As Fall slips away in concert with my garden duties, I'm desperately trying to tackle a mountain of winter reading material before it engulfs the house and overflows into the forsythia bed. Alongside my gardening activity, I collect and occasionally read gardening-related material, to the point where my valet is stacked with no less than ten books-in-waiting.
I've tried several off and on, and I continually keep picking up Brenner and Scanniello's A Rose By Any Name and knocking off a few pages, but my main theme this season seems to be "back-to-the-farm" literature. I keep picking up and putting down Margaret Roach's And I Shall Have Some Peace There, but I'm having trouble identifying with Margaret's "successful-woman-middle-aged-angst" crisis. No surprise there, since a puttering older male is probably not her target audience.
I recently finished, however, and enjoyed immensely The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball. Subtitled "a memoir of farming, food, and love," it chronicles her move from NYC to northern New York with her soon-to-be-husband, an arduous back-to-the-basics to establish a community farm in the North Country. The book is not so much about the love, since she notes that on most nights they managed only exhaustion and worry, but it's a lot about the farming and food and the localism movement trumpeted these days by the ecological aristocracy. All in all, The Dirty Life is an easy and likable read. Kimball, by the way, is no shrinking hippified housewife, as the jacket blurb notes that she has a degree from Harvard, and the last I knew, Harvard was not known for its agricultural program.
For me, Kimball's tales of farming with draft horses, primitive balers, maple syrup production, unrepentant swine, nervous chickens, and endless daily work prompted fond recall of times I spent in Amish country. Thirty years ago, I spent two months on externship as a 4th year veterinary student at a large dairy practice in Wakarusa, Indiana. Wakarusa, with a population of 1758 in the 2010 census, was even smaller in 1982, a place back then whose local Pizza Hut, the only "eat-out" restaurant for 15 miles, became a hot spot every Friday night for young Mennonite boys and bonneted teenage girls. Wakarusa was in Elkhart County, one of two northern Indiana counties where the population was predominantly Amish and Mennonite and the veterinary practice I worked in served the small family farms and dairies of the area. For two months, I lived on and off of those farms, in Amish barns and fields, knee deep at times in dairy muck and at other times holding for dear life to the lead ropes of Draft horses whose backs were taller than my heads. Two months among good people who lived plainly, by the strength of their arms and the sweat of their brows. A part of me still longs to be there.
Though an old gardener, I am but a young blogger. The humor and added alliteration are free.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Comte de Chambord
How the heck have I missed making 'Comte de Chambord' a focus of discussion in this blog??? Somewhere, somehow, I've overlooked one of the most dependable roses of my back landscaping border, a pleasure to have and to hold and to smell. She is one of my favorite roses, prominently displayed out in front of my Kon Tiki statue since 2003, alongside her garden-mate, 'La Reine', whose violet tones she reflects in her blush pink petals as an expression of love.
'Comte de Chambord' is a pink-blend Portland rose, one of the few of this class that I've been able to find and grow. She was bred by Robert and Moreau in or around 1858, a cross of 'Baronne Prevost' and 'Portland Rose'. 'Comte de Chambord' has relatively small blooms in my garden, about 3-4 inches in diameter. but they are very full of petals (50+ petals), and of fragrance, with a sweet, strong aroma. She's at her most beautiful in Spring and Fall in cooler weather, when the color is medium pink with a trace of blue, but in the midst of Summer she pales to almost white and she wrinkles terribly with the sun. In fact, I've questioned that I have the right rose for the name because of the small size of the blooms and the paleness in my garden compared to some descriptions of the rose, but I received my specimen from a trustworthy mail-order source. Once in a while, she'll even show her Damask background and have a bit of a green pip visible at her center. Sources on the Internet list her as tall, like my specimen, but Peter Beals, in Classic Roses, has her as only 3' X 2' and also lists her introduction later, in 1863.
'Comte de Chambord' is a real garden shrub, with a vase-like shape staying at about 4-5 feet tall in my garden. I trim about 6 inches off her top every Spring, but that's about all the care she requires; no spraying or fussing with this rose. She is cane-cold hardy in my garden, never exhibiting any winter dieback. I see about five or six bloom cycles before Winter shuts her off every year. All in all, a trouble-free and gorgeous rose.
'Comte de Chambord' is the mother of 'Gertrude Jekyll', the first of the English roses, but none other than Paul Barden says he prefers the mother to the offspring, and I agree. 'Comte de Chambord' is a fine rose for the garden, and I recommend adding her to yours as one of the best ambassadors of the Portland class. And by the way, I'm amiss in calling 'Comte' a she. No less tha Jeri Jennings noted in a Gardenweb post that 'Le Comte' would be a gentleman, while a female would be 'Le Comtesse'.
'Comte de Chambord' is a pink-blend Portland rose, one of the few of this class that I've been able to find and grow. She was bred by Robert and Moreau in or around 1858, a cross of 'Baronne Prevost' and 'Portland Rose'. 'Comte de Chambord' has relatively small blooms in my garden, about 3-4 inches in diameter. but they are very full of petals (50+ petals), and of fragrance, with a sweet, strong aroma. She's at her most beautiful in Spring and Fall in cooler weather, when the color is medium pink with a trace of blue, but in the midst of Summer she pales to almost white and she wrinkles terribly with the sun. In fact, I've questioned that I have the right rose for the name because of the small size of the blooms and the paleness in my garden compared to some descriptions of the rose, but I received my specimen from a trustworthy mail-order source. Once in a while, she'll even show her Damask background and have a bit of a green pip visible at her center. Sources on the Internet list her as tall, like my specimen, but Peter Beals, in Classic Roses, has her as only 3' X 2' and also lists her introduction later, in 1863.
'Comte de Chambord' is a real garden shrub, with a vase-like shape staying at about 4-5 feet tall in my garden. I trim about 6 inches off her top every Spring, but that's about all the care she requires; no spraying or fussing with this rose. She is cane-cold hardy in my garden, never exhibiting any winter dieback. I see about five or six bloom cycles before Winter shuts her off every year. All in all, a trouble-free and gorgeous rose.
'Comte de Chambord' is the mother of 'Gertrude Jekyll', the first of the English roses, but none other than Paul Barden says he prefers the mother to the offspring, and I agree. 'Comte de Chambord' is a fine rose for the garden, and I recommend adding her to yours as one of the best ambassadors of the Portland class. And by the way, I'm amiss in calling 'Comte' a she. No less tha Jeri Jennings noted in a Gardenweb post that 'Le Comte' would be a gentleman, while a female would be 'Le Comtesse'.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Color Among the Viburnums
Viburnum juddii |
'Roseum' |
Viburnum burkwoodii |
My favorite of the "colorful" viburnums, at least in this unusually dry year, is the Viburnum burkwoodii that occupies a center spot in my border. This guy is turning red leaf by leaf, and right now looks like a winter holly with the spotted red against the dark green background.
'Mohawk' |
'Synnestvedt' |
The ugly sisters of the group are a few "Fall-challenged" viburnums, such as the 'Synnestvedt' Viburnum dentatum at the right. 'Synnestvedt' is trying to turn yellow, but doing a poor job of it, losing leaves as fast as they turn. I also have eight or ten other viburnum cultivars and species, but many have already dropped their leaves and are ready to face the winter naked and spindly. If we turn out to have a bad winter, these, of course, will be the brainiacs of the bunch, placing their faith in hardened buds that will swell with the coming of Spring.
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