Category Archives: Gardening

All this time I simply assumed that Rosa rugosa was so named because the plant was so rugged – able to withstand salt-spray and the often-inhospitable environs of seaside survival. Turns out that ‘rugosa’ in Latin translates to ‘wrinkled’, and Rosa rugosa is so-named because of the wrinkly nature of the leaves. Words are magical, and often defy expectation; it’s always worth looking things up before assuming. 

As for the plant in question, here is its wondrous late-fall wardrobe – one of the few spots of color left in the garden, and reason enough to keep this prickly beauty around, aside from its happy connotations to seaside memories. 

The leaves look striking against a blue sky, which this November has afforded more than it usually does. Another moment ripe for gratitude, another glimpse of beauty in the garden, even at this late stage of the gardening year. Slumber will come soon enough… 

This little coreopsis, bless its heart, has made its annual surprise appearance – though after three or four years it shouldn’t be such a surprise. I think I’m still amazed that it perseveres after no real coddling or care – and sometimes outright abuse (the groundhog or rabbits usually sheer it down to the ground at least once a season). 

This year I managed to capture two blooms as they were just opening up. It’s always such a joy to see something come into bloom at this time of the year, even if our pool days for the season are officially over. I will mark it this fall so I know where to watch for it come spring. 

And then, if I remember to be so kind, I will pamper it with some manure and mulch, keeping it well-watered, in the hope of bringing it back to more robust form. Such faithfulness and continued commitment, even in the face of neglect, deserves a reward.

How the squirrels and chipmunks chew through the mealy, gritty fruit of the dogwood tree is beyond me, but as long as someone is getting sustenance out of them, I’m happy to see these beauties go to some use. A number of years ago I tried crafting a cocktail out of the dogwood fruit – heating and pulverizing and straining them into a semi-simple syrup (anything that involves an extra step of straining is not purely simple, hence the semi – and if you’re a regular here you probably enjoy a semi). 

This is the next to last show of the season for the Chinese dogwood. These fruits will ripen into something that resembles a reddish cross between a strawberry and a cherry, dangling in pretty profusion until the rodents or birds or rainy winds pull them all down. It sets the stage for the final stunning moment – the colorful autumn foliage. It looks especially resplendent when backed by a falling sun. 

The hosta flower spikes often sneak in and sneak out without much fanfare or notice. They arrive at the height of summer, when far more showy flowers are showing off and stealing the focus. Sometimes, they stay hidden beneath the hosta’s handsome foliage until the last moment and I miss them entirely, especially if there are days when the rain keeps me inside. 

There have been a number of those days recently. 

The hosta flower is like a lily, and some varieties carry the most delicate and elegant fragrance, held close to its petals and only found when you bring yourself right next to its beauty. 

Mid-August is when the garden begins its wind-down. Summer has more than a month to go, but we sense what’s coming. Andy just remarked that the sun is different in the sky. I knew exactly what he meant – it carries a different shade – softer in its focus, but sharper in its shade and color. A mix of factors, a mix of emotions. 

This Rose of Sharon was a gift to my Mom for her front yard, and it has come up and started its bloom season thanks to all the heat and rainfall that Amsterdam has had lately. A member of the Hibiscus family, the Rose of Sharon is one of those ubiquitous shrubs that often gets overused, but its happy colors and ease of coaxing into bloom make it worth growing. This variety is not as common, so it takes pride of place at my Mom’s garden. I love how the bloom of the featured picture hides bashfully behind a leaf – a coy, shy bit of beauty in a summer of quiet healing. 

While my Dad was always the family’s main gardener during my childhood with his vegetable expertise, Mom knew her way around the annuals. Her garage-side garden of impatiens was a simple but spectacular summer tradition. In her current home, she’s made the gardens her own. I’ve given her a few more Rose of Sharon plants, as well as a couple of lilacs that are still trying to take hold in the rather inhospitably-humid summer we’ve had this year. She’s also been able to grow the spectacular love-lies-bleeding plants that Dad used to grow from seeds he gathered one year in Ogunquit. That’s something I’ve never been successful at doing. 

Next spring we’ll look into refining the gardens she has now – a pine tree that my brother planted too close to the patio needs to go before it becomes unmanageable, and an unused fire pit will have to be repurposed as well. I’ll advise her to take photos and write down measurements now, so we can remember when snow is on the ground and we are desperately leafing through flower catalogs hoping for a hasty return of spring and planning for the next season of the garden. 

Island breezes are few and far between in these landlocked parts, but things have certainly felt tropical here. While I’ll never complain about summer being too sunny and warm, I also wilt like a hothouse flower in extreme heat. The plants and garden, however, are loving it. Our pair of fountain bamboo plants have sent up about a dozen stalks into the warm air, rising and rising but not yet releasing their foliage. It feels like they are behind, but I’ve lost track of their timing so maybe this is all as it should be. There are still almost two months of summer left.

Water droplets on banana leaves in upstate New York look gloriously incongruent to the tropical locales they naturally frequent. Along with a couple of palms, they are giving a very tropical vibe to our back patio, which retains pink elements of our coquette summer. 

Let’s have a quasi-tropical song then, where all of nature is wild and free – this is where we long to be…

Summer drains of a little color of late, the flowers in the gardens largely spent, the fresh bright green now watered down into deeper hues, or dried up into brown and tan like many of the ferns at this point. Yes, I’m hinting at fall, the way the slant of the sun has hinted at it, the way it always does this time of the year. 

Every year around this time the gardens start to give up a little. Once-verdant stretches of ostrich fern are brown and burned (despite my best efforts to keep them watered), the floral stalks of hosta plants are weighed down with pendulous seed-pods (which I am late in dead-heading), and the first thrust of blooms from the potted patio plants has declined. 

Still, there is hope, and this is the time that a renewed fertilizer cycle and some judicious but drastic pruning can result in a second summer showing. I was reminded of that when this begonia began making its own efforts to that end. Here you can see it forming buds for new flowers after taking a couple of weeks of rest. 

Summer is still going strong.

Our Rosa rugosa shrub was planted when we had to miss out on going to Ogunquit one year. I’d been missing the ocean air, the salty way Maine seduced you brusquely and beautifully, and so I found a plant that would bloom wit the scented memory of all those walks along the Marginal Way. It didn’t bloom profusely that first year – or most years for that matter – but just one bloom was enough for me to smell, and then quell the restless heart. 

That clump of Rosa rugosa has lasted for over a decade, though it still only yields a few flushes of blooms each year. This one is currently beginning. and every time I see a bloom open, I stop to rush over and inhale its perfume. It takes me back to the Maine of my earliest days with Andy, and further back to my first trip to Provincetown with Suzie, and then even further back with memories of Cape Cod with my Mom and Dad and brother. All happy memories, all got me dizzy on the intoxicating scent…

The heat is on, and the best way to combat it, if you are so inclined, is to find little pockets of coolness throughout the day. In the middle of one excruciating Chicago heatwave on the week that I first visited that fair city, I could only walk outside for limited stretches. Making my way along the Magnificent Mile and ducking into a place every few shops was how I made it through those unbearably hot days. Another way of doing that, and a very different way at that, is to dart from cool scene to cool scene – pool to air-conditioning to basement – in a literal sense, or to simply find places that look cool – such as the shaded nook of a secluded garden, where a clump of chartreuse Japanese spikenard illuminates the space, the shadows behind and beneath it lending the sought-after coolness.

The mind can overcome the matter, even when the matter is a scorching day. Setting and atmosphere can trigger tranquility. A fresh shade of the lightest green reminds of early spring, tricking the mind, bending the time, and believing it’s not quite as hot as it may actually be. 

This wild sweet pea has finally been beaten down into neglected submission. For years, it had been staking its overbearing claim to its self-seeded and self-chosen corner of the garden, where I let it climb and re-seed for a moment. How could I not allow such a marvelous color to exist, so long as I kept it on a short leash? 

It was a yearly battle, one I almost lost on occasion, as volunteers took hold around the original plant, with roots surprisingly strong and not so easily pulled despite how thin the stems were. In the end, though, I managed to keep it in check. Cutting it back by half after its first bloom prevented much of the reseeding, and also inspired a second flowering later in the season. 

This year, it seems all that hard love might finally have been a bit too harsh, as it’s made a piss-poor showing of blooms. I caught these right after a rainy night, and missed their typical magnitude. Perhaps it’s time for some potash to thank them for all their years of service. 

One of the most charming giants of the garden has been its summer show, as the cup plant is sprinkling the sky with its sunbursts of blooms. The yellow finches have returned as well, and the other morning I watched a hummingbird dart from flower to flower. The cup plant gets its common name from where the leaves attach to the sturdy square stems, forming little cups where rainwater collects and offers drinks to the birds and the bees and the butterflies. 

The blooming period of this plant has traditionally signaled the arrival of high summer. It feels a little earlier this year, which is the way the world has been headed. Faster and faster, with nary a moment to slow down. And so I make the pause, trying to stop the day, and mostly failing in the effort. As soon as something happens it is gone from the mind – only once in a while can I imprint a new memory. Maybe these aren’t days I’ll want to remember. 

It’s much earlier than usual for the second blooming of our Korean lilac, but everything has been early this year. Good gardeners feel the shift and know that climate change is real and happening right now. The reblooming of the Korean lilac is not a guaranteed event, though in the past several years it has produced at least one or two bloom clusters later in the summer. Often it comes when the nights cool down nearer the end of the season, when conditions mirror the late spring atmosphere of their first blooming period. One of the happier tricks of the garden. 

This is actually a rather robust collection of blooms for a reprise, and their perfume has brought back the earlier flush of spring, while reminding of how far along we already are in this summer. Time plays its tricks like the garden hides its scented secrets. 

In a way, these little blooms remind me that there’s always a chance to start over again, to find another season of flowers even if it’s a little different than what’s expected. They’re also a little gift, a reprieve before the sadness of summer returns. 

This shockingly-hot pink variety of Monarda – better known as bee balm – called to me last year, and I promptly gave it a prominent place in the garden. Keeping it well-watered and pampered with a decent dose of manure and compost, I took extra special care of it. Most perennials require a year or two to really get going and show what they can do – and it is in this time when the care and watering is most important. 

After it finished its first bloom cycle, I cut it back about halfway down the stalks, hoping it would throw off a few flowers later in the season. Its color was so grand I wanted more. Rather than do that, however, it quickly became afflicted with a debilitating bout of mildew, its leaves shriveling and blackening like Dumbledore’s hand when he dared to destroy a horcrux. 

It died down tot he ground, something I’d never seen a Monarda do, but I had faith it would survive the winter, and come back in some form. As part of the mint family, they are scrappy survivors, even if mildew does wreak its havoc in our humid summers. This spring, only a few stems poked through the ground, but they grew well, and this one is now in glorious bloom. We shall see how it fares as the summer arrives and progresses.