Wall's Owita

Among other activities this Spring, I spent my reading time rambling between several books.  I often find myself with several books open, picking up each one as my mood directs me, reading one of them tonight and another tomorrow, only to come back to the first a week later.   It drives Mrs. ProfessorRoush slightly more nuts, dusting around 3-5 books that are open or bookmarked at any given time.  Would anyone else like to admit here a similar reading habit?

This weekend, I finally managed to finish Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening, written by Mrs. Carol Wall and published early in 2014.  Mrs. Wall was a high School English teacher in Tennessee and Virginia who previously wrote features in Southern Living Magazine and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and she writes as beautifully as you would expect.  I picked up the book with the expectation that it would be a nice essay about gardening and friendships, but if you are looking to learn much about Mister Owita's green thumb from it, you will be sorely disappointed.

Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening is, in fact, two related tales, one of a friendship and a mentor-student relationship developed between two gardeners, and the other a very human tale of hope, longing and loss.  Mr. Owita, the declared subject of the story is a local immigrant who becomes Mrs. Wall's gardening advisor, and later her confidant and friend.  The story is not really about the garden they create, but about their support for each other during the trials of each life.

Spoiler alert;  Mrs. Wall was a breast cancer survivor, who relapses during the book.  Part of the story  focuses on her worries and thoughts as she faces more illness and treatments.  Early in the story, Mister Owita is concerned about a daughter left behind in an unstable country.  Later on his own terminal illness is revealed.  Mister Owita dies near the end of the book.  In fact, I learned while writing this that Mrs. Wall also passed on December 14, 2014, 9 months after the book was published.  I'm sorry for the lost to both families, but I think you understand what I mean if I say that I didn't feel very uplifted after reading this book.

If you're wanting a profoundly moving book, and if you can stand a bit of a downer of an ending, Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening is a good, easy read.    If you're looking for garden or plant information, or if you need or expect an uplifting story about survival in the face of cancer or HIV, then don't make this book one of the many you may already be reading.

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.

Squatting Dark Lady

'The Dark Lady'

I suppose that ProfessorRoush could be faulted for ignoring many popular roses with my primary focus on Griffith Buck, Ag Canada Roses, Old Garden Roses and Hybrid Rugosas, but I do grow a few roses that are perhaps more widely known and viewed as "modern."  Among those are a few of the David Austin roses, but just a mere few because I find they don't always do well in my climate and I tire of wasting money on them.  Devoted readers know that I really like 'Heritage', and that I persist with 'Golden Celebration', and you may remember that I thought 'Benjamin Britten' was a nice rose until I lost it last year to Rose Rosette.  You may not know that I've failed with about 6 or 8 others.



I also grow an early Austin rose, 'The Dark Lady', on her own roots and she has survived a number of years to produce these big, very-double fragrant blooms for me.  In fact, I once moved her and she came back from a forsaken root, so I have two growing in my garden and both are passable representatives of their clan.  She does not need any preventative maintenance for blackspot in my climate, but I wouldn't call her a vigorous rose, and you can see from the photo at the left that our recent rains have left her a bit bedraggled.  According to one anonymous post at a website, "feeding her bananas" will take care of the weak necks, but I'm a bit skeptical of such an easy fix.

'The Dark Lady', otherwise known as 'AUSbloom', is a shrub rose bred by Austin prior to 1991, and she throws dark magenta-blue flowers of 100 to 140 petals for me, although Austin describes the color as "dark crimson."  Helpmefind.com lists her as having a bloom diameter of 3.25 inches, but many of the flowers in the photo above are around 4 inches in diameter.   She does repeat with several flushes over a season, but I wouldn't call her a continuous bloomer.  The poor woman is described as being 4'X 5', a little wider than she is tall, and I would agree with that unflattering shape description with the exception that she seldom gets more than about 2.5' X 3' for me in a season.  She is moderately cane hardy here, with some dieback each year but usually not to the ground.   Her heritage is a little perplexing;  helpmefind.com/rose lists here as a cross between 'Mary Rose' and 'Prospero', but Austin's website says she has a R. Rugosa parentage.  The latter, if true, would help explain the hardiness and the somewhat rough matte foliage.  And perhaps the color.

According to the David Austin Roses website,  Austin named 'The Dark Lady' after "the mysterious Dark Lady" of  Shakespeare's sonnets.  In those somewhat heated sonnets, we learn that Shakespeare's mistress had black hair, dun-colored skin, and raven black eyes. In several places, Shakespeare suggests that she wasn't that pretty ("In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes, for they in thee a thousand errors note"), and that she also had bad breath ("And in some perfumes is there more delight, than in the breath that from my mistress reeks").  Always the contrary, cynical professor, I think Austin misnamed this rose because she is a very beautiful rose and her fragrance is strong and sweet.  At least, in my opinion.

Magic Mornings

There is no morning more pleasing for me than to wake up early and find the house silent and cloaked in fog, harsh rays of the rising sun diffused into gentle radiance.  Combine that with the clean air and glistening landscape from a previous evening's rain, and I'm in heaven, or at least as near as I can get with my feet still on soggy ground.

These are magic mornings for me. Magical moments that I steal to watch the world stir and wake, to wait without worry and simply to be.  On most other mornings, I'm fully awake as my feet touch the floor, leaping into my life with jobs to finish and errands to run, lists to complete and chores to get done.   On these mornings, however, I pause, knowing that rain has dampened the urgency of outside work, and wanting to preserve the quiet and peace of a still-resting household.   While Mrs. ProfessorRoush sleeps soundly in the silence, Bella and I slip outside to capture the scenes, small or vast, that wait just a wall away.

On such mystical mornings, if you wait and watch, seek and search, you can pierce the veil and glimpse, if only briefly, the canvas of life beneath the colors.  Hues of blooms and leaves and grass seem brighter, stems and stalks stand surer, and birds sing sweeter as the sun slowly dawns.  On this morning, I found the cheerful buds of 'Betty Boop' bound together by industry, support stays for a small spider's larder.  Raindrops glistened on perfect new leaves, each drop a jewel of a sequined cover, each leaf a dark green factory of life itself.  The tightly woven petals, scarlet and yellow patterned into perfection, pushed back the darkness and reflect the warming sun.  The whole drama, a merry microcosm greeting the greater world in grace and glory.

Soon, I know, the sun will burn back the damp and break the fog's embrace.  Sound and action will pour in with the sunlight and send the silence slinking back to the shadows.  I'll start coffee for Mrs. ProfessorRoush and butter her toast to better our marriage.  But I've had my rest and quiet, my moments of wonder and awe to revitalize my energies and soul.  Another day beckons with jobs and errands and lists and chores.

(P.S.  I was so pleased with the photo of Betty Boop that I'm entering it into the Gardening Gone Wild 'Picture This' photo contest.  See the contest at http://gardeninggonewild.com/?p=28687)