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A Cottage Garden: 2003

November-December - What a challenging fall it has been. Writing & editing the infectious diseases book has been enormously consuming. Then the clinic situation changed and I became board chair. These situations + teaching and work at the clinic have been a huge overload & gardening has fallen by the wayside - along with church & other important parts of life. Now we are at least caught up with the writing & a clinic director is starting the 1st week of January.

About the garden: I have done nothing except for harvesting a few flowers - which is what prompts me to write. It is after Christmas and we still have roses! Fresh-cut Marie Pavié blooms & flowers in the house for Christmas! What a great rose this is. Old Blush is also blooming - for the first time as it appears in photographs. Flowers brighter, larger, more fragrant. I guess it took a year+ for the bush to reach its potential. Other roses also blooming sporadically. Sweet allysum continues the show. Maybe this all goes back to good soil preparation. I said somewhere else in here that I have never felt that I did too much preparation, and it really is true. Book scheduled to be finished in May. Then, NO MAS!!! I'm going to start taking it easy.

October - Here we are at the end of October (26th) & last hybrid roses of year fading in the vase - though a several old garden roses still blooming in the front yard. It has been a great year for gardening - we've had fresh cut flowers every day since March (see how to increase cut flower life in the Tips on Growing section at end of page). Next year I plan on more gardening as soon as the infectious diseases book is finished, probably in April. We should have good perennials next year when what I planted this year matures. Winter coming soon, so it will be time to waste time looking at seed catalogs - one of the best parts of gardening. See Park's Seeds at end of page. You'll be glad you did.

There is a wonderful yellow flower blooming in the back garden. Small, five petals, and leaves smell like tarragon. Strangest thing happened when I planted many of the flowers last spring: squirrels (I guess it was the squirrels) pulled up & scattered nearly all the sticks with names of plants on them. So I just don't know what many of the new ones are. The cypress vines played out and cut them back and pulled them down from over the front door. Today is the 2nd cool day of the year. At last. Photo: 9/03 Front porch - huge number of pixels or something in this image. Will readjust camera as don't know how to change after taken.

September - Roses are blooming out front - especially Katy Road Pink, Perle d'Or, Duchess de Brabant, & Mrs. Joseph Schwartz. The cypress vines on the porch are very vigorous, to say the least. They cover the front door (we use porch door to go in & out) and I should cut them back, but they are so beautiful & so huge. Numerous red flowers on the vines (also pink & white) have begun attracting hummingbirds. The other morning Leslie was out front to say good by to me on my way to work & a hummingbird was hovering just a few feet away. Leslie heard it peep! Now we're talking cool. I mean, how many people have ever heard a hummingbird peep? They also come to the Turk's cap at the side of Phyllis' house, so once again, we have hummingbirds visiting.

Going back to the question of cutting the vines back: Its the hummingbirds vs. the rigido neighbors with their 1950s just so trimmed bushes lined up like little soldiers. Hup 2 - 3 - 4. Yes Sir! No Sir! No Contest, Sir! Hummingbirds rule, Sir! Adolescent cardinals are coming to the back feeder every day. The female shivers her wings and peeps until the father or mother gives her some of the treasured abc seed. Its mid-September and it has begun cooling down & once again, the front is fragrant - though not as strong as in May & June. Got a heavy rain several days ago. A lush & beautiful time with a cool breeze blowing through the house. Feels so good - Feelin good again. I wanted you to see them all. I wished that you were there. It feels so good - Feelin good again.

August - About a month of no rain. Temp yesterday 109° & today 105°. Keeping water sources in front & back for birds, butterflies, & whatever. Earlier this year Judy McFarlane & Bets Anderson gave me help with means of attracting butterflies & it worked. Wildlife is great this year: its an adolescent jay extravaganza; scruffy adolescent sparrows all about; and every night we see an opossum or racoon - last night saw a baby opossum & a raccoon. Lizards (geckos?) everywhere outside and an occasional baby inside ... Leslie & I were in a government guesthouse on the Thai-Cambodian border near Khao-I-Dang in 1981 - lying on the mat on the floor watching as the lizards on the walls by the ceiling ate mosquitoes & listening to the artillery a couple of miles away (incoming, a little close for comfort). Leslie was cool with it & with the get-out plans. Cool wife. Go lizards.

Anyway, in August in Texas blooming slows some. Graham Thomas (yellow rose planted for Leslie) just sent up one long shoot out of the bush with a great burst of bloom. Marie Pavié & Chrysler Imperial blooming off & on. Phlox just ended its best ever blooming here - maybe that had something to do with thinning (cutting) the plants back to 7-10 stalks/clump in the spring. I put some lythrum (purple loosestrife) in in June & its blooming very nicely. Zinnias giving great summer color of course. Asters, cannas, jewels of Ophar, etc. blooming. David has gone to college. An exciting time.

July - The front porch is perfumed with the scent of nicotiana & jasmine - the latter from Doan's - they said it would only last a year. Here we are more than a year later ... Some years ago I made bird feeding platforms from cedar and put one outside our bedroom window and the other outside the window closest to where I write. What a show! Right now, the juvenile birds are all about - especially sparrows and blue jays. We've seen some great interactions between young cardinals & their parents. The squirrels are really aggressive toward one another and the birds. A few days ago, a little mouse showed up on the bedroom feeder & has returned every day since. Coincidentally, I'm writing about infectious diseases - some of which are hosted by mice. Uh-oh.

People around the corner are working on a flower garden & despite the heat, making some progress. Nice to see young people doing this. Puts me in mind of how I learned about gardening. But first, there's something about spirit or genetics or something - my Grandmother was a gardener and some of my earliest & happiest memories are of her in relation to her garden. For me, gardening is at least in part, a fulfillment of self. Anyway, where I learned about gardening:

June - Roses bloomed sporadically all month and toward the end, several are about to burst into bloom (a good thing to say). Hollyhocks so huge that they were shading & crowding roses - and blooms waning, so cut them all back except one stalk/plant for seeds. Lots & lots of butterflies, so its the question of whether to spray the roses - which mostly are healthy except thrips are after some. Tomatoes, peppers, many herbs producing. Put in a bed between alley & back fence; had already planted some climbing roses on alley side of back fence (Peace, America, yellow Lady Banks, & white Lady Banks). Tomorrow, the front expands. Thinning iris, planting the many 1/2 price perennials from Redenta's. Finally got in an American Beauty ... there is a road, no simple highway. Photo: In front 5/7/03 - New Dawn and further back are digitalis (need to figure out how to take lower res photos).

May - In mid-May the "evening scented mix" of flower seeds I bought from Parks came into bloom. What a beautiful evening scent! By early May the roses were blooming with less profusion; just about gone in mid-May; and now in late May, some are coming back. Hollyhocks are spectacular - blooming & 6'-8' tall. Cecille Brunner bloomed first time.

April - The iris were spectacular during April. In mid-April the roses came fully into bloom. First to bloom was Old Blush, then Katy Road Pink, Perle d'Or, Marie Pavié, Gruss an Aachen, Zepherine Drouhin, & so on. Then the New Dawn on the arbor over the front sidewalk is in full bloom. In this second year, the New Dawn is blooming far more than in the first year. This is my first year to grow digitalis - lovely. Planted Cecille Brunner climbing rose at front corner of house.

Early spring 2003 I took out all the bushes in front and started over with Texas mountain laurel, old garden roses (climbing and bush), clematis, flowers, and herbs - these are all pretty small. The neighbors seem to like it, but to me the house looks kind of bare.