Kiss the Earth

No, not that kind of holiday blues. Poinsettia blues. I know these novelty colors have been around for a few years and it's got to be because consumers want them, but geez, are these two the ugliest things you've ever seen or what? I won't say where I found them, but it doesn't matter. Screaming shades of neon-bright poinsettias are everywhere.

Sometimes American consumers are so crass. Even if you're sick to death of seeing them at this time of year, poinsettias are actually very pretty plants. The traditional ones, I mean, the rich red ones. And I can't be totally crazy, at least on this point, because red remains the best-selling color of all.

Better than blue or purple. Better than orange or yellow. I can hardly write those colors without grimmacing. I like the cream-colored ones and the salmon and maroon, and the marbled blends. The speckled ones look like they were left in a room being painted and got splattered.

I do like the plant's size and shape, tips and angles. And nothing looks prettier in a house at Christmas time than groupings of poinsettias. But novelty shades leave me cold. No, freezing! They say all the wrong things about this holiday, which isn't unusual. Not much about Christmas feels much like Christmas anymore.

Against the modern current, I am determined to preserve some customs in their pristine state. Next time I'm passing through my local garden center or Home Depot, and those tacky-colored poinsettias catch my eye, I'm going to motor on past till I get to a sea of tradition.

Like so:

The weather's been gray and dreary, cold and damp (the worst!) for so long, it almost feels like April. Don't know about you but I'm so busy at the moment I've had no time to feel depressed about the weather.

No time either to fuss in the garden. So I got someone to do it for me. I can't prune huge tree limbs hanging over the street and I chose not to spend gigantic chunks of vacation time to trim perennials and spread compost, so I bit the bullet, hired some folks to help and ran up the equivalent of the war debt. Which leads me to urge all gardeners to keep track of what's planted where.

I thought I was Miss Smarty Pants by putting plant tags next to all the stuff that went in over the last growing season. But sometimes when leaves and debris get raked and gathered with gusto, the tags get swept away. Upon seeing my nice, neat and newly trimmed garden, then, I was of two minds: Thrilled that I didn't have to do it and chagrined to realize that almost all of the plant tags were gone.

Some of the plants got swept away, too - a couple of little sedums I was nursing along and a few other things whose names now - of course - I can't recall. I guess come spring we'll take inventory and see what else went away.

Point is, nobody fusses over your garden quite like you do. Nobody takes the care you think it requires. It's kind of like raising your kids. Nobody who isn't kin cherishes them exactly as you do.

Short of explaining what's what and hovering over the work crew, there's not a lot to be done about this. And I shouldn't complain. I'm lucky I could hire someone. But I'm kicking myself for keeping no records, for not writing down somewhere what I bought and where I planted it. I took the easy way out and then, faced with strangers coming to do my work for me, I failed to go outside and take notes.

It'll be interesting to see what comes back next spring. What does come up should be fluffy and full, which will be pure joy to watch. What doesn't come up will be noted, grieved over, gnashed about and then, face it, forgotten. I'll just run out and get something else.

I'm trying to cut out that last step, though. I'm trying to plant enough perennials that I don't feel the need to buy new stuff every year. Is that such a crazy notion?

By now you're wondering what the photo at the top of this posting is and why it's there. It's a picture of a spectacular dahlia that didn't grow in my garden, didn't get swept away and likely will never be bought by me to plant there. It was growing this summer and fall in Burpee's Fordhook Garden up in Doylestown. Isn't it superb?

I've always considered dahlias a pain in the neck because they need to be dug up every year and held over till spring. These days, I'm being decadent. Let others do the digging. I just want to enjoy the flowers - swept away, if you will, by their beauty.

Recently someone from Burpee mentioned that this year for the first time most of its seed orders would be coming from online, rather than catalogue, customers. This shouldn't surprise anyone but it's sort of sad. The arrival of plant and seed catalogues at this time of year has always been a welcome break from the darkness and cold of winter, and while we might not curl up in front of a fire in the living room to peruse our catalogues anymore, we do find time at the kitchen table or before we fall asleep, moments sandwiched in and around the busy-ness that we're all about these days.

Online shopping for seeds and plants is like any other online endeavor - a whole lot easier and quicker than doing comparison shopping with catalogues. If you want to see all the new amaryllises available for Christmas, for example, you just Google and go. There are tons.

Over the weekend the Heirloom Roses catalogue appeared in my mailbox, the result of my ordering (online, naturally, from www.heirloomroses.com) a couple of roses last summer. (It says $5 on the cover - very impressive.) I bought "Compassion," a nifty little apricot-colored climber that has a sweet fragrance, the idea being that once it fluffed over the fence, passers-by would catch a whiff. And that's been true, though on a small scale. The rose has thrived but is still not too large. One of these days ...

And I bought "Ginger Syllabub," whose flowers are described in the catalogue as "amber ginger ... exuding wave after wave of perfume." On the fragrance scale of 1-10, 10 being the most fragrant, this one rates a 9 from Heirloom Roses. On my fence, it's still a delicate little thing, but hints of greatness are there!

I have other roses ... the old standby, another climber called "New Dawn," which is pink and supposedly grows almost to tree size if you let it, and the heirloom "Portlandia," which is pink and apricot, two colors I find positively irresistible in a rose.

Sounds like a lot of roses, but they're here and there in the garden. You'd never come visit and think I'm a rosarian of any consequence. I dabble.

But last Saturday, I sat down in the kitchen and took a look at this thick, colorful catalogue that had just appeared. Suddenly I was having one of those moments you read about and people like me write about! What a delight. The photos are luscious. Every bloom looks huge, every rose is a treasure.

I found myself reading and reading ... "Very large, fully double blooms are a standout color of orange-red with a coppery cast ..." That's Dolly Parton, a hybrid tea, and it's no surprise this one has "very large, fully double blooms"!!

Dolly Parton isn't, but a lot of the names are very romantic. Paul's Himalayan Musk and Tess of the d'Urbervilles,Glamis Castle and Lady of the Mist.

It was a gloomy day, and just the sight of all these delicate beauties in picture perfection was transporting, to say the least.

Like many gardeners, I've been reluctant to take the rose plunge in any major way. Roses have a reputation, don't you know - fussy, high-maintenance, temperamental, ephemeral. But looking throught his catalogue, I had one of those moments.

Maybe it's time.

This is a Japanese beautyberry (Callicarpa japonica). Isn't it the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen? It stopped me dead yesterday, in the parking lot, no less, when I arrived at Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore College. I whipped out my digital camera - always handy for gardeners to carry - and snapped away, knowing it would be dark by the time I returned to the car.

This beautyberry is almost identical to the native American ones that I like so much - just smaller. The fruit is a bit paler, too, but the effect is the same: a riveting sight on a cold, windy day. The berries don't taste good to us and birds aren't wild about them either, stripping the other shrubs and trees of goodies first and turning to beautyberries last.

I wouldn't want to eat these guys anyway. They're too good to look at. They don't call 'em beautyberries for nothing.