Bloggers Bloom Day in the new year

The holidays are over, the snow has melted and the rain abated – for now.  As I venture out into the garden I am shocked at the resiliency of the many plants I thought were gonners after our 20 day freeze-fest!  Of course I know from sad experience that often damage (or death) may not show up for months, so the final verdict won’t come until spring.  At which point I hope, hope, hope that my beautiful Olive tree will put out another set of leaves!  It is so… naked!  Finely pruned into a standard for the first time in years, yes, but now a bare skeleton of it’s formerly lush, shaggy self.

But Bloggers Bloom Day is about the living not the lost!  The garden prevails and so do I (you can’t see me but I’ve squared my shoulders, raised my chin and already have a list of plants I want to buy in the spring to fill in the holes.)  Oh, my fickle heart!

“We can have flowers nearly every month of the year”

Inspired by the words of Elizabeth Lawrence, Carol of May Dreams Gardens started Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. On the 15th of every month, garden bloggers from all over the world publish what is currently blooming in their gardens, and leave a link in the comments of May Dreams Gardens.

We’ll start with the indoor blooms; get real people – it’s winter out there!  There’s wiggle room in the rules, and I have it from Carol herself, Queen of BBD. 

An update on the Great Paperwhite caper of ’08.  I did indeed try pickling my plants in a dilute alcohol solution and it worked!  Cheers to the good folks at Cornell.  Not only did it curtail foliar growth and prevent inelegant flopping, but it seemed to sloooooow the entire process.  My replacement bulbs are only just this week beginning to break bud, a full month since “potting” them.  Dare I say these are the perkiest paperwhites I’ve ever had the pleasure of producing!

 Speaking of obedience, this is the first holiday season EVER that my Amarylis actually bloomed in time for Christmas day.  I’d taken to purchasing white or pink varieties as they generally didn’t make an appearance until mid February and those colors where more in keeping with Valentine’s Day!  But not this year…gorgeous red and white striped blooms on not one, but two stems were glorious all through Christmas week. I’m enjoying their swan song as the petals take on a crepe paper-like texture and droop their beautiful heads.

This little beauty followed me home from the grocery store last week and already it’s gone from a tight bud hidden in its foliage to emerging into brilliant blue-ness, filling my kitchen with a heady fragrance.  I know it’s not chic to love hyacinths, rigid little soldiers that they are…maybe we should ask what they’re drinking?!  But it’s been my experience that after a year or so in the garden they let down their hair and blend quite gracefully into the surrounding spring composition.  I have some heirloom bulbs which I purchased years and years ago from Old House Gardens that faithfully take my breath away every spring when they bloom in the midst of a lime green clump of Millium effusium aureum.  The blossoms are a midnight, inky blue – either King of the Blues (1863) or Marie (1860), of course I can’t remember which.  These bulbs have been in my garden for at least 10 years!  I also had a beautiful stand of the beet-root colored Distinction (1880) now sadly no longer available commercially.  It remains to be seen whether or not they survived being dug up and moved (where? I don’t remember) in the big garden remodel of last year.

But I’m getting ahead of myself; as I wander today’s garden I can’t help but anticipate all that is to come.  I guess that’s why we do this little exercise every month!  Here’s one last indoor bloom: a wan cutting of Salvia dorisiana or Fruit sage.  As the snow began to accumulate I ran out and nabbed this stem and it’s been resting on my kitchen window sill ever since, I’m hoping it roots as the mother plant has certainly bit the big one!  But then the flowers began to emerge and I can’t bring myself to cut them off to encourage rooting. 

While you see the sorry, limp, spotted speciman on the left, I see this robust, furry summer beauty here on the right. 

It is a gift we gardeners have to look beyond the current month to the growing season ahead.

And now a quick survey of the outdoors — this has gotten way too long.  It’s an established fact that garden bloggers have more time to ramble on in the winter than during the growing season.

Winter blooming heather (left) may not create a lot of excitement in single plantings (but try multiplying them by the dozens for waves of color and texture!) but I never cease to be impressed by their strong consitution and welcome bloom.  Euphorbia rigida (right) is a year-round knockout that I appreciate for its matte blue green, perfectly clean foliage.  The lime-green flowers appear early in the season – although not generally this early – creating a stunning color combo.  My only concern with this plant is its somewhat lax form, beautiful among gravel and soft grasses yes, but how did it get the name species name “rigida”?

 And last, but not least, my favorite winter blooming fragrant shrubs.  Winter box (Sarcococca ruscifolia) is a short evergreen shrub to only about 3 feet in my garden  covered in tiny greenish white, insignificant flowers from December through March, which ripen to glossy black berries.  This plant fills my front walk with a brisk, clean fragrance.  Witch hazel ‘Jelena’ (Hamemalis x intermedia ‘Jelena’) on the otherhand is a show boat – as all redheads generally are.  Her shaggy orange blossoms are hard to see in the winter garden, unlike the yellow flowering varieties of this winter star.  I’ve learned to place this plant against an evergreen background or close to a pathway so the spidery blooms can be appreciated.  Fall foliage color is equally warm and toasty, making her a star in my small front garden through out the year.

Well, that’s all for now.  For those of you who kept reading through to the end of this looooong post, I thank you.  I can only surmise that garden blog readers also have more time to spend during these long dark winter days as we all wait for the return of the sun.