Lee vs. Cherokee Rose

Lee 9, Cherokee Rose 1.That's me in the red. It's my own blood covering me after being repeatedly lashed by giant rose canes. Once a year I risk life and limb to cut back this giant magnificent rose. In the photo I'm standing on the roof of our carport. The plant mass isn't all Cherokee Rose. There is a Lady Banks and a Carolina Jessamine mixed up in the tangle but 80% is Cherokee. It will cover our carport over the course of a year and will begin to grow under and over our house roof and into the gutters. It also drops about 40 gallons of organic matter that I spray off the carport roof and haul down to the vegetable garden. Best of all, the huge bundle of pruned canes offers massive amounts of cuttings to root-a few years ago I rooted 50 and gave them all away. (photo by Rinne Allen).

Native Plant Symposium

Busy as a bee today at the Native Plant Symposium at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. Loads of information and, in what seems like the way only gardeners can be, I'm all riled up about these plants that are new to me and I'm full of new ideas about what to plant where. But first, let's think how logical native plants seem: they have evolved to grow here. Zone 7. Low maintenance, relatively pest free and genetically inclined to live here. Plus, many plants we discussed have medicinal qualities and are a direct connection with our multicultural past where European and Native American plant knowledge co-mingled and, best of all, these plants, being native, don't require one to turn one's yard into a chemical dump to get them to grow. What could be more antithetical to gardening than walking outside and dumping, spraying, dusting or otherwise administering death dealing chemicals into your yard? And one can simultaneously strike an economic blow with the pocket book at those companies that spend millions of dollars a year to market to us an idea of a garden as a monocrop of emerald turf surrounded by lollipop color pod plants. Hogwash! Hopefully you were already eating organic produce from your garden and running an organic yard and if you weren't, well there is no excuse for that. Ammonia and petroleum needn't have a thing to do with gardening.
First of this morning Rinne and I headed out Milledge to the Bot Garden. The symposium was held in The Garden Club of Georgia's state headquarters which has the distinct misfortune of looking like a suburban bank branch minus the drive thru. However, the interior was a notch up and the stairway had a quite nice view over woods above the conservatory. We couldn't help to compare this beginning to attending a speech sponsored by "Gardens Illustrated" where we were given a flute of champagne upon entering the Royal Geographic Society building during the 2006 Chelsea Flower Show, but that is a story for another post and isn't germane to what I'm talking about anyway.
The first speaker was Dr Armitage from UGA who gave a fantastic talk about native plants that he has researched for use in the nursery trade. According to him this is a growing segment of the market and so one should expect to see more natives in the local garden center and big box stores which is extremely refreshing. A wonderful point he made was that there is no point in being a plant nazi. Natives mix perfectly fine with your other plants. He has also written a new book about natives that we weren't quick enough to grab before all the copies were gone. Some of the native plants he spoke of: squaw weed or ragwort, Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight', several varieties of blue star flower (Amsonia), the tall white spikes of Tiarella corifolia, mayapples, false indigo, rosin weed, jack-in-the-pulpit, and the northern maidenhair fern. A quick hour.
Next up, Dr Maudsley, who gave a presentation on butterflies and the plants that attract them. Very informative as he gave a rundown of the common butterflies of our area. He said that www.dallasbutterflies.com is a good resource and I finally learned that the caterpillar that chewed my parsely and dill to nubby stalks last year was a black swallowtail. That and that the state butterfly of Georgia is the tiger swallowtail.
Following, Patricia Howell, registered herbalist, gave a lecture about native medicinal herbs that drew from her book "Medicinal Plants of the Southern Appalachians". Thank goodness this plant knowledge has survived. Besides, who could resist a plant called faerie torch or mad dog skull cap ? Her talk touched on many plants that seemed more common to me such as bloodroot, butteryfly weed, coneflower, solomon's seal, passion flower and witch hazel. But many others I had never heard of (partridge berry, lobelia, cardinal flower, elderberry and gentian) or never thought of as herbs (wild geranium, joe-pye-weed and goldenrod).
Post lunch brought a hilarious presentation by Jerry Hightower, a naturalist from the National Park Service. He talked about wildlife in the garden. And folks our gardens are crawling with critters. The usual suspects: song birds, chipmunks, squirrels, possums and racoons. The reptillian suspects.The less usual suspects: red foxes, eastern coyotes, beavers and armadillos. Suprisingly to me the urban red fox population has been on the upswing due to all the urban rodents and trash bins to scavenge through.
Finally we closed with a lecture about garden design from Connie Cuttingham which was less informative to us than the others but she did have a couple of interesting plant suggestions. So we'll probably be planting a sourwood tree before too long and probably try to work in a rattlesnake master also.
All in all a fascinating day that left me determined to plant more natives such as sweet bay magnolia and mayapples and to help with hummingbird tracking at www.georgiahummers.org. And as always, spend more time in the yard. (photo by Rinne Allen)

Top of the Week

Weather and work conspired against me this week and I had hardly a moment in the yard save for a few quick dashes through for a dose of nature. Happily I'll have time to tackle the Cherokee rose this weekend and Wednesday brings the Native Plant Symposium at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia which is located here in our happy little burg. Also we have a new copy of "Gardens Illustrated" to leaf through and daydream about future garden projects. Continued to enjoy the fruits of our labor in the garden, eating kale, collards and sweet potatoes this week.

Flowers in January

Well, it looks like winter has decided to pay us a visit. The temperature is dropping as I write, sitting by the fire, and it is due to continue to drop. Sleet and freezing rain are a possibility along with trees pruning themselves. A possible casualty of the freeze: the flowers that have been blooming-camellias, narcissus, daphne, quince and hellebores. A little browning around the bell edges anyway. It is evenings like these when one begins to plan and plot this spring's garden. All is possible. No folly unreasonable. No project too large. Long rows to hoe? No problem. Garden gift certificates horded and seed catalogues stacked; now is the time to imagine. Huge sunflower mazes or sunflower and morning glory houses. Long ranks of juicy tomatoes. Spiralling loofah climbing the trees. Hollyhock spikes and angel's trumpets. Twining wisteria and hyacinth bean. Ajuga carpet and selaginella patches. Cardoon. Figs. Groves of bountiful figs! Big leaf magnolias and ginkos. Japanese maples and carolina hemlocks. Forests of ferns. All possible.

Saturday Mulch Moving

Successfully moved the mulch today with no small damage done to my long suffering back. My only comfort is that when my back finally locks up for good, I can look at well mulched beds out the window. I then retired to our courtyard to laze away the rest of the day-the gardener's reward. I was then lanced by a mosquito. In January. (photograph by Rinne Allen)

Tomorrow

Well, I never actually made it to the garden over the last few days. Work conspired to continually spirit me away until darkness and that just wasn't good. Tomorrow brings the moving of the wood chips. Hopefully I'll also have time to do a little clean up from the last bit of rain and check on the bees. But probably not. That is a fairly ambitious plan when I also want to sleep late tomorrow and the pile of wood chips is almost as tall as I am. Thank goodness for wheelbarrows. I did manage to set up some cold frames for our green starts. It is hard to remember that it is winter when the forecast calls for 70 degree temps this weekend and then 40 degree highs by the middle of the week. I keep looking at the greens and wondering why they aren't growing faster-but then I remember that it is winter but then it feels like spring. Maybe the plants are confused. I know I am. I hope we (as in the humans) haven't broken the environment. (photograph by Rinne Allen)

Mulch

Mulch. You can never get enough and when you get it you don't have a decent place to put it. These wood chips came from the chipper of a tree service that did a little tree work for us and they were more than happy to leave these behind. This is to be tomorrow's labor should I have time to get away from work. My intent is to spread it in some new beds that I have cut in in front of older beds to expand them. I hope that a good three months or so of rotting will create fertile ground for more flowers and veggies this spring.

Rain.

Meet the Rake

Spent the day in the garden cleaning up from yesterday's storms and I must have raked up 5 cubic yards of cryptomeria needles. All now neatly piled underneath shrubs for mulch. It is always remarkable to me how a small bit of raking can whip a garden into shape and give a previously cluttered area nice clean lines. When I first began to garden I didn't care for tasks such as raking or weeding because I felt they were far too mundane. But I've since come to see the everyday maintenance, the chores of the garden, as my favorites because it is then when a gardener ranges over the whole yard checking in on every nook and cranny. And while it always feels good to look back on the day's labor and see a job accomplished, one also must realize that that accomplishment is only temporary-the leaves will fall again. Plus that one day's raking, that one project, is but one small bit of work in the over arching work of a garden.
Then I went for a motorcycle ride.

66 degrees

A January day in Georgia and somehow it is 66 degrees with a 70 degree day due tomorrow. Storms, tornadoes and generally odd weather. I wonder if this is connected to massive pieces of Arctic ice shelf falling away, or the lack of snow in some areas or the excess in others? Are we in the midst of a climate that is changing or is this weather simply an anomaly? I feel like before I had a garden I hardly paid any attention to the weather, but now I constantly monitor it and try to stay tuned to what the forecasts says in order to manage my garden more effectively. From deciding when to water, when to place cans out to collect water, when to plant seeds or seedlings, when to fire up the heater in the greenhouse, when to try to save wood from trees or large limbs that have been removed for firewood, when to undertake masonry, carpentry or painting projects or when to simply hang out in the yard with a good book and relax. All those decisions require that me, the gardener, live closer to nature and pay attention to the natural world immediately around me-and for the last 10 years I've been lucky enough to do just that.

I attempted to take photos today in the yard of a few camellia and narcissus blooms, but the camera phone photos were bad. It is a lot harder to take a good photo of a flower than one would think. I think I'll leave that task to Rinne. Anyway, here is one tool that I think is perfect. Felco #2.

Another Bitter Winter Day in Athens, GA
(photograph by Rinne Allen)

A Lesser Day

Today ranks as a lesser day in my book because I had no time to garden due to work. I did have time for a quick dash through the yard, glancing at the green house, then at the greens getting their start, then at a few onions and garlic and then turning to see a few bees darting in and out of their hive. And that is about all I had time to do, besides steal a few moments to think about future projects. We have a tremendous Cherokee rose (our state flower from China) to prune and its whips extend a full 15 feet from a large trellis over our garage to the sitting area below. After we have had a few freezes then the ferns will need to be cut back, which is a chore I've always enjoyed because to me it has always meant the nadir of the garden's season cycle. When I am cutting the crumpled brown dead fronds and looking at the coiled green proto-fiddleheads tucked beneath them, I know that in the next 2 months so many plants will begin emerging and leafing out and that the yard will not come back to life, but swarm with more and new life. Besides the Cherokee rose pruning battle and cutting back the ferns, January in the garden doesn't require a great amount of work. There is the usual maintenance work of raking and small pruning and another good winter job is pruning dead lower limbs from hemlocks and red buds and other small trees. This also seems like a good time of the year to plant trees and shrubs, as long as you can imagine what the plants will look like in the spring. Another garden joy for the winter is perusing the ever growing pile of seed catalogues that tumbles through our mail slot. Seeds of Change seems to lead the pack although it would be nice if their was an organic seed catalogue for south eastern gardeners.

January 1, 2007

A new year seems like a good time to start a new project. Just as these arugula sprouts were placed in the ground on New Year's Eve, an idea popped up in my mind. I'd like to have a conversation about gardening and all the maddening, fascinating and enlightening places this hobby (mental illness) can take you. So, this blog is a quickly germinating seed of my idea. I'll try to document (and my wife will ably photograph) the life of our urban garden in Athens, Georgia and the myriad paths this takes us down. (photograph by Rinne Allen)