Takeover of the Gnomes?

Indian Balsam (c) Ray Woods

It is the end of the world as we know it - it can only foretell the extinction of all taste and (superior) discrimination vis-a-vis gardens.  Alas, England's 100th annual Chelsea Flower Show, THE premier decorative botanical exhibit in the world has allowed ... garden gnomes in.  And not just one or two.  Oodles - decorated by celebs.  The NY Times was so surprised they gave the little twerps a major front page story.  And not only the Times - the Chicago Trib reports you can buy gnome garden furniture (not for them;  for you!)  Cutesy-pie little tables made from bent-over little men and the like.  Oh, the horror!  (Do not send me e-mails or texts or tweets saying they're in your garden.  I.  don't.  want.  to.  know!)

Here's this column's rant:  unfinished parkways.  Folks, if you're going to put something in your parkway, fine.  Just don't leave it hanging.  Three hostas and just dirt; or one small patch of groundcover and a geranium;  or 10 impatiens (you'll be sorry - they're sick) and 10 square yards of red mulch.  Good God Gertie - if you haven't the time to do it right put in some spreaders - old-fashioned daylilies, false lamia, fallopia, petasites. Almost anything, just not half done.  As an example of the correct, tho' extreme, way to do it - I delivered some of my Indian Balsam babies (immigrant impatiens not suject to mildew) to a friend who lives in the enclave called "The Villa" on Chicago's north side.  Coincidentally The Villa which consists of bungalows and Arts and Crafts houses was having an all-neighborhood garage sale.  Trooping thru (and picking up some copper-coated metal planters - 4 bucks - from which I'll scrape the interior rust & paint with spar varnish) I got to check out gardens.  There were some doozies but people told me to check out the parkway at Harding and Avondale.  The street runs along a wooded berm (the Kennedy) on one side.  For half a block on the other side, a gentleman - no one knew his name -has planted his parkway and adjacent yard like The Forest Primeval.  People said it was magical and it was - two steps in and you were no longer in Chicago but a long pathway from "Green Mansions."  That was a pathway done right!

I've been dipping into Page Dickey's book, "Embroidered Ground."  Altho' she is apparantly rich and has lots more ground than any of us she is no snob.  The book about the gardens of her home in up-state New York is a good resource for checking out growth habits (flowering, shade tolerance, height, etc.) of many shrubs and trees:  viburnums, daphnes, fothergilla, dogwoods and many others.  If it'll grow there it'll grow here in Chicago.

Did your tulips and daffs last longer than usual?  This very cold spring was like a flower cooler at a florist.  It'll be interesting to see what happens this summer.  Some of my Indian Balsam are big enough to bloom now but they don't usually do it till July.

If you're into really big plants there's a new reality show about Pete Nelson who builds tree houses for grownups.  The houses and the trees they're in are magnificent.  The show "Tree House Men" will be on Animal Planet.

This month's recipe is totally politically incorrect, full of things you've been told it was declasse to consume.  It was given to me by a friend, Eileen Curry, Aka "Bunny" who was a famous Chicago madam.  I realized years later this particular salad was a Depression concoction:

      Peas and Cheese Salad

      Ingredients:  head of iceberg lettuce, large can of peas, a couple of green onions, several stalks of

      celery, bag of cubed cheddar cheese, cup of (real) mayonnaise, salt and pepper.

      To do:  drain peas, rip lettuce into small chunks, coarsely chop onions and celery.  Toss these things

      with the cheese, mayonnaise and salt and pepper.

Hold the presses - this just in:  The origin of garden gnomes, says the NY Times is extremely odd.  In the 18th century during the Romantic era (of gardens and architecture besides music) rich aristocrats with large estates would have small picturesque huts built and hire real live geezers to be their resident hermit for local color, don'cha know.  When the hermits got uppity and charged too much for the local gentry they were replaced by little bearded statues which morphed after a bit into garden gnomes.  (However, just because they have an aristocratic background doesn't mean they're in good taste!)

Cicadas, Borage and Japanese Pancakes

Cicada (Brood II) court Wikipedia

It's going to be a noisy summer - the cicadas (Brood II) are back from their last appearance in 1996.  Do not reach for the bug spray - they won't harm you or your plants or your pets (unless your feckless Lhasa Apso eats 14 of them but he'll only throw up.)  Perfectly harmless except to your ears.

 

I opened up my pond/waterfall contraption and released my poor fed-up-to-here-with-this-tiny aquarium goldfish.  They've spent the last two days surfing in the waterfall led by Diva Gloriana of the veil-tail& the red, gold and black movie-star body.  (And yes, in spite of their tiny brains they are capable of inventing and having, fun.)  The folks that built my boulder falls got an "A" for engineering and a "D-" in rock placement (and I thought I was being nice by vacating myself from the actual construction).  So I have a big pile of rocks glued to each other by what looks like dog puke.  My job which I've already started is to chip away the extra plastic glue & fill the many unnatural looking holes with a mixture of dirt and compost and planting these little gardens with sedums.  I'm heartened that many of the plants beneath the fountain that I tried to move, survived and are emerging only slightly bedraggled.  The twin-leaf and the giant lilies made it!  There are several bare areas around the falls that I'm going to plant with columbines and johnny-jump-ups.  I'm putting some pink, purple and red hollyhocks behind the falls from seeds I got from my sister in Kansas.

 

Other garden plans - all new perennials will go in pots to get established in my over-crowded yard.  The cannas have been split up to go in separate planters;  the columbine that's come up in a crack in the patio for 3 years is back but being much put upon by Nova, my tenent's white husky.  Nice dog but he lives to pee.  I built a little brick wall around the beleaguered posie & surrounded it by pots of plants.  Nova, by the way was drinking from the pond, and was so surprised by the fish (new to him) that he fell in.  I do appreciate the fact that he puts the fear of God in the resident (not for long I hope) rats.  He really wants those tasty critters.  He's named them Hors d'oeuvre #1 & Hors d'oeuvre #2.

 

I'm planting a whole patio container with borage.  I recommend it:  A) for drinks, B) for bright blue flowers and C) because bees love it.  I'm also planting some mints up for my tenants who seem to have an uncanny knack for knowing what's good in alcoholic drinks.

Foo Dogs, the Pope, Elephants and Kitty Litter

Foo Dogs

 So how am I going to get  Foo dogs, the Pope, elephants and kitty litter scoops into a garden column?  Pay attention, everyone.

Off to Chicago’s annual Flower & Garden show at Navy Pier with a friend, we found  it somewhat disappointing.  As usual the water features were great – beautiful koi and falls but of course these were companies with something to sell.  All of the other exhibits’ plantings seemed a little sparse and fairly tired.  Vignettes:

           - Charming students from the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences speaking of their school's curriculum, their garden at the show and their sister school in Japan (which some Chicago kids visit and vice versa).

            - A rather confused docent at one exhibit asking ME about plants in a neighboring exhibit:  "And what are those big yellow flowers, sir?"  "Those would be tree peonies, miss.  They're perfectly hardy here but don't cut that little three foot trunk down."  "And what're those big grey flowers behind them?"  "Umm, miss, those would be Chinese stone Foo dog statues."  "I think I need new glasses, sir."

           - "Good lord, Sheila!  Look at this tree.  Young man [?!!], can you read the label up there?"  "It looks like it says 'Wilt Siberian Maple', miss."  [The amazing critter had green and white vertical stripes on its bark.]

           - My friend , much disappointed that the vendor selling exotic dried fruits, veggies and nuts was not there this year.

            - They saw 'SUCKER" practically tatooed on my forehead when I passed the plant sale section.  I bought two crinum lilies (one for my sister in Kansas) mainly because I really wanted a bulb that was 15 inches long weighing as much as a small baby.  (Crinums have pink/purple blossoms and can be kept as house plants.)  Also snagged some tall purple alliums, fancy daylilies and some pink lily-of-the-valley.

           - I bought a subscription to Chicago Gardening Magazine (& got freebie copies of sister mags from Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan).

Guest blog: Jim Edminster, The Fairy Gardener

Driving to Kansas for Xmas I got to sample different public radio stations in four states, much to the detriment of my opinion of Chicago's NPR - a station that has taken Terry Gross off in the afternoon and replaced her with some goofus with permanent laryngitis and a format for analyzing local newspaper headlines with "C" team celebs.  I bring up this personal distaste only because it allowed me to glean some garden column items.  An ancient but incredibly intelligent interviewer in Iowa, Diane Rehm, talked to the author of "American Canopy:  Trees, Forest & the Making of a Nation" by Eric Rutkow.  His book relates the relationship of trees to American history from our forests' abundance which probably led to our famous wastefulness to the strange saga of pro-slavery, anti-native-American J. Sterling Morton who established Arbor Day to John Muir, Johnny Appleseed & Paul Bunyan.  A bright young interviewer, also in Iowa, talked to Evelyn Birkby, a newspaper columnist and radio show host who has been doing a farm, garden and food weekly column for 63 years without any missed deadlines.  Miz Birkby is hilarious, in her high 90's and has written ten books, the latest of which is "Always Put in a Recipe and Other Tips for Living from Iowa's Best-Known Homemaker."  In her honor I'm including a recipe I picked up from somewhere that people lined up at my workplace to get to:

                    Quick Trifle

                    Ingredients:  (already made) angelfood cake, milk, instant vanilla pudding, kool-whip, 3 kinds

                    of fruit (fresh, frozen or canned.  If canned, drain).

                    Rip up the cake in big chunks.  Put in a bowl. Put in a layer of fruit.  (Possible combos:  sliced

                    peaches, strawberries, blueberries or raspberries, cherries and pineapple chunks.)  Put in a big

                    glop or 4 of kool-whip. More fruit layers & more kool-whip to top of bowl.  Do not mix!  Make

                    instant pudding in separate bowl (with milk) and before it sets pour it over first bowl.  That's all.

Let us now rant:  some of you may have read or heard of a report that cats eat, OMG, birds.  That many birds are going extinct because of domesticated tabbies and that feral wild cats need to be, it was more than hinted, absolutely wiped out.  I like birds just fine.  I feed them all winter.  Guess what?  Birds eat birds - as my (indoor) cats and I watched out  the windows on my upper deck, what to our wondering eyes should appear (5 blocks from Wriggley Field in Chicago) but a large red-tailed hawk.  He wasn't eating grain at the feeder, either.  Further that report glossed over something else it said cats eat:  small mammals - moles, voles, mice, rats, rabbits and squirrels.  All these critters, I might point out, are anathema to gardeners.  Other predators used to eat these "vermin":  weasels, martins, lynxes, bobcats, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, wolves, badgers etc.  Hardly any of these predators live in cities - they've either been hunted out or their habitat destroyed by modern people.  This same habitat destruction has also heavily influenced wild birds.  Cats are not so responsible, people are.  Birds for thousands of years have dealt with other (better, by the way) hunters.  Leave the cats alone.  Support the trap, neuter, and release programs for feral cats if you want.  Keep your own feline darlings indoors.  Adopt a stray or two.  That'll be enough without a cat holocaust.

Some garden books to check out:  "Kiss My Aster: A Graphic Guide to Creating a Fantastic Yard" by Amanada Thompson.  A book after my own eccentric heart - if you want to put something odd or colorful or individual in your yard Amanda shows you how.

Wicked Plants:  The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart.  Lots of info on, apparently, most of the poison and/or obnoxious plants in the world (e.g. oleander, water hyacinth, ergot, coyotillo, et. al.).  Also plants that you thought were awful but are not quite so bad.

Any Size, Anywhere Edible Gardening: The No Yard, No Time, No Problem Way to Grow Your Own Food\ by Wm. Moss.  Yes, window boxes and tiny containers and probably window ledges and fire escapes too.

A friend was kind enough to slip me a news paper clipping illustrating a catch-22 situation to which I am very liable.  A certain Kathy Cummings, here in Chicago grew a natural garden - no lawn, and all wild flowers such as milkweed (which feeds Monarch butterflies - Illinois' state insect).  For this Ms Cummins got an award and plaque for 1st place citywide in naturalized gardens.  She even had her picture taken with then Mayor, Daley.  This past October the city ticketed Cummings for having weeds taller than 10 inches.  Officials insisted her wild flowers were weeds.  The only thing I could advise her to do, should she ask, is plant lots of obviously blooming plants or at least have ones with colorful foliage.  And she could do as I do - slip lots of big pots of cannas, geraniums, daisies, zinnias and coreopsis around. (And bribe the neighbors not to turn you in.)

~ The Fairy Gardener

    daunsenbere@prodigy.net