Brief Bartzella Bonanza

Despite my momentary elation at the triple alliteration of the title, Professorroush finds it hard to believe that he has never raved in lyric fashion about the peony wunderkind that is 'Bartzella'.  A search of my blog, however, says I've never mentioned the gentleman at all.  See that search button at the right of this column?  If you haven't tried it, you can search this entire blog for whatever you desire to see or know about my garden or the plants in it.  I use it to find old posts to link from current posts and to make sure I'm not writing my 40th entry on 'Madame Hardy' lest it chase my readers away.  Anyway, shameless plugs aside and back to today's subject, I've had a 'Bartzella' in my garden since 2018, purchased on a whim at a Maier's in Indiana on a trip, and this year "Mr. Bart" has outdone himself trying to one-up the sun here in Kansas.

What can I tell you about this nearly disease-free and trouble-free peony?  'Bartzella' is an Itoh-type peony, and because of that, I wasn't entirely honest when I said I purchased him on a "whim".   Since I discovered them, I'm always on the lookout for a new reasonably-priced Itoh.   These hybrids are more pricey than "regular" herbaceous peonies, often over $50 and sometimes over $100 apiece at local garden centers.  I bought "Bartzella", purchased pre-recent-inflation at a time when most Itoh's were $60, for the bargain price of $26 as I recall, a deal that I couldn't turn down.

'Bartzella' is an Itoh-type peony, yes, a so-called "intersectional" cross between herbaceous and tree peonies, but not one introduced by Dr. Toichi Itoh who hybridized the first such intersectionals.  'Bartzella' is a more recent introduction, in 1972, created by noted peony-breeder Roger Anderson.   Anderson was a self-taught breeder who began hybridizing peonies in the 1970's and introduced 50 varieties of intersectional peonies from Callies Beaux Jardins,the nursery owned by Roger and his wife Sandra.  Roger is said to have created the most named and color varieties of any peony hybridizer in the world and is considered the world’s leading intersectional peony expert.   Roger was a native of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where there is a display garden at the Hoard Museum that contains 58 peonies developed by Roger and the "largest public collection of intersectional peonies in North America."  

But, enough history, look at the gorgeous display of this peony at its best!   The bloom featured in the top right photo is bigger than my hand and its otherworldly yellow glows above the medium green matte foliage.   Gorgeous, isn't it?  It is said by some to sometimes, in some places, display these fabulous blooms for up to 5 weeks!

I'd prefer to leave you in that floral ecstasy that I just induced without telling the rest of the story, but alas, Kansas weather has shown its ugly side and smashed my dreams and this peony beneath its unrelenting onslaught.   I took the fully-blooming picture above at 6:07 p.m. on Tuesday, May 14.  the following Wednesday night we had a rain- and hail-storm come through, accompanied by high winds and tornado warnings, and at 6:50 a.m. on May 16th I took the photo at right, documenting its "new" appearance, a ragged and nearly-naked bush, brilliant petals on the ground at its feet.  Blooms for 5 weeks?  Not in Kansas!  Such are the boundless highs and the dismal fate characteristic of a Kansas gardener and his garden.

So, It's Not Just Me?

 I've spoken before about the surprise to me that peonies seem to volunteer everywhere in my garden and of the volunteer peonies that have thrived here.  Until this week, I've felt like either a deep, dark gardening secret has been hidden from me despite all the reading I've done, or alternatively that I'm just blessed with a peony-fertile climate.  Just recently, however I've seen that the volunteer peony issue can plague others in the area.  I was taking my first walk of the new spring in the K-State Gardens at lunchtime the other day and came across this obvious aberrant peony growing out of the first tree peony to bloom there.

It is likely, I suppose, that since a tree peony is grafted to the roots of another herbaceous peony, the above break of a graft understock is not so really so surprising.  I'm used to rootstocks growing up and being a nuisance in grafter roses.  During the same lunchtime constitutional, however, I also observed another herbaceous peony rising from this Itoh hybrid, which I highly doubt is grafted.  Itoh hybrids are usually propagated by division according to my reading.  I predict that if I watch while the dozens of peonies at K-State bloom, I'll see other wild children, exposed by their flowers after hiding inside more similar foliage clumps.

Regardless of the wanton explosion of unplanned peonies at the K-State garden, however, my own volunteer peonies continue to crop up.  Just this week, I noticed this small seeding trying to grow next to the Knautia macedonia and Monarda of this bed.  

And I've lost count of all the volunteers that grow for me.  In this vertical line of three distinct peonies, I think that only the center one was planted and the other two are volunteers.   And then there is the volunteer peony with the burgundy foliage growing nearby (and pictured below);  it bloomed last year with a deep red, single flower.   It is worth keeping for the foliage alone.

Should I now run across the city, screaming warning about the unplanned peony population explosion?   Should I be interrogating this advance guard about their alien invasion plans or likely non-terrestrial planet of origin?   Both seem like a slight overreaction given the innocuous and welcome presence of a plant that doesn't smother nearby neighbors and will survive the worst things Kansas throws at it.  No, I think I'll just keep nurturing these babies along.  At worst, they don't have good disease resistance and don't make it.  At best, they'll survive for generations and be my legacy, my lasting joke on those who garden here long after I've become part of the landscape rather than a gardener of it, as they try, and fail, to identify what peony varieties I planted here.

Oh My P. P.!

Okay, the first rule of 2021 is that we don't talk about "the year prior."  We leave behind here all reference to the misery and chaos of the past few months and any bad feelings or thoughts associated with it.  And, for the record, the title of this blog entry does not mean what you were thinking it did.  You obviously stayed up late on New Year's Eve and have carried over your hangover and mental remnants of debauchery from the closed doors of our locked-down society onto my innocent intentions.  In complete gardening naivete, I meant "Oh my poor peonies."  I can't believe you thought otherwise.  

We won't talk about last year's miseries, but we need to be prepared that our gardening tribulations didn't magically end with an arbitrary agreed-upon calendar change. The photo at the top was taken on Christmas Day last when I realized to my shock that my fernleaf peonies were already birthing into the world, months ahead of prudence and safety. These poor darlings are waking too early, yet another victim of the seasonal time change.  Or  global warming.  Or it could be normal and I've never noticed it.  But it was only Christmas Day and I had peonies breaking ground!  Ridiculous. They should be still sleep, like this reading, dozing old man in my garden, carefree for the cold world around.  My peonies should still be snug under a frozen crust, protected and nurtured by the brown earth around.  Oh, my poor precocious foolish darlings.

And those little red nubbins weren't alone.  Nearby and also coming out were these more-blanched spears of what I think are a Matrona sedum, and doubtless I could find more elsewhere if I looked.  But ProfessorRoush doesn't go looking for trouble when he can avoid it.  If I don't know they're out and about, I can rest easier under the illusion that my garden is also at rest, hibernating against the frigid days still surely to come.  If I stay out of the garden in body and mind, I'm almost positive my garden cannot change without me.  If I don't search out problems, they won't visit me, just as COVID stayed an ocean away last spring while we ignored it, correct?

Well, it was the thought that counts.  I can't change the seasons, nor the cycle of death and rebirth, anymore than I can change the clouds rolling across the Kansas prairie.  I can only await, anticipate, and accommodate to whatever comes in 2021.  It was only a number change, people, the world still moves along its same prior path.  We must perish or adapt, just like these peonies in the coming cold.

Back to Winter

And.....winter again.  Just as ProfessorRoush was hoping to put the seasonal losses behind us, spring whimpered out of the way and let winter's lioness roar back in full bloodlust.  We had two very unfortunate anti-garden nights this week; a hard freeze on Monday following a strong north wind that shook the house and then a dusting of snow and another brief dip to freezing temperatures Thursday night last.  Only this fake steel rose near my front walk seems to be impervious to the damage.








If you can't bear to look, then turn away quickly, but let me show you what a hard freeze does to asparagus.  I looked at these growing, stiffening spears on Sunday and thought about picking them, but decided another couple of days would get me a more filling harvest.  Now here they are, limp and broken, their tumescence and potential gelded by an icy maiden.  I'm sure this picture is an apt metaphor for some other issue that vexes old gardeners, but I can't recall anything like it at present, just another incidence of déja vu that will come to me later.







What will become of the snow-kissed peonies, like the ones pictured at right?  Or the daylilies and young roses, prematurely coaxed by the warming sun into rapid growth and now slapped down for their exuberance?   I have hope for the peonies yet, frost-resistant as these sensuous beauties can be, but some were beginning to bud, and I may yet harvest only a crop of small black buttons from the early peonies.






 In the two days since the snow, I've re-examined the daylilies and most may recover; leaves wrinkled and a little brown on the edges, but they may recover.  ProfessorRoush, however, is retreating for a time back into his COVID-quarantined lair, suckling his thumb in the darkness.  I'm tempted, knowing that the lowest forecast temperature for the next 10 days is 47ºF, to uncover the greening strawberries, but I just don't trust Kansas.  If I lose the strawberries, I lose all hope, and so I will change the oil in the lawnmower and sweep out the barn, and nurse the surviving onion starts, but I will not offer the strawberries in sacrifice to please the fickle gardening gods.  Hear me, Priapos, god of vegetable gardening?  You will not get my strawberries!

(Not) Killing Peonies!

A few weeks ago, on a partially random internet purchasing foray, I came across How Not to Kill a Peony; An Owners Manual, a 2018-dated paperback by a fellow Hoosier, Stephanie Weber.  Consistent with the wonders of modern shopping, a simple "add-to-cart" click made sure that I wouldn't forget it, and I included the book in a recent order of other items.

I've read several garden-oriented books this winter, but none better than this one.  Ms. Weber wrote a simple and entertaining narrative of her experiences growing and selling peony divisions in Indiana, the rural Indiana of my boyhood home, and she is true to the frank and plain spoken nature I expect of Hoosiers.  Early in the text, she detailed the important factors she used to choose among varieties of peonies for growth and sale, and then related how she and her husband planted 1200 peonies of roughly 40 different varieties in 2006 on a half-acre of good Indiana farmland  to create a "drop-in" peony nursery.   TWELVE HUNDRED PEONIES!  Now that, my friends, is taking a leap of faith reminiscent of Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade!  Well, except for the Indiana placement of the nursery, because I'm well familiar with the productivity of northern Indiana soils.  Borne in them, you might say.

'Red Charm'

How No to Kill a Peony is a delicious, straightforward, and sometimes snarky 98 page read that quickly brought me to understand the many useful things I never learned about peonies from Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall's massive Peonies sleeper.  Ms. Weber quickly explains why heirloom P. lactiflora peonies flop, describes the contributions to peony genetics of each of the 4 major species that led to modern peonies (including the contribution of red pigments from P. officinalis), and she sprinkles valuable information on planting, care, harvesting, and storing peonies through the book.  Every important fact about growing peonies is covered, and covered in straightforward fact.  And the most important advice?  Plant peony varieties that don't flop!  Who knew?

'Scarlett O'Hara' in 2019

 As a testament to its engaging prose, I read How Not to Kill a Peony in a single setting, learning more in an hour about how to choose between peonies than I did in my previous lifespan. As a testament to its entertaining nature, one need only skim section titles such as "How Floppers Infiltrated the Landscape,"Days in May That Cause Dismay," and "The Importance of Eye Candy."  There are hundreds of beautiful peony photographs, and lurid descriptions of popular varieties.  Popular 'Red Charm' receives a proper promotion, and 'Prairie Moon' gets her due attention. Coral-colored 'Flame' is described as "like the quiet, nerdy girl in your math class who you one day realize is gorgeous."  Red single 'Scarlett O'Hara', one of my personal favorites, is "a sleeper, like a granny car with a turbo engine."  Bicolored 'Mister Ed' "has been on acid since the 1950's."

Need I go on?  For early and experienced peonyists (a self-coined term that sounds vaguely lewd and improper but it is the best I can think of), I've never seen a better presented "How-To" that will help you grow peonies that are the envy of the neighborhood.  Now, darn it, where did I leave that Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery catalog?  I just don't have enough peonies in my front yard....

Elegant and Eccentric

'Buckeye Belle'

The peony show is nearly over for this year, but due to sold out crowds, I have booked it for another showing next May.  In the meantime, I'd like to present Her Royal Highness, deep burgundy 'Buckeye Belle', and her two playful courtesans 'Bric a Brac' and 'Pink Spritzer', for your attention and pleasure.



 





'Buckeye Belle' is still rapidly expanding for me, and I don't feel she is anywhere near her full potential, but I'm completely obsessed by the rich color of those blooms.  An old peony, introduced in 1956,  I previously noted that she found new life as the 2011 Peony of the Year and 2010 Gold Medal Winner.  She put forth a total of 5 of those big sumptuous blossoms for me this year, a modest number, but the total display she put on is out of proportion to her floriferousness.

Sultry, seductive, bold, majestic, and opulent are all words that I would use to describe her.   Everyone who sees her wants to know who she is and where to buy a piece of her.  Honestly, look at that color.  The closeup to the left is true to the real color of the petals.  Doesn't it evoke a deep, full chord inside you, just begging you to sing of royalty and richness?

'Bric a Brac'

Her two weird distant Paeonia lactiflora cousins, 'Bric a Brac' at the left, and 'Pink Spritzer', below right, evoke a totally different set of adjectives.  Strange, oddball, kooky, peculiar, and even "eerie" come to mind.  Both peonies are both daughters of famous hybridizer Roy Klehm, 'Pink Spritzer' in 1999, and I couldn't find the birthdate of 'Bric a Brac'.  Whoever chose names for Klehm's peonies was inventive; 'Brac a Brac' referring to collections of curios, and 'Pink Spritzer' referring to the German spritzen, to "spatter, sprinkle, or spray."  I bought both peonies after seeing slides of them at a Roy Klehm lecture, because of my love of striped plants.  Neither are very vigorous peonies, in fact I worry about their health each spring, but they are certainly conversation starters.

'Pink Spritzer'

'Bric a Brac', particularly, requires a certain aesthetic set to appreciate.  A poster named "tehegemon" on GardenWeb.com wrote, "I definitely think Bric A Brac has its place, although as I previously mentioned, not in my garden."  The website "seedratings.com" states "There has never been such a frazzled, fringed, ferociously twisted Peony as Bric a Brac!"  I admire the alliteration, but I don't agree with the sentiment.  That creamy background, maroon-striped, green-tinged petals and contrasting bright yellow stigmas and styles just does something for me.  I don't know what, but it does something.

Writing about striped peonies is a dangerous activity for my garden and pocketbook.  In my search for information about these peonies, I found Klehm has another striped one, 'Circus Circus', for sale.  That one just made an order list for fall.  I'm weak, yes, but I'm at least I'm predictable.

Bursting with Promise

No, this is not a photograph of a psychedelic alien landscape from a light-lifetime away, nor is it a scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I promise that neither Gene Wilder nor Johnny Depp is going to pop up from those hairy green pillows and sing to you.  And for those who were young adults in the 70's, you should not worry that this is a flashback from an old LSD trip.  This candy-colored scene is brought to us by way of a 1956 single-flowered peony introduction by Falk-Glassock, the aptly named 'Scarlet O'Hara'.

I'm not intentionally trying to imitate Bob Guccione, but these are, in fact, the....ahem....sex parts...from one of my earliest and most favorite peonies.  And what a brazen display Ms. O'Hara is giving us!  She has erected bright red walls to enclose and protect the participants in today's drama.  Inside the scarlet petals, tall golden stamens loaded with pollen are crowded around the shockingly-pink stigmas atop each pistil, a beacon to beckon the bachelors forward.  The swollen pistils beneath the stigmas are already soiled, basking in the afterglow, their hairy buxom surfaces dusted with the golden packages of chromosomes.  I'm not even going to mention the presence of the white foam at the base of the pistils.   But can't you feel the excitement in this photo, the promise of new seed forming and new life beginning?

'Scarlet O'Hara' is a peony that should be in everyone's garden, She stands right now about 3 feet tall, and wide, a crimson beacon shining across my garden.  There is no other scarlet red flower blooming right now for me, and certainly nothing to match the size and vivacity of these 6 inch diameter blossoms.  The photo of the whole plant at the right displays the usual poor reproduction of red tones by a digital camera and it doesn't adequately communicate the true brilliance of color of this peony, but it does give you an idea of the impact of these flowers in a landscape otherwise filled only with green Spring foliage, the blues and golds of irises and the white clusters of a few remaining viburnum blossoms.

Perhaps a  recent wide-angle view of my "peony bed" will emphasize the importance of 'Scarlet O'Hara in the garden.  There she is, at the top of the photo, glowing ahead of the hundreds of bulging buds of other peonies, all aching to follow her lead and explode into 2015.  'Scarlett' O'Hara' exposes promise for us on a microscopic level; the promise that reproduction will always go on, au naturel and without shame for appearance or wantonness.  The other peonies of this bed show their own macroscopic promise of a massive display a year in the making, a spectacular future fireworks created from sunshine and rain and chlorophyll.  Over it all, a concrete cherub urges the peonies to turn their bacchanalia into a more quiet party, to turn a pretentious display into a coordinated and respectful celebration.  Behind the camera, ProfessorRoush, garden voyeur extraordinaire, breathlessly awaits the chorus to come.      

Promise within and promise without.  Of countless such moments, a garden made.

Volunteer Opening

Another mystery of my garden was revealed last night when a volunteer peony seedling (sapling? stalk? plant?) opened for the first time.  Until I first noticed this little gem in 2012, growing where it shouldn't be, I was unaware that some peonies would self-seed if they weren't deadheaded.  There were 6 or 8 ancient peonies near the orchard where I was raised, and I never noticed any distant seedlings, but perhaps that was because we mowed around each peony and never gave them a chance.  In contrast, my cypress-mulched and partially shaded front garden must be perfect for peony babies, because I've now got three small new peonies where none was planted.

My natural approach of live-and-let-live for self-seeding plants paid off perfectly this time.   This little girl is presumably a self-cross of 'Kansas' or 'Inspector Lavergne', or a cross of the two, since there are several of each in the bed.  Regardless of the parentage, I'm pleased at the almost bright-red coloration, the prominent yellow stamens, and the semi-double form, and I think I'll keep this one around under an appropriate study name such as 'Roush's Red'.  The blue foliage at the top of the picture, if you're wondering, is a blue-green sedum, 'Strawberries and Cream'. 

If you recognize the foliage of a volunteer plant, and it isn't a weed, don't pull it up.  You just never know the gifts you've been given until you, in turn, give them a chance to shine.

 

Yellow and more Yellow

In contrasting fashion to Picasso and his blue phase of painting during years of depression, ProfessorRoush seems to be going through a yellow phase of uplifted spring spirits.  Everything in my garden (well, except for some blue iris and a very splashy pink 'Therese Bugnet') seems to be yellow at the present, all of them a bright cheery yellow sufficient to join me in a celebration of the coming warm weather.  My yellow celebration really began on Friday last, as my first ever Tree Peony (Paeonia suffruticosa) opened up a single bloom just after our rainstorm. The satisfaction of seeing this bloom washed over me like a rainstorm across the prairie.


Tree Peony experts in the audience are laughing, but they don't fathom the difficulties I've transcended to get here.  This is my fourth attempt at a Tree Peony and the fourth year here for this one.  I've lost them to cold and drought and had them toppled by marauding critters and wind.  Growth has been slow, and I thought I'd lost her once, but she is settling in and looks like a survivor.  She is sited in the most protected spot I could give her; walls on the north and west to collect and reflect the sun's warmth, amd open only to the south and east where gales are least likely to topple her.  There is shade in the afternoon and she is protected by chicken wire on all sides, a virtual fortress erected to be impenetrable to man or beast.  Thus, you can understand my elation at getting this far, even though she dropped petals quickly and is now but a memory.

Just finishing up is my prize Magnolia 'Yellow Bird', an exciting bush that I've bragged about before.  It continues to grow and do well, now almost twice the size of when it was planted 4 years ago.  The bloom this year was a delight to see and more prolific than ever.  I can attest now that 'Yellow Bird' must be at least Zone 4 hardy, since that seems to be the degree of winter it has just survived and thrived through.  Rain sometimes dims the brightness of these blooms, but even the soft yellows of a dampened flower are pleasing to the eye.  

The most dependable and brightest yellow on this Kansas prairie comes, as usual, from the chrome-yellow rose, 'Harison's Yellow', just beginning to bloom profusely.  Almost one in every four buds on this rose is now blooming, so it will get better yet, but it's pretty good right now, don't you think?

How long will my yellow phase go on?  Not much longer, I think.  The irises are taking center stage and a whole bunch of pink roses are about to steal the show here.

Winter Nadir

Friends, ProfessorRoush has reached, at last, his Winter Nadir.  I've had it.  I've spent far more time than I can spare discussing the subtle beauty of peeling bark on bare trees.  I've sung rhapsodies to the grandeur of evergreens blanketed by virgin snow.  I've waxed eloquent over the sturdiness and form of ornamental grasses and I've proclaimed the glories of statues and trellises that form the bones of my garden.  There is only so much comfort a gardener can manufacture for himself in the depths of winter and I'm leaking hope like a garden hose run over with a lawnmower.

"Bones of my garden";  that's a pretty good description of what lies just outside the windows of my frost-bound prison.  I see only the bland, tan landscape of the Kansas Flint Hills surrounding the garden's skeleton, flesh ripped away from the carcass by a carnivorous winter and blown away to distant lands.  Left behind are twiggy blobs of roses and dried clematis, sinew clinging desperately to the backbones against the northern wind.  Tattered low remnants of iris, withered daylily, and brittle sedum litter the soil.   Here and there stand a few lonely statues, joints around which the garden revolves in summer, now reduced to frozen arthritic slumber.  Between the bones of the garden lie the paths, circulation routes around the garden's body, as dry and brown now as the plants they used to serve.

I've lost my way amidst the fog and sleet.  I need desperately to feel the pulse and flow of life beginning again from the frozen ground.  Photos of past summers, like these, provide no condolences, only grief and despair for lost gardens and lost time.  I have no remaining faith that my garden will ever again appear green and verdant, lush and bountiful.  It seems impossible that the garden can fill again with so many flowers and so much life.  My soul is with the garden, frozen in place, withdrawn to a timeless and lifeless plane, shrunk down to a dry kernel of memory.

I must, I know, endure.  I search the garden endlessly for signs of life, the first stirring of snow crocus, the first tip of a green daffodil.  I amble stooped over the garden beds, at times on hands and knees, pulling back the mulch in the search for the promise of tomorrow.  I watch the peony bed most closely, diligent scrutiny in the sure knowledge that life will first beat there again, if anywhere life remains.  Wispy and ethereal crocus and tulips and daffodils may indeed be the vanguards of warmer winds, scouts following the retreat of winter.  Yet still, it is the impossible extravagance of the peonies, buxom and luscious in youth and vitality, that herald the Spring for me, reclothing the old bones of the garden and gardener once more in bountiful flesh and leafy skin.  Hold tight yet the remnants of courage, for peonies shall surely return to save us.

Memory Keepers

I don't know where the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" originated, but sometimes even a picture is inadequate to plumb the depths of thought and emotion induced by the simplest of stimuli.  Take, for example, the still life in brown pictured at the right.  An unknowing, unaware observer might recognize the presence of a little loose soil, a number of brown vegetable-origin structures, and the background of brown prairie grass, trimmed short in the late days of Fall.  A very astute observer might recognize the brown tubular structures as roots, and perhaps the most knowledgeable and experienced gardeners, looking closely, might discern some bud eyes peeking from the crowns of those roots.

I can confirm, for the curious, that these are peony roots, ready to be transplanted.   These roots are divisions that I purloined at Thanksgiving from my boyhood home, healthy survivors who were growing in good Indiana soil long before I drew first breath.   There are 5 different peony starts here from a row of peonies that always separated orchard from vegetable garden, large clumps that sagged with each rainfall and became obstacles to be mowed around during the verdant summer and then to be mowed off short at the start of Fall.  You can see, in the closeup at the left, plump buds biding frigid Winter, waiting to clone and grow again in my Kansas garden.

They are, at once, both unique peonies and common peonies, unremarkable to the average gardener, but precious everafter to me.  They are common because I suspect that the varieties are just the same tired pink and white and red peonies that our grandparents grew and that probably sell for $3.95 per 3 clumps now each Spring at Walmart.   Odds are that one is 'Festiva Maxima', and another 'Sarah Bernhardt',  and it is likely that I already grow all or most of these, purchased at local nurseries.  They are exceptional, however, these 5 peonies, because they are now weighted down with childhood memories and ghostly fields stretching as far as a boy could roam.  They bear this heavy load because this year, after 50 years of living in one place, my parents are selling the home farm.  I have only the opportunity to start them here, these keepers of memory, so they can whisper to me of family picnics in the Spring, and sweet corn grown tall in Summer, and of the peaches and apples that fell from the nearby orchard trees, destined only to rot and fertilize these roots.

 In my garden, these will be the heirlooms of my boyhood, these few ancient peonies planted by those who lived before me, to live on long after me.  They will rub shoulders with sedums and columbines from my grandmother and with trees planted by my children.  They will carry for me my memories of another place and another time, simple and carefree, when the world was new and every tree a mountain to be climbed.  I planted them here now, sprinkled them with the remnants of the good soil that nurtured them, and watered them in so they'll grow and outlast me here, transplanted with me to foreign soil.  Memory keepers of a far away place and time.

And you thought it was just a picture of a few brown roots and dirt.

The Other Front

Well, at least the other side of my front bed.  In contrast to the yellow border that comprises the right side of my front landscaping, the left side (as you view it) is mostly a succession of reds.  The view recently, in late June is certainly red and green as shown below, the red provided by the second blooms of roses 'Champlain' and 'Hunter' in the background, and Monarda 'Jacob Cline' in the mid-picture, self-seeding madly.  If the picture was large enough, you could see a burgundy Knautia macedonica sticking out behind 'Hunter'.  The picture is clear enough, however, to probably discern the light blue native Salvia in front, Salvia azurea, that I also allow to self-seed anywhere it wants.

When the season first began however, in March, it was only the Red Peach tree showing color, with a few minor daffodils sticking their yellow heads out as shown below.  It is always stunning to me how sparse is the March look of this bed, and how bountiful it is in June.

It then moves on to "first bloom" in April, the red of the roses and the burgundy of 'Wine and Roses' Weigela mixing in a monochromatic theme. Okay, maybe there are a few blue and purple irises and yellow rose Morden Sunrise mixing up the foreground.

Then later, in May, the line of peonies in front pops out even while the roses are still blooming (below).  The peonies add pink and light pink and red (the latter from peony 'Kansas') into the mixture.  And oh, how those deep purple irises show up!  'Wine and Roses' has faded to a burgundy blog in the center.

As the peonies fade, by early June, this garden again (below) goes back to just roses as shown in the first picture above.  The view from the opposite side, in late June, looking out from the front door, is still mostly red and green, but here you can see the stepping stones that are hidden by the lush front display.  There is no hint yet of the white 'David' phlox in the foreground, blooming now only a week after this last picture was taken.  I'll show the phlox and the fall look at the sedums in this bed in a later picture.  All have their season to shine, each and every plant.  Another season, passing away into next year's promises.

Mowing Bedlam Revisited

In a post written last March titled Mowing Bedlam, I described how I've completely ceased any extensive maintenance on my iris and daylily beds.  Instead of individually cutting down each iris in nice fans and individually removing the remnants of last year's daylily foliage, I have been simply mowing them off and I thought the results were quite acceptable.  

Well, year two of the experiment on the daylily beds has been complete, and the results, seen at right and pictured from the opposite end of the bed as in my previous post, are just, if I say it myself, gorgeous.  And I've done nothing at all to the bed this year (no fertilizing, watering, or extra mulching) except spend about 10 minutes weeding it.  Not 10 minutes a day or 10 minutes a week, 10 MINUTES THE ENTIRE SUMMER.  It seems that chopping up last years foliage and leaving it behind as mulch is quite sufficient to keep the decent bloom going.

You'll recall that I also threatened to start mowing off the peonies and let the foliage also lie where it was chewed up by the mower.  Well, you can compare the picture of the partial bed at the left, taken in May, with the picture below of the same area, taken exactly 2 months earlier.  I don't think the peonies look any worse for wear and this was not even a good peony year; a cool wet spring resulted in the loss of  quite a few peony buds to botrytis and it didn't seem to matter if the peonies were massed in this minimally-cared for bed or separated in other beds.   

In fact, the picture above is a decent example of one of the reasons to photograph your beds.  I thought the peony season was wasted this year, but looking back at the pictures, it looks pretty good to me.  The same thing happened with my roses; I believed I had a dismal early rose season because of the wet weather, but the pictures I took of the garden in mass look like it was blooming away with no thought for tomorrow.  Using the camera really does help us see as if we were looking through the eyes of another gardener, one separated from the frost and wind and heat.

 Anyway, all written sources to the contrary, I'm continuing this experiment.  No fertilizer, no extra water, and no extra mulch but the foliage of these perennials back on the ground again this fall.  If these beds stay looking this good, my low-maintenance dreams are realized.

Floral Turkeys

Peony 'Shirley Temple'

As filler, my local newspaper this week picked up an article on peonies written by Adrian Higgins from The Washington Post, originally titled "Best Peonies for the D.C. area".  It was, of course, retitled here in Manhattan, Kansas since the editors knew I wouldn't care which peony is best for D.C.  Higgins started out his discussion of peony gardening and new peony varieties with the most delightful statements:  "Before any of us were born, plant breeders looked at the Chinese peony and decided that if a variety had many petals, its offspring would look much better with far more....Gardener's describe these gluttonous flowers as fully double.  They're the floral equivalent of turkeys so meaty they can't fly."



I had to chuckle, because truer words were never written.  "Floral equivalent of turkeys so meaty they can't fly," Ha, Ha, Hah.  Mr. Higgins was referring at that point to the peony varieties that we all know, love, and think of as "real" peonies; the ubiquitous 'Sarah Bernhardt', 'Festiva Maxima', 'Felix Crousse', and 'Karl Rosenfield' that seem to be the major offerings at the big box stores and in those little bags of eyed-roots stored in wood shavings near the checkout counters.  It was a rant about how the large very, very double flowers of these peonies take forever to open and stand on such weak stems that they topple over with the first decent rain.  Higgins went on to say that "Gardeners who try to fix a rain-splayed peony bush may as well try to repackage a newly unwrapped dress shirt," provoking yet another giggle from me.  Mr. Higgins then introduces the unknowing reader to Tree peonies and Intersectional peonies and I have no arguments with his comments about the values of either of those advancements in breeding.

But, the main peony season is beginning here in Manhattan, and my first floral turkey, Paeonia lactiflora 'Shirley Temple,' has opened as you can see from the delicious picture above and she was followed quickly by 'Festiva Maxima'.   'Shirley Temple', introduced in 1948, often has a little more blush to the petals, but she's almost entirely creamy in this cold Spring. 'Festiva Maxima', of course, is an ancient and classic peony known to every gardener who aspires to grow peonies.  In deference to Mr. Higgins, I enjoy the easy maintenance and large blossoms and fragrance of  both these varieties and all their cousins in my garden.  I control their floppiness with peony supports placed early during growth and by planting them close enough together that the inner peonies don't have room to flop.  Yes, I have some newer single peonies and one Intersectional peony that seems to be doing well, and a Tree peony that just survived the Kansas winds for the first winter.  But I'll never stop loving or growing the turkeys.

I wasn't aware of Adrian Higgins before, since the "Post" isn't a common newspaper for viewing in Kansas, but after looking over a few of his articles, I'm going to be reading more.  Several of the articles I've already browsed contain just the right amount of cynical sarcasm to match the late Henry Mitchell, one of my favorite garden writers.  As an example, an article on Sarah Palin's fence was just perfect, and another gem, comparing the modern rose to "a matinee idol with too many demands and chemical dependencies" was just the ticket to tickle my fancy. Catching up on his many articles, though, is going to cut into my blogging for awhile.