Practical Matters for Physically Challenged Gardeners #18

Sorry it took me so long to get back. We've been redoing the laundry room, and things are a mess right now.

Glad y'all had fun at the RU and came back with lots of plants. I agree about purchasing scented when they're not in bloom. It's very disappointing indeed. Do you have a Sweet Almond Verbena? One place I can recommend as far as ordering plants is Almost Eden in LA. Have you ever looked at their catalog?

Thanks for your recommendation.

Carrie, I have 4 paws that do the tracking in here ... ☺ Oh, and of course, let's don't forget the sticks and hickory nuts that fall through the ceiling? LOL

Someone asked about my tomatoes ... so far so good. They're standing up anyway. That's a plus after all the rain we've had. I'm not doing too good at locating pics on this Windows 8 computer right now. I'll try to post some pics later, though. They've really grown. No blooms as yet ...

Okay, off to bed.

Yes, we are fully moved in. That is to say, a 3-bedroom house has been consolidated into a 2-BR apartment and a storage unit.

Yesterday we took a wander (a wander is where he walks and I roll) over to a strip mall near our apt. We found two bars, a SuperCuts, Jason's Deli, a bagel store and (farthest away) a cute little Mexican (Tex-Mex) restaurant where we had dinner. We both got a little sunburned and I got a little MS-woozy (sp). Just like being tipsy, but from MS and not alcohol.

Sorry about your headache, Kay.

It sounds like you will enjoy the new apartment, Carrie. I’m all for downsizing as I grow older, but Jim, Nadi and Jennifer all love their “stuff”.
Travitan, the eye drops, have to be refrigerated. I don’t carry them with me the way I do other meds. Nadi’s father was a Type I, insulin dependent diabetic and carried his insulin with him everywhere in a small thermal container inside an insulated shoulder pack. I think I need to start doing something like that for my eye drops.
Aloysia virgata (sweet almond verbena) is on my fragrant plant want list now. Thanks for alerting me to that one. I’m putting the Rose Glory Bower (a, k.a. Cashmere Bouquet, Mexican hydrangea) in a huge stone tub today. A raised planter made of granite should keep it in place so I can relax and enjoy the fragrance. lol. It is another good example of highly fragrant plants being aggressive.
I’m looking forward to the new jasmine. All I know at the moment is it’s a white jasmine bush. This kind of plant mystery I like. I don’t know of any jasmine I wouldn’t welcome.
I want to be outside playing with plants, but Monday is cleaning day. (sigh.) mk*

Oh, you clean? We don't. ha ha. We are still waiting to hear from our old landlady as to whether we get our deposit back. We paid some company around $150 to clean out the old place. We were planning to do touch-up painting etc. but Ray had (as usual) a couldn't be missed work requirement. Yeesh. I could do the painting along the baseboard but it's impossible to get back up.

Cleaning -- that means picking up the germination mix that didn't make it into the container, right?

That definition works for me, Turtle. Lol.
Good luck, Carrie. I’ve never gotten an apartment deposit back no matter how much I cleaned, filled in nail holes and did paint touch ups. I imagine it would be harder to deny someone their deposit when the place was professionally cleaned, however
Jim noticed some of the new shade loving plants were drooping a little yesterday and let me outside to play. We don’t have any nursery benches in day-long shade since we had all the big pines felled. Nadi is right. Jim definitely has his own case of plant lust now. He talked of building another bench instead of how I needed to cut down on plants
The altromeria and walking iris are in their new homes. I got greedy with the walking iris and came home with both the blue and yellow variety. I assume the yellow variety still goes by the common name walking iris. I noticed they changed its botanical name. It isn’t even classified as a Neomaria now.
Nadi wanted both the daturas for her purple themed garden, but I thought I might put the ‘Black Currant Swirl’ in the front walkway border near the deck for its scent. I discovered a fragrant brugmonsia in the exact place I was planning to put it though... It never crossed my mind that the brug I left in the ground might survive the winter, especially not this last winter. So it turned out angels will live at the main house and all the devils will live at Nadi’s micro house. Lol. I’d never heard that saying about how to tell a brug from a datura until recently. Devil’s trumpets (datura) look up to Heaven and Angel’s trumpets (brugmonsia) look down to Earth. What a clever memory aid. I need all the memory aid I can get. mk*

Yeah, me too, Kay. I'm still getting a lot of mileage out of "a pint's a pound the world around" (at normal pressure and temperature with infinite volume). That one is really about density, but I think it dates to marketing milk and cheese in Europe at some point when they were switching measurement systems, like maybe liquid (volume) to weight? And certainly "30 days hath September, April June and November," I like that one too. Especially the second line, "all the rest have 31, except for February." And that's like "some poems rhyme, but this one doesn't." Ahhhh, I hope you've enjoyed this trip around the world in my brain.

Yeah, Aloysia virgata (sweet almond verbena) that's the correct name. If you want me to try to root you one, I'd be glad to. I've had good luck in the past, and it didn't take that long. I could probably have you one by fall. It will soon be too hot to mail plants in the south anyway. I love that thing ... and so do the bees and butterflies. ☺ That's one of the plants I ordered from LA. LMK if you're interested.

So Carrie, how do you like our south?

Cleaning? What's that? My house is a wreck right now. I'm still in the middle of the laundry redo.

edited because I repeated myself.
☺

This message was edited May 6, 2014 10:50 PM

You repeat yourself? Do you mean you say the same thing over and over, but in slightly different ways? Maybe you use the exact same words when You repeat yourself. Are you more repetitive, or more redundant? Sorry.....I've been on the phone with Netflix and Time Warner Cable all day. Very repetitive AND redundant! Reset your password, log out, log in, unplug the machine, wait, plug it back in, delete the program and reinstall it, reset your password, log out, log in, I'm going nuts. This last young lady with Netflix was as nice as can be but still!

I enjoy my visits to your mind, Carrie. It’s an interesting place.
I cower at the idea of calling tech support. I just know one day I’ll end up as one of the infamous jokes.
http://tcastle.com/fun/jokes10.html#.U2rnmyhOnA
Someone finally decided to do Mother Goose one better and make the last part of that ditty about the days of the month rhyme, but the Mother Goose version is too firmly fixed for me to adopt the rhyming one at this late date.
That would be wonderful, Susan. Check out Amargia’s journal and blog in Autumn to see if we have anything you would be interested in. I’m working hard this year on labeling and record keeping. I’m planning to put a list of Amargia’s fragrant plants and also our tomatoes in blog entries. I’m slowly re-categorizing the plants under the “For Fragrance” category in the journal. We have so many plants that are fragrant ranging from trees to perennials, to bulbs, to annuals. As an organizing category “Fragrance” isn’t effective. It was the same with “Bee Plants.” We have indeed purchased plants specifically for the honeybees, but the bees couldn’t care less about my neat, little categories. They claim all the blooms as theirs. “Craft Plants” isn’t working as a category either. I’m staying with growth habit, very general use categories such as “Ornamental” and “Edible” and specific plant families (“Roses”, “Daylilies”, “Hostas”, etc.) to group things. If I’d paid more attention to how nursery catalogs are organized, I could have saved myself some trouble. Well, even blind people have 20/20 hindsight.
As for tomatoes, we are having the same problem categorizing them people have had for centuries. Should it be classified as a fruit or a vegetable?
I don’t think I told my Almost Eden story here. Nadi wanted a pineapple guava tree and Almost Eden had them in stock. Jim thought he would surprise Nadi with the trees and me with a trip to a favorite nursery on our way back from TX. There is only one thing he didn’t consider until we had arrived. Almost Eden is an exclusively mail order nursery. Nadi didn’t get her trees, but I had a blast exploring parts of LA I’d never been to. I’ve made the trip from here to Houston countless times, but always down Interstate 10. That leg of the trip would have been monotonous without the goof-up .
I’d better get to bed before I have to go on the Night Owls forum also. Mk*

MK I have the main categories of my seed filing system, aka unzipped zipper bags, as E, O, and GF: Guardian Flowers. The president of GF is marigold, of course, but I include medicinal herbs, and anything else I want growing amongst the Edibles. But then my Grand Landscaping Plan is to make those three categories indistinguishable, and go back to the primordial chaos of pre-zipper bags. And one day have plants growing in the actual ground, even if "ground" gets a little altitude adjustment.

Jim's goof is priceless, a wonderful example of life being what happens while we're busy making other plans. Thank goodness for such goofs! They are called barn sales round here. We were driving somewheres and I saw a sign for a barn sale, my kind of thing. My DP, the actual driver, asked if I really wanted to buy a barn. It doesn't sound as though it translates exactly, but it has become the go-to phrase for unplanned life.

I mean, if life were all planned and lined up in neat little squares, uhh, why bother living it? "Oh look, that's what I did in life I mean am going to do." Besides which I hate straight lines. I would love a keyhole garden, ooh, or a chain of keyhole links.

Actually what I really want is a labyrinth which I've already designed, but lacking the means for stone and needing to leave 36 inch passage, I don't see it happening. Maybe if I plan for something else???

Good night all.

I’m from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles generation. For those of the Mother Goose generation, the current version goes:

Thirty days have September,
April, June, and November;
February has 28 alone,
All the rest have 31;
Except leap year, that's the time,
When February's days are 29.

Oh, Miss Susan. Never ask a native northerner what they think of the south after May 1st. It’s like getting a mogwai wet or feeding it after midnight. Always wait for winter to avoid the gremlin response. Okay, I had to Google keyhole gardens. There are disadvantages to the ¼ century thing.
So does Colocasia escalenta go in the Ornamental or Edible Journal file? To MK it’s an ornamental for the bog garden. To me, it is galangal, a root vegetable. It is Taro to Papa Jim. The plant they make poi from in Hawaii. Poor Mama Kay. This drive for organization is going to have her pulling her hair out. Life just ain’t that neat. But, then, if some people didn’t feel the need to imposed order on chaos, we wouldn’t have gardens at all, would we? –Nadi

Okay, y'all have me smiling!

Nadi, I've never heard that version of the rhyme before, so I guess you know which generation I'm from. LOL

Kay, you'll be welcome to it if I get one to root. So sorry about your side-trip. Sounds like something that would happen to us.

Carrie, tech support drives me crazy! If at all possible, I let the DH handle that ...

As far as gardening goes, I'm not at all organized. I need an idea for a low growing shrub in front of my house. I have an oak tree there, and nothing will grow. I set out dwarf gardenias about 3 years ago, and they've done little to nothing. I'm thinking about yanking them and putting something different but don't have a clue what to replace them with.

Well, it's late ... Waving if I missed you ...

Normally, I have gardenias flowering by June, but not this year. I think it will be August before they flower.
I see a garden as a balance between order and chaos, but it looks like chaos has his thumb on the scales at the moment.
Ha, I added a category called “Water & Bog Plants”. I’ll put the colocasia in it. I had better create an independent category called “Tomatoes” That way I can avoid the debate about whether to drill down under “Fruits” or “Vegetables” to make a sub-category. Where there is a will, there is a way. Lol. I’m learning that keeping a record of plants for a group is more complicated than keeping records for myself alone. If the list were just for my use, I would put the tomatoes in “Fruits—Annual” and have no problem, but the others might have trouble finding it there
I wonder if we could create a maze from Sudan grass (sorghum) and vetiver grass. It would be something interesting to do with the troublesome NE corner. There is a local farmer who does a corn maze for people to explore around Halloween every year.
With the exception of trees and shrubs, the majority of our plants are in raised planters of some sort. There are advantages aside from the accessibility issue and the fact that that containers make things simpler for blind gardeners. All the plants in raised beds have done better than those in the ground recently. . I imagine it’s the better drainage. I did learn the hard way to put a layer of sand or small gravel atop containers filled with potting soil to keep our deluges from washing the lighter potting soil out of the container. Raised beds are the ONLY way to go in the NW corner which is red clay. A mineral pick is needed to dig a hole in that corner.
I got to thinking about your “guardian plants”, Turtles, and found a list. (Gotta love Wiki!) Garlic under the peach trees? I will try that for sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pest-repelling_plants

My gosh! It's after midnight. Am I officially a night owl now or do I have to post. on the thread. mk*

Wow, who would ever have thought garlic and peaches. Are they mutually beneficial, do you think?

I also have tomatoes in the category "Tomatoes." They are like the Titans over the Gods in my garden.

I like the grass idea for the labyrinth! Now my mind is gonna be busy all night, lol, and probably for the next X number of months. I have a different space that I might be able to do that in. I'm very excited now!

And Nadi, I'm definitely Mother Goose, so what's the TMNT version?

“Thirty days has September. As for the rest, I can’t remember.” It may not be packed with useful information, but you’ve got to admit it has a good beat.
MK is a little older than Papa Jim and she teases him about his childhood confusion with the Mother Goose mnemonic. He was old enough to understand the concept of half, but not old enough to recognize the archaic word “hath” in “hath September.” To this day, when he mishears something, MK will point out the source of his confusion by saying,
“No, Dear. You’re giving September fifteen days again.” It must be a challenge to be married to someone who can remember all the silly things you did as a child.
Andromeda (Pieris japonica) might be a possibility, if you want an evergreen, Susan. I would do a sniff test first in someone else’s garden. Not everyone likes the smell of Andromeda. I could kick myself. We had a beautiful ‘Mountain Snow’ Andromeda, but I yanked it out when I first got bees. That was before I learned that bees will leave blooms that aren’t good for them alone as long as they also have yummy bee forage in bloom at the same time. I guess I should buy MK another one. There are also some dwarf mountain laurels to consider.
I want to try an evergreen blueberry in a shady spot. Since evergreen blueberries grow wild in Pacific NW forest and the Pacific Northwest is in Zone 8, it is worth a try. The Pacific NW being in the same growing zone as us strikes me as odd considering the latitude, but the map says it is so. –Nadi-

Oh, Nadine, you silly child! The USDA zone map is full of things like that. Dallas and San Francisco maybe, or there are other curious pairs. The USDA zone map ONLY takes into account night time lows, not Ph of soil, not humidity, not daily maximums, not all the other things which we gardeners know are important.

As an official Old Timer, I can tell you the actual rhyme I grew up with is:

Thirty days hath December,
April, June and November,
All the rest have thirty-one
except for February, all alone.

I just don't like rhyming "alone" with "thirty-one" so I mess up the ending.

December has thirty-one days, September, thirty. Seasons are all backwards here in the substropics so I don't know much of anything. Except that. katie

This message was edited May 10, 2014 5:34 PM

Ah-h-h, does that mean I can’t grow a giant redwood? Bummer!! Seriously, Oregon Grape Holly grows here so I thought some other natives of the Pacific woods might make themselves at home. I think MK mentioned the new plan is to go with intensive no-till immediately around the main building and go native for the outer ring. (The main building sits roughly in the center of the property.) Tending the outer ring will fall to me and I would like to see more food forest plants (permaculture) going on. A list of edible plants that grow in shade gets very short if it is limited to Wiregrass area natives. Evergreen blueberries will allegedly produce fruit in dappled shade.
Kudos to the DG writing staff for thinking of beginners when deciding on article subjects. The beginners’ forums are all on my favorites list. Landscape planning is giving me grief. My micro-house is on the edge of the woods and across the driveway from the WildPower Garden so I don’t think the traditional front yard plants would look right. There are a few peach trees there also that I’m not about to move. Some fruit trees make very respectable front yard trees, but I wouldn’t count peach trees among them. Making my little personal space an extension of the WildPower Garden looks like the way to go, but the WP Garden is heavy on bright yellow which isn’t a favorite color of mine. I’ll switch the dominate color to purple on my side of the driveway.
There are dandelions under the peaches that Kay would rather I keep. Traditionalists believe that dandelions, which bloom at the same time as peaches, insure better pollination for the tree. Since I’m keeping the dandelions, I might as well plant garlic under the trees also to guard against peach tree borers. I would eventually like to switch out the common dandelions for those that have been bred especially for culinary use. (Yep, those really exist.) So far, it’s a foodie’s butterfly garden. Well, no one will have a front yard like it. We luckily live out in the sticks where HOAs and neighbors worried about property re-sale value don’t exist.
I’ve sunk the old spa tub with the top at ground level, but that is all I’ve accomplished on the bog garden. I re-potted my new bog beauties to larger pots so I can take my time with the project. The kids will like the insectivore plants being on their level, but I need to come up with some way to keep it safe for visually impaired people and we light dependent types who like wandering the garden at night. Wouldn’t want anyone stepping off into the bog. It will be lilyturf to the rescue yet again unless I can think of something better. It’s the best plant path marker we’ve found. It is dense enough to say “Stop” loudly, but friendly enough to add “please.” –Nadi-

Hey Nadi, you could plant a hint or two of purple on the far side of said driveway, and several yellow on your side, fading into pure purple. I don't know why you would want to do that, it was just an idea that popped into my head. I haven't examined the thought yet. :~)

Yesterday we finished putting my first raised bed together, kneeling in the muck. It is beautiful, in my eyes. It is 16.5 inches high, cedar, 4' by 12' foot. Then we added a 2x6 board to cap all sides. At the midpoint. I will put a grab bar. I can now kneel on the ground, sit sidesaddle or even kneel on the cap. It's not a standing bed like my mini from last year, so perhaps no casual weeding, but I wouldn't be standing for that long anyway. We will drill holes through the cap for those white things (word-balk) used to make hoops.

I'm pleased with everything so far that we have thought to take into account.

I hope everybody's safe out there.
Turtle

Yay, Turtles!!! That sounds like a beauty of a raised bed. Do you know what you will be planting in it yet?
(sigh) I thought we had solved this proper person logged in problem when Nadi got her new computer, but she says her system is slower than mine. I bet my computer being readily available in the kitchen and her being able to see the screen without glasses is also a part of it
Hi, Kb. I thought about you yesterday while I was planting Mexican flame vine. I think I may have found a plant that grows faster than kudzu. It will cover the entire front fence in a growing season if it continues at this rate. The hummingbirds and Jim are fine with that.
Susan, nematodes might be your problem if the gardenia isn’t a grafted variety. I haven’t discovered the ideal fragrance plant for around oaks yet. I have to admit I usually fall back on the classic hollies and hydrangeas. It was so exciting when the hydrangea ‘Golden Crane’ was introduced to the trade because it is reportedly fragrant. So far, I’ve had no luck in finding one to sniff or buy. I make the classic choices for under oaks a little more interesting for V.I.P.s by putting in fragrant or edible underplantings. (Wild ginger, fragrant Solomon’s seal, woodland strawberries, etc.) The jury is still out on my experiments with fragrant shrubs from CA that are said to play well with oaks. Shampoo ginger thrives in shade and the fragrance is great to have in the late season, it made a carefree foundation plant for the shade in Brooksville, FL. But it’s a real slow poke about coming up in spring in extreme southeast Alabama. For it to work this far north as a foundation planting I need to combine it with an early bloomer that fades away in the summer heat and I haven’t found the right candidate.
Is the thread length giving anyone any trouble? Do I need to start a new thread yet? mk*

This year it's destined to be the bean bed, with, I think, the eggplant or zukes at the end.

My sweet DC has asked if we can make the next 'bed' a walk thru hoop house. Why, sure honey! Lol

Sweet potatoes are my new favorite fence climing, ground cover plant. They grow like weeds here but are a beautiful green and can be easily kept in check.

A mystery plant that Tony has been caring for is moringa he told me thsi morning. One of the new super foods.

hugs, katie

SPV - which is not very different from actual stick-a-sweei-potato-in-a-pot-and-see-what-grows - is one of the first plants I grew successfully. I somehow kept it alive all winter. It also has a few nice cultivars 'Blackie' 'Lime' (I think) and 'Tricolor' (I think).

Mercy! Mercy! I’ll be more careful in future. We agreed my good computer would be used only for work and I can’t even call my play computer a dinosaur. It’s more like pre-Cambrian era. It’s a Dell ThinkPad. It has a FLOPPY DISK DRIVE! It is true having a computer in the kitchen is convenient for me, but I have to turn off the ZoomText program when I borrow this computer. I talk to my computer often, but I’m not accustomed to having a computer talk back.
Oh, Katiebear, that’s a smart move on Tony’s part. Keep us posted on how everything goes with the moringa tree. The missionaries from my church who work in tropical areas encourage the planting of moringa to combat malnutrition. How many plants can provide super-nutritious food, medicine and pure water? To top it all off, it’s a great honeybee plant. That is one amazing tree.
The flame vine is an easy, breezy annual for us. MK is exaggerating. There will be space to try a sweet potato on the fence. The flame vine may grow faster than kudzu, but we have a long fence to cover. I still have a couple slips of an edible kind of SP and I think even they are pretty. Certainly prettier than an 8’ wire fence. The ornamental sweet potatoes are used often in our area as the spiller in thriller, filler, and spiller container combinations.
I like your idea, Turtles. I wouldn’t mind trading off some of my moss verbena for some of the freesia in the WP garden. There turned out to be two purple butterfly bushes in the pot I was given. I’ll find a sunny place in the WildPower Garden for the second one.
The last of the plants on the nursery benches are going in the ground. It will be too hot to successfully transplant soon. The mosquitoes are wicked bad today. Forget a new bee suit, I’m pricing those mosquito netting coveralls. –Nadi-

Ah-h-h, poor child. I can only imagine her suffering if we had dial-up. It doesn’t seem that long ago to me when a laptop computer was the stuff of science fiction
Nadi picked wild blackberries yesterday morning and made cobbler last night. It was the best blackberry cobbler I’ve ever eaten. Try this recipe if you have the opportunity. Nadi said she chose it because it was simple. Sometimes, simple is best.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/blackberry-cobbler-recipe.html

Jim is racing to finish the work on Nadi’s micro-house to free up the bedroom Nadi is using. It looks like we will have another full-timer at Amargia soon. I don’t know if garden therapy will work for this individual or not, but she loves nature so there is a chance it will.
We are having New England weather. It’s only 57. Old Tater-dog is begging to go outside again. The tomatoes and eggplant may be confused by the unseasonably cool weather, but Tate is thrilled with it. She’s acting like a puppy again. Let’s see if the rejuvenating effects work for me. mk*

Oh, poor Nadine, too young to experience the thrills of (oh, wow!) 28,000 mps dial up! Ahh, the good old days. (Was it 28000 mps? It was 28000 somethings, maybe bps. ) Those were the slow old days!

I was on my way to the PHARMACY and wound up in the garden dept. of Lowes....how do those things happen? HD sends back the flowers (even perennials!) that don't sell, but Lowes marks them down. We grabbed a few pots of petunias to spruce up and some nicotania. They have different things here than they did in MA, for some reason, duuuh. I am just always surprised bay the plants they have here that wouldn't last 5 min. in Boston.

Super article yesterday, Carrie. I’m opposed to GMOs for political reasons since reading “The World According to Monsanto”, but I still enjoyed the article. Golden rice wasn’t living up to its promise last I read. I hadn’t heard about GR2. Do you think there is a real possibility the people it was designed to help will accept it? China, most African countries and the majority of EU members are opposed to GMO's in general. Of the African countries that accept GMO food as aid, most require it to be milled to make it impossible to plant. That doesn’t sound promising for golden rice.
All the plants in the garden look a little ragged, pounded by the rain and wind. Papa Jim’s funky foliage plants are earning their keep. They look good. I’m looking at thorn less blackberries for the gardens so V.I.P.s and mobility challenged people can have the fun of picking blackberries. We tried the wild variety of dewberries draped over a retaining wall so Jim could pick them from his w/c, but they were too aggressive. Technically, it was southern dewberries I picked for the cobbler. They are like a vining version of blackberries that ripen with slightly larger fruit earlier in the season. The blackberries that grow on bushes will come later. I’m not much on canning and jam making, but I would like to get enough to put some in the freezer.
The daylilies are finally blooming in earnest.–Nadi-

I’ve noticed the Golden Rice Project focuses on countries without anti-GMO policies and without a grassroots movement opposed to the technology. I think Golden Rice will have a chance to prove itself. Bangladesh needs any help it can get.
We are working on the Old Soldiers Garden this week to get it looking its best by Memorial Day. I hope to make a trip this week to the Dothan Area Botanical Garden to get more ideas on what we could have blooming over the holiday. The daylilies and yarrow will be at their peak. Jim insists on having common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) in his garden because of its historical association with soldiers. Soldiers carried it from antiquity to WWI to treat wounds. Fortunately, it grows happily in containers. It’s a bit too aggressive for beds and borders when planted in ground, at least it is in this region. Under control, I’ve learned to appreciate it, particularly for the foliage. It is like having a delicate fern that will grow in full sun and poor soil. I don’t know how it behaves in your corner of the world, Turtles, but it is one of the best “guardian’ plants we have in the vegetable garden. I’m adopting your label. “Guardian Plants” describes what these plants actually do better than ‘nurse plants” or “repellent plants”. mk*

We have Achillea in Boston, where it is quite weedy. I'm not sure which cultivar or even which species we have, but I know my grandmother used to grow it in Maine because the fragrance is SO familiar. Do I mean genus? Maybe I should write about that someday.

Yes, it can run rampant here too, but I have pots. What a good idea; that should work great. I don't remember how I started it last time (last home) but since I did it once I should be able to do it again. Thanks for the idea.

I'm glad you like 'guardian;' I had forgotten the term nurse plants, lol. But I'm sticking with guardian too.

What else do you grow in your Old Soldiers?

We transferred the Old Soldiers Garden into the front not long ago to make it more accessible to Jim. The perennials that were moved haven’t fully recovered. It will be next year before it is at its full glory. It is very obvious that we were shooting for the 4th as peak bloom time with the border plants and need to work toward a border with yeararound appeal. The color scheme for the boundary is red, white and blue. There are white Easter lilies which left to their natural schedule bloom in late June or early July. Red flowered Cana and hibiscus both oddly named ‘President’. We tried out bluejackets (Tradescantia ohensis) for blue, but it is too aggressive and weedy looking for the purpose. Jim attacked the blue problem in predictable fashion with blueberries. (I wonder if there is a 12-Step program for blueberry addicts.) I’m trying agapanthus and will add European forget-me-nots next Spring. I would also like to add the red, white and blue morning glory combination available from J.L. Hudson’s next year. Morning glories would be in bloom over Memorial Day. There are gardenia and ‘Immortality’ iris. I would like to have more of the latter. Cardinal flowers are in a chronically damp area and I’m considering a Japanese hydrangea to climb on the deck in that same area. I’ve just added a crinum lily, white with red veining, for May bloom. It will also re-bloom in October. There are red roses making up the north boundary. Some more roses wouldn’t be a bad idea for May interest. ‘Fourth of July’ looks like a good candidate. Contrary to its name, it tends to bloom in May here. The daylilies are red and many have appropriately martial cultivar names.
We don’t adhere religiously to the flag color scheme within the borders. The plants there are reminders of vets we knew personally and the plants sort of tell a story. For a soldier who was wounded in action numerous times, ‘Purple Heart’ tradescantia seemed the obvious choice as our salute. Honeysuckles are a special tribute to a man who was partially deafened and blinded during WWII. He was visited by Helen Keller while recovering and she became a great influence in his life. He went on to become a teacher who influenced my life. Honeysuckles were H. Keller’s favorite flower so they seemed an appropriate reminder of him. These are displayed individually in a Belgium style.
Jim let Nadi put the bog garden in the OSG. Since it honors a man from the South Carolina Low Country, I guess that makes sense. The Old Soldiers Garden wouldn’t win any awards for design, but it is meaningful to us. Using plants symbolically is interesting. It is like gardening in greater dimensions in the same amount of space.
Sorry about any typing errors. The ZoomText program has been giving me grief. I think the last update went awry. Jim un-installed and reloaded it and things SEEM to be working right now.
Amargia will continue to consist of only three full-timers. The psych evaluation of our potential fourth did not go well. Sociopathic tendencies just don’t jive in a living situation based on interdependence. I do believe gardening therapy can help anti-social people since it gets a person outside of themselves and nurturing other life. It is a first step toward nurturing and caring for other human beings. I wish more hospitals and long-term care facilities could see the value of plant therapy. Mk*

It sounds great, Kay; you must have a lot of land.

There are days when I wish we had less land to steward. It is like how there are many perfectly written short stories where the ideal words are exactly placed, but the perfect novel has never been written. There are just too many words involved to get surgical precision.

I think every gardener dreams of that moment where everything in the garden is just right. With a large garden, that perfection is highly unlikely. Something always needs doing, but we keep striving for that flawless moment.

I don’t know why the others keep gardening. As for me, I’m a true gardening addict. For my type of gardener, it is as much about the journey as the destination. The thing about gardening as therapy is you can never quit therapy. I imagine on the day I give up the ghost, some part of that day will have been spent tending plants. It might only be shakily watering a jade plant on the windowsill in my room at a nursing home, but I’ll still be gardening. Mk**

(Jim) Photo Note: …because among the half finished projects and the weeds, there are scenes like perfect little works of haiku.

Hope you had a wonderful birthday, Carrie.

I did! It was wonderful, family and symphony.

Wow, that garden sounds AMAZing MK.

Happy New Year Carrie, hope you have a wonderful next trip around the sun.

While I am thrilled to bits to have new raised beds and salad bar I'm bristling and (to be honest) sulking a bit about having to plan for wheelchair access, which means having straight, smaller beds and having fewer beds. I detest straight lines, especially in something "natural." Sorry about the mini-rant. The new stuff is beautiful.

Our "salad bar" is the old 7 ft wide wooden gate, whitewashed, with the old gutters mounted as mini beds, for herbs and lettuces. It can be moved to have a northeast exposure or to be in more shade. It's an experiment!

Wow, sorry about the post on #16.

My dr. told me he wanted me to stay off of my leg, hip, for another 6 weeks. So, since I had already paid $250 to rent the electric scooter for a month and that applied to the purchase price, I decided to go ahead and buy it instead of rent it for another $250 plus. So, for the $527 I bought it. I think the scooters are easier to handle than the wheel chairs because I don't have any cartalege left in my shoulders and need power.

Just thought maybe this might be easier for some of you also. Sorry I butted in. Jnette

(Jim) You’re not butting in, Jnette. We are happy to have you on the forum.

Nadine tried using my manual wheelchair when her ankle was hurt and quickly discovered moving around in a w/c isn’t as easy as it appears. My mobility problem is a back injury complicated by arthritis. I leave the foot rest off the manual chair and “walk” while sitting in it when I’m just moving around the house. The arthritis has crept up to the vertebrae between my shoulders. I understand what you mean. I use a Quantum power chair for shopping and outings or, better yet, talk Nadine into doing my shopping.

MK has issues with straight lines also, My Old Soldiers Garden calls for straight lines, but I doubt she will let it go further than that. Straight lines are recommended for visually impaired gardeners, but MK thumbs her nose at that “rule”. Accessibility aside, I think the OSG looks better against the straight lines of a building than it did with a meadow as backdrop. A garden of straight lines seriously looked out of place with untamed land in the background.

I had a rare, highly productive day yesterday. Weeded the entire length of the rose border in the OSG. I think I will under plant the roses with parsley. I read somewhere that will boost the aroma of roses. It will look good even if that is an old wives’ tale.

Photos: 1) Parrot gladiola 2) Something from a wildflower mix. Not identified yet. 3) Daylily 4) Crinum lily 5) Daylily