Redemption and Judgement

If I hadn't felt a responsibility to remove (mow) the spent peony foliage down last weekend, I would have entirely missed the annual bloom of the nearby and sadly neglected Hamamelis virginiana, my erstwhile 'Jelena' that I now believe was sold to me falsely identified.  In fact, the pale yellow blooms, plentiful as they are, might have still been missed if the foliage of the shrub had not already dropped. My love-hate relationship with this shrub has not improved over the past few years during my abandonment of its care, but with this latest attempted display of blooms when nothing else braves blooming, I have resolved to follow Luke 6:29, "offer the other cheek", and allow it a chance at redemption.

That last statement, written down and seen  and reread in words, seems blazingly presumptuous, an open declaration of my self-proclaimed status as the garden's judge, jury, and executioner; carelessly risking a lightning bolt or two cast in the direction of my blasphemous gardening soul.  Upon further contemplation, however, I do view the gardener as the God, or at least the stand-in Caretaker, of their garden, making annual and daily decisions about the lives and survival of all the creatures within the gardener's gaze.  Perhaps we are merely the Instruments of Divine Provenance, under illusion that we have any control in the garden, but the act of gardening is at least pretending that we are the ones deciding what to plant, where it goes into the ground, and how it is cared for.

I think that's quite enough digression into the philosophical abyss for one day, ProfessorRoush.  Returning to the subject du jour, suffice it to say that I have allowed this Hamamelis to be overrun by the wild Rosa multiflora that has been growing in the same space, and the Witch Hazel has suffered greatly in the absence of my attentions.  I first noticed the R. multiflora several years back, and have enjoyed its spring display of blossoms and the orange hips that follow it into autumn, but enough is enough; a choice must be made.  One can hardly discern the straggly limbs of the Witch Hazel from their entanglement with the long slender canes of the rose.  This Judgement Day seems overdue for these two plants. 

At its base, shown here, the multiflora rose is seen growing to the left and slightly behind the Hamamelis.  Low to the ground, I braved the thorns and branches and, one-by-one, chopped the rose canes off close to the ground, spraying the still-green stumps with brush-killer to prevent any regrowth.  Finally, the only chore left was to disentangle and remove the rose canes from their close embrace with the Witch Hazel, a task accomplished with only a minor release of profanity and loss of blood by the gardener.  The common name, Witch Hazel, was appropriate for the "toil and trouble" it caused me this day.

It stands now, alone, my (likely) Hamamelis virginiana, looking perhaps despondent at the loss of its volunteer companion, but with a better chance for growth and survival.   I will prune it this spring to encourage it to fill in and prosper without its former competitive neighbor.  The blooms themselves are not as large and brightly-colored as I expected when I planted it, but as my garden shuts down and awaits winter, I'll accept whatever gifts it may meagerly send in my direction.   

Witch Hazel Whitewash

As ProfessorRoush looked out his bedroom window two weeks ago, he spied yellow; yellow where it shouldn't be yellow.  In the garden, something was blooming in late fall!  Something that shouldn't have been blooming!  On closer examination, it turned out to be his witch hazel, purchased as Hamamelis × intermedia 'Jelena' and planted in 2008, profusely and vibrantly blooming its overhyped head off.

But, it wasn't, actually.  It wasn't his 'Jelena', because ProfessorRoush has to face the fact that he doesn't have a 'Jelena'.  'Jelena' should bloom in the spring.  'Jelena' should bloom in various shades of red-orange to yellow.  'Jelena' should have better fall foliage color than my obviously mislabeled 'not-Jelena'.  

I'm finally sure that I was sold a proverbial pig-in-a-poke, a witch hazel whitewash, as it were.  I've long suspected it;  the sporadic bloom, seeming to occur in fall or early winter, although sometimes it held off till February.  Plain fall foliage that turns tan and drops fairly quickly, and a slow growth rate.  The discordant fact that no one else seems to be able to grow witch hazel in this area.  Several of my garden visitors have inquired of it, and then proclaimed my green thumb at getting it to grow in these alkaline, dry soils.  Mine never thrived, but it lived, suffered through long summers of drought, and grew a little each year.  And those chrome yellow blooms, which didn't show nearly the length and visibility they were supposed to, in disappointing contrast to rave reports from plantsmen. 

It's now clear that I was sold, at a premium price, the common witchhazel, Hamamelis virginiana, or some variant thereof.  I'm going to have to find a way to live with that, to live with the knowledge of yet another mislabeled imposter in my garden.  I've accumulated a few over the years, wrong-labeled roses I can't identify, cultivars of perennials that were sold as something else.  How often, how curious, that the mislabeled plant lives and thrives while the cherished named cultivars perish.  I'm  suspicious that horticultural stores have a way of growing what is easy and then just responding to consumer demand.  "You want a 'Jelena' Witch Hazel?  Sure, we've got those, just give me a minute to type up a plant tag for these unlabeled shrubs over here."  One wonders, one worries, right up until the plant finally matures and shows its true, completely yellow colors, in the wrong season, no less.  And then one has to live with the imposter, right there, in the midst of a dry brown garden, blooming yellow with carefree abandon.  I suppose I can let this one pass.   It does, after all, contrast nicely with the blue Kansas sky.