Pleasing Combos, Native or Not

A recent post by Gaia Gardener about nice combinations of native prairie plants was timely and I made a mental note to blog this combination, of butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) and catnip (Nepeta cataria) that sprung up voluntarily in my back garden.  This one is for you, Gaia!   I now have 8 or so Asclepias volunteers around the yard and I've blogged before about my accidental combination of Asclepias and a 'Fiesta' forsythia.   The catnip simply grows everywhere.  I fact, I weed out more of the catnip than I permit to  grow.   I wonder if the daylily in the foreground will bloom in time to add to the display?








Gaia's post also reminded me to occasionally look beyond the roses and view the rest of my garden, and while I was in a mood to appreciate plant combinations, there were several other combinations that were particularly pleasing to me at this time of year.   Here is an iPhone photograph of a couple of  recently planted lilies against the backdrop of tall, stiff 'Karl Foerster'.  I'm not that fond of "Karl", but even blurred in the Kansas wind, as it is here, it makes a good foil for the flowers.  The pink blooms intruding at the lower right are Griffith Buck rose 'Country Dancer'.








You should always assume that any pleasing plant combination in my garden is the result of a happy accident because, well, because that's exactly what it is.  I'm a plant collector by heart and I tend to plop down any new plant that tickles my fancy into the next open available spot, full speed ahead and ignoring the dangers of clashing colors and inappropriate size differentials and wildly differing growth patterns.  They can always be moved if they prove they can survive the Kansas climate, right?  Here, one of the more colorful lilies has opened up against the fading 'Basye's Purple Rose'.  The deep reddish-purple rose makes a nice contrast to the more orange-red lily.






It's probably now obvious that within the past couple of years, I realized that Asiatic, Oriental, and Orientpet lilies are useful to fill in the dreary period between the end of the first wave of roses and the cheery summer daylilies.  I'm seeing the payoff from planting a lot of lily bulbs into the beds the past two summers.  Here, a nicely colored lily blooms in front of a Yucca filamentosa 'Golden Sword', both in the foreground of a nice, light pink 'Bonica' shrub rose.

Soon, the lilies will fade and other accidental combinations will quietly bid for my attentions.  The next round of blooms will be the colorful daylilies against other neighboring plants, and then the late summer flowers such black-eyed susans and daisies will hold center stage, and finally grasses will become the focus of the garden.  And then another growing year, along with all its fleeting combinations, will be gone. 

Cat-a-phoria

Yesterday was the day I've been waiting for, hoping and praying for, so long now.  Pure golden sunshine, a minor warm breeze, and 75ºF.  I attacked the garden at 8 a.m., determined to get a start on the Spring chores, to feel sweat on my arms and aching muscles again.  Determined to soak in the sunshine, to end up with red-tipped ears and rosy cheeks, melanoma be damned.

CatMint 'Nepeta cataria'

I was not the only creature on God's earth waiting for this day.  The Eastern Bluebirds are back and the Killdeer showed signs of nesting on their usual spot.  Moose, our Maine Coon cat, demonstrated his blissful enjoyment of the day by rolling over and over in the first bunch of catmint (Nepeta cataria) that I uncovered.  You can see it there next to the top of Moose's head.  Another clump is beneath him.  As I related before, I originally was thrilled to discover this native Kansan and I carefully nurtured it wherever it self-seeded.  These days I spend more time grubbing it out then preserving it, else I'd have a garden of white catnip and be overrun by most of the cats from neighboring Manhattan.  You can see in this picture how Moose was affected, his tongue hanging in drugged stupor. This picture isn't very flattering, but the silly boy deserves a few moments of Nirvana.  He's had a rough winter recovering from being the victim of a tug-of-war by two neighboring dogs back in November.

All in all a successful day for both of us.  I cleaned out the back patio bed, cut off all the ornamental grasses in the garden, reattached the lawn mower deck and leveled it, greased the tractor, crab-grass-prevented the buffalograss lawn, fertilized the sprouting daffodils and crocus, potted some left-over tulips bulbs I discovered in the garage, and mused about what I was going to move this year.  This morning I am sunburned indeed, a little bit sore, scratched up from tying up my 'American Pillar', and completely satisfied.

About 7:00 p.m. last night, the wind started howling out of the north, and this morning it is 30ºF and the wind is still threatening to lift the house from its foundations and send it rolling across the prairie.   I don't suppose I'll get much outside work done today although it it is tempting to enlist the wind on my side and just go out, tear out the brown remnants of perennials, and toss them into the air to let the wind dispose of them instead of having to drag them to the compost pile.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with the thought that those brash yellow crocuses that I wrote of just a few days ago look much better when joined by their blue and white cousins,.  Don't they?



  

Coincidental Catnip

For some time, I had been admiring the drought fortitude of a couple of particular perennial clumps in my peony bed and that of another identical plant in a bed close to a 'Jeanne Lavoie' rose.  These happy-go-lucky plants had a textured medium green foliage that never burns or wilts, and they had began flowering recently, drawing in hundreds of honey bees while providing a nice light-pink (or is it white?) flower for my landscape. 

In a flash of unaccustomed brilliance, I realized this was obviously a plant that adapts well to my Flint Hills weather conditions, and so I resolved last week to divide and propagate it in a few more spots.  Since it was already present in a few spots, in fact, I thought that I had probably already come to that conclusion before, divided it, and then forgot about it.  Old age can be such a bummer.  Seeking to learn again the name of this little pet, however, I consulted my landscape maps in each place that it grew and I came up short.  To the best of my knowledge, I had never placed a plant matching this description anywhere near their locations.

The solution of the mystery, of course, was to acknowledge that I was likely coveting a native Kansas weed, er uh...wildflower, and to turn once again to KSWildflower.org for identification.  And, as usual, a quick search there informed me that I had been admiring the native Catnip (Nepeta cataria), which grows wild over Kansas and, in fact, over the entire United States.  And as I looked for it more carefully, I realized that this member of the mint family was growing throughout my garden; eight separate clumps, although some had not yet started to bloom. As I compared it to the cultivated forms offered locally in fact, it was obvious that my native form is identical to what I could buy for prices between $3.99 and $12.00 depending on the size of the pot.  Talk about your serendipity!  I should be digging this stuff up and selling it instead of looking to acquire more.  

Catnip, also known as Catswort or Catmint,  has a long history of use with humankind and our feline brethren.  It contains a steam-distillable terpenoid known as nepetalactone that has a slight numbing effect on people and drives cats absolutely bonkers.  In the case of felines, it is believed to mimic a natural cat pheromone to which about 2/3/rds of cats are genetically susceptible.  So, of course, people have used it in teas and poultices and smoked it, and cats have just; well, cats just view it as a self-aphrodisiac and general whoopee-maker and they just make fools out of themselves rolling around and basking in it whenever they can.  Luckily, our personal cat, living outdoors now because I want it to earn its keep in the form of mouse mutilations, seems to be immune to the effects and so my clumps remain standing tall.  Or perhaps my cat just hasn't discovered it yet, since bruising the leaves enhances the drug's effects on cats.  If you have a cat addict, you'll have to remove the plant from your garden because keeping it there is as cruel as drinking alcohol in front of a recovering alcoholic.

One last thought; nepetalactone is reputed to be ten times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than DEET in the lab but it is supposedly not effective when the plant is rubbed on the skin.  I'm going to try it out because I frankly don't trust those researchers, who are likely just capitalists trying to keep us from using a plentiful and inexpensive alternative to DEET.  Of course, their motive could be to prevent me from being molested by a herd of drug-craving cats, but there are some crosses we all have to bear in the name of science.