Each Little World

Lavender in Wisconsin

This garden — located on a main neighborhood artery — is one that we drive by constantly. Over the years the house has changed hands and I no longer can remember when this retaining wall was planted.

Our mild winter, early spring and current hot, dry, sunny weather have made these particular plants very happy. 

Most years there is some overlap in the bloom times of the various yellow succulents and the lavender. But I've only ever noticed them all flower in unison once. It was too spectacular to forget.

Unfortunately we didn't take a picture of that memorable event, thinking it would occur again. So this year I made sure we snapped the luscious lavender.

Though most of the succulents have yet to open, the lavender has never flowered so profusely nor with such intense color. It's a dramatic follow-up to the soft spring scene that's dominated by flowering crabapple trees. 

These are simple and restrained plantings, but they make what could be an imposing and impersonal wall into a neighborhood showcase.

Keep on keepin' on . . .

From the neighborhood couple who always give me a mental boost with their handmade signs:

I go all girly

When Mark and I met, my apartment was clearly the home of an Anglophile: English antiques, chintz, paisley shawls, 19th century British watercolors and lots of blue and white china. You get the picture.

His was all artist angst: black and white woodcut portraits in the German Expressionist style. Over the years we've each come to appreciate the other's taste and developed a style that merges our many interests.

His sisters, however, always felt like he was inhibiting the girly, fancy china, tea party side of my personality. To prove them wrong I pulled out all the stops for a recent tea party we hosted for the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection in the School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison*. Not all the dishes are on the table yet but this gives you a sense of the looks of things. (And no, I did not make all these gorgeous treats).

*HLATC was recently re-named the Center for Integrated Design and combines the textile collection as well as the former Design Gallery and the Ruth Ketterer Harris Library under this title. 

Serene Sunday

Cool and cloudy here, with rain apparently falling around Madison, but missing us again. It would be so pleasant to spend a day indoors while a gentle rain refreshed the garden — and us.

Dan Toberer's big bowl on the deck with Stewartia blossoms.

Serene Saturday

Playing in the tea house

Last Thursday, we hosted the annual High Tea fundraiser for the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection in the School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison. We spent a lot of time in the last month re-arranging our art, objects and textiles to showcase everything to its best effect.

Mark decided that he would hang one of our favorite fiber pieces — a large tsutsugaki boro noren — from the edge of the roof across the front of the teahouse. I bought Mark this Japanese shop sign as a 60th birthday present and it hung on our library wall for a long time; though lately it's been rolled up in acid-free tissue paper and stored under the bed. You can see for yourself that it fits the tea house perfectly and makes a beautiful garden feature look even better.

The next big project is to do the fine carpentry work needed to finish off the interior of the tea house. This is something that Mark is considering hiring a professional woodworker to do; someone who will perhaps let Mark assist him.

Mark is still undecided about how to complete the doors and windows of the tea house, which you can see are currently framed in with plastic sheeting. That part of this long-term project will require some looking, some reading and planning, to say nothing of the actual construction work for those entities. And he needs to deal with the water and electric lines which are marked as "off limits" by two pairs of bamboo pyramids.

But in the meantime, Mark decided to take advantage of this special occasion to get a rough idea of how the interior will look once it is all done. He brought out a few of the objects that will eventually call the tea house home to display them in place — if only briefly. 

Even with no floor matting in place and lots of fine detail work still to be accomplished, I was thrilled at the impact these few furnishings provided. And it certainly gave all our visitors a glimpse of the next stage in the garden's future. 

No cherry pie this summer

For many years my friend Doris and I spent a week of our vacation in Door County each summer. That's the area that's at the tip of Wisconsin's thumb for those of you who live elsewhere. We'd take an art class with Wendell Arneson at Peninsula Art School in the mornings, make art and visit galleries in the afternoons, read in the evenings and eat around the clock. The food is always fabulous in Door County where the specialties are whitefish and cherries. I don't think you can find an eatery up there that doesn't have dishes with cherries — from muffins to french toast to cherry pie a la mode — on its menu. Our last stop each summer, as we drove out of Fish Creek, was always Ray's Cherry Hut where we picked up fresh and frozen cherries to take home for our own pie baking exploits.

This year's unsettling weather — too hot too early, followed by frosts and dry conditions — has had a nasty effect on Wisconsin's traditional crops. I've already stocked up on maple syrup because of this year's truncated maple season and now it's bad news about the cherries. The Associated Press reports this story about what the change in the weather means for Wisconsin this year:

"Door County in northeastern Wisconsin ranks among the country's top cherry producers. But this year's crop could be the pits.

Bob Lautenbach of Lautenbach's Orchard in Fish Creek says this is the worst year he's ever experienced, and his family has grown cherries all his life.

He tells WLUK-TV the 2012 cherry crop in Door County has all but failed. He says the county would normally produce about 8 to 10 million pounds, but this year the prediction is about half a million pounds.

That's because the warm March woke up the trees early, but several nights of frost then killed off the buds.

Door County growers say they'll try to keep their crop in the county this year, for tourists and locals to enjoy. Prices will be higher."

According to the Wisconsin Cherry Growers' website, Michigan — which produces 80 percent of the total supply of tart cherries — experienced much of the same early season damage to flower buds. Reports indicate that "many commercial Michigan growers have experienced severe and devastating losses" as well.

. . .

Yesterday in Madison, the high was 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34.44 Celsius) and today 95 is predicted. We've only had a trace of rain in a month where we typically get about three inches. Not exactly the lovely June days that were the norm for southern Wisconsin. The question we all want answered is how much of this is an aberration and how much is a taste of things to come?

Thanks to Jim Rowen for the heads up on this climate change story.

Peony postscript

Given the interest in sustainable agriculture, it was only a matter of time before someone applied the concept to flowers. Now there's a book and a blog on the topic: "The 50 Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local and Sustainable Flowers." The blog is fascinating because it really makes you think about where flowers come from and who grows them. The site has a link to the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers where you can find the growers in your state and area if you want to join this particular "buy local" movement. There were 14 entries for Wisconsin.

But the most interesting tidbit I discovered was the video, "Empowered Peony Picking," featuring peony grower Joan Thorndike. As a professional peony grower, it's critical for Thorndike to pick peonies at the perfect moment to send them off to her floral customers. She picks them when the buds feel like marshmallows rather than marbles, which she talks about in the video. Thorndike said you can also cut peonies at the marshmallow bud stage and hold them in the fridge — wrapped in paper — for a month. Then you bring them out, recut the stems, put them in water and voila: you've got peonies.

So I tried it and it worked! Since this was my first attempt, I have a few kinks to work out but I will definitely do this again next year. I think my buds were not quite marshmallow-y enough when I cut them, so the flowers are smaller than they would be when blooming on the bush. But I cut these flowers on May 17th and they bloomed this afternoon, June 17th — literally after a month in the crisper bin in my refrigerator. 

I took them out on June 13th and by the afternoon of the 14th — when I hoped they would be ready for a party — they weren't doing much of anything. To get them out of the way during the party, I stuck them in the cool, dark garage and forgot all about them. Brought them back into the light and heat last night (the 16th) and recut them. This morning they were clearly opening and I had peonies by mid-afternoon. Too cool! 

Foliage Follow-up: 6.16.2012

A little corner of the front garden next to the path around the house to the pond garden, offers a nice foliage vignette. Less than normal rainfall and much higher than normal temps have not bothered these plants one bit.

Carex 'Beatlemania,' Geranium, Hakonechloa  and a couple of different Epimediums. To see what kind of foliage is starring in other gardens, visit Pam at Digging who hosts this montly celebration of foliage.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: 06.15.12

We're so far ahead of schedule this year that the usual array of June blossoms have mostly come and gone. I saw our neighbor and a friend of hers out in our garden the other day, ooohing and aaahing over this combination of perennial foxgloves and assorted foliage plants. "You should really take a picture of this, it's so beautiful," they told me. So here it is in honor of Bloom Day.

To see what's blooming in other gardens here, there and everywhere, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens who hosts this monthly meme.