Author: lwcmartin@bellsouth.net

Although Jack and I share many passions (travel, hiking, grandchildren, good food etc.) we also have our own individual enthusiasms. Over the 20 plus years that we’ve been together, we have both learned quite a lot about the value of an “Appropriate Response.” We decided early on that “Yes, dear” lacked imagination and sincerity and would not be accepted as an “Appropriate Response.”

Jack is wildly enthusiastic about bicycling, and in particular about the Tour de France. Me? Well, if you’ve read this blog even once, you know that I am equally wildly enthusiastic about my garden. I’m quick to recognize that when it comes to making an appropriate response, I have it much, much easier. After all, the gardening season lasts for months whereas the Tour only lasts 23 v…e…r…y. l….o….n….g days.

We both have stock phrases which we have fine tuned over the years. Jack has learned that “You’ve worked so hard!” is almost always a good response to my commenting on my garden. It works for both celebration and commiseration. For example, Me: Bugs ate all my Black-eyed Susans! Jack: Aww, and you’ve worked so hard. Or, Me: I don’t think the peonies have ever looked better. Jack: Wow, and you’ve worked so hard!

My stock response to the Tour is to say, “Wow, they are amazing athletes.” This, too, works in a variety of situations, from time trials to peddling up mountains in a snow storm. However, as I found out, it’s not appropriate for ALL situations, as when Jack was telling me about stupid fans standing on the roadside, endangering the course. “Wow, they’re amazing athletes” was definitely not an “Appropriate Response” to that one.

Basically, we just want to show interest and support for each other. Even if we don’t happen to share these particular interests, we love each other enough to want to be involved. But not too much. The trick is to find a response that is appropriate but that doesn’t provoke the need for further information or explanation. It’s a tricky business, this finding an appropriate response.

I have found though, that spending a few minutes on Google is sometimes a good investment. For example, I could say something such as “Wow, can you believe that Van Aert was 21 SECONDS!!!! ahead of Kasper Asgreen in the time trials??” My hope, of course, is that such a statement would render him absolutely speechless for the rest of the Tour! But, knowing Jack he wouldn’t even blink before launching into the statistics of the last five years of time trials.

Which is okay, because then I could tell him all about the challenges of starting pansies from seed…..they need cool but not cold temperatures, and where can you find that in August? and then, is this really the best time to be starting them if I want plants by fall? They must be easy to start from seed, though, since they are so ubiquitous at the nurseries. Maybe it’s the kind of soil……….

Jack? Jack? Are you still there? What’s that you say? Something about working hard?

Well, thanks. And I think they are amazing athletes!

The University of California at Berkeley Botanical Garden is a wonder to behold. While visiting family in Oakland, we spent the morning exploring the garden. It is divided into regions and countries, profiling native plants. Though I felt most at home in the “Eastern Woodland” area, I was most fascinated by the things in the “Plants of the American Deserts” area. Let me hasten to add that “American” refers to both North, Central and South.

Tha plants native to the desert are both alien and awe-inspiring to me, partly because they are so different from the plants in my own garden. Sporting big, thorny, thick leaves, the cacti demanded – and received – the respect of distance. Spines from the Opuntia, or prickly pair cactus, are barbed, making them almost impossible to extract if they become imbedded in your skin. The fruit is edible and considered delicious, though harvesting and extracting the juice from the fruits without getting speared is a daunting task.

Other cacti in the same genus, such as the Beaver-tail cactus, sported beautiful blooms in yellow, orange and red.

There were several Agave species found in the gardens, each one more outrageous and unusual than the next. Agave parryi, native to southwestern parts of the U.S. is also called the “artichoke agave” because of the configuration of the leaves. Bright yellow blossoms are found on stalks that can grow as tall as 12 feet.

The plant dies after flowering because it takes all of the plants energy and resources to produce these magnificent blooms. Blue agave, A. tequila, is the source of not only tequila but also of agave “nectar”, a syrup often used in place of sugar. Before you get too excited about using this “natural” sweetener, you should know that agave syrup has a higher fructose level than even table sugar.

Agave mites is just plain strange looking. The leaves are much smaller and less imposing than other agaves but the flowering stalk, which can grow 8 feet in length, shouts for attention.

Echinopsis is known as the hedgehog or sea-urchin cactus and has startlingly beautiful flowers which occur at the ends of stout, stumpy branches. As indicated by the name, the plant is covered with sharp spines, similar to those found on a hedgehog.

Like reading science fiction, my experience of seeing these plants was one of wonder at things so alien and unusual. All spiny and prickly, I wouldn’t want them in my back yard, but then again, they wouldn’t want to be in my backyard! Everything has a place and frankly, I’m glad my “place” is not a desert.

Summer evenings in times long past were pretty simple at our house. After a dinner of mostly home grown vegetables (green beans, yellow squash, okra and tomatoes) we’d play a game of hopscotch until it got dark enough to catch fireflies. Hot and sweaty and armed with a mason jar with holes punched in the top, my siblings and I would head to the back yard to catch some magic.

Squealing every time we caught one, we’d compare our harvest, then let them all go, only to be caught again the next night.

My attraction to fireflies is partly nostalgia but partly just because their magic continues to fascinate me even after all these years. At an early age I was taught the science, that they are not really flies but beetles, that the “fire” is actually a bioluminescence that is used primarily to attract mates and that each species has a unique flashing pattern so that if you watch carefully enough you can distinguish one species from another.

But what I’ve only learned recently is that the flashing lights are also used to attract prey. For example, the Pennsylvania firefly uses bioluminescence to attract the Big Dipper firefly, which they then eat. There are over 2000 species of fireflies worldwide, with 170 species living in the U.S. and 50 living in Georgia. Bioluminescence is actually incredibly efficient, using almost no energy to produce light. In comparison, an incandescent lightbulb is only 10 percent efficient, losing 90% of the energy to heat.

In the Smoky Mountain National Park, fireflies have become a tourist attraction. Each summer thousands of visitors flock to the park to see the Carolina firefly which displays synchronous blinking, meaning all the male fireflies blink together. Rangers at the Park explain that for three seconds, the males will blink and then all of a sudden they stop for six seconds. Then they “turn on” again and the pattern repeats over and over for a couple of hours.

Like many species, firefly populations are suffering these days. The reasons are familiar: increased us of pesticides, habitat loss, water pollution and climate change. In addition, fireflies are suffering because of light pollution. Knowing the reasons for their decline aids us in knowing how to correct the problem. We can turn off outside lights at night, avoid lawn chemicals and pesticides, plant native trees and grasses and allow part of our landscapes to just be natural with fallen logs and tall grasses to provide habitats for the fireflies.

But science and the reality of declining populations cannot take away from the pure magic of the firefly. Fortunately, summer evenings in our backyard are still illuminated by these wonderful creatures. Now all I need is a good, flat rock for hopscotch.

Summer has come to Georgia. When I step into the garden, heat and humidity envelop me and I feel like I’m in a rainforest. But then, last week, Jack and I were in a real rain forest and I realized that it feels completely different.

After visiting family in Hood River, Oregon we headed northwest to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state. This is a large and astonishingly diverse and beautiful part of the state, home to Olympic National Park and the Hoh Rainforest.

The Hoh is one of the largest temperate rainforests in the U.S. and one of the wettest places in the continental United States, receiving over 150 inches of rain annually. (It actually can’t compare to THE wettest place in the U.S. which is Mt. Waialeale on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai which receives 460 inches of rain on an average!) Atlanta averages 52 inches a rain per year.

The forest is magical, with huge trees, many of which are over 300 feet tall. Sitka Spruce, Western Hemlock, Douglas fir and Western Red Cedars make up the majority of the tree population but in and amongst those are the truly stunning Big Leaf Maples. Though smaller than the evergreens, they are impressively large for a maple and covered with moss, creating a scene that looks primeval.

As we drove through a fairly remote part of the Park along the Quinault River, we were excited to first see an Olympic black bear – with her cub! and then later, a bobcat who ran across the road right in front of us. Luckily we were in the car both times! The Park is also home to cougar, Roosevelt elk and the northern spotted owl.

We felt really lucky to be able to travel again and to see this truly beautiful and fairly remote part of our country. But even though I was thrilled to see the wildlife and the stately trees, it just couldn’t compare to seeing my beloved grandsons again!

I have an unwritten agreement with all my plants. As long as they earn their keep and either provide some sort of harvest or at least look good, I’ll let them stay. For the most part, this works well, with both parties seemingly happy.

But at the moment, I’m reconsidering my end of the bargain. In March, I planted sugar snap pea seeds. They eventually sprouted and began to grow. I provided the support they needed and in mid – April I harvested my first little pods. They are delicious!

I’ve never grown sugar snap peas before so I was interested to find out that they are different from “snow peas.” Sugar snaps have rounded pods with thicker walls, snow peas have very thin pods. But both kinds can be eaten whole, either raw in salads or steamed or sautéed. I like the French name for them, mangetout, which means “eat all.”

I have had a long and very productive season of sugar snap peas. Every few days I go out and stuff my pockets full of pods. We’ve eaten them in all kinds of ways and the freezer is full of them. All of which is great. What’s not so great is that this lingering harvest has messed up my brilliant garden design.

I know that peas are (supposed to be) cool weather crops, meaning when hot weather comes, they are supposed to be done so I can pull them up. Planning for this, I planted tomato and okra seedlings nearby so that when I pulled up the peas, they would have plenty of room to grow. Brilliant, right?

But this is my dilemma. They are still producing! And don’t even look terrible. They are full of buds and are technically holding up their end of the bargain. What to do, what to do!

I finally decided this morning that the space was much more important for my summer vegetables and that I had to pull up the pea vines. And feeling only slightly guilty that I had breached our agreement (I mean, after all, they’re only peas) I picked the last pods and tossed the plants on the compost pile. Tomatoes and okra are happy that they have more room, Jack is happy that we won’t be having sugar snap peas at every meal. I’m happy because I’m always happy in the garden and because I know too much sugar is just not good for you!

I’ll have to admit that every once in a while I am guilty of hubris when it comes to my garden, especially this time of year before bugs and heat and gardening fatigue have taken their toll. I look out at an expanse of bright blossoms and healthy foliage and swell with pride.

But inevitably, in the wings, my dear and revered Mother Nature is standing by to bring me back down to size. This year my comeuppance was particularly humbling. My caladiums last year were so beautifully satisfying that when cold weather threatened, I decided to save the bulbs to replant in the spring. (Caladiums won’t tolerate freezing temperatures so I couldn’t leave them in situ.)

I dug the fat bulbs and stored them in the garage over the winter and in early March, shook off the dirt, removed any lingering dried foliage and planted them in an array of pots. I put a few on a sunny windowsill and a few under a grow lamp, just to see which would emerge first and dreamed of a field of colorful caladiums in my back yard.

And then I waited. And waited. And waited. While my tomato and zinnia seedlings virtually jumped out of the potting soil and grew quickly and happily, my caladiums didn’t show a sign of life. Finally, after a couple of months, I couldn’t stand it any longer and dug up one of the potted bulbs to see if it was at least putting out roots. This is where Mother Nature began laughing as if she were watching a Laurel and Hardy skit.

Because what I discovered was that I had planted all my carefully saved caladium bulbs upside down. And poor little pitiful leaves were trying desperately to blindly push their way through damp dirt to find sunshine. Oh good grief!

Humbled and slightly embarrassed, I dug up the remaining bulbs, turned them right side up and tried again. More than half the bulbs had rotted, being planted so improperly they just gave up, and the remainder weren’t in any great shape but a half dozen persevered and look pretty good, though still a little frail by now.

It was a great reminder that no matter how long you’ve gardened, how much you’ve read and studied and how hard you’ve worked at it, gardening is still a humbling – though ultimately extremely satisfying adventure.

If there’s one thing that I enjoy more than looking at the flowers in my garden, it’s looking at a bouquet of flowers I’ve created from flowers cut from my garden. The bouquets vary from one season to the next, of course, and sometimes even one week to the next as the progression of blooms marches through the gardening season.

Right now, in mid-May, my garden is full of cuttable treasures. I have six different kinds of roses, mostly pink and mostly the “low maintenance” variety. Although I love the more traditional roses as much as anyone, I’m just not willing to give them the chemical support that they so often need. In my garden, they only get the bare necessities of sunshine and water.

I have a lot of pink things in my garden right now. Pink yarrow, which began to bloom in earnest about a week ago, looks gorgeous alongside the roses and dark reddish-pink snapdragons. The pink blooms of spirea look especially pretty against their bright yellow / green leaves.

Both catnip and pincushion flower have both offered up boucoups of blossoms this spring and have stems long enough to make them a welcomed addition to a bouquet. The added advantage to cutting these blossoms is that if you cut enough, the plants will generally bloom again later in the season.

Daisy-like blooms come from Shasta daisy, yellow coreopsis and Echinacea, which I have both in white and a pale pink form.

The best time to cut flowers is early in the morning when they are rested and full of moisture from the night. Once the sun comes up, they will begin to lose moisture. I try to put the cut stems into water as soon as possible.

AS this cutting season fades, I look toward the next round of flowers, which includes favorite perennials such as summer phlox, bee balm, black-eyed Susans, hydrangeas and Japanese aster, as well as annuals such as apricot cosmos and lime green zinnias. Come on by – I’ll pick you a bouquet. Can’t wait!

I’ve been trying to grow foxglove in my garden for years. The desire is, like many things in my garden, based partly on nostalgia because my mother used to grow beautiful foxgloves and partly due to the challenge of growing a new plant. But mostly it’s due to aesthetics because I find foxglove to be elegant and beautiful.

This year I had a bit of success as I found and purchased plants at a local nursery in early spring. I settled them into the space that I had planted foxglove seeds the fall before (with almost no success) and about two weeks ago they began to bloom.

Because they are so toxic, I put them in a place difficult for both dogs and children to reach. And they’ve done well. The spot is in semi-shade, has good, rich soil and good drainage. Everything I read about foxgloves indicates that they will “easily” reseed so I’ve provided bare ground underneath the fading blossoms and hope they do!

Digitalis purpurea is the species used most often in the garden and there are now seemingly endless numbers of varieties and cultivars that range from yellow and orange to white to the more traditional pink and purple. The bell shaped blossoms are arranged on a tall, graceful stalk. The shape of the flower has led to many common names (some say as many as 65 folk names). “Foxglove” has several possible origins, including a variation on the name “folk glove”, folk referring to the fairies and other little people. Another possible origin is that the name came from “fox’s glew,” a glew being an ancient bell shaped instrument.

It is Digitalis lanata that is the commercial source for the chemicals that are found in the drug digoxin that is used to treat heart disease. At present, the chemicals cannot be produced in a lab, meaning that we are still dependent on the plant itself for the components in the drug. Growing digitalis for commercial use is an intensive and time consuming project, since the plants have to be two years old before they are harvested and even then, the plant produces very small amounts of the glycosides. And, if you believe in superstition, the process is further complicated because folk healers believed that the plant only held medicinal powers if it was collected with the left hand!

The first documented use of foxglove as medicine is attributed to an English doctor, William Withering, who wrote of using the plant to treat a patient in the 1780s. The story is told that the patient regained her health – and that the good Dr. Withering eventually married her.

Although the plant has saved many lives, it’s good to remember that many species, including the garden variety, are poisonous and that they should be treated with care and admired at a distance.

I love ferns and have multiple kinds growing both indoors and out. I have to admit that they are a little tricky to identify but for the most part, I can come up with an ID that satisfies me.

So, when I transplanted a beautiful fern from our land in north Georgia down to the garden in Atlanta, I thought it would just be a matter of looking it up to find a name. This is a very distinctive looking fern with unique characteristics. It is covered with black hairs and the fronds, instead of being in a circular coil like other ferns, are folded back onto themselves. So, I thought it would be no problem finding the name. I thought it was probably native since it was growing in the woods, but I wasn’t sure because it was not far from the house.

I went through all my books and even dragged out my mother’s copy of Getting To Know the Ferns that she used a half century ago. I Googled it, of course, and spent hours scrolling through fern images but nothing looked even close.

This is where I’m going to lose some of you. You either “get” the obsession of having to know the identity of a plant – or you don’t. Many of us have obsessions, mine just happens to be a relatively severe case of plant mania. I literally stayed awake at night trying to figure it out, images and possibilities flitting through my mind. But I still came up empty handed, or empty minded as the case may be.

But I knew help was on the way. Forty master gardeners were coming to look at my garden, surely someone would know. But, no! We were all intrigued but no one could come up with a positive ID. Back to the drawing board, or actually the phone on my camera. I took lots of pictures. I contacted a fern nursery. No response. I called a local nursery. No answer. Finally, it occurred to me that there must be an American Fern Society. Which, of course, there is. And they have a Facebook page. I hurriedly joined their “group,” became their new best “friend” and posted my pictures. Within an hour, I had an answer. Dryopteris cycadina. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? Just kidding. Commonly known as shaggy wood fern, it is NOT native to North America but instead is native to China and Malaysia and is obviously sold as a cultivated plant here. It is a handsome plant and one that I’m glad to have growing in my garden. But more than that, I’m just glad I know what the sucker is. Now maybe I can sleep at night

Oh, and for the sensitive maidens? Other ferns, of course. Both maidenhair and sensitive ferns have a strong presence in my garden and thankfully, I know their names.

I stared at my Oak-leaf hydrangea, knowing something wasn’t quite right. Some of the leaves just looked a little off but I couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong. Finally it dawned on me that what I was looking at was a real oak leaf from a seedling growing right up through the hydrangea! Coincidence? I think it more likely that it was Mother Nature enjoying a good laugh at my expense. Again.

This happens over and over again (Mother Nature laughing) when I try to impose some sort of control over my happy, wayward garden. Like a 3rd grade prankster, Mother Nature continues to tease and baffle me, allowing weeds to flourish right next to a plant that it closely resembles.

Take, for example, the bed where I’m working hard to establish Columbine seedlings. Sprinkled throughout the bed are the seedlings of common, weedy wood sorrel that look almost identical!

Or think about all the giggling going on when I was all puffed up and proud of the thick, luxuriant growth of iris only to realize that half of the leaves were from the aggressive and unwelcome spider wort! Ha, ha. yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then there are the tiny seedlings from my mother’s Japanese pale tree that I protected with great ferocity (staking, chicken wire, extra watering etc.) only to find out that they were actually new growth from the ubiquitous Japanese aster.

Is all this a survival mechanism? Do weeds grow next to plants they resemble because they have a better chance of being missed by obsessive gardeners? The whole field of plant mimicry is fascinating and perhaps the most interesting example is the Boquila trifoliolata, a vine growing in Chile that is a master of disguise.

This sneaky plant can vary in size, shape, color, length of stalk and angle of growth to mimic the plant it is growing next to. And, no physical contact is necessary. If the vine is growing close to a plant with spiny-tipped leaves, Boquila, too will develop spiny tips. It must be the world’s greatest plant poser.

Boquila does not grow in my back yard, although I am quite sure that if it did, Mother Nature would be having another good laugh.