"..like roses, only easy to care for, don’t have thorns and aren’t ugly when they aren’t blooming"

That is probably one of the five best quotes I have ever read in a garden article.

In case you missed Thursday's Home and Garden section from the NY Times, check out this wonderful story about rare camellias in southern Louisiana. 

Last minute wishing

Dear Santa,

If you are looking for ideas for me, here are four:

Please have your elves build me a tool shed from shipping pallets.
My personal shed construction project has seen the DP (design & procrastination) stage stretch on and off for almost two years. This unfortunate timeline has taken another blow now that I have just acquired 14 panels of glass windows from my father-in-law’s freshly demo’d Florida Room. …. Should I tack on a large cold frame or a tiny greenhouse? Please help.

this book

this app (although it won’t be available until after Christmas, I can take a rain check)

a badass  Japanese farmer’s knife
P.S. I have been good.

a week of real winter

Since last Friday we have seen the first night below 20 degrees, a first snowfall, and the first seed catalog in the mail...It feels like January already.  Last Saturday's inch-plus of wet fluff broke a limb on one of my adolescent wax myrtles.  A chunk of ice shattered my rain gauge.  My roses are probably done and my spring bulbs are finally planted. So now I am taking notes on what to do next year.

Speaking of next year, I got the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Catalog in the mail on Tuesday and it is filled with lusciousness.....pulling names at random from its glossy pages, you could find things like the Knife River Squash, originally cultivated by Native American tribes from present day North Dakota;  a watermelon developed by Mississippi State University in 1965; and the "Spanish Mammoth" sweet pepper which was (according to the authors) shipped to Paris markets in the 1880s from Algeria and Valencia.  Oh, and if that is too Western Civ. for you, then you could cash out for Christmas on dozens of Pan-Asian antiques. I have my eye on a Japanese pumpkin developed in the Edo period (1804-1818).  I don't know where the hell I could plant 1/100th of all the good stuff but I am excited to read and dream. 

If you are interested in the heirloom, the unique, the rare, and the organic seeds that you can't find in local stores, then other catalogs I would recommend are:
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, High Mowing Organic Seeds, and Seed Savers Exchange.

eye candy from the 2010 Baker's Creek catalog

in my garden: things to notice and things to do

I finally got to work in the garden yesterday. The wet snow melted enough to allow me and my Felco pruners to eat away at the base of some old perennial stalks and tall clumps of native grasses. They are things that I had let die “in situ.” Not everyone likes they way dead stalks look in their garden, but I do (especially the remains of Texas star hibiscus, obedient plant, switch grass, and purple coneflower).

I also picked up stick arms and Mardi gras beads from our Saturday snowman. He didn’t stay together for more than two hours after the sun became bright. And last but not least, I mulched the muddy track that my two big dogs make as they tear into the front yard on their way to the northern pecan tree….the one that sometimes has a squirrel.

So, what else is new? I decided against pansies along the front walk and am looking around for some other stuff to try for my late winter containers. I threw some seeds of winter rye grass into two large pots that were filled with last season's soil and the dormant roots of something called "wire vine." By itself, rye grass looks a little spare for my taste …..Maybe I will add a clump of oregano. Besides oregano’s obvious merit in the herb garden, it is a cheap and plentiful groundcover. I like it because the chalky green leaves hang in through the cold months. I will post some pictures in a few weeks, after the rye sprouts. If the wire vine also sprouts, then this container may have some staying power. Overall it was a good day outside. I am looking forward to more ahead.

bright branches

Chinese witchhazels were blooming in Sarah Duke Gardens this past week. These pics were taken Wednesday.
This grouping is on the grassy slope behind the large Dawn redwood-just north of the terraces. I thought the images could be appreciated on a cold and soggy midwinter day.

Oriental Paper Bush

This week I took pictures of Edgeworthia chrysantha or “paper bush.” With its nodding bell shaped flower buds, it is not hard to spot in late winter. In the weeks ahead those silky calyxes will turn into half-inch long clusters of tiny tubular flowers. In addition to the peculiar white buds and fragrant yellow flowers, this plant also has an attractive form. The reddish and cinnamon colored branches fork into threes instead of twos.

On farms in southern Japan, the wood is commercially harvested to make a high quality paper. In Japanese its name (mitsumata) means “three pronged fork."

no, it's not forsythia

it's winter jasmine.... why would you want to plant an embankment with turf when you can grow this instead?

winter's honeysuckle

Winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) is an old fashioned pass-along plant that is invaluable for large Southern shrub borders. The Scottish plant explorer Robert Fortune brought it to the UK after a visit to China in 1845. I have also heard it called "sweet breath of spring."

It is rangy and suckery and doesn't have a spectacular flower (appearance-wise). But it is blooming right now. I can see a large grouping as I write this from my lunch break in Duke's Perkins Library. The strength of the blooms' fragrance will grow more powerful throughout the weeks ahead. I love the light green leaves that stay semi-evergreen throughout the winter. It is an excellent choice for an out of the way spot in a yard or garden---actually, since it smells so nice in the doldrums of late winter, you may want to plant it closer to a path. It can always be pruned hard after if finishes blooming. Left unchecked it can grow 8-12 tall.

that time of year

Until I can find some more time to write a post or post some pics, I will need to lean on other good stuff out there. Here is this week's front porch essay from the Independent. ... by the always-awesome John Valentine. He makes a lot of us say, "damn...wish I could have written that. "

Cold Weather Color: January 9th at SDG

Southern Living has recently named Durham's Sarah P. Duke Gardens as one of the top ten public gardens in the Southeast. I spent my lunch break there on Friday exploring what looked good this time of the year. The answer was plenty. With our last projected freeze a good three months away, you may think it would be a dreary hike in spots. But I found several reasons to fumble for the digital camera. Here are some pictures. (Right: buds of flowering quince 'Texas Scarlet' and yellow blooms of winter jasmine / Bottom left to right: wintersweet, Golden Sword Yucca, Japanese flowering apricot)

winter berries

This is a Winterberry Holly (ilex verticillata). It is an obvious candidate for best-in-show when the middle of winter comes and we are looking around for something besides evergreens to brag on in our yards and gardens. Today's picture comes from a tallish shrub near the duck pond at Sarah Duke Gardens. Its site near the water gives a clue as to this native's love for moist soil. But thankfully, drought is not necessarily a threat to its existence. Check with your local nursery or online resource to see what hybrids are available and how many male versus female shrubs you need for pollination purposes.

winter walk

It is early February and I can count four different varieties of yellow bloom on a walk through Duke's campus.

The first, fragrant wintersweet, I noticed several weeks ago on my way to work. Its deliberate planting beside a trail in the Sarah Duke Gardens could not be missed. Chimonanthus praecox can become a large shrub or trained as a small tree. By now the small waxy trumpets have lost their keen smell, however they turned my head from ten feet away just after the New Year. Hopefully a three inch sapling I have planted near my front walk will do the same one day. This Southern favorite comes from China and Japan.

Leaving the Gardens and climbing a hill near the medical school, I arrive to the roundabout terminus of Research Drive. An embankment covered with winter jasmine sits near a service entrance to the Perkins-Bostock Library. Thousands of small yellow flowers make it a favorite early blooming shrub to put along steep grades and in difficult sites. Many folks (including me a few years ago) mistake it for an early blooming forsythia. It is much more of a low-grower.

Between the bank of winter jasmine and my workplace, I veer west to find the pedestrian path beside Hudson Hall and the Nello Teer Libray. This walkway is lined with healthy, useful, and typical groups of azaleas, camelias, and hollies. In one shady pocket I am pleasantly surprised by a thicket of Japanese kerria. This six-foot tall mass of crayon green stems is a spreading old-fashioned shrub not very common in institutional landscapes. My newly "discovered" specimen is presently sporting a few golden fluffy flowers which were possibly preserved from a sporadic late summer bloom. A good many new buds are starting to open, a preview to the early spring flowering that lends it one common name, "Easter Rose." I am trying to grow a bunch on the east side of my house beside a bedroom window. Their leafless arches are very attractive in winter.

Lastly, I make a detour past the Levine Science Research Center to a columned walkway. Thick boughs of Carolina jessamine climb these columns, and their small tubular yellow flowers bring it a lot of attention in February. You can count on this native evergreen vine as a good choice for climbing mailboxes, fences, or even cascading down walls. It can be drought tolerant when established and take partial shade or sun. Look for it in trees and yards around town before spring bulbs start to steal everyone's attention.

Monday 2.25.08: a revision
I was wrong about the jessamine vine. It really does not bloom until well into March. My visit today revealed lots of yellow studs that will flower in the weeks to come. There are some scattered flowers so I guess it counts for February, just not in the way I had imagined it.