***plAnt dAy!***(a running commentary on the most interesting collector's plants I own) *GUNNERA*

GIANT GUNNERA (gunnera manicata)
This one isn't mine!

i first discovered Gunnera ( AKA Giant Rhubarb and "Dinosaur Food"! ) when i began leaf casting. i was browsing the Web for articles on the subject, and i could see it was a fave with leaf casters in the Pacific Northwest (far from me), so i decided i HAD to have one, too! It is not hardy in my region, (that rarely stops me from trying things, though), and i knew the leaves wouldn't get anywhere near the 5-6 feet across that they would if the plant was happy, but, really, did i WANT to try to cast a SIX FOOT leaf in cement anyway? So i sent for one last Spring, potted it in an old washtub with a spigot in the bottom, thinking i could hopefully control the water saturation for the soil it was planted in, and set it on the patio. Did very well, i ended up with several nice sized 8 - 10 in (20 - 25 cm) leaves to cast, definitely not huge, but very nice. She lived in my unheated sunroom all winter, except for that VERY cold spell, when I moved her into the house for 3 weeks. Just relocated her outside in a protected spot near the house till the weather really warms up.

...Not bad for zone 5b in April!

Delicious Daffodils

Daffodils, by far, are my absolute favorite flower! They're the "official" flower of my birth month - March- so that may be a reason i'm so attracted to them. Actually, it's about daffs being the first large blooms to show up around here! i like collecting different forms and color combinations - no expensive bulbs - the brand new varieties i can't afford today will be plentiful and reasonably priced in a year or two (same goes for Hostas!).

I just plant a few "new to me" varieties each Autumn. There are white, yellow, and orange flowers, and even more colors and shapes of the corollas (the center cup ) - pink, red, small, large trumpets, split, ruffled, double ( the doubles have the most fragrance).

Here's a tiny one






...Take a walk around my garden to see how many others i have!










Here's a peach and white form

Most of the "pink" corollas are orange at first and fade to a pink in a day or two.

All Daffodils are Narcissus, but not all Narcissus are Daffodils!

(All Daffodils, Narcissus, and Jonquils are in the genus Narcissus).







Nothing says "Springtime" like Daffs glowing in bright sunshine!

Last but not least, a split corona form



Hope you liked this little tour! :o)

RANT - Solar Power Failure

i have been an environmentalist for many years - recycling, composting, organic gardening, etc....i would also love to switch our outdoor lighting to solar- too bad it's nearly useless! Had low voltage lighting for years, and bought the cheap sets of plastic lights, but they worked well for years. The sun finally got to the plastic, though, and they got too brittle (i thought plastic takes hundreds of years to break down - why does it only take FIVE for mine?)* i had used solar lights many years before, i knew at the time they did not throw much light and did not work well during the winter months, but during the past couple of years, we could hardly find low voltage lights to replace ours - they were all solar! So, i (erroneously) assumed that solar lighting must work a lot better these days, since they have all but replaced LV in the stores. Uhhhh..no.

We purchased quite a few of them last year (it was late spring, when the days were longer), and they were OK during the summer, but when the nights got longer, they were even WORSE than I remember! They didn't light at ALL on cloudy days, which is about all our winters consist of, plus they were a copper colored metal, (which is why i chose them), and the color faded within 3 months! I did write the company (Westinghouse, which i thought should have good quality items), they just told me to send them back with the box, which i did not have after almost a year. Don't get me wrong, for little accent lights here and there with no real purpose (security, safety), they're cute, but we don't have street lights, and it is very dark in my neighborhood - we all have post lights and landscape lights, but when my lights go out at 2 AM or don't come on at all, it doesn't do any good!..i DO like the floating solars, though!...

Anyway, we did finally find some LV lights, scattered the solars here and there in the garden, and all is well with the world...

* Just being funny- i know plastic breaks down in sunlight, and not in a landfill because it's buried and light doesn't get to it!

***plAnt dAy!***(a running commentary on the most interesting collector's plants I own) *VARIEGATED HORSERADISH*

VARIEGATED HORSERADISH

This was one of my first "must have" plants - Armoracia rusticana 'Variegata' . I love finding variegated forms of ubiquitous garden plants that you rarely find variegation on (unlike, say, a Hosta, since a great percentage of them are variegated). Variegation in leaves is caused by a loss of light absorbing pigments in the plant cells. Remove only the chlorophyll and the result is yellow variegation. Remove both chlorophyll and the yellow pigment xanthophyll and the variegation is white. The white parts of the leaves do not make food for the plant, (that's what chlorophyll does), so as a result, a lot of variegated plant aren't quite as robust as their green parents. Always an exception to the rule, though - don't think i'd ever trust a variegated MINT to behave more timidly! In my limited experience with this Horsie, it does not spread as much as the green form. Two other points: when you plant a root of Variegated Horsie, it will take a year or so to develop it's variegation - also, lots of people ask me if they can make prepared culinary horseradish with it, but i would stick with the green type for that (IMHO). It can be a knockout, though!

Moo

We spent Easter at my Sister in Law's house in the country. Grandma and Grandpa, mentioned below, are her real grandparents, evidently they made an impression on her, too, since she has always loved the country, and that is where she and her husband live now.

A lot of the people where she lives have "farm ponds", i.e., large bodies of water that are actually utilised for their water supply. i have to be careful when i mention "my pond" around there, because they are thinking of a BIG pond, and mine is just a "water garden". This pic is of ONE of her ponds..

They also raise some bovines (i'd rather say that, i always call them "cows" and i know they're boys, so i always get corrected!) , actually for food, but i think it's funny that SIL always gives them names! Oh, well, i probably would, too - when i go out to look at them, it doesn't take me long to find a couple of favorites!

HAPPY EASTER!!!

Me and my Peeps want to wish everyone a wonderful Easter !!!
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Down On The Farm...

Grandma's and Grandpa's farm, circa 1988
i never knew my grandparents on my father's side, they passed away the same year as my parents were married, my grandparents on my mom's side moved to Florida before i was born, so i met them maybe twice before they were gone. With this background, when i met my husband to be's grandparents, they immediately became MY grandparents - they were just those kind of people. They were farmers, worked very hard all their lives in a small town outside of my city, and they really resembled (but better looking!) Grant Wood's painting, "American Gothic" (their names were Neva and Delbert - those are definitely Old American country names)! i had never known anyone like them before, the way they were so down to earth and the way they loved the outdoors... - they were part of the reason i became so interested in growing things. There are few people who have had that much of an influence on me; even the drive out to the country to their farm, past the cornfields and the cows, was fascinating to me! Grandpa was always fascinated in turn that a "city girl" like me "liked getting her hands dirty" in the soil! They both lived to be 95 years old, and, while Grandpa was bedridden for the last two years of his life, their minds stayed sharp till they day they died! I miss them terribly, but wherever they are, i hope they're on a pristine little farm in the middle of rolling green fields (without the work....!)

The Watergarden Journey

We started out with a 60 gallon, preformed plastic pond. No filtration, no aeration, just water, two goldfish, and several water plants....No idea what i was doing, either! But, the 2 goldfish turned into 7 by the end of the season, so apparently somebody was happy with the conditions! Of course, the fish were feeder fish, and i got them with the idea that i'd just let them die in the winter or throw them away (they were FEEDER fish, after all!), but, animal person that i am, i just couldn't, so instead, they spent the winter in an aquarium! Had this little pond for about 3 years, then got the itch to have a "real" watergarden, one that the fish could stay in all year, so, in 2001, hubby and i took a free watergarden class at a local shop, and jumped in head first, to coin a phrase!

We took one week of vacation to work on it - of course, it was the only 95 degree (F) week we had that summer! Just the two of us....when someone asks my husband what he dug the hole with, he always says, "With my wife!" Well, HE thinks it's funny... ):}

In a way, it developed a life of it's own, deciding what size and depth it would ultimately be, and when we were finished digging (mainly because we decided we'd had enough!), it was an 11' X 20' oval, 24 inches deep.
Anyway, it definitely turned out beautiful, and now i have another environment to grow plants in - water! All of the plants surrounding the pond were just moved or divided from those i already had, and all of the fieldstone around it came from hubby's grandparents' farm - hauled in one pickup truck load at a time! We have various types of fish - Koi, Goldfish, and Rosey Reds, and it's visited by a large number of American Toads every Spring, almost always around April 15, except we usually have warm weather by then, and it doesn't look promising so far, so Toad Day may be delayed this year! More about THEM when they show up...
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Grow Your Own!

The seedlings are growing - here's Skeeter keeping guard on them, just in case there's a ferocious plant - eating mouse loose in the house! i used to start hundreds of seeds under lights every Spring, especially when we had a basement and i had more room. i was always a little worried that my neighbors would see the lights on half the night with all those plants and call the police! i assure you, though, there was never any "hemp" involved (although there may have been a stray Opium poppy or two in there!) But now with my leaf casting business taking up more of my time, (and i've gotten older), i tend to want "instant gratification" - or a lot closer to it! i'm not as willing to wait several years for a seed to grow into a landscape - sized plant! These days, i pretty much just grow Castor Beans, heirloom tomatoes, Moonflower vines, and some annuals that are hard to find around here.

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Gargoyles in the Garden!

Forget concrete geese, elves, and deer! i have my Gargoyles! This green one is the first I ever found - i painted him with the only paint i had on hand at the time - a strange metallic green fabric paint! The fangs weren't cast very well, so i actually made these for him - implants, if you will!

... a few others...

i really like this one - he looks like he can't take it anymore!

My newest addition to the family - he's just a tiny thing found at a thrift store- and yes, i added the touches of paint!