Squish, Squish, Slosh

I was reading an article about lantana today, and it mentioned that “soggy winter soil” is fatal to them.

So I’m not getting my hopes up about seeing them come back in spring. Fortunately they are inexpensive, and grow quickly, even in just one season.

My entire yard is a quagmire. We’ve gotten, I don’t know, maybe 7 inches of rain in the last month, and for the last 8 days, it has been covered in snow. I like snow, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. We are at that point now.

I do like the way red-twig dogwoods look with a snowy backdrop, though.

Beneath the snowpack, things are stirring. The white hellebore blooms have opened, daffodils are sprouting, and hyacinths are pushing their way out of the ground.


This has been the coldest winter I ever remember. Most years I can count on one hand the number of nights in the teens, and days when the high never gets past freezing. This year, I quit counting before Christmas. I suppose this is the year when I see which of my plants can’t handle extremes of cold and/or sogginess.

Goldfinches in Snow

7 inches of snow so far in Greensboro, and birds all over the feeders. Just this week, I’ve noticed the bright yellow breeding plumage appearing on the male goldfinches.

Fighting January III–Winter Daphne

Winter Daphnes bloom in late January to February, and their scent is worth bundling up and going outside for. Even better, plant it in a shady spot between the car and the front door so you can inhale its fragrance as you run between the two on biting cold winter days.

This is my second Daphne–the first one died suddenly, for no apparent reason, and I’ve spoken with other gardeners who have had similar experiences. They are rather finicky, and absolutely will not tolerate poorly drained soil–which is basically the definition of my garden (and has potential as a blog title, come to think of it) but this is one of two winter plants that I will go to great lengths to keep happy by amending the heck out of the soil to make it drain.

Speaking of poorly drained soil, my entire yard is becoming a quagmire with all the rain we’ve had this fall and winter. Another 3 inches fell Sunday night, (already over 5″ for the month) sending rivers and creeks way over their banks and carving channels through the mulch in my garden. Now I’m hearing a forecast of possibly heavy snow for the weekend!

Fighting January: Otto Luyken Laurel

The “Fighting January” series is a tour of the plants in my garden that make the bitter cold of January a little less miserable. Today’s installment is a shrub that is not particularly flashy, certainly not rare, but one that will work almost anywhere you need a medium-sized evergreen.

Just outside the front door, beneath the living room windows, a previous owner planted three Otto Luyken Laurels. I much prefer them to the boxwoods that line the foundations of many of the houses in our neighborhood because they aren’t so formal-looking, and I like the contrast of their dark green foliage against the red bricks. In spring, Otto Luykens have tiny white blooms.

The ones pictured above are in full shade most of the day. Later I planted some more in front of the house and on the south side, all or which are in full sun, and they do equally well in both locations. Even in the severe drought a couple of years ago I never watered them, and they have never suffered from any pest or disease that I know of. The oldest plants were beginning to get leggy, so I pruned them close to the ground and the new growth came out much thicker and more attractive.

I planted pale yellow daffodils and white shasta daisies in front of them, so the laurel’s dark leaves would provide an attractive background for the spring and summer flowers.

Join me tomorrow as the tour of my January garden continues. In the meantime, leave a comment telling what your favorite January plant is. And if you’re in the NC Piedmont tonight, go outside before the rain starts. The temperature has climbed ten degrees in the last hour, and it feels almost tropical outside.

Fighting January

If January were a person, it would be one of those cold, hard, and bitter souls with a perpetually crabby demeanor and a face frozen into a permanent scowl. Even the occasional sunny displays of warmth seem forced and suspicious, and it is generally agreed that the sooner one is rid of such an individual, the better.

I do not like January. The harsh, biting cold and ungodly early sunsets keep me inside far more than I would like, and most of my plants are bare and brown, if not entirely vanished beneath the soggy ground.

In selecting plants for my garden, I’ve made it a point to go heavy on the evergreens, and to make sure they are planted in view of the windows that I often look out of, or near the paths that I walk on my infrequent forays across the permafrost.

Whenever I visit other gardens in January (which, admittedly, is not all that often) I take note of what looks attractive during this most dismal of all months. Anything worth going outside to see in January is deserving of a place in my garden.

For the rest of the month, then, I invite you to join me on a tour of my January garden. I’ll try to do a post every day highlighting one plant that brings joy, life, and greenery to the deadest month of the year. In return, I’ll ask you to post a comment telling about one of your favorite January plants. (Tell if it likes sun or shade, moist or dry sites, and anything else readers ought to know if they are thinking of adding your plant to their winter garden.

Today’s plant is Italian Arum. I discovered this in my mother’s garden several years ago, and she gave me several to bring back to Greensboro. She told me that “Arums come up as the Hostas go down” and vice versa, and that is a pretty good description of their life cycle. (Some people, in fact, refer to them as “Winter Hostas.”)

They strike me as shade plants because of their wide leaves, and aesthetically seem most at home in a woodland garden–mine are in the front shade garden beneath the dogwoods, with azaleas and hellebores for companions. There is not a lot of winter shade there, though, so they can take some sun, but they seem to do better if they aren’t stuck out in the full sun and wind. The soil there is damp, heavy clay, and they do fine in it.

They have these little corms at the roots, sort of like wild onions, and they multiply, but definitely will not take over a space. In May, just before they go dormant, these really odd flowers appear.

According to the people who know, arums are best divided in the summer when they are dormant. The problem, though, is I can’t find them in the summer, so I dig them up and move them on sunny days in winter (like today) and hope for the best. (In the fall of 2008, I rearranged my shade garden and moved the little gumpo azaleas closer together because I thought they would be more visually appealing to a person walking up the path to the front door. I forgot about the arums, which weren’t up yet, and a few weeks later noticed them coming up right in the middle of the azaleas. I made a note to do something about that the following summer, but we got a little sidetracked by a very unexpected discovery, and I am only now getting around to moving them.

When the Hellebores Bloom

A 60-degree day in January is always welcome, but especially coming on the heels of the longest, most bitter cold snap this gardener can remember in his forty years on earth. (Just to illustrate: it snowed on December 18. There were still patches of snow in shady spots around Greensboro this morning, one month later.)

But when buds appear on the hellebores, I know that spring is not too far away. Their blooms appeared this week, close to the ground amid the new foliage that is just beginning to unfurl beneath the dry brown leaves of autumn.

The bluebirds and squirrels also know that springtime is near, for the bluebirds stopped by the new birdhouse today, and the squirrels were busy hauling mouthfuls of leaves to their tree hollows, preparing nests for their babies, which will be born in late winter or early spring.

Teresa and I are getting ready for a late winter baby too, assembling a crib, installing car seats, and selecting books and toys. Our son is due on February 21st, and it is my hope that as he grows up, he will learn when the bluebirds start looking for nest sites and when baby squirrels are born. I want him to know real animals, to respect them, marvel at them, and care about them, and to know the cycle of the seasons. I want him to know when the hellebores bloom.

Adventures in Shopping

I went to a store today, where, upon arriving at the line of cash registers with my purchase, I was dismayed to see that one of the cashiers was a psycho woman that I had the misfortune of knowing several years ago, and have been avoiding ever since.

I pulled my baseball cap down low over my face, and scanned the line of cashiers, calculating my risk of ending up at her register. Not wishing to chance it, I turned back.

I thought of approaching a customer, explaining the situation, and handing him or her the item along with a $20, asking them to pay for it and bring it to me outside.

With my luck, however, the $20 would turn out to be counterfeit, the embarrassed customer would point me out to security, and I’d be hauled downtown and be forced to explain my actions to a judge. I can see it now:

“Honestly, Your Honor, I was just trying to avoid this psycho lady who works there. I didn’t know the money was bogus.”

“We’ll see about that,” the judge would reply. How about if I subpoena your “friend,” and see if you’re telling the truth?”

So then I’d be in a courtroom, psycho lady comes in, “David!!! I’m so glad to see you! I had no idea you were back in Greensboro!!! Oh, yes, Your Honor, I know David. He’s one of my best friends!”

Prison would be preferable. I put the item back on the shelf and went home. It wasn’t worth the trouble.

Late Bloomers

The first morning of December brought the first freeze of the season. Outside my window, a cardinal perched on the frozen birdbath, his head cocked, perplexed by the glaze of ice coating the shallow dish. It seemed a good time to resume blogging on a regular basis, since the first freeze, at least in my mind, marks the end of the growing season and the beginning of the season of waiting.

I took the time this week to pay attention to my garden, something I’ve not done much over the summer. The hydrangeas bloomed into the early hours of December–that seems longer than usual, but I don’t know for certain.

Late Hydrangea

The 30 degree night, though, was too cold for them.

The Shasta Daisies (Leucanthemum ‘Becky’), however, are extremely tough. They survived the freeze with no trouble. It will be interesting to see just how far into December they will survive.

Shasta Daisy

They are one of my favorite flowers for cutting. Their bloom season, obviously, is quite long and they last forever in a vase of water. I cut these 11 days ago. (And how many flowers can you pick from your garden and combine with bright red nandina berries for Thanksgiving?)

Shasta Daisies & Nandina Berries

Yes, There’s a Garden Under All These Weeds

The summer gardening season began well enough. I had no major projects to see to, and my goal was simply to keep up with the weeding and watering so that my garden didn’t look abandoned by fall. As you read in my previous post, I got about 6 weeds pulled up in June when we found out that we were going to have a baby.

After that, the garden was on its own for the summer. Not that I didn’t want to work in it. It’s just that for about 4 months, Teresa was sick and absolutely drained of energy, to the point that all she could do after work was lie on the sofa until time to go to bed. Normally we split the housework about 60/40 (you can guess who does the 60) but when it was 1/99, that left no time for gardening, or blogging for that matter.

So, fast-forward to November. The leaves are mostly off the trees, the juncos, white-throated sparrows, and yellow-rumped warblers have already made it to my yard, and what used to be the spare bedroom is getting full of baby stuff. We are having a boy, and we’re going to name him Patrick. (Francis, of course, is the patron saint of birds and animals; Fiacre the patron saint of gardeners, but I thought those names might provoke fistfights. And Teresa and my mother both vetoed Roy Dean, which was the favorite of Carolina fans at church, who wanted to name the baby in honor of the two greatest basketball coaches who ever lived.)

I actually got a little work done this fall–moved some Shasta Daisies, planted a couple of cotoneasters in the front bed–but it’s raining now and I can’t get pictures.

Thanks for all the good wishes everyone. I’ll try to write some more before another three months have passed.

Didn’t See This Coming

Back in June, when our niece was born, I observed that while she was very cute, I personally had no interest in obtaining firsthand knowledge of childbirth, diaper changing, or the many other aspects of being a parent. Even as I clicked “Publish,” I had a vague sense that I was painting a really big target on my back…

Three weeks after I penned those words, I was out pulling weeds in my flowerbed when Teresa emerged from the house, holding what appeared to be a thermometer.

“David, come here a minute,” she said.

I assumed that she had a fever. My first thought was that perhaps she had contracted the swine flu. Being the caring husband that I am, my second thought was, I sure hope she didn’t give it to me.

“You’d better sit down,” she said, handing me the thermometer.

How high was this fever? I wondered.

The thermometer was not like any I had ever seen. Where there should have been numbers, there was a word. I tapped the thermometer against my palm but could not get the reading anywhere close to 98.6. It kept showing this:

To say that we were shocked would be an understatement. A baby wasn’t on either of our lists of future plans, so we’ve spent the last few months getting used to the idea of being parents. (And to think that I recently turned down a cat from my friend Sandra because our one feline, Casey, is such a big responsibility!)

Fortunately, we have a backyard that, by the time our child is about five, will look somewhat like my grandfather’s where I played as a child, with dense thickets of shrubbery that magically transform into jungles or mountain ranges or the Forbidden Forest of Hogwarts. Down the street is a patch of woods with a creek running through it, just begging to be explored. Beside the woods is a large field that has plenty of room for a left-handed pull hitter (male or female), and if we have a boy, to learn to run post routes, slants, and flanker screens. (Those are baseball and football terms, in case you’re not a fan.)

Teresa says that in 2020, when people ask how many kids she has, she’s going to reply, “Two. One’s 10 and the other is 51.”