Pink Garden Phlox and Blue Salvia

Somehow a red monarda is also out here – I think I had taken cuttings that didn’t grow big enough for the Master Gardener sale, and I ditched the pot and contents in the garden. Somehow the monarda grew – but at least the bees like it.

Monarda is called Bee Balm for a reason!

Blue was not a problem – I have hydrangeas everywhere and they are are all standard mop head blue. Alice Morse Earle commented that the hillsides of Long Island looked like they were moldy when the hydrangeas were in bloom and although many will disagree, it can get rather too much.

Then the white was just as easy because the gardenia is in bloom. I think these look much brighter white than the ones at the front and they are maintained for longer too. The front gardenias are in full sun and turn yukky brown in just a few hours. These are in afternoon sun, but shade for the rest of the day, and look much fresher. This one still has early morning dew on the petals.

Finally red. This was more of a problem because the Knockout roses are past their initial bloom and the echinaceas are not quite out yet.The nearest I could get was this reddish pink dianthus.  Its full  name is Diantus Scent First Passion, and yes it it very scented.

This makes a lovely place to sit in the summer

The calendar shows the end of May and the official start of summer is celebrated. In the garden that is shown by the first flush of the gardenias. These dark green, glossy leaves make for a lovely evergreen bush, but the flowers are perfect! They are pure white and very fragrant which stand out beautifully against the foliage.

These bushes make a lovely place to sit and read on warm, humid southern summer days. I spent way to long reading here yesterday.

Everyone knows that I like Fiskars tools as well as folks at the company, but lately I have taken to getting some new orange tools from Black and Decker.
I got the little chain saw a few years ago and didn’t think much about it (love using it though).
Last year I was browsing the garden/yard tools aisle and noticed a bright orange, lightweight trimmer. I am not a big fan of trimming the edges of the lawn and with the old 2-stroke heavy duty knock-a-tree over trimmer, it took longer to start than it did to trim, so I didn’t do it. This new guy works on a little rechargeable battery. It is light, starts with just a touch of a button and does a decent job.Even changing the nylon chord is easy to do – just lift out the empty one, thread the wire through the hole and replace the cap. Yesterday I used it just to trim the heads of the dianthus. 3 minute job with one or two stops along the way.
Then enter, orange tool number two – the blower. This little guy works on the same battery pack so they are interchangeable. Again it starts with just the touch of a button and can be used for dusting leaves off steps, clearing pollen off the patio and diantus debris off the footpath. All little jobs that were major when the old 2-stroke engine machine had to come out. Did I mention the noise that the old machines made? Gone with the new lightweight ones.
The jobs I do are small and these things are handy but they do not do heavy duty clearing of damp wet leaves and the battery pack sometimes needs to be changed halfway through my ‘need to do list’, but or the price, they are terrific.

I was delighted to see that Safer had a similar product, so feeling rather good about that I bought two to try. The problems were driveway cracks with clover and grass, tree beds that were planted with the dreaded liriope and a bed taken over by poison ivy.  I started with the product and within minutes was frustrated with the delivery system. The trigger spout was giving out a trickle at best after several pumps. With a 400 ft driveway this was not going to work. I unscrewed the top and thought about just pouring the liquid onto the weeds, but that seemed rather a waste. I resorted to the shed and picked up the RoundUp vine killer. This, of course worked, but there was not much in the container. The delivery system though was much better – they had a pull trigger that filled the cavity and delivered a full stream of herbicide to the weed area. It didn’t go far, but on returning to the good old shed with the abandoned Safer product, I noticed that the two screw caps were the same. A quick switch and I was off and running with the less toxic brand again.

The overall results were mixed: the Safer brand was quite good on most small grass and clover issues, but truly was no match for wicked veins (poison ivy, honeysuckle and wisteria). I noticed that the leaves were blackened but the vine itself looked untouched. Maybe I needed more thorough coverage, but my guess is that for serious problems, Safer is not a good option.

For general cleanup of driveway and smaller problems, I think it did just fine and will be in the shed for those areas as it is far less toxic than big commercial brands.

So when you see a bunch of daffodils in an old lawn, there is a good chance that  the Victorian who lived there a century ago wanted the spring color right there. Sarah was there to add the dates to the flowers and record what was there.

Then we walked over the road to Barrington Hall where the ‘Jonquil Hedge’ was in full bloom’ – well as much as it was going to be this year. From the same theory of someone planted them there – we have a daffodil hedge that was planted in about 1870 and in full bloom in 2010. The strange parts where the ones in the spirea hedge itself. It is doubtful that people did that, but there are records of the original hedge being  hawthorne which may have extended further, or perhaps the spirea was planted when the daffodils were dormant we don’t know.

For instance, each item such as chives, has four entry points divided into tabs: There is planting/growing; varieties;produce selection (for those who cannot grow these things)/harvest; and preserving. There is not a tab for recipes but there are lots of recipes in the book too. One extra for today’s modern household is the nutritional information.

I think this is the first book that takes the shopper’s point of view when talking about growing. Too often gardeners get carried away with growing new things and are confident about how to grow them. The standard garden book though does not tell you when to actually harvest the melon or tomato or green bean. This book does that and does it in a very clear way.

This Saturday – March 13th Jean Ann will be giving away a signed copy of her book, so please listen in to America’s Home Grown Veggie Show at 10am, on www.radiosandysprings.com. Join us on Facebook at americashomegrownveggies to hear about other books, tools and seeds that we give away to lucky listeners every week.

One of the few advantages of the snow was that Barrington Hall’s  remnant daffodil hedge did show up slightly better this week! The hedge was mentioned by George camp in a letter about 1850 ish, (”The jonquil hedge is in full bloom’) but he forgot to tell us where the hedge was, and we are now eyeing every peak of daffodils just in case they are ‘the one’. This line though is favorite to be the line he mentioned. It was first noticed about 3 yrs ago but got mown down by landscape crews before I could mark it. I think this year there are a few green stems that are thickening indicating that we may get a bloom and my daffodil lady, Sara Van Beck,   will be able to identify and perhaps even date the line.