Long time gone

Yep, its been months and months since I blogged last, not that anyone really noticed... probably. Its not that I haven't had a few musings rolling around in my head; deep contemplations and such. The trouble is coming to a conclusion on any of them. Having not acheived that I decided to just blog about what's going on in the garden. It is, afterall, one of the finest (perhaps THE finest) spring that we had here at Molehill Gardens.

May is the month of Irises. Several years ago we began collecting Irises and are close to matching our number of varieties daylilies. Most of them are bearded irises with which most people are familiar. In fact it is the state flower of Tennessee. Well, the beardeds are almost finished blooming, but the show goes on thanks to the host of other types of irises that are not nearly as well know, but which, nonetheless, deserve a prominent place in the garden. The flower pictured right is a Louisiana iris called 'Voodoo Music' and the picture doesn't do it justice. It is much darker than the blue that is represented. A vigorous grower, it has come back very well after we divided the heck out of it to give a bunch away to the Master Gardeners class last fall. Louisiana irises can tolerate a wide range of soil conditions including completely saturated (even in standing water) and we grow them in everything from a potted pond setting to a sandy sloping part of our display garden.

Also perfoming well right now it the Louisiana iris called Feliciana Hills, a new acquisition for us this spring. It is a big, big bloom and a nice new shade for our other-than-bearded iris selection. We haven't even found a place for it in the garden yet!! I hope that it proves to be as vigorous as our other Louisianas!


I guess the "kodak moments" are too many to just keep going on and on about; best to keep them for another blog perhaps. But I have to include this little gem as we are always excited to see it come into bloom every year. It is a calla lilly called 'White Giant' and it is a real shiner! It can grow to a height of nearly four feet, but hasn't in our garden yet. Still, at nearly three feet and a huge bloom it is a show stopper to those who visit and see it in bloom. It is on its second bloom now, pictured left. Very few callas are hardy where we garden and we always cringe when we hear forecasts for single digits or lower. This year was a good test for them as we had eleven straight days with temps below freezing and a couple of single digtits. I did have a nice mound of hay over the growing area but it was not placed until the temps were a couple of days into that cold run. Seems to have worked!

Well, maybe since this is such a great year (and we have decided not to have an Open Garden... more on that later) I can get more posts up about the goings-on at Molehill... or maybe you'll just have to come and see!

Hidden Treasures

Maybe its just a mushroom. Maybe not. One man's trash is another mans treasure. Some see a fungus, I see a living pearl in its botanical oyster. This giant mushroom sprang up underneath the slender weeping foliage of the nearby ornamental grass. Mushrooms are often considered a nuisance, or unsightly, but I love little things like this in the garden for several reasons.

For one thing, its just so darn big you can't help but admire it. Come on, how often do you see a big honkin fungus... uh, livng pearl like that, huh? It was easily eight inches across. For another thing, if only for an instant, when you do see these little gems, it allows your mind wander into the "gnomes and faries might really exist" realm. Who hasn't stopped and wondered if there wasn't really something out there that would make the fantastic real. And finally... and this is the one that makes me swell with pride... its a sign that your soil is actually very healthy! You see, mushrooms are the fruiting body of the fungus that grows beneath the soil surface. Most soil fungi grow in long root like strands called "mycelium" and it is a parasitic organism. It lives on complex organic matter that soil bacteria (who also like organic matter) find a little tough to chew. It is kind of like "everything has a purpose, and there's a purpose for everything." The presence of fungi means the presence of organic matter. Organic matter means healthy soil. I, of course, swell with pride at that since I am a soil scientist.

Little gems (and big ones) are everywhere. You just have to know either WHERE to look or HOW to look. I think it is more of a matter of HOW.

OPEN GARDEN TIME!!!

Yeah baby, its that time again. Time for the 7th Annul Daylily Open Garden! It is our delight to open our garden to visitor from where ever they come. We started it years ago to show folks that modern daylilies are more than just the little yellow "stella d'oro" that you see in commercial landscaping just about everywhere or the orange "ditch lily" you see growing on the roadsides. Yes, the modern daylliy has come a long way; they have so much to offer a garden. They are called America's favorite perennial for a reason.

For the past three years, we have been selling our "surplus" and donating the proceeds to the Volunteers in Mission "Taiama" farm project that I have been so blessed to be a part of. Just a week ago, more than 200 trees and 140 pineapple plants were delivered and planted at the farm. It is our hope that the trees will make a significant impact on the nutrition and economy of this little village in one of the worlds poorest countries.


So, if you want to make a difference; if you want to make an impact, or if you want to just stroll the paths of our garden and gawk at the colors, sizes, and shapes of hundreds of daylilies and perennials, come on out. Email me for directions.

Bloggers note: all of the grass you see in picture above is now taken up by MORE GARDEN SPACE!!!

Treasures

Treasures are anywhere and everywhere; you just have to know how to look for them. A couple of years ago we opened up the seedling field from our daylily hybridizing to friends who, by making a donation to our Farm Mission in Sierra Leone, West Africa, could chose a daylily seedling and give it a name. We would take care of the official registration through the American Hemerocallis Society, they just had to come up with the name. One of those seedlings is shown on the blogpage here. H. 'Taiama' is named after the village where we go to do Medical, nutritional, agricultural, and other types of mission work. Many people chose to honor or memorialize loved ones. My best friend Rob, a long time supporter of the mission, asked me to chose one for his wife, and our friend, and name it after her, Ashlee Nicole, as a birthday present. Now, I must say it isn't easy to make that kind of choice... you never know what colors someone likes or whether a flower will appeal to them or not. But one day, Alison and I were looking at our seedling bed and this one spoke up and said "I'm Ashlee Nicole, happy to meet you." We think it is a real treasure, just like Ashlee.

LY-cor-us or ly-COR-us, they're still naked ladies

Everywhere you go you run into it. That look of puzzlement that you get when you are talking to a fellow plant lover and you say the name of a plant, pronounce it differently than they know it. Then, after the look, you get the proper pronunciation put back to you. Now, I grew up calling the flower shown below a Pe-OH-ne, and then I became educated and highly knowledgeable about plants and of course learned the correct pronunciation is PE-oh-ne. Locally, they are known as the former and I do get some looks and corrections periodically. I sometimes like to get digs in to people by repeating the correct pronunciation.
The peony pictured here is a nice yellow we purchased recently. Yellows are a difficult color to acheive in peonies. We actually were eyeing another one but decided not to shell out the dough for it and go for this one which should have been orange and yellow. Hmmm, appears that luck was on our side!
Of course Peonies are not the only flower that has its local name. My personal favorite is the Clematis. Until I moved here, to Paris Tn., I don't know that I had ever heard it pronounced any way other than CLEM-it-tus. Or maybe time and fading memory are just failing me now, who knows. But here, they are known as Cle-MAT-us. This is the one I pariticularly love to torment people with by never conforming to the local pronunciation. Sometimes people even have to ask me if we are talking about the same plant. (I get a big inward grin when that happens, hehehe) I love clematis. I love anything that vines and twines, but when it flowers like a clematis, its a real winner! This one is growing in our garden; scaling an old spoked wagon wheel I found just for this reason.

With so many plants having dual pronunciations, I could go on and on, but will close with the title theme, the Lycoris. LY-cor-us or ly-COR-us? Resurrection lillies or Spider lilies? I prefer just calling them naked ladies. Now, come on, who's gonna complain about having naked ladies in their garden no matter how you say it??

Shameless Plug.. its not my fault.

OK, I know that this is a shameless plug for one of my boys, but I tried emailing the video below and it was too big to go from either of my email sources and at home it would take about 3 days to load on our dial-up connection. So, this was suggested by my friend Rob... its his fault.

The setting is the Paris Strings Spring Concert. My youngest son Colin is in the Fourth Grade Orchestra playing violin. He was selected as "Concert Master," and that is a great honor. The Concert Master comes out after everyone else is seated and "tunes" the orchestra, then takes his/her seat. The lead violin is usually chosen for this honor. So, without further delay...

Here today, gone tomorrow

Authors note: This blog could possibly be rambling... I am know to do that occasionally... apologies in advance.

Hello, hello. Its been a while since I blogged. The richness of the experience in Africa all to quickly succumbed to what I recently called the "pace and swill" of the western world. However, I have made a commitment to myself to share some of the insights I have gleaned from these trips to Sierra Leone and the ones on my Christian journey. And I have one to share now.

The garden is starting to burst from the ground now, in mid April. The tulips and daffodils have had their day and are beginning to fade (but still making a show). We scavenge discounted bulbs from Lowes a few times and have had great success with them. We rarely buy anything from the retail stores (Lowes, WalMart, etc) unless it is on clearance. But as nice as the bulbs look now, if you walk through the garden right now, what you will notice most is weeds! Yes weeds have already taken over. Weeds like the one pictured above called "Henbit." And when I say taken over, I mean they are everywhere!

Am I worried you ask? Well, no, I am not. And why? because the weeds that are ruling the roost right now are called "ephemeral weeds." Ephemeral weeds are weeds that grow quickly, bloom quickly, seed quickly, and, thankfully, die quickly. They are almost going to seed when they germinate from the previous year's seed that has lain dormant all year. The reason I am not so worried, is that they are essentially gone by the time the real Spring and Summer flowers decide it is their turn. Now, I can say that i am a bit regretful that I am unable to "harvest" the fodder for my compost pile (oh for a couple more hours in each day). Yes, I do wish I could rid the garden of those weeds before they go to seed (an almost impossible feat due to the short life cycle) so that the cycle could be short circuited and maybe the next year they are only a minor nuisance. One of those scoundrel weeds has seed pods that shatter on the slightest touch and scatter seed in a wide area around making it nearly impossible to be rid of. Grrrr. When they die back, however, they leave little behind in the way of nutrients for the garden so it is as if the garden never knew they were there. They are mostly water and organic matter. Little substance for the greater scheme of the garden.

The garden is a collection of individual plant and ornaments, and creatures. Each exists to fulfill its own mission of birth, life, reproduction, and death. But when taken as a whole, the GARDEN is something more. It is itself a living, breathing thing. It has a heart, which in our garden is daylilies. It has bones, the trees, shrubs, and woody structural elements. It has a skin of good soil and mulch. It has a circulatory system in the paths that wind through it. And best of all it has little gems which are like the little things you notice about your spouse for the first time after so many years. The subtle variation in their eye color, the shape of a collar bone, the character of their face when they interact with a child. These little gems, the Heucheras, the Geum, the verbena, or trilliums, they are what make the garden a unique individual. In the life and existence of a garden, each separate component contributes to the whole to make it live. The ephemeral are counter to this scheme. They spring forth, live hard and quick and die. They live and leave little behind to show that they were there.

People can be ephemeral too, and never even know it. So many people live day to day disconnected from the "garden" that is the world around them; their neighborhood, their community, their town. So many people live and die thinking that self fulfillment is the purpose for which we were created. They never realize that the real purpose is to be part of the garden. A low, mounding verbena without a back drop of a tall monarda is just a mound of verbena. It shines its light upon itself But together, they shine brighter, they lend light to one another, and enhance, and make a difference to the whole garden. Likewise, a life lived for the community, for a neighbor, for mankind is a life that allows the garden to shine brighter; it lends it light to the garden rather than using it to light itself. It enhances and makes a difference. It is difficult for humans to live their lives in perpetual service to their neighbor (and I use this term neighbor the way that Jesus used it in the story of the Good Samaritan) but I am sure that the more we live in it, the more our hunger for self fulfillment is satisfied. In contributing to the whole we are fulfilled.