It's not that easy bein' green...

My apologies for seeming to have fallen off the radar the past few days. Because of some interesting events in my life in recent weeks, I've taken on a new project that is both highly challenging and highly satisfying. However, it is keeping me VERY busy, and also out on the road some. So as sometimes happens to us all, I have gotten behind in my blog reading, commenting, and even my own posting. Rest assured, however, I'm still around, just busier than a Nova Scotian snow-shoveller with only a teaspoon with which to clear the drifts. 

All the weather tantrums of recent weeks, coupled with the blossoming of spring in some of your gardens further south/west/'nother continent/hemisphere has got me craving green in the very worst way. And I don't mean the green that forms in the bottom of my vegetable crisper when we forget there's a cucumber in there. I'm looking for signs of gardening life. Since I won't see them for a while, I turn to my photo albums. And since several of my blogging friends have been talking about green-flowered plants in recent posts (and if I was less tired I'd go find the links...) I had the urge to talk a bit about green flowers.

I suppose for some people, the notion of a green flower is a bit bizarre, since normally we're craving all kinds of colourful blossoms in shades of blue, rose, red, gold, orange, and purple. But I love green flowers, in part because they are not hugely common, and because they're fresh and wonderful and just appeal to my delight in unusual things. So I'm sharing a few of my favourites, including two echinaceas; the delightful and perfectly named 'Green Envy' (top two photos), which I've had for two years and just adore, and the more comical but equally delightful (and delectably named) 'Coconut Lime'. The latter doesn't look so much like a coneflower to the purists, maybe, but I like its shaggy, mopheadedness. Is mopheadedness a word? If not, it should be!


As those of you who read one of my favourite blogs, Our Little Acre, know, Kylee scored herself a bargain phalaenopsis the other day, and it's one of the handsome greenflowered varieties. Although I've yet to meet a phal. that I didn't love, the green or greenish-yellow flowered types, like Phal. 'Golden Music' are particularly appealing to me.



This is my own green phalaenopsis, sadly nameless other than 'Jodi's prolific green monster' (I believe that's what Longsuffering spouse nicknamed it last year. It's still resting, which means I should get my act in gear and move it into a better lit location and get it forming flower stalks

 

From the truly exotic and unusual, we visit something equally unusual but not quite so showy. This is the alpine Bolax, (I believe the species is glebaria but I'm too lazy to go find my records right now). It's a native of South America, but it grows in an alpine trough whic I overwinter inside the greenhouse--unheated, but protected from wind, rain, snow, sleet and other assorted insults. It's a very cool plant, slowly forming a mat, and very plastic-looking in appearance.


This is the annual Bells of Ireland, a truly cool plant. The green 'flower' is in fact a bract, or modified leaf, with the tiny creamy object in the centre the actual flower. I've grown these from seed and had fun with them, but they have declined to reseed for me, and I find germination very spotty. They have a lovely delicate minty-lemon scent to them which just adds to their charm, and they're very popular with florists.

I'm very fond of hydrangeas, as I've written before, and this is the Proven Winners PeeGee type 'Limelight.' I love this plant. It hasn't given me a lick of trouble, it flowers like mad maniacs, the flowers gradually fade to tan (and a few of them are still hanging on, the last time I checked.

Now, the purists among us might debate the colour of some euphorbia species and cultivars, preferring to call them chartreuse or acid-green or yellow. But I'm looking at the bracts surrounding the flowers of this Euphorbia 'Efanthia', and they seem decidedly green to me. Whatever you call them, I like them. 
It's no secret that I am also highly fond of tulips, especially the viridiflora types. I believe we have 'Groenland' and 'Apricot Parrot' (fading to pink from apricot) in this photo, and I like these later-blooming tulips even more because they present these intriguing colours and patterns when a lot of other plants have begun their riot of rainbow shades; they're a bit more subtle, and soothing as the heat of late spring begins to find us. 

And this is one of those plants that makes me jump up and down and declare "I want I want I want!" Primulas do very well for me, and that's almost enough to make me go after 'Green Lace', but for one detail; the literature I've read put it at zone 6, and I'm a mixed zone 5 a-b, depending on where in the garden you go. It's still a new introduction so I may be good and hold off for another year. Unless I find it in a nursery, and then there's no guarantee that Urgent Plant Seeking Madness won't strike me suddenly. 

And last but never least, a viridiflora that causes me both joy and sorrow/frustration. A green flowered hellebore caused me to fall in love with these plants nearly a decade ago, and I've been dallying with them for the past six or seven years. As many of you know, until last year that dalliance was mostly an unrequited love affair, but last spring, with the help of Faire Frances, I did succeed in getting several plants through to joyous blooming. I'm not quite ready to try the lovely green hellebore again just yet. Not yet. I keep telling myself that. 

Jodi's Gotta-Have Plants, Pt. 2: Which Witch(hazel) is Which?

March has come in, not like a lion or a lamb; just a grey, nondescript day. But that puts us almost halfway through FARCH, and that's reason enough to celebrate by talking about favourite plants.

Some years back, my longsufferings spouse and I were traipsing through Pine Grove, a marvelous park established and maintained by Bowater Mersey in Milton, near Liverpool on Nova Scotia’s south shore. We were coming across a clearing when I caught a fragrance on the air, sweet as honey. We couldn’t figure out where it was coming from until I discovered a modest shrub, leafless of course, but festooned in these spidery flowers with stringy petals of orangish-gold. It was a witchhazel, of course, and there began my love affair with these easy-care, handsome shrubs. 


(photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
Witchhazel belongs to the genus Hamemelis, and there are five species native in North America, with only one, H. virginiana, being native in eastern Canada. It’s considered a shrub, generally ranging from 15-20 feet in height and spread. What’s interesting about the native species is that it flowers in autumn, generally between October and December, with stringy-petalled flowers that are generally yellow but occasionally tinted with red or orange. The petals look like crumpled streamers of crepe-paper, and while they aren’t beautiful, they usually have a lovely fragrance.


Hamamelis mollis is the Chinese witchhazel, and said to be the most fragrant species. It’s much used in gardening and landscaping in milder climates but generally isn’t hardy below-15 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point bud damage can occur. Sadly, I don't remember where I got this photo or what cultivar this might be.


Where H. mollis comes in handy is as a cross with the Japanese witchhazel, H. japonica, resulting in hybrids generally classified as H. x intermedia. These tend to flower in mid-late winter or early spring, depending on where you are and how buried in snow your plants get. Some of the more spectacular flower colours are in the Intermedia hybrids, including 'Ruby Glow' (above photo); 
'Jelena' is also sometimes labeled as 'Copper Beauty'. I haven't gotten my mitts on one of these yet, in part because I find them regularly priced much higher than you might expect. And of course in containers, they flower early in the season, often before garden centres even put their stock out, so you have to be prepared to live for a year or so without flower display, at least in my cool neck of the woods.

The first one I plan to purchase this year is 'Arnold Promise', and part of the reason for that is the foliage colour in new growth, seen here on a plant from the Nova Scotia Agricultural College Rock Garden in Truro, NS. 

The flowers are yellow and can be very profuse, and according to the good people at the Missouri Botanical Garden, the fragrance is quite wonderful. I know scent can be highly personal, but I am very fond of the scent of witchhazels and would happily have them everywhere in our garden. 


Witchhazels make fine specimen plants and provide us with four season interest; the Intermedia hybrids flower from winter into spring, summer foliage is handsome, and fall colour can be spectacular. Most importantly, witchhazels are easy-care shrubs, seldom bothered by diseases or insects, and requiring minimal pruning other than to remove suckers if you don’t want your plants to spread or if they are grafted onto hardier rootstock.

My witchhazel is 'Diane' (seen flowering in the top photo) and she has routinely been buried in snow this winter, and even had one session of being encased in ice earlier in the winter. 

While others are already enjoying their witchhazels in bloom, I have yet to even find Diane, although she is slowly emerging from snow after the melt we had on Friday and yesterday. But that just means I get to enjoy other gardeners' plants until mine is ready to flower. 

Which will happen one of these days. Spring does always come.

Cheery Red for Indoor Colour

Although you might not think so to see the indoor plants at our house these days, I very much love houseplants. There are incredible and fascinating choices out there in some areas, depending on how good your local nursery, flower shop, garden centre or even department store is at sourcing and caring for plants. Sometimes, the plants at these places resemble mine (and a call to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Houseplants might be in order) but other facilities know plants and know how to take care of them.
Here's a lovely example of a plant that is normally fairly tough...but they resent being left unwatered for weeks on end, or being put outside in a pot without drainage during a rainy rainy summer. Yes, I'm hanging my head. Cathy of Outside In will likely be scandalized by my poor house plant-caring skills. 

It didn't used to be like that. When I was at Ag. college, my room on campus was home to anywhere up to 100 plants. No, not that kind of plant. Ordinary flowering plants, foliage plants, cacti, succulents, from lithops (living stones) to Monstera and ficus--but never did I see a ficus as pretty as this one until recent years. 

Back in the autumn I visited a nursery to find photos for a story I was doing about indoor gardening with plants, and I saw some I'd never seen before--and may not see again. This is called Dipladenia, Crimson Parasol plant. It's apparently related to Mandevilla, and I was quite taken by it, but didn't bring one home. I like to know more about plants before I bring them into the house, on account of the cat children.

I do not know what this is at all. I seem to have seen something like it on someone's blog recently, and I want to call it a red clerodendron (I had a blue one one time) but I'd be fibbing if I said I even know what genus it is. Fascinating and I should definitely have succumbed to the urge to buy it. 

And this? Its colourful flower/bracts are awesome enough, but the foliage? Ohhhh, I looked long and hard at this bougainvillea, never having seen one with variegated foliage before, but I guess they're quite common where they're easy to find. Too pricy for me, with my talent for causing houseplants to go to sleep. 

One of my favourite, if curious, plants has always been the crown of thorns (Euphorbia milii). It used to come in two flower colours, red and white, but now you see pink and yellow and probably others as well. Again, it depends on where you live. I had a yellow one, but it seemed more spleeny than the more common red varieties. 

Here's a glorious foliage plant that some regions can grow nicely outdoors at least in the warm months, longer if they live in civilized climates without so many snowflakes as I have. Caladium don't need to flower, with foliage like this, do they? Marvelous plants, but fussy indoors if you don't give them adequate moisture/humidity.

And then there's hibsicus. Some day, I'll get to visit Hawaii and see plants like this blooming in their native habitat. They do well for me usually for a few years, but leaving them out one night too long during autumn in my climate is a very, very bad plan. "And that's all I have to say about that!"

I know they're ubiquitous these days, almost as much so as geraniums. I do not care. Gerberas have this appeal to them that causes me to stop and stare and force myself to bring one home. Or maybe two. Or more. They have lovely tidy blooms, brilliant colours, not-totally-nondescript foliage, and I just plain like them. Sometimes they even do well outside as container plants (I'm speaking from my experience--they may well do much, much better for others. ) It won't surprise anyone that one leaped into my wagon at the grocery store in Liverpool yesterday. It wanted to take up residence on my office desk. Could I refuse? No. Is it red? No, brilliant yellow, in honour of the spring that I do assume will find us one of these days. 

The Artist-Gardener of Liverpool

Despite the best attempts of Mother Nature to bury this family of her Nova Scotian children in 78,000,0000,876,907,352,086 snowflakes artfully arranged (as James Alexander-Sinclair so sympathetically counted observed), we felt definitely hints of spring in the air today. Of course, that may be because I fled to the balmy south--shore, that is, of Nova Scotia. To Liverpool, to be exact. Not THAT Liverpool. No Beatles here. Maybe a few aging beatniks, but nary a sign of a Paul or a Ringo.

I love Liverpool. Not only is it a whole zone balmier than our wildness (as a rule, though they've had their share of winter this year), but it's also a lovely historic town. It's also home to one of the most interesting of garden centre operators/plantsmen, Ivan Higgins. Ivan runs Cosby's Garden Centre here in town, and it's appropriate that I mention him because it was he I bought my Hamamelis 'Diane' from several years ago.


Ivan is an artist in every sense of the word, not only with plants, but with cement, pencil, pen and ink too. He is known for his lifesize (and beyond) concrete sculptures, which are all around the Garden Centre. They are imaginative, whimsical, hilarious, magical, and they make Cosby's a destination even if you're not as besotted with plants as some of us are.
I popped in a couple of weeks ago to say hello, and Ivan proudly showed me a drawing he has been working on for many hours this winter. It encapsulates his life as a nursery operator and artist beautifully, although you'd have to visit and see the drawing AND the nursery in order to appreciate all its details and nuances for yourself. 

The front of the garden centre is all windows/glasshouse panels, and on a sunny day it's just as nice a place to visit as you could possibly hope to imagine. 

I looked longingly at this handsome aeonium, as mine is feeling very hard-done-by back home, with insufficient sunlight and naughty kitties causing it some distress. 

There weren't a huge number of plants for sale at the nursery the day I visited, it being just before Valentine's Day and still plenty early to be carrying too much other than houseplants. A few flats of rooted cuttings were happy to soak up the sun, however. 

And the big tropicals that stay outside during the summer months are whiling away their winter in the garden centre quite contentedly. Ivan likes to push the zones so he's got a Gunnera (nicknamed Gramma) buried outside under straw and snow, and it's done just fine the past several years. But these plants are far less forgiving so they come indoors until spring remenbers where we are. 

I'll have more to say about Liverpool and surrounding areas in coming weeks, as a project I'm involved with has me visiting here every week. And that's not a bad thing at all. 

Sign of the Times...

I used this photo last week in the February issue of The Canning Gazette, (which is why it's in black and white). Looking outside this morning, regarding the shovelling and plowing efforts of my long suffering spouse One. More. Time!, I thought of this photo and decided it would be worth sharing with everyone. Meanwhile, the snowdrifts just get higher and higher and higher...

Ominously ongoing observations of....

...winter, of course! You were expecting crocuses, or veggie seedlings? Not here. Not any time soon. I remember when things did look like the photo above. And they will again. But permit me a little more amused grumbling about the weather, please. You'll be amused, and your heart will be warmed too. (click photos for larger image in most cases)


I came home Friday night from the south shore in a gale of wind and 'flurries', which continued on yesterday. Winds out of the west, off the water, made more flurries and sculpted the drifts in the yard higher and higher.


I had thought I'd wallow out through some of the snow and take some photos, but in studying the yard from windows and from the few spots outside where I can walk without floundering, I decided I didn't want to scale 4 and 5 foot snowdrifts with my camera in hand, just to try to get some sense of what it's like for you all. So instead, I took photos where I could safely do so. Like from my office window, where the snow-tsunami is threatening to engulf my weeping Chamaecyparis.


From the back window, you can (sort of) see how the snow sculpts itself around structures, trees, etc. Hubby managed to clear a sort-of path to the pasture to let Leggo and Jenny out, as they've been indoors for several days. The snow was up to Jenny Lumpy-donk's belly even with the horse breaking the trail through first.


I cheated. I went through the barn and out the back barn door to take this photo, startling my snow bunting friends into flight.


They landed in their tree and sat chittering and twittering and waiting for me to disappear, which I did by getting into the car, rolling down the window, propping up my camera, and waiting.


They land on the house, sidle over to the edge of the roof, and discuss amongst themselves whether or not they should drop down to the feeding area. A few of them elect to go first.

As they snatch up bits of corn and other seeds, they tell their friends to come down and join the buffet...

And pretty soon everyone is down there with them. I just sit quietly in the car, snapping photos and grinning a lot, because I know that any second now...
They'll all take off again, and do some aerial acrobatics around the house before returning to the roof of the barn or house to do it all again. 

Days like this, when it's mild and calm and the snow buntings and other birds are having fun (or are giving me great joy because they seem to be having fun) are what get us through the bleak days. Like the storm that is due to come in tomorrow. 

I'll hang out with the cats, the plants, my computer and some hot chocolate tomorrow, and let the weather bring what it may. It's gonna do that anyway, so it's best to just acquiesce and put a good face on it all. That's my usual philosophy, and it helps get us through Yet Another Fundy Winter Weather Tantrum.

At least there's no goutweed at this time of year....