Kiss the Earth

A week ago yesterday, it being a gloriously sunny Sunday, we ventured out to Morris Arboretum to take a walk and see how the rose garden was doing. Cars were lined up along Northwestern Avenue waiting to get in. Couldn't imagine what was going on. Were they giving away plants?

Actually, it was opening weekend for the 2008 garden railway, an event you might not suspect would generate so much excitement. But there you go. This year's theme is "Architectural Wonders of the World." It runs till Oct. 13.

No world wonders, but I remember being drawn to my brothers' toy train set back in the dark ages, especially the small-scale towns, bridges and mountains and the pale puffs of smoke that came out of the engine.

This is a grander thing. The trains - one has Thomas as the engine - were amusing and interesting in their own right as they passed replicas of some of the world's most fascinating buildings and sites - the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, the Giza pyramid.

Fifty-six in all, including some close to home. Hey, how'd these guys get in there - Betsy Ross House, Elfreth's Alley, historic houses in Fairmount Park and - OK, so Morris gets a pass - the Fernery at the arboretum. The miniature replicas, whatever their pedigree, were absolutely great, and we ended up doing the whole circuit. There's also a small train for kids to ride all over the arboretum. Opening weekend only. (See lower photo)

There's a long history of garden railways in Europe, starting in the mid-19th century. The fad hopped across the pond in the crazy 1920s and '30s, dropped out of sight in the boring '50s and re-emerged about 30 years ago.

Morris' garden railway is lots of fun, especially if you have little ones to entertain. Truth be told, it was hard to tell who was enjoying it more - the little kids or the big ones. That would be us.

This is love-in-a-mist, an old fashioned flower properly known as Nigella damascena and I grew it from seed last year. The self-sowing promise isn't always fulfilled in my garden, but maybe I'm getting better with time and experience. Or maybe not! It's hard to know why things happen.

The love-in-a-mist came back this year in spades after a rather puny showing last year. Some nasturtium seeds I literally tossed into a bald spot in the garden have sprouted cheerfully as well. This is great news, as both provide delightful flowers and unusual foliage - the love-in-a-mist has tall feathery stems and the nasturtiums look like little lily pads. The former, as you can see, are cooling shades of blue and white, the latter warm yellows and oranges.

Nigella comes from niger, or the Latin for black, because the seeds are black. And get this - in Egypt, ladies used to eat the seeds to "produce stoutness, which is considered an attribute to beauty in these lands," according to a handy/dandy reference book on my desk called "100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names" by Diana Wells. The heck with handy/dandy. That's some attribute!

In any event, I love these flowers and their flighty foliage. Something about them suggests airy thoughts. They're in the back of my vegetable patch, a place increasingly inhabited by flowers. I like the idea of combining the two and lots of gardeners I've interviewed suggest this either to create a more colorful bed or to distract little nasties that otherwise would be feeding on your vegetables. It helps soften the look, too, when the lettuce is pulverized and the tomato plants yellow.

So far, the tomatoes are looking good. Maybe it's all that misty love. Maybe it's the goodwill it generates.

Even in the garden, where I believe we are at our most authentic, we can be just as unconscious as we are elsewhere. This year in my garden, I suddenly realized, I've been gravitating toward yellow, a color I've always loved but until now has taken a back seat to purples and pinks. This is not by design exactly. It's a classic case of we like what we like and eventually it comes out.

Walking around to see how much the overnight rain had energized everything, I was struck this morning by the many patches of yellow: the bumpy - spectacular - spires of false lupine, the hardy yellow pansies, the new bits of yellow yarrow, the mound of evening primrose (known as sundrops) a neighbor shared last spring, the ever-taller healianthoides next to thin spikes of globe-flower, and the 'Angelina' sedums blooming up and down the walkway.

Most of these are new. And do they cheer me up! I think this signals a new day in my garden, one infused with horticultural sunshine to complement the real thing. It changes the palette dramatically, perhaps a sign of growing confidence.

Friends are emailing photos of their roses, all in spectacular bloom right now. Mine, too, and this NATURALLY has fueled a desire to buy even more. My current favorites run the gamut from groundcover roses like 'Good and Plenty' - the color of those scrumptious pink and white candies - and 'Happy Chappy' - a pink-gold-apricot - that are blooming up a nice, compact storm in the garden ... to several fragrant climbers that are doing their thing on the fence out front.

After reading a lot about roses, and talking to gardeners who grow them, I looked for climbers that are repeat bloomers, very disease resistant and fragrant. There is so much hype out there about plants - and roses are no exception. To read the blurbs, you'd think every single rose possesses all of the qualities I seek. So I jumped into the garden forums and flipped through some rose books and made my choices.

They are: 'Compassion,' 'Ginger Syllabub,' 'Golden Showers' and 'Portlandia' - all yellow, peach, apricot, pink - to climb on the front fence in whatever patches of sunshine I could find. The bright yellow 'Golden Showers' just went in over the weekend, with lots of water and mulch, but the others have a year or two under their belts and are doing great. It's fun to watch passersby suddenly stop, lean down to smell these incredible flowers and smile as they go on their way. I do it myself. (It's a bonus for taking out the trash.)

I planted four more climbers on the pergola, intertwined with Clematis 'Montana Rubens' and 'Henryi,' which truly deserves to be the best-selling white clematis - red 'Don Juan,' pink 'Zephirine Drouhin,' yellow/orange 'Joseph's Coat' and, I think, cream-colored 'Highfield.' These are too young to be blooming but they look healthy. Perhaps next year.

Two creamy pink 'New Dawns' and a new red and white 'Fourth of July' are climbing up trellises in the herb garden, along with a new hybrid tea called 'Lady Bird Johnson,' that is outstanding. And speaking of bonuses, 10 percent of the net sales of this rose, chosen personally by Mrs. Johnson, go to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin. 'Lady Bird' produces five- or six-inch coral-orange blooms that last and last and also have a fruity fragrance.

I've stayed away from hybrid teas for their fussy reputation and my desire not to spray, but this rose is enough to make short work of my objections. We'll see how successful I am ... Meanwhile, I'd appreciate thoughts and suggestions from any veteran rosarians out there. What do you like? And how do you care for your roses?

It's no secret why gardeners love roses. Is there anything lovelier in June?

Get a load of this! For the first time, baby figs are growing. This is a tribute to the tough nature of this 'Hardy Chicago' (Ficus carica) that's been abused in my garden for the last couple of years. It was but a few inches tall when it arrived from an online nursery, and I planted it in a terrible spot. Yes, it was sunny, but it was soon dwarfed by the perennials all around it. Still, it lived.

I transplanted it last year to a spot against a wall that gets morning and afternoon sun. It continued to live but quality of life was minimal. This year, as you can see, it's taken off and is producing tiny figlets, at last.

This variety supposedly does well in extreme heat in early summer. How about extreme heat in spring, which we've just had? Perhaps the cool air this week will help. Meanwhile, I daydream about the figs to come ... mottled black and purple skin, strawberry-red pulp inside, sweet, juicy, like the ones we plucked right off a tree in Tuscany. Forget the romance. I could go for a bucket of fig gelato. None better.

A few weeks ago I thought it was Poppy Awareness Week. Everywhere I went I saw poppies. Now it's little green things. First, I pulled the last of the pea vines out of my vegetable patch. They're done, fried, crisp as a potato chip. I squeezed open the last few green pods and popped those sweet little peas into my mouth raw. None of my meager pea crop made it to dinner. Or I should say made it into the main dish.

I put them on homemade pizza. I put them in salads. Mostly I put them in my mouth. So that's one little green thing.

The second: the baby figs. See earlier post.
Third: grapes. Nothing stirs my inner Italian than the sight of small, hard, green grapes that I know will grow into marble-like, rose-colored, Reliance table grapes. Problem is, I'm basically supplying the bird population of Northwest Philadelphia with delectable eating grapes. I've yet to harvest one before the birds do.

But that doesn't detract from the thrill of watching this process unfold. Birds gotta eat, after all.

Hydrangea season is upon us, which brings to mind one of the most common questions gardeners ask. When do I prune? I still laugh to recall the many phone calls I had from readers after doing a story about hydrangea. Every one started like this: "My hydrangea didn't bloom this summer and I don't know why."

"Hmmm. Have you pruned it recently?" I'd ask. "Oh, yes," the caller would say. "We cut it way back a few weeks ago" or last fall, effectively killing the new growth that was already under way.

This is tricky business, for sure, so I go for the least complicated route: Whenever possible, do nothing. Most experts recommend leaving hydrangeas alone if you can, expecially the jumbo-jet native oak leaf, which shouldn't really be planted in a space it can easily outgrow. And anyway, I think hydrangeas look best when they're flopping and arcing all over the place.

But if you must prune, here are some very conservative suggestions. You can remove dead wood or do slight - SLIGHT - pruning at any time for shaping. If you have to prune for size, some folks take out a few branches, no more than about one-third, in winter or very early spring to rejuvenate the plant. But don't do more or you'll be in trouble.

Once the blooms are done, you can leave them on 'cause they're fun to look at through fall and winter OR you can deadhead (remove) them as you would the spent blooms of other perennials. No one's out in the woods deadheading hydrangeas, so clearly these dead flowers don't need to come off. I'd just as soon leave them till spring, then in one of those happy springtime rituals, make way for new.

Hydrangea macrophylla, the so-called "mophead" shown here, was planted in my garden six years ago from a single bloom in a pot for Mother's Day. You should see it now - it's a giant, and more beautiful than ever this year. Maybe that's due to the great spring we had. Or because it was expertly thinned last winter. (Not by me, of course.)

In any event, unless it's my imagination, it's emerged this season straighter, with stronger - and somehow darker - stems, than I remember. I've even cut them to bring in the house and they've survived for several days.

So while the best strategy is to leave your hydrangea alone, you can prune out the dead branches or a little of the old growth on occasion. I wouldn't make an annual habit out of it and I'd restrain with a floral-patterned straight jacket any significant other who exhibits a compulsion to prune this fall. Even better, hide your pruners.

As we head into the summer of 2008, here's a photo to remind us of the incredible beauty of this season in the garden. It may not look like this in a few weeks, but this morning was one of the most beautiful yet.

Now if we could just get some rain over the weekend ... and I mean, real rain, not the wimpy washouts we've had over the last few weeks. Thunder, lightning and then nothing. No fair! We'd like a good soaking. Sunday's forecast looks promising.

Happy weekend - and summer!

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