The rarest flower color is true blue—not muddy blue-purple or questionable blue-pink, but bright, unabashed blue. That color is even more spectacular when it is set against a background of dull earth and comes after a winter onslaught of gray days. I rejoiced in that color yesterday when the chionodoxa or “glory of the snow” … Read more
It has been at least four years since I last grew the lovely plumbago, with its cascading habit and sky-blue flowers. This was not because I had grown tired of plumbago, but because my last plumbago grew tired of me and died. I did not take it personally, since the death happened in January, as … Read more
About 1,000 years ago, or in 1967, to be specific, the Fifth Dimension, a pop group, recorded “Up, Up, and Away,” a song about bout love and ballooning. The refrain goes, “Up, up and away–My beautiful, my beautiful balloon.” It was a huge hit, combining the ideas of love, hot air, and rising above earthly … Read more
It is clear from even a brief tour around the garden that extensive squirrel landscaping has happened over the past half year. Little “tommie’ crocuses, or Crocus tommasinianus, sprouted weeks ago in the lawn and other areas far removed from where the bulbs were originally planted. Now, having played their role in the early spring … Read more
In a memorable scene from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, the character of Emile de Becque sings: “Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger, You may see a stranger across a crowded room,…” I had a similar feeling one semi-enchanted afternoon, when I saw a bush clematis across a crowded garden center. … Read more
