Every spring I rediscover my spring\/summer wardrobe, my garden tools and the clutter in my garage.\u00a0 My wardrobe and the tools always seem fresh and new\u2014at least for the first fifteen minutes.\u00a0 The clutter in my garage is forever old and daunting.\u00a0 Generally I ignore it in favor of making discoveries in my garden.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s big revelation was the clove currant\u2014Ribes odoratum.\u00a0 I planted it about five years ago after being intoxicated by one at Wave Hill in the Bronx.\u00a0 The Wave Hill specimen was mature at about four feet tall, with lobed blue-green leaves.\u00a0 It was covered with hundreds of small yellow flowers, each one exuding the sweet, spicy fragrance of clove.\u00a0 I wafted home on that fragrant memory and ordered a clove currant immediately.\u00a0 It was in the ground three weeks later.\u00a0 Then I waited, and waited and waited.\u00a0 Last fall I had just about decided to rip out the shrub in favor of something that would pull its weight in the garden.\u00a0 Laziness and Hurricane Sandy intervened to save the clove current and now it is blooming.\u00a0 The show is not astounding, but there are enough flowers to perfume the air around the bush.\u00a0 Fruit will have to wait until I get a clove currant of the opposite sex for hanky-panky and pollination purposes.\u00a0 For the moment though, I give thanks once again for laziness.<\/p>\n
As poet John Donne said, \u201cDeath be not proud.\u201d\u00a0 It certainly wasn\u2019t for the hardy ice plant\u2014Delospermum cooperi\u2014in my back garden. \u00a0The ice plant, a low grower, was three years old, with narrow fleshy leaves and gorgeous pink-purple daisies.\u00a0 It grew on the edge of a raised bed and flowed gracefully over the low stone wall directly in front of it.\u00a0 In the winter the leaves turned a lovely burgundy shade.\u00a0 It was, in short, a perfect plant.\u00a0 And then it died\u2014an unhappy revelation in this season of rebirth.<\/p>\n
I am not sure why this happened, as it was in a raised situation with good drainage.\u00a0 It probably had something to do with last winter\u2019s weather.\u00a0 In any event, I will replace it with another ice plant and this time add both compost and gravel to the planting hole. \u00a0I am taking no chances the second time around.<\/p>\n
I love the reasonably unusual yellow trillium\u2014Trillium luteum\u2014which is now preparing to bloom in my back shade garden.\u00a0 Its whimsical common name is \u201cwake robin.\u201d\u00a0 The robins in my yard are already awake, but I am sure they appreciate the wake robin anyway.\u00a0 Each plant grows about a foot tall, with a very distinctive cluster of three large, rounded leaves at the top of every stalk.\u00a0 The medium green leaves, splashed and mottled with lighter green, serve as a backdrop for the yellow flowers, which look a bit like small yellow tulips.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t expected the yellow trillium to bloom this year, and in truth, I had forgotten all about it.\u00a0 Happily, the plant was oblivious to my sieve-like memory and came up anyway.<\/p>\n
Nearly a decade ago, I was at a plant conference and one of the sponsoring nurseries was giving out tiny starter plants of a clematis called \u201cRadar Love.\u201d\u00a0 I took one because it was free and I am a soft touch for freebies of all sorts.\u00a0 The name is reminiscent of the psychedelic sixties, but the plant is actually a variety of Clematis tangutica, a native of Asia.\u00a0 This climbing or free ranging vine can grow to eight feet, with a spread of three or four feet.\u00a0 The attraction is the bell-shaped flowers, which are bright yellow and borne in profusion.\u00a0 Mine, of course, has never borne anything in profusion and tends to disappear in the hot summers.\u00a0 I would have ripped it out years ago, but at the times when my ire was at an apex, the plant was nowhere to be found.\u00a0 This spring it is suddenly alive, well and spreading lustily.\u00a0 We will see if this is finally the year when I get a little \u2018Radar Love\u2019 of my own.<\/p>\n
In the spirit of rebirth and spring construction projects, the resident groundhog has built an extension tunnel, with an outlet in the raised bed by our garage.\u00a0 This is offensive, like everything connected with the groundhog.\u00a0 As with his other excavations, I have filled the latest one with used cat litter.\u00a0 I will add an assertively scented mound of discarded onion grass to the top, possible with a few dabs of Vick\u2019s Vapo Rub, which really does seem to deter garden varmints.\u00a0 The groundhog is a cagey creature.\u00a0 I have no doubt that right now he is taking a page from Tennyson and his young groundhog\u2019s fancy has lightly turned to thoughts of love<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>I can\u2019t put a stop to that, but if my efforts are successful, there will be no groundhog love shack in my garden.<\/p>\n This is the essence of spring gardening\u2014birth, rebirth, new plantings, discoveries and groundhogs.\u00a0 I rejoice in all of them\u2014except for the groundhogs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every spring I rediscover my spring\/summer wardrobe, my garden tools and the clutter in my garage.\u00a0 My wardrobe and the tools always seem fresh and new\u2014at least for the first fifteen minutes.\u00a0 The clutter in my garage is forever old and daunting.\u00a0 Generally I ignore it in favor of making discoveries in my garden. This … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[556,558,413,557,540,559,560,561],"class_list":["post-802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","tag-clematis-tangutica","tag-clove-currant","tag-groundhogs","tag-ribes-ordoratum","tag-spring-gardening","tag-trillium-luteum","tag-wakerobin","tag-yellow-trillium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":803,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions\/803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}