Adventures with Indoor Plants: Confessions of a Chronic Underwaterer

People are often surprised at my reluctance to grow houseplants. They see things thriving in the garden and assume that I have a green thumb, that houseplants should flourish under my care. Sadly, here is photographic proof of how misguided that notion is. More sensitive viewers may wish to avert their eyes.This is what I found the other day when I happened to glance over at the Primula I so recently made such a fuss over. The sorry truth is that I forgot to water it. I would love to say that I was shocked that this could have happened, that it was a strange aberration that I would forget to water a plant. I would also love to say that I've written a bestseller and drive a Lamborghini, but I'd be lying. Despite the appearance that the Primula had moved on to a better place, I watered it. Making the most dramatic recovery since William Shatner,the plant revived completely within 24 hours. I'll take full credit for it.

Things have gone more smoothly with the forced bulbs.This Hyacinth is a bulb kit I picked up at the grocery store. It was pretty much a no-brainer and hopefully will be blooming for the 15th. I prefer Hyacinths indoors, as their fragrance is so welcome, and I find they look awkward in the garden.

I potted up these 'Lydia' Tulips last fall and stored them in a cabinet in the garage. Last week they had sprouted and were ready to come inside. Already I can see the buds starting to swell. It won't be long now before there are beautiful Tulip blooms. I wish all indoor plants were this easy.

Chicago Really is the Center of the Universe

2008 Independence Day Parade, Barrington, IL

Here's the proof; not only does the new President of the United States call Chicago home and Garden Bloggers' Spring Fling will be held in Chicago this year, but now comes that venerable British magazine, Gardens Illustrated, with a story about local heroes Barrington's own Citizens for Conservation, a not for profit organization (yes, I'm a member), and their efforts to restore prairies and preserve open spaces. I've posted about their Grigsby Prairie twice when my kids' classes went there for a field trip (see here and here). (The Gardens Illustrated story is in the January 2009 Issue 145, page 72.) As the maestro used to say, "Bravi, tutti!" To put it more prosaically, you guys really rock!


Moreover, Gardens Illustrated is sponsoring a trip this September to Chicago, including a tour of the Lurie Garden, the Chicago Botanic Garden and the Morton Arboretum, and a walk around Oak Park, some of the same places we'll be touring with Spring Fling. Oh, yeah, they're also going to go to the Missouri Botanic Garden.

So even though it's snowing again and there is already over two feet of the stuff on the ground right now, I just can't imagine living anywhere else. (Except maybe in Italy.) Don't you wish you lived here too?

Will the Real Tiarella 'Iron Butterfly' Please Stand Up

Shady Gardener, at Does Everything Grow Better in My Neighbor's Yard?, recently posted photos of her Tiarellas here. One of them is a plant I also have, 'Iron Butterfly.'I apologize for the quality of the next photo (from a year ago), but I wanted to show the plant as it appears in winter, and I can't go out and take a shot right now, as there are a couple of feet of snow on top of it. As is obvious on comparison, her plant looks much different from mine. The leaves of hers are much narrower and have a more distinct marking at blooming time. So, who has the real deal? I am inclined to think that Shady does, as I have an uncanny knack for collecting mis-named plants, such as the Clematis 'Ramona,' which turned out to be Clematis 'Henryi,' Lobelia x gerardii 'Vedrariensis', which turned out to be Lobelia siphilitica, and my mystery Phlox maculata that was supposed to be 'Rosalinde.' What other misnamed plants are lurking in my garden, I wonder? (Is my Cornus kousa really 'Beni Fuji'?) How can I trust that what I think I'm planting is the real thing? What is a gardener to do?

The Deserted Island Plant List

This question was posed originally back in August by James of Blogging from Blackpitts and has been revived by Shirl from Shirl's Gardenwatch: if you were stranded on a deserted island without access to mailorder nurseries, what three plants (James asked for six) would you take with you. It's taken me this long to tackle this question because, as with signature plants, I just can't decide. (Normally I am not an indecisive person.) My island would have to be in a temperate climate, because I'm just not familiar with tropical plants.
And now, without further procrastination, The Plants:
The autumn blooming Actaea 'Black Negligee' or 'James Compton'

interchangeable plants, with outstanding dark foliage all season until it turns orange in autumn, for its amazing, strong scent of Grape Neehi pop (soda for all you non-Midwesterners). The scent fills the whole garden.

Phlox paniculata 'Nicky'

Not only does it bloom all summer until hard frost, it changes color (hey, with only a limited number of plants, I need all the variety I can get). It's also a popular feeding station for butterflies and those funky hummingbird-looking moths. I bet if there were any hummingbirds flying past the island, they'd visit 'Nicky' too.

Finally, I'd need something for spring bloom, but this tree does so much more, Magnolia stellata.Not only are the flowers large and beautiful, but their tantalizing scent wafts on the breeze. The foliage is an attractive green all summer, late in summer the seed pods burst, revealing bright orange pods, and in autumn, the leaves turn golden. But the real value of this plant is in winter, when the beautiful, smooth gray bark and silky buds take center stage. Whenever it's warm enough to remove my mittens, I stroke the buds. They are almost better than the flowers. (Clearly, somebody has had too much of winter.)

What three plants would you choose?

I've Got a Head Full of Plants...

what's your excuse?

The temperature finally cracked the 0F mark, and I left the house after nearly 72 hours of self-confinement. I'm sure it will come as no surprise that my first outing was to the garden center to buy houseplants on sale. Above is my new mini-terrarium and very first African Violet. I've had this head hanging around the basement for years while I waited for inspiration to strike me on how best to use it. I'm satisfied with the symbolic, aesthetic, and practical aspects of this arrangement. Hopefully, the terrarium effect will prolong the life of the plant, or least give it a good head start.

January Bloom Day - Stir Crazy Edition

Inspired by Elizabeth Lawrence's statement “[w]e can have flowers nearly every month of the year,” Carol, of May Dreams Gardens, started Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. It is abundantly clear to me that Lawrence never spent a winter in Chicago (other than during an El Nino winter). Even if I had something in bloom outside, there's no way I could find it under the couple of feet of snow on the ground. Even if I could, I wouldn't venture outside to look for it right now, with windchills in the dangerous range, with exposed skin freezing within 10 minutes. Right now it's -12F/-24C with a forecasted high of -2F/-19C, school has been cancelled because of the cold for the first time since my Fourth-grader has been in school, and it's supposed to get down to -16F/-26C by tomorrow morning. So what's a snowbound gardener to do? I bought a plant in bloom.

Here it is, a Primula obconica:
It has soft lavender flowers with a yellow eye.
Some of the flowers are clustered a bit too closely together.Here it is with a vase handpainted by my mom. She's quite talented, especially when you consider that she's never taken an art class. Too bad she doesn't have time to do ceramics anymore.
In keeping with the plant theme, here's a photo of a cactus.
The cactus is made of glass, and in the background is, surprise, the Primula.

And now, for a slight change of pace, here is a photo I like to call "Still Life with Italian Carnevale Mask."

For something not entirely different, here is a photo of a Chinese Foo Dog that's also an incense burner.


I must beg your indulgence for all these photos of a single plant. I plead the insanity defense. A Looney Tunes cartoon said it best (as sung by Bugs Bunny):

I'm going cuckoo, woo-woo!

Here comes the choo-choo, woo-woo!

I'm so gooney Looney Tuney, touched in the head

Please pass the ketchup, I think I'll go to bed

I am the screwball, woo-woo

Throw me the eightball, woo-woo

Once I knew a thing or two, but now I'm a buckaroo

Hinky-dinky parlais....voo-hoo!

It's been snowing too much and it's been much too cold. I think the technical term for my malady is "Cabin Fever." Please don't judge me too harshly. Remember, I haven't had any flowers to photograph since November.

Adventures in Overwintering Tender Plants

I've got such a bad case of the winter blahs. All this snow has finally gotten to me, with more in the forecast and the "B" word being used for the first time this season. (It's "blizzard.") My potted bulbs that I'm forcing are nowhere near ready to bloom. I've been trapped in a world of gray, black and white, frozen in snow and ice. And then, a package arrived in the mail. For entering the "Why I Garden" contest on Blotanical, I won a copy of the book "Bulbs in the Basement, Geraniums on the Windowsill" (thanks, Stuart!), a book for people such as myself, whose success in overwintering plants is limited to a couple of cacti. How I wish I had this book a couple of months ago, when I embarked on my overwintering adventure. I started with such enthusiasm with a large gift Pelargonium, a couple of pots of Alocasia, a Dahlia tuber and two Ipomoea cuttings.(The Alocasias have already bit the dust.)

"Bulbs in the Basement" provides information specifically on many tender plants. Although Alocasia isn't one of them, the directions in the general information section would have told me to store the tubers rather than try to keep them growing in potting soil. It also lists the various pests and diseases that afflict indoor plants and advises how to deal with them.
At least I received the book in time to save the Ipomoea cuttings from death by overwatering. (I was trying to compensate for my underwatering tendencies, and they were starting to droop.) The book also validated my instinct to put the Pelargonium next to the patio door to keep it cool. With a forecasted low of -9F for later in the week, I'm thinking maybe I should move the Pelargonium until this Arctic blast has moved on.
I hope all of you are doing better than I am. Stay warm, stay sunny, and may you have abundant blooms.

The Great Earwig Invasion of Aught Eight*

Eagerly awaiting catalog season, I jumped the gun and immersed myself in the Plant Delights online catalog. While drooling over various things, I discovered that what I thought was Dahlia 'Bishop of Canterbury' was actually 'Bishop of Leicester.'

Oops! That got me thinking about how I didn't get to enjoy any unspoiled Dahlia flowers until August because of the earwigs.

With all the rain we had, 2008 was a banner year for them. Earwigs like damp, they don't like drought. They also like Dahlias, Daylilies, Clematis,

Campanulas, and Coneflowers. I put out traps made from dishwashing liquid and soy sauce, but there were so many that the traps didn't solve the problem.


(For maximum effect, imagine the following said in my fake old lady voice.) Course, when I was a young 'un, we didn't have no earwigs. Never heard of 'em, nor never even seen one! It was when I was living with my parents on the north end of Arlington Heights, in the mid-80s it was, when my sister started complaining about these bugs at her new house near downtown Arlington Heights. Pretty soon, they started showing up in my mom's garden. Ugly things they were, with roach like bodies ending in nasty pinchers. Heck, we didn't even have Japanese Beetles then. Daggum globalization, that's what's done it! Don't even get me started on them infernal German hornets.


(I learned how to make my photos larger from this post on Robin's Nesting Place.)

*I'm one of those people who enjoys saying "aught." I envision myself when I'm old telling the children (or hopefully grandchildren) in an accent like the Pepperidge Farm guy, "I remember back in aught eight, the earwigs were so fierce they ate right through trees!"

Gardeners & Guns?

Today I read about a magazine called Garden & Gun, which claims to speak to the "Soul of the South." At first, the title struck me as an oxymoron. I just couldn't imagine any of the gardeners I know picking up a gun to shoot innocent animals. And then I thought of two reasons why a gardener would pick up a gun: