I’m sad to say that my hydrangea rooting experiment didn’t work. Though the tops of the cuttings kept turning black, I held out hope that the tiny sprouts of new growth would prevail. Unfortunately, the heavy heat and humidity prevailed; the cuttings are now entirely black.

The good news is that my Mexican Petunia has budded! Okay, so I did fertilize it. Apparently even weeds need nutrients.

Plenteous Pentas

I finally added a deep pink penta to my garden; the first one hadn’t yet opened when I bought it so I couldn’t tell that it was more of a “sweet” pink. Oh well, butterflies like them. Butterflies may enjoy dining on the nectar of pentas but they must not have gotten the invitation to mine; I haven’t seen a single one.

Nevertheless, the pentas' clusters of star-shaped blossoms are pretty, long lasting, bloom often and grow well. When I bought the "sweet" pink one it was the size of this deep pink one (that I got for half price!); now it has multiple branches and blooms. They like having more room to grow.

I thought I could stay outside longer this morning to write since it’s cooler but the humidity smothered that plan.

I haven’t seen any more caterpillars or grasshoppers, no lizards—just lots of tiny white flying insects. I don’t use chemicals and to a point, I reason that these creatures have a right to be outdoors. However, they don’t need to be attacking my plants; they especially like my petunias. Maybe I’ll get some fly paper.

Lazarus Update

Lazarus airplane plant is doing remarkably well. It’s once grey-green and shriveled leaves are now a robust green. Though initially larger than its brothers (or should I say sisters since airplane plants have “babies”) it’s not quite as healthy yet. Lazarus’ fully green leaves still droop while the other plants hold their leaves firmly up. I’ll know the plant’s fully recovered when it begins producing new leaves; then it will be moving beyond survival mode.


Was it a stick I saw or a dead leaf? I looked more closely and discovered that a caterpillar had chopped off a third of my chives clump! I found the severed strands on the wooden balcony floor—I guess I’ll be having chives for lunch. At times like these, I’m very glad for “vegetable soap”! If possible, I don’t harm “var-mints” (as the Old West movies used to say), so I sent the thing to reside in a bush below.

I heard birdsong this morning that rang like a crystal goblet.

Fresh Salad

Salad doesn’t get any fresher than picking it from your own garden! In fact, container gardens are usually even closer to the kitchen door than a conventional garden, making salad fresher still.

Lettuce is usually thought of as a cool weather crop but mine has continued to produce right through the sweltering heat. Watering, of course, is key, along with keeping the leaves from coming in contact with the edge of the pot—they incinerate.

Since “baby greens” have become fashionably gourmet, it doesn’t take long to get leaves big enough to add to a small salad (later, you can get enough leaves for a whole serving or more). Packets of seeds with a mixture of varieties are easy to find; though they often advertise purple varieties in the mix, I have yet to sprout any colorful ones.

Even in an average-sized pot you can grow quite a bit of leaf lettuce, especially if you continually reseed. Of course, my pot of lettuce isn’t this full after making the salad but if I keep reseeding, it’ll soon fill again.

What They Need to Succeed

Today is another idyllic day; it helps make my disagreeable task less so. Today is fertilizer day.

When I had a yard to garden in, I’d measure out some blue stuff into my huge watering can and hose it full. Then I’d haul the heavy thing from bed to bed--an arduous task. I had adjusted the process to fit my smaller scale container gardens but an (indoor) incident a few years ago caused me to be chemically sensitive. Now I use only organic fertilizer.

I like to buy it from the 100 year old+ hardware store in a nearby small town. Shopping there is always a pleasant adventure so I like to keep the tradition going by supporting them. Besides, I couldn’t find any organic fertilizer anywhere else so I asked at the farmer’s market…

The fertilizer is a powdered mix of things that I don’t even want to know about but I know the plants need it, so I get it for them. It’s not that I’m looking to have big, fat, bushy, record-setting everything, I just want them to succeed at what they’re made for. If they’re flowering plants, I want them to flower well. If their main purpose is to display colorful leaves with attractive markings then that’s what I expect them to do. But they have to have what they need.

In the same way, Jesus expects his followers to do what they are created to do—live a godly life. Living a godly life isn’t only for spiritual giants; it’s the simple, basic, norm. And he has given his follower everything they need to succeed.

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” 2 Peter 1:3

A Change in the Air

Today is one of those “golden” days when the temperature is cooler and a light breeze stirs. The slant of the sun has changed ever so slightly and sunset paints its colors half an hour earlier. I could stay in the garden all day in this weather, especially if I had a computer that could operate outdoors!

And it’s a good thing since Monday always calls for extra attention to the garden after a weekend of only hurried watering. There are dead leaves to trim and spent flowers to deadhead, vines to reroute. Often, as today, I have weekend plant purchases to repot; the garden centers’ small flimsy plastic pots cause the plants to dry out too quickly in my setting.

Happily, I finally found one of my all-time favorites, peppermint. I’ve been searching all season but all were either gangly or too expensive or both. Now, I finally have a nicely branching plant at a good price but after its sojourn in the dimly-lit parking garage entrance to Trader Joe’s, it’s stretching for every bit of sun it can get. To keep it branching, I think I need to make some tea. I grew up in “ice-tea” country and often enjoyed a sprig of mint in a tall glass but a brief trip to North Africa intrigued me with hot mint tea. Either way, I enjoy it’s fragrance as I brush against it so I put it within easy reach My iced tea sprigs often do double duty; when the tea is gone I often put the mint in a flower arrangement where it then roots and can later be planted—the ultimate “reuse”.

This particular peppermint plant doesn’t have a variety name but last year’s Kentucky Colonel Mint of “mint julep” fame proved too strong a flavor for my tastes, so I passed that one by.

I’ve seen no sign of the “giant” grasshopper since I last sent him flying. The birds like the weather too!

Resurrection

A day or two ago as I was looking over my airplane plant (aka spider plant, but I don’t call it that since some people are so frightened of spiders, I don’t want to prejudice them), I noticed that one cluster of “babies” was the wrong color and knew something was wrong. Eyes are some of the best gardening tools! As I looked over the limp gray-greenness, I was pretty sure that the plantlet’s connecting branch had somehow been broken. It had.


Airplane plants can be easily propagated from these “babies” but usually only when they’re cut and planted right away. However, I’ve not had success in planting the “dead” ones. But I had a pot of soil and decided that I had nothing to lose if I planted this one. Maybe some TLC would pull it through; would it thrive like others (2nd picture) I had cut and planted—I didn’t know. I potted and watered and put it in the least sunny place in the garden (any difference in sunlight is incremental though since in the afternoon the entire garden is ablaze).


This morning when I checked on it, I was pleased to find that it was making a come-back! It’s not yet fully flourishing like its brothers but it’s on its way—a kind of resurrection. Since the morning some years ago when I collapsed and showed no signs of life until my husband shouted, “Be alive in Jesus’ name!” and I was, I’ve been reluctant to give up too easily. Even when things show no signs of life.

I’ll keep you posted on “Lazarus” airplane plant.

Elbow Room

This morning I noticed that my Persian Shield leaves are always upright when they normally spread to show their beautiful purple and silver markings (as in last year's plant in the photo on the far left).

Though it’s tempting to pack the plants into the space, they really do need some elbow room. So I moved the pots out a bit to give the Persian Shield some room to spread its leaves; that’s the beauty of a container garden—you can rearrange it to suit your design, and the plants’ needs.

New Clothes

A sign that it’s getting (slightly) cooler is that I had no trouble staying out in the garden for hours. My other work sometimes gets jealous but it’s good and healthy to get outdoors for awhile. After all, the first work that God assigned to people was gardening. The Garden of Eden was also the first home for them. Sometime, I’d like to explore the possibilities of what the garden needed from them.

Today, in my garden, I found the tall, spindly Mexican Petunia (Ruella) toppling over so I knew it was time to give it a bigger pot. My sister, who lives in a hotter climate talks about her purple-flowered ones all the time; they’ve been the trendy new thing in our garden centers the last couple of years, so I decided to try one. When I bought it, it had flowers on it. They were shriveled from the heat by the time we got it home. I haven’t seen a flower on it since (2 months!). Nothing seems to have helped. It gets plenty sun and water; I even fertilized it. “Don’t fertilize it,” she exhorted, “it’s a weed!” Maybe it needs a bigger pot or “new clothes”… Definitely. As you can see in the picture, a large root ball had grown outside the pot. I gingerly cut the plastic pot away (recyclable)—had it been a clay pot I would have carefully worked as many of the roots (without soil) as I could back through the hole and lost the rest.

An orchid cactus cutting I was given and hurriedly stuck in the “corner” of a pot of airplane plants also got its own pot. It will likely stay in the indoor part of my garden since it prefers indirect sun. Angel Face Angelonia also has its own pot now to encourage as much growth as possible before it winters indoors.

Time for a Haircut

My yellow-green sweet potato vine is thriving—all over the place. I’ve taken cuttings before to root in clear vases of water indoors but it’s time for more. I’ve enjoyed the beauty of the cuttings indoors so much that I’ve been reluctant to pot them outdoors. Encouraged by new cuttings on the way, I finally moved one to a large pot out front. By the look of the long loop of roots, I waited longer than is ideal. (The roots are pink!) It takes a little while for a plant with water roots to adapt to soil but with care, a plant this vigorous has no problem. In fact they’re so vigorous that they need a big pot since they grow a good-sized tuber or sweet potato (non-edible) underground. The pot therefore gets heavier as the tuber and its vine grows.

The best time to see the hummingbird, I’ve discovered, is morning but today as the temperature climbed I came face to face with him or her over the geranium.

Last night our gullies were again washed—this time with a bang!

Color!

Since I’m an artist, color is essential to me (or maybe it’s the other way around). It’s fairly easy to find the purple and magenta flowers that are the backbone of my garden but the orange ones that complete my color vision are harder to find. I found these orange zinnias marked down at the local garden center and finally have some orange. (I do have a touch of orange with my million bells but I’ll write about that in a future post.) The garden centers are beginning to mark things down more every week but the longer one waits for “just the right price”, the more TLC will be required.


This variety usually does well in my garden, unlike its cousin a deep pink “cherry” mini zinnia that re-blooms in white with a tinge of pink—nothing like the magenta double-flowered beauty I bought at a garden center. The same thing happened last year. Hmm, I wonder if they’re like flamingos, which have to eat certain crustaceans to maintain their beautiful color? Whatever the problem, they apparently didn’t like Friday’s FOUR INCHES of rain since I found two of them dead this morning. Hopefully, next year I’ll resist their temptation. That’s part of the fun of gardening though, to try things and see what works and what doesn’t, to learn and then move on. (Recommended for gardening—not marriage!)

Staying Power

A couple of years ago I took a chance on a new plant at the locally owned garden center since I’m always looking for purple flowers for my garden. It was a little more expensive but I hadn’t seen it anywhere else. Angelonia turned out to be a great “investment” with its spires of small lavender flowers blooming right through the first frost! Though it was sold as an annual, I had nothing to lose to bring it in for the winter. The first one didn’t survive indoor dryness but the one I bought last year not only survived but it’s blooming now in my garden.

However, last spring my carryover flowerless Angelonia looked a little ragged so I set out to the garden center to get another. But instead of getting a replica of the one I already had, the larger Angel Face Angelonia caught my eye. Angel Face has the look and feel of larkspur but is easier to grow (though both Angelonias tend to spiral as they grow).

I had hurriedly planted it in a large pot with many other plants when I traveled but I may transplant it to a larger pot to give it room to grow and mobility to bring it indoors in winter.

Angelonia also does fairly well as cut flowers in small vases.

Plan B

What a humid day! Last evening a blanket of gray clouds pressed down the oppressive heat. They were so heavy with moisture that I knew they’d have give it up. They did.

And that’s the problem—not the rain, we’re glad for it. It’s just that our gullies have been washed several times lately and uncharacteristically, the rain has inundated my garden. Usually welcome, the rain waterlogged my pot of hydrangea stem cuttings, causing several of them to rot—even though they were in a terra cotta pot.

So today I was able to rescue three cuttings and followed the rules more closely, putting them in a small plastic pot with a lighter “sterile” seed-starting medium. They’re now out of the way of downpours but I’ll have to watch closely that they don’t dry out. Many plant cuttings can be “just stuck in the dirt” and they will grow but apparently not these. I did add more rooting powder.

If you look closely at the picture on the right you can see tiny bits of new growth! We’ll see how it goes.

It’s yet another two-red-hibiscus-day and yes, the grasshopper was back. But not for long, I sent him flying--further this time.

Trouble in Paradise

Paradise: an ancient Persian word meaning garden.

The other day as I examined the plants in my personal paradise, I found an interloper—a “giant” grasshopper. It was exactly the color of the hibiscus leaves. I’m not one to pick up bugs, uh uh, so I didn’t know how to get rid of it (and I prefer not to kill them if there’s another way). If I shook the bush, the grasshopper would just jump to another leaf. As I prayed for a solution, I looked around and saw a handy small plastic pot and my garden gloves. With my gloves on (!), I scooped the pest into the pot and cast it from my garden. It flew to a tree across the easement. Sure it could come back but I kept it from eating more for awhile at least. Then I saw the huge hole in a leaf of my beautiful red-striped Tropicana cannas—the grasshopper’s calling card.

Today, I found more holes. It was back. I checked each plant as I watered and then in the last spot, I caught it green-pincered on a coleus leaf (it must like colorful food like I do). My method didn’t work as well this time since I had a little less elbow room to throw it and the grasshopper landed in a hanging basket. By the time I spotted its new hiding place and turned to get the pot, it was gone. I searched and rustled the other plants without finding it so maybe it flew away. Good riddance!

Okay, so maybe I’d find it a fascinating part of God’s creation if it wasn’t devastating my plants. It’s not like there isn’t plenty other greenery out there in the semi-wild. They are kosher but I won’t go there…except to ask those who insist that the Biblical dietary laws are the only acceptable diet, “Mmm…have you eaten the grasshoppers on that diet?” And yes, I know that they are a delicacy in some cultures and in others they are “all they have” but unless it’s necessary, thank you but no thank you.

Nostalgia

When we were young, my sister and I used to walk to the garden center during the summer. It was one of our favorite things to spend our allowance on bedding plants to fill the garden containers my dad made for us out of oil drums. He sliced the drums vertically, welded some kind of feet on them and lined the open edges with a sliced garden hose. Then he filled them with soil.

My sister always bought Sweet Williams (dianthus)--that’s one of the reasons I always grow them. Other reasons are that they are biennials and come back the next year and they bloom like crazy in the spring, continuing to bloom here and there through the summer with another burst in autumn. And for adding easy growing color to the garden, they can’t be beat. It spreads well too, which can be a plus or a minus depending on the setting.

A Possible First

What a pleasant surprise to find not one or even two red hibiscus flowers this morning—but three! I’m not sure my bush has ever had that many flowers at once! It's tending toward being leggy though I’ve wanted the height in order to block some of the intense sun. However, I read in a houseplant book I found at the library that they can be pruned in the spring—maybe I’ll do that next year and make more blossoms possible. Maybe I can even grow some new ones with the stem cuttings.

A week ago, I saw some small hibiscus plants for an unheard of $4.99. But, I thought, I’m not sure if some are orange so I’ll wait ‘til they’ve bloomed out a bit by next Saturday when we’re here again. Too late, they were gone. The store plant lady said, “Oh but they were an opportunity buy so they’re all gone!” Well, I missed that opportunity but surely there will be another one…somewhere.