Category Archives: Hellebores

February 5, 2023 · 3:11 pm

FIRST BLOOMS

So here we sit on a glorious

60 degree no wind

February Sunday afternoon.

It’s oh so tempting

To do something

Anything

In the garden.

But wait

There is still a bit more winter to come.

In a few weeks we can start planting

Cool season vegetable crops

Here in zone 7a.

All those cabbage teenagers

Will get happily planted

In their permanent homes.

But till then we need to calm down.

And wait just a bit longer.

So until then

You will find me in one of four

Hellebore patches

Cutting off the dead leaves

Making room for the very first

Harbingers of spring.

Welcome back.

Gail

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Filed under Hellebores, Winter Garden

Tagged as Hellebore

March 13, 2022 · 8:37 pm

FINALLY…THE BEGINNING

After a March of fits and starts

This weekend feels like the beginning of gardening season.

The 10 day forcast shows no freezing temperatures

And it is the 13th of the month.

Put those two things together

And I spent several hours

In my garden

Doing “spring things”.

I pruned the last of the roses

Planted lettuce, arugula & strawberries.

All Star Gourmet Lettuce mix edging the flower bed May 2021

Cut back the Annabelle hydrangea a bit

For the first time in their lives.

I was chicken so I just cut back every other one

And not by more than a third.

Finished planting sweet peas

The blooming kind this time.

And cut the old crispy leaves off of Hellebore

To expose those glorious blooms.

Who doesn’t love a late winter blooming flower.

But mostly I reveled in the miracle that is a garden

When the negative wind chills of just a few weeks ago

Nipped the baby buds on my rose bushes

They simply made more.

They did not pout or throw a tantrum

They just got on with the business of living

Bringing beauty into the world.

And hope.

A gift for a world in great need.

Gail

“Where flowers bloom so does hope.”

– Lady Bird Johnson

4 Comments

Filed under Annabelle Hydrangea, Arugula, Hellebores, Hope, Hydrangea, Lettuce, Nature, Peas, spring, Uncategorized, Vegetables

January 24, 2021 · 1:20 pm

HOLD ON

Just when I think

The darkness

May overcome me

This!

Hold on

Spring’s coming.

Take care of yourself and stay safe,

Gail

4 Comments

Filed under Hellebores, spring, Uncategorized, Winter Garden

January 19, 2020 · 5:51 pm

WAITING

In the cold and snow of winter,

There’s a spring that waits to be,

Unrevealed until it’s season,

Something God alone can see.

Natalie Sleeth

WHERE DO GARDENERS GO IN WINTER?

Usually by the time of the first killing freeze

I’m ready to hang up my pruners.

I’m fortunate to live in a place

With a long growing season.

But I do appreciate the break winter brings to me.

First freeze is normally followed by

A flurry of holiday activity.

So by the time we ring in the New Year

I’m ready to settle in with a good book

And the multitude skeins of yarn I plan to whip

Into something fun for H & H.

Along about now I begin to get itchy.

I’ll step into the garden on a sunny afternoon.

Looking for the first bud on the Hellebores.

DSCN0574

Or I’ll take a slow walk around the garden looking for

Daffodil and Tulip noses peeking out through the frozen earth.

Last weekend I found both.

I instructed them to retreat

Knowing the “polar vortex” was coming.

Fortunately, I’m far enough south that they will survive.

So far during this colder than usual winter

I’ve been able to dump bagged leaves into a compost area.

Organize my endless supply of deadheads and saved seeds.

And, of course, order more.

Seeds that is.

I’m planning to try some new annuals to add to my standards.

China Aster is the one I’m most excited about.

We’ll see if those big fluffy blooms are in my future.

So where do gardeners go in the winter?

Mostly inside their heads

With the help of endless seed catalogs.

And flower farmers Instagram feeds.

It’s a busy season.

Happy garden dreams,

Gail

1 Comment

Filed under Daffodils, Hellebores, Seed Catalogs, Seeds, Uncategorized, Winter Garden

June 3, 2018 · 2:17 pm

ROOTS & WINGS

In my core I am a flat lander.

A fourth generation flat lander.

As a kid I was taught by example

To be in awe of sunsets.

My father loved them.

A get everyone up from the dinner table

To admire them

Kind of loved sunsets.

He traveled the world

Met fascinating people

But was never happier

Than when standing in his own front yard

Taking in the full 180 degree sunset

In the evening sky.

We do have some pretty spectacular sunsets.

And thunderstorms.

My friend Mike Klemme has captured many of them.

I know this place.

With it’s long growing season.

I know that sometime in late January

I can start looking for buds on the Hellebores

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And by Valentine’s I’ll see the first nose of a daffodil.

If not an out and out bloom.

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I know that each fall when I spread the summer’s compost

Around my garden

I can expect a spring crop of worms

The size of small snakes.

Happily digging their way through

The rich soil they helped to create.

But for the past few years

I’ve been cheating on my garden.

I’ve taken up gardening

In another place.

A place that couldn’t be more different

From home.

Where here there is a generous 9 – 10 month growing season.

There the last freeze date isn’t until June 15th

And the first freeze date can happen anytime after Labor Day.

Really….three months.

How do people live like that.

For me it’s because of my grandchildren.

So I’m learning to garden again.

In a new place.

Now don’t get me wrong.

Home is still home.

But I now have the opportunity

To grow things

That absolutely hate it here on the plains.

I’m trying my hand at

Lupines

And Delphinium.

Oriental Poppies

And even Foxglove

Which I have no luck with

No matter where I try.

I’m learning how to out wit

These guys.

IMG_0994 (1)

Though they seemed to have eaten

Most of said Poppy buds.

Most challenging of all is the soil.

They don’t call them the Rocky Mountains

For their light airy loam.

Even staking up a delphinium bloom

(to make it more accessible to the deer)

Is an excavation project.

But the mountain air

Does make for glorious color

In all that grows there.

So, I’m literally putting down part time roots

In a new place.

In order to give the next generation

Wings.

Gail

2 Comments

Filed under Daffodils, Delphinium, Digitalis, Gardening, Gardening;Perennials, Grandchildren, Grandchldren Generations, Hellebores, Lupine, Poppy, Uncategorized

April 15, 2018 · 1:54 pm

WIND AND OTHER LUXURIES?

Wind.

Growing up on the plains

It has just been a part of my life.

My father always said that his mother,

A woman who kept house during the dust bowl

Putting wet towels around doors and windows,

Understood that wind was important to staying cool

In the summer.

And she never cursed it.

Rogers and Hammerstein even wrote it into

What would become our state song.

You know

“Where the wind comes sweeping down the plains.”

I’ve always tried not to complain about the wind.

But these past few days have really tried my resolve.

The wind has been howling off and on.

One day it’s an unusually hot wind out of the south.

Then it turns on a dime and gives us a mid-April frigid north blast

Leveling my tulips for the third time.

With wind in the forecast for last Friday

I was fearful we might have to cancel a long planned fun morning

Of Debra and her camera in my garden.

But on Thursday she called to say she was coming.

Period.

Luckily my garden is somewhat protected

With old trees and a two story house

Covering it from the south and north.

It was still pretty

Shall we say breezy

When Debra arrived Friday morning.

For the photographer in Debra

My backyard is something akin

To a village of bouncy houses

For a three year old.

She just doesn’t know what to jump on first.

The parrot tulips in the pots on the patio

Drew her in

And the clicking began.

But the wind was wanting to play as well.

Some of the pictures were clear

Others blurred

And some take your breath away.

It did not detour her

Finally declaring she would just wait

“The wind will die down…it always does.?

She moved from parrot tulips

To the more protected Hellebores

To the tulip lined path

leading to the garden house.

The light and the wind

Dancing around.

Creating opportunities

And problems.

All of which were joyfully accepted.

Her patience paid off.

As you can see by the results

I’m sharing here.

This reminded me of my grandmother.

Accepting what she couldn’t change.

Finding the good in what some would consider bad.

And just simply making the best of what you are given.

Some might call it Pollyannish.

Others perseverance

I call it grace.

Gail

10 Comments

Filed under Garden House, Garden Photography, Gardening, Gardening Friends, Hellebores, Parrot Tulips, Pettit Basset Griffon Vendeen, Shade Garden, tulips, Uncategorized

August 1, 2016 · 12:33 am

Marry a Carpenter

I think I’ve written before

About the great match of

A carpenter married to a gardener.

Over the years John has built

Fences and gates and arbors and potting benches

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

And much more

Basically he’s handy – very handy.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

A few years back he built this screen

To help hide the back of the garden.

You know

That place where you store things

Old broken pots

Millions of flats and plastic pots

That you haven’t gotten around to recycling.

Old hoses

And whatever else you haven’t found a permanent home for.

This “hidey hole” has another side.

It’s where I park my double bin compost tumbler.

I literally wore one out last fall.

It’s taken us this long to get it replaced.

And John decided this time it needed a screen

So he built it.

Nothing much has ever grown in the space

Opposite the compost tumbler.

So we talked about repeating

The plants that have done well

In the shade of the cedar tree

On the other side of the garden

DSCN7068

John planted Yews that will spread to create a backdrop

More Oak Leaf Hydrangea

And a passalong Hosta.

The largest I’ve ever seen

Which John divided into four large Hosta.

Who knows how big they will get.

I’ve also added two “Incrediball Hydrangea”.

They are pretty sad right now,

But since they are related to

Those wonderful Annabelle hydrangea

I’m hoping they’ll thrive like their cousins.

All of this joined existing Hellebores and Ferns.

This fall

I’ll extend the brick path

And sprinkle in a few spring flowering perennials

To complete the space.

Thank you John for hours of hard work

In this hotter than usual summer.

This all started with the death of the old compost tumbler.

I was sad to lose my rusted out old friend.

You just never know what will grow

Out of loss.

Enjoy the week,

Gail

ARRANGING THINGS

It’s the height of summer here.

Endless sunny days.

And because we had all those wonderful

Badly needed rainy days.

The humidity is back

Big-time.

So what’s a gardener to do.

This time of the year is basically for maintenance.

Deadheading and weeding and watering are the order of most days.

I love it because it can all be done in little snippets of time.

But there is one more activity for high summer.

Flower arranging.

For some reason I don’t bring a lot of flowers into my house.

I have a few here and there

But mostly we enjoy them from the inside of the house

Or on the morning garden walk.

So it’s great fun

When I have a reason to make flower arrangements.

Friday night was just such a reason.

We were one of several host couples

For a shower for our minister Andrew

And his bride to be Katie.

Now it’s too hot to have the party in my garden

So it was held at a local lodge.

Decades ago it was part of an amusement park

And has been lovingly restored.

So along with chamber music

Yummy food

Including crab claws In honor of Andrew’s Maryland roots

Family from home

Church members

And local friends

We needed flower arrangements

And lots of them – 26 to be exact.

First order of business

Find 26 vases.

I’m embarrassed to say that 25 of them

Were alive and well living in my garden house!

The schedule went like this.

Weekend before dig out all the vases

And wash them

Tuesday the vases were taped with cross hatch pattern

To hold the flowers in place.

It was also the day to cut Euonymous.

And Hydrangeas.

They last for days if you sear the end as soon as you cut it

And let them rest in buckets of water up to their necks.

Wednesday morning Linda came to help with the harvest.

We cut buckets of Phlox, Purple Coneflower, Dahlia & Dusty Miller

We added bits of White Balloon Flower, Veronica Spicata, Hellebore leaves and blooms.

Linda and Virginia each cut a bucket of Zinnias – one fuchsia and one pale pink.

I even used the blooms on the radishes that should have been pulled long ago.

Wednesday night the arranging began.

Linda, David, Mary and Gay came on Friday morning to complete the arranging

And haul it all to the lodge.

It takes a village!

Friday was a warm evening.

Not just the temperature.

But the people, the place and the occasion.

There’s something wonderful about small towns.

When I looked around the room

There were people I had known for decades.

We have raised our children together.

We have buried our parents together.

We have thrown a million wedding and baby showers together.

We have welcomed newcomers together.

Those newcomers have become new friends.

What is there to do in a garden

In the mid- summer heat?

Share it.

Photo Credit David Meara

4 Comments

Filed under Bouquets, Bridal Showers, Dahlias, Dead Heading, Euonymus, Flower Arrangements, Garden House, Hellebores, Hydrangea, Purple Coneflower - Echinacea, Radishes, Tall Garden Phlox, Uncategorized, Vases, Veronica Spicata, Wedding Flowers, Zinnia

April 8, 2013 · 12:37 am

FAITH

It happens every year.

When I finally get winter’s blanket of leaves removed

I wonder where everything has gone.

Sure the early blooming show offs are visible

The Iris and Peonies.

And Larkspur sprouts are everywhere.

But right now I’m wondering why is there so much dirt showing.

And what is lying in wait beneath?

My friend Suellen used to call every spring

To tell me that everything had died over the winter.

Then…she’d call back in a week

Saying it’s OK.

And we would have a good laugh

Remembering the same conversation from the year before.

Faith

It’s as important to gardening as fertilizer, healthy soil and water.

It’s the belief that a tiny green frond

Will unfurl into a gorgeous fern.

That the precious buds on my Japanese Tree Peony

Will soon take my breath away.

That come June

These few leaves at the bottom of what looks like a stick plant

Will give astonishing blooms.

The robins have returned.

Lady bugs and honey bees abound

Peg is on her never-ending bunny search

And the Hellebores are blooming their hearts out.

It must be spring.

Faith

All we need to do is trust

And believe.

And as my friend Jerry used to say

Do the best we can…

God will take care of the rest.

Take time to breathe it all in.

Gail

3 Comments

Filed under Bugs, Ferns, Gardening, Gardening Friends, Grape Hyacinths, Hellebores, Hydrangea, Iris, Japanese Tree Peony, Lady Bugs, Larkspur, Peonies, Perennials, Redbud Trees, Violets

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