Hot, Tired, and Nearly Over It

The 8 days of 100ºF+ heat we just had were not kind to ProfessorRoush's garden, drying the yard, crisping young plants with adolescent roots, and just generally beginning the seasonal change from green to ochre and brown. Still, there are bright and beautiful spots in the garden, and after a summer of weekly mowing, I cannot say that I'm unhappy that the grass is going dormant. With fall comes more leisure time outside and far more pleasant temperatures to enjoy it.  

I know that I've spoken of Sweet Autumn Clematis any number of times, but today, when the garden is a baked quiche of worn-out plants, she grabbed my attention first visually and then, as I came closer, olfactorily, sensuously dragging me to her by the sweetest of scents.  Clematis terniflora is a changeling, a glorious prankster, and I have a love-hate relationship with her constant attempts to stray into the beds of other plants in the garden, and her ability to hide both pack-rats and weeds inside her ample growth.  This beautiful specimen, climbing charmingly up into the gazebo to caress the bell at its entrance, hides a volunteer rough dogwood beneath its skirts, a dogwood that I've tried multiple times to trim out, missing a piece each time, a series of floral charges repelled, but still the enemy reforms and strikes when my diligence wanes. 

Late August here is also the period when the crape myrtles are the stars of the garden, and although I've mentioned 'Tonto' previously, I don't believe I have ever fully let you appreciate him in bloom. 'Tonto', or more properly Lagerstroemia indica x fauriei 'Tonto', has been a resident in my garden since we moved to the prairie.   Initially he grew on a hillside, tall amongst purple-leaved honeysuckle, but when that hillside was excavated for my "barn," he was moved to anchor one end of a daylily bed.  The daylilies around him long ago quit blooming, and they look pretty bedraggled right now, but 'Tonto' is just reaching his prime; a normal 5 feet tall here in my Kansas garden, with healthy foliage and delicate flowers that defy the burning sun.

Tonto' is one of several mildew resistant hybrids developed by the National Arboretum.   Each of the 25 released varieties was named to honor American Indian tribes, and although I feared that the Arboretum had slipped and named this one after the sidekick of the Lone Ranger, the only "Tonto" that I had ever heard of in my naïve, isolated little life, a little research revealed that the Tontos were an early tribe originating in the Payson, Arizona region, and are now known as the Tonto Apache.  Now satisfied as to the origin of the name of the crape myrtle introduction, while now somewhat unsatisfied of the origin of the name of the TV and fictional character, I can only say that 'Tonto' is a persistent and strong warrior in my garden and I'm happy this Apache is healthy here.

White Tower

My Sweet Autumn Clematis bloomed in September this year instead of late August, keeping me waiting a bit for the annual wrapup of fragrancy in my garden, but bloom it finally did.   I worried about its health all through the spring, but it nevertheless returned to sweeten the September air.

Although most of the summer it merely provides iron-clad green foliage, and after flowering silvery, plume-like seed heads will decorate it, every gardener should grow Sweet Autumn Clematis merely for the few weeks of unmatched fragrance it provides.  But talk about your confused Latin nomenclature!  Sweet Autumn Clematis has been variably listed, and can still be purchased as Clematis terniflora, C. paniculata, C. maximowicziana or C. dioscoreifolia.  The species most commonly grown in the United States, and listed by the USDA as C. terniflora, is native to Japan, although one source says that C. paniculata is a separate but identical species native to New Zealand. 

Whatever you want to call it, I grow Sweet Autumn Clematis on an 8 foot tall wire cylinder in the center of my garden, pictured above as taken on a recent misty morning.  I question the oft-repeated information that C. terniflora is hardy to Zone 4, because my history with the plant has been to grow one, lose one, have a volunteer come up in another spot, and then had that volunteer cover the wire tower for three years running until this past winter, admittedly a bad one, when it was killed back to the ground.  I waited patiently this spring, hoping to see signs of life and knowing that clematis often take some time to put leaves on their seemingly dead vines, and just as I was about to give up and was ready to find and plant a new one, some nice green shoots popped up from the ground in the center of the tower. Luckily for me and my garden, Sweet Autumn Clematis grows 20 feet in a single season and blooms on new growth, and it recovered 2/3rds of the trellis again before blooming this year.  In the Flint Hills, it seems to be completely free from disease and the flowers, though small at one inch across, are so fragrant with a rich vanilla scent that this single vine perfumes my entire garden for weeks.  To stand downwind of this central white pillar is to overdose on the scent of heaven.

Although I understand that the Internet is not always a reliable source, it sometimes pays to do a little reading anyway, and in my readings about this vine, I discovered that clematis is in the buttercup family (a neat little factoid for cocktail parties that I never attend anyway) and was called "pepper vine" by Western pioneers and used as a pepper substitute since true black pepper was a rare and expensive commodity for them.  I don't know which clematis would have been carried on the wagons westward, but the entire genus supposedly contains essential oils and compounds that irritate the skin and mucous membranes and can cause bleeding into the gastrointestinal tract if ingested in large amounts.  Thankfully, since I don't like black pepper anyway and the long-suffering Mrs. ProfessorRoush has indulged me by limiting its use in her cooking, I won't be tempted, come the Revolution, to try this dangerous substitute.

It just occurred to me that I've blogged on two white fall-blooming plants in a row.  Maybe I should start a White Garden and create a prairie Sissinghurst out here in the middle of Kansas.  What a fantasy, me and Vita (Sackville-West), gardening together at last.