A magical tunnel of roses

Okay.  You're going to have to do some work here.  Please put your hand over the blindingly bad camerawork in the upper left of the photograph.  Now you are able to make out the beauty of this rose-covered pathway.

Once again, we're in Dan Cleveland's cottage garden on a very bright day in May.  It was probably high noon when I took this picture, which never works.  Add in that this is my old camera which is not as forgiving as my new one, the latter actually getting quite elderly now.  

This tunnel of roses runs along the side of Dan's house.  I went from his sunny front yard, where foxgloves, poppies and roses grew in great profusion and walked under a wooden arch into this secret passageway.  The fragrance.  The cool feel of enclosure.  It was magical.

You can make out the bent rebar that is used as a frame for the climbers.   On the right side is Dan's house.  The lot is narrow and long, so his neighbor's yard is not far away on the left, but is screened by a line of narrow conifers.  

Often, we don't think of the area on the side of a house as a potential garden.  But here's a great example of what can be done with a space that otherwise might not hold much charm.  And, for those of us who don't have the time or wherewithal to tackle the front or back yard on a big scale, a narrow strip such as this might be a good place to start.  

A magical tunnel of roses

Okay.  You're going to have to do some work here.  Please put your hand over the blindingly bad camerawork in the upper left of the photograph.  Now you are able to make out the beauty of this rose-covered pathway.

Once again, we're in Dan Cleveland's cottage garden on a very bright day in May.  It was probably high noon when I took this picture, which never works.  Add in that this is my old camera which is not as forgiving as my new one, the latter actually getting quite elderly now.  

This tunnel of roses runs along the side of Dan's house.  I went from his sunny front yard, where foxgloves, poppies and roses grew in great profusion and walked under a wooden arch into this secret passageway.  The fragrance.  The cool feel of enclosure.  It was magical.

You can make out the bent rebar that is used as a frame for the climbers.   On the right side is Dan's house.  The lot is narrow and long, so his neighbor's yard is not far away on the left, but is screened by a line of narrow conifers.  

Often, we don't think of the area on the side of a house as a potential garden.  But here's a great example of what can be done with a space that otherwise might not hold much charm.  And, for those of us who don't have the time or wherewithal to tackle the front or back yard on a big scale, a narrow strip such as this might be a good place to start.  

Dan's ever changing cottage garden

One of these days I'd like to see a study (there probably are many out there that I don't know about) on what makes a person choose a certain garden style.  I know a lot depends on the lay of the land, what type of house you have, sun and shade exposure and, of course, personal preferences.  What pleases one person may not appeal to another.

This photograph was taken on a hot, sunny day in May 2005 in garden designer Dan Cleveland's cottage garden.  Dan grew up in north Georgia and was, as many of us were, influenced by his grandparents' love for growing vegetables and flowers.  There's a chicken coop at the back of the lot, so you have a feel of the country in a city neighborhood. When you walk up the steps and into the back yard, you know this is the right style for this place in every way.

Dan has incorporated not only the vernacular aesthetic of the South, but has included English, Italian and French influences, using plants that do well in Georgia.  That's sort of the key to this style thing.  That is, you can fix your garden to please your eye, you just have to do it with what works in your area.  

In this scene, roses clamber up a metal tuteur.  Digitalis 'Pam's Choice' intermingles with shrub roses and yellow Iris pseudacorus.  The garden is intersected with gravel walkways that are lined with boxwoods and filled in with ferns and hosta.  I have more photographs to share later, showing other areas of the garden that are just as entrancing.  

Recently, Dan built an addition to the house.  A friend and fellow designer said the garden has changed, but that one thing is consistent.  It's still a cottage garden, chock full of wonderful plants,  and it's spectacular on any given day of the year.

   

Dan's ever changing cottage garden

One of these days I'd like to see a study (there probably are many out there that I don't know about) on what makes a person choose a certain garden style.  I know a lot depends on the lay of the land, what type of house you have, sun and shade exposure and, of course, personal preferences.  What pleases one person may not appeal to another.

This photograph was taken on a hot, sunny day in May 2005 in garden designer Dan Cleveland's cottage garden.  Dan grew up in north Georgia and was, as many of us were, influenced by his grandparents' love for growing vegetables and flowers.  There's a chicken coop at the back of the lot, so you have a feel of the country in a city neighborhood. When you walk up the steps and into the back yard, you know this is the right style for this place in every way.

Dan has incorporated not only the vernacular aesthetic of the South, but has included English, Italian and French influences, using plants that do well in Georgia.  That's sort of the key to this style thing.  That is, you can fix your garden to please your eye, you just have to do it with what works in your area.  

In this scene, roses clamber up a metal tuteur.  Digitalis 'Pam's Choice' intermingles with shrub roses and yellow Iris pseudacorus.  The garden is intersected with gravel walkways that are lined with boxwoods and filled in with ferns and hosta.  I have more photographs to share later, showing other areas of the garden that are just as entrancing.  

Recently, Dan built an addition to the house.  A friend and fellow designer said the garden has changed, but that one thing is consistent.  It's still a cottage garden, chock full of wonderful plants,  and it's spectacular on any given day of the year.

   

Creating 'Harmony' in the garden

Yesterday, trying to beat the rain (and now they're saying snow for tonight!), I finally got Hydrangea quercifolia 'Harmony' into the ground.  This is an oakleaf hydrangea I've wanted for years, ever since I saw a huge specimen loaded with big, showy blooms at the garden of the late Catherine Sims in Homewood, Alabama.

Like Hydrangea quercifolia 'Snowflake', this unusual oakleaf hydrangea was introduced by Birmingham area nurserymen Eddie Aldridge and his father. The story goes that in the 1920's, their friend Joe McDaniel's father  brought a plant from the wild to the McDaniel plot in the cemetery at Harmony Church near Rainbow City in northeastern Alabama.  This oakleaf produced very tight double flowers that resembled the blooms of large flowering forms of the peegee hydrangea. 

When the Aldridge father and son went to the church in 1969, the plant was in bad shape.  It had been very dry, and the Aldridges weren't very hopeful.  They were able to take three cuttings, and miraculously, all three rooted.

'Harmony' is hard to find and has not caught on like other forms of oakleaf hydrangea.  This is probably because each bloom can weigh upwards of a pound and pulls the entire branch down to the ground.  This was not the case in Mrs. Sims' garden.  Apparently, if the shrub can reach a certain size, it can support the weight of the blooms.  When we filmed the plant for A Gardener's Diary, the editor kept saying the flower looked like a giant poodle's head.  I've read where it's called sheep's head hydrangea, which I can fully understand.

In the above photograph, another Alabama gardener, Jim Scott, solved the problem of the heavy blooms by providing a nice boulder for support.  The flowers are almost at eye level, and you can reach out and pick up the blooms to see how dense they are.

I just went out and checked on my plant.  It was in a one gallon container, so it's not very big, but the foliage is this jewel-like ruby red, shading to the deepest burgundy.  I'm not completely satisfied with where I have it planted.  I think I'll need more morning sun, but I can lop off a magnolia branch that will be shading it in the spring.  And, I have no way to do like Jim Scott and bring in massive boulders to prop it up.  But we'll see next May when I hope I'll have a couple of these big, showy blooms to contend with.

Creating 'Harmony' in the garden

Yesterday, trying to beat the rain (and now they're saying snow for tonight!), I finally got Hydrangea quercifolia 'Harmony' into the ground.  This is an oakleaf hydrangea I've wanted for years, ever since I saw a huge specimen loaded with big, showy blooms at the garden of the late Catherine Sims in Homewood, Alabama.

Like Hydrangea quercifolia 'Snowflake', this unusual oakleaf hydrangea was introduced by Birmingham area nurserymen Eddie Aldridge and his father. The story goes that in the 1920's, their friend Joe McDaniel's father  brought a plant from the wild to the McDaniel plot in the cemetery at Harmony Church near Rainbow City in northeastern Alabama.  This oakleaf produced very tight double flowers that resembled the blooms of large flowering forms of the peegee hydrangea. 

When the Aldridge father and son went to the church in 1969, the plant was in bad shape.  It had been very dry, and the Aldridges weren't very hopeful.  They were able to take three cuttings, and miraculously, all three rooted.

'Harmony' is hard to find and has not caught on like other forms of oakleaf hydrangea.  This is probably because each bloom can weigh upwards of a pound and pulls the entire branch down to the ground.  This was not the case in Mrs. Sims' garden.  Apparently, if the shrub can reach a certain size, it can support the weight of the blooms.  When we filmed the plant for A Gardener's Diary, the editor kept saying the flower looked like a giant poodle's head.  I've read where it's called sheep's head hydrangea, which I can fully understand.

In the above photograph, another Alabama gardener, Jim Scott, solved the problem of the heavy blooms by providing a nice boulder for support.  The flowers are almost at eye level, and you can reach out and pick up the blooms to see how dense they are.

I just went out and checked on my plant.  It was in a one gallon container, so it's not very big, but the foliage is this jewel-like ruby red, shading to the deepest burgundy.  I'm not completely satisfied with where I have it planted.  I think I'll need more morning sun, but I can lop off a magnolia branch that will be shading it in the spring.  And, I have no way to do like Jim Scott and bring in massive boulders to prop it up.  But we'll see next May when I hope I'll have a couple of these big, showy blooms to contend with.

Artichokes to amaryllis

The Sunday after Thanksgiving is always an awkward time at our church.  Often, as it is this year, it's the first Sunday of Advent, yet the calendar still says November, and leftovers from Thursday are still in the refrigerator.  Somehow, it feels like you should cling to Thanksgiving a little longer.

That's the mistake a friend and I made.  This year, we did something on Tuesday in hopes that it will last until Sunday (usually the arrangements are done Saturday morning). The head of the Flower Guild suggested we use a giant cornucopia already on hand.  This seemed like a good idea to save money, because we could use leftover pumpkins and decorative squash.  The idea was for things to come spilling out of the large round end onto the altar.  

It turned out to be hard to work with, as it had to be propped up, and it was difficult to cover the mechanics.  We didn't have enough pumpkins and fruit and ended up using bittersweet and sticks and leaves that are sure to be shriveled by Sunday. At one point, I was ready to kick the whole thing over.  It looked like a giant bird's nest gone wrong.

Anyway, we finally let it go, just because there was nothing else to be done.  I was not pleased because putting up a cornucopia to be viewed after Thanksgiving just didn't seem right.  I was even more in agony when I came home and was looking through photographs and saw the above arrangement, done a couple of years ago by Benjie Jones and Peggy Witt of our Flower Guild.  

This beautiful combination would have been perfect for this in-between Sunday.  The artichokes and green and red apples (can you spot them? There may be a pomegranate in there, too) echo back to Thanksgiving, while the amaryllis takes you forward to Advent.  

I have to say that this is one of my favorites of all the arrangements our Flower Guild has ever done.  The texture is so rich, with hydrangeas and roses mixed with lilies.  The rose hips, which are available this time of year, translate as berries and add yet another element to this stunning composition.  I just wish this very arrangement could somehow magically appear on the altar this Sunday.  It would be perfect for the changing seasons.

Artichokes to amaryllis

The Sunday after Thanksgiving is always an awkward time at our church.  Often, as it is this year, it's the first Sunday of Advent, yet the calendar still says November, and leftovers from Thursday are still in the refrigerator.  Somehow, it feels like you should cling to Thanksgiving a little longer.

That's the mistake a friend and I made.  This year, we did something on Tuesday in hopes that it will last until Sunday (usually the arrangements are done Saturday morning). The head of the Flower Guild suggested we use a giant cornucopia already on hand.  This seemed like a good idea to save money, because we could use leftover pumpkins and decorative squash.  The idea was for things to come spilling out of the large round end onto the altar.  

It turned out to be hard to work with, as it had to be propped up, and it was difficult to cover the mechanics.  We didn't have enough pumpkins and fruit and ended up using bittersweet and sticks and leaves that are sure to be shriveled by Sunday. At one point, I was ready to kick the whole thing over.  It looked like a giant bird's nest gone wrong.

Anyway, we finally let it go, just because there was nothing else to be done.  I was not pleased because putting up a cornucopia to be viewed after Thanksgiving just didn't seem right.  I was even more in agony when I came home and was looking through photographs and saw the above arrangement, done a couple of years ago by Benjie Jones and Peggy Witt of our Flower Guild.  

This beautiful combination would have been perfect for this in-between Sunday.  The artichokes and green and red apples (can you spot them? There may be a pomegranate in there, too) echo back to Thanksgiving, while the amaryllis takes you forward to Advent.  

I have to say that this is one of my favorites of all the arrangements our Flower Guild has ever done.  The texture is so rich, with hydrangeas and roses mixed with lilies.  The rose hips, which are available this time of year, translate as berries and add yet another element to this stunning composition.  I just wish this very arrangement could somehow magically appear on the altar this Sunday.  It would be perfect for the changing seasons.

Mama's golden horn-of-plenty

In the 1950's, in our little town, "Miss" Sally Hutson (she was married to Mr. Hut Hutson; that was the way we addressed anyone older) was the person with the creative talent in the ladies' garden club.   At holidays, the members made whatever Miss Sally was teaching that year.  Usually, it involved gold spray, although there was one year when my mother followed Miss Sally's latest trend resulting in a white flocked tree with shiny pink ornaments.  A contraption made from white coat hangers and matching pink balls hung from our living room ceiling.  No one bothered to take it down until March.

The twin cornucopias Mother put on the table every year at Thanksgiving were made at garden club.  She pulled them out at Thanksgiving, with their gold spray and "fruit" stuck in a dry piece of light green foam.  There were plastic green grapes, miniature pumpkins the size and color of tangerines, some yellow squash type fruit that matched nothing in nature, a bunch of impossibly small carrots and tiny pears.  The "greenery" had berries that faintly resembled deep orange pyracantha.

As fake as they were, there was something endearing about them.  I could just imagine Miss Sally providing all the supplies to make the Thanksgiving centerpiece. Mother never said anything about the two gold basket weave horns, but they would appear each year in the middle of the dining room table, facing out from each other.

At my house, I use the cornucopias on the mantel in the dining room.  I let the green grapes stay, but I add things from nature - whatever I have on hand at the time.  In late October, I pick up the round orange fruit that falls from the lethally thorny hardy orange, Poncirus trifoliata.  I also use nandina berries, which I try to catch before they turn red.  If I have dried okra from the summer, I throw that in.  My yard is full of beech trees, so I'm usually able to cut some foliage when it still has green and orange (incredibly beautiful), although overnight, it turns to brown and shrivels.  Then, I use whatever fruit I have, usually apples, pears and pomegranates.  I've even used sweet potatoes, green tomatoes and jalapenos from the garden and hickory nuts and buckeyes I've picked off the ground. 

At the end, I add bittersweet (I used to risk my life to cut branches from a nearby bridge, but I've discovered some in a ditch along the driveway), which gives the whole composition a wild look.  If there's a chinaberry tree I can reach at the farm, I'll put a cluster of the yellow berries to cover the fake pyracantha.

Every year is different.  Even though I like to add everything natural, I don't mind if those funky little carrots peek out from the opening.  And, there's a lemon that looks real, so I let that stay.  This year I have two little cantaloupes that never made it to maturity.  I picked them up in the garden at the farm after everything froze.  They're a little soft, but so far they're still intact.  

I wonder what Miss Sally would say.  I bet these days she would have real fruit and nuts for the garden club members to choose from.  Most likely, she wouldn't use gold spray, but somehow, that's the charm of these two horn-shaped baskets - treasures that have seen many happy Thanksgivings.

Mama's golden horn-of-plenty

In the 1950's, in our little town, "Miss" Sally Hutson (she was married to Mr. Hut Hutson; that was the way we addressed anyone older) was the person with the creative talent in the ladies' garden club.   At holidays, the members made whatever Miss Sally was teaching that year.  Usually, it involved gold spray, although there was one year when my mother followed Miss Sally's latest trend resulting in a white flocked tree with shiny pink ornaments.  A contraption made from white coat hangers and matching pink balls hung from our living room ceiling.  No one bothered to take it down until March.

The twin cornucopias Mother put on the table every year at Thanksgiving were made at garden club.  She pulled them out at Thanksgiving, with their gold spray and "fruit" stuck in a dry piece of light green foam.  There were plastic green grapes, miniature pumpkins the size and color of tangerines, some yellow squash type fruit that matched nothing in nature, a bunch of impossibly small carrots and tiny pears.  The "greenery" had berries that faintly resembled deep orange pyracantha.

As fake as they were, there was something endearing about them.  I could just imagine Miss Sally providing all the supplies to make the Thanksgiving centerpiece. Mother never said anything about the two gold basket weave horns, but they would appear each year in the middle of the dining room table, facing out from each other.

At my house, I use the cornucopias on the mantel in the dining room.  I let the green grapes stay, but I add things from nature - whatever I have on hand at the time.  In late October, I pick up the round orange fruit that falls from the lethally thorny hardy orange, Poncirus trifoliata.  I also use nandina berries, which I try to catch before they turn red.  If I have dried okra from the summer, I throw that in.  My yard is full of beech trees, so I'm usually able to cut some foliage when it still has green and orange (incredibly beautiful), although overnight, it turns to brown and shrivels.  Then, I use whatever fruit I have, usually apples, pears and pomegranates.  I've even used sweet potatoes, green tomatoes and jalapenos from the garden and hickory nuts and buckeyes I've picked off the ground. 

At the end, I add bittersweet (I used to risk my life to cut branches from a nearby bridge, but I've discovered some in a ditch along the driveway), which gives the whole composition a wild look.  If there's a chinaberry tree I can reach at the farm, I'll put a cluster of the yellow berries to cover the fake pyracantha.

Every year is different.  Even though I like to add everything natural, I don't mind if those funky little carrots peek out from the opening.  And, there's a lemon that looks real, so I let that stay.  This year I have two little cantaloupes that never made it to maturity.  I picked them up in the garden at the farm after everything froze.  They're a little soft, but so far they're still intact.  

I wonder what Miss Sally would say.  I bet these days she would have real fruit and nuts for the garden club members to choose from.  Most likely, she wouldn't use gold spray, but somehow, that's the charm of these two horn-shaped baskets - treasures that have seen many happy Thanksgivings.

A last look at fall color

The leaves are falling fast now, with just some of the Japanese maples and oaks holding on.  And the beeches - they've already turned a dark tan color.  Later, towards spring, the latter will bleach out and take on a silvery hue.

But for now, there's sort of a last gasp before Thanksgiving.  This is, once again, Bill Hudgins' garden in Atlanta.  I talked to Bill recently, but never got over to make any photos this year.  He said the trees were turning at different times, not like last year when so many of his Japanese maples were in their full glory all at once.

Earlier in the fall - maybe it was even in late summer - I received a call from a national garden magazine. They asked me to send pictures of Bill's garden, and I did.  They called back to say they definitely wanted to do a photo shoot in his garden, that they would contact Bill.

It never happened.  I guess they just never got around to it.  I still have several photographs of Bill's garden in fall I haven't posted, so I'll save them for next year. I definitely want to show what his garden looks like in spring.  He's going to be on tour in May when all the hostas and ferns are out fresh, and many of the Japanese maples will still be in their spring color.  That's when all the textures he's put together are at their best.

 I just love the above scene that shows one of the many paths that crisscross Bill's garden.  As gorgeous as those trees are (check out the finely cut yellow leaves in the upper foreground - amazing), they look all the better because of all the evergreens.  The stone and gravel and especially the beautiful bark all add to the composition.  I can't think of a better photograph to illustrate this beautiful season that seems to have, once again, passed so quickly.

A last look at fall color

The leaves are falling fast now, with just some of the Japanese maples and oaks holding on.  And the beeches - they've already turned a dark tan color.  Later, towards spring, the latter will bleach out and take on a silvery hue.

But for now, there's sort of a last gasp before Thanksgiving.  This is, once again, Bill Hudgins' garden in Atlanta.  I talked to Bill recently, but never got over to make any photos this year.  He said the trees were turning at different times, not like last year when so many of his Japanese maples were in their full glory all at once.

Earlier in the fall - maybe it was even in late summer - I received a call from a national garden magazine. They asked me to send pictures of Bill's garden, and I did.  They called back to say they definitely wanted to do a photo shoot in his garden, that they would contact Bill.

It never happened.  I guess they just never got around to it.  I still have several photographs of Bill's garden in fall I haven't posted, so I'll save them for next year. I definitely want to show what his garden looks like in spring.  He's going to be on tour in May when all the hostas and ferns are out fresh, and many of the Japanese maples will still be in their spring color.  That's when all the textures he's put together are at their best.

 I just love the above scene that shows one of the many paths that crisscross Bill's garden.  As gorgeous as those trees are (check out the finely cut yellow leaves in the upper foreground - amazing), they look all the better because of all the evergreens.  The stone and gravel and especially the beautiful bark all add to the composition.  I can't think of a better photograph to illustrate this beautiful season that seems to have, once again, passed so quickly.

Memories from a mixed-up still life

I like to stick to photographs of plants and gardens, but I kept coming across this picture I'd put on my blog list.  I'm not sure exactly why I included it among landscape features and close-ups of flowers and such.  It was a haphazard, unplanned arrangement - it must have caught my eye one day - and I snapped a picture.  Upon examination, it brings back a lot of unconnected memories.

First, see those tiles on the backsplash?  I bought them in a little town in France sometime in the early 80's.  They came with either green or blue hearts in the corners.  I'm a regretter, and the moment I had them packed up so I could carry them on the plane (remember those days?  I also brought an iron rooster weather vane home on the same flight), I wished I had bought the ones with the green.  Sorry to say, I haven't ever let that go.  I did go back to the little town (name escapes me now) in 2002 to see if they still had the green ones.  They didn't.  Nor did they have anything similar in any color.

The trip to Provence in 2002 yielded the peeling still life painting that is propped up in back of this little kitchen scene.  I was staying with friends, but I rented my own car and drove over to a tiny village where I found a very scrubby market, just as it was closing.  I bought some mustard colored pottery pieces and this painting.  It's not very good, but it goes with my kitchen.

The market basket belonged to my mother and daddy.  They were great vegetable gardeners, so that basket was filled many, many times over the years.  And, the canned soup mix and tomatoes were put up by my mother.  The date on the piece of masking tape on the tomatoes:  2001.  My mother was born in 1910, so that meant she was 91 when she did that canning.  It also meant that Daddy and Mother had grown the Silver Queen corn, the baby limas, the okra and the tomatoes.

The bronze fig was made by Frank Fleming, a well-known sculptor from Alabama.  His large animal figures sit in a fountain at Five Points South in Birmingham.  Frank was a subject for an episode of A Gardener's Diary.  He took objects from nature and used the forms for sculptures and pieces of furniture.  His most famous works, though, are of whimsical animals.

The yellow bowl I picked up at Scott's Antique Market in Atlanta, and the vase, I'm embarrassed to say, is one of the few survivors of my attempts to become a potter.  That effort back in the early 1970's mercifully didn't last long, as I never could get anything balanced on the wheel.  If only I'd spent the pottery lesson money on some nice pieces from a talented artist.  The bouquet consists of Sedum 'Autumn Joy', and a bunch of weeds and grasses from my late parents' farm.

Last but not least are those buckeyes in the yellow bowl.  My daddy believed that buckeyes brought good luck.  Every September he would go down to this little lane on the farm where a 20 foot tall buckeye tree grew.  He would collect the shiny dark seeds that came out of a shell that sort of looked like a cross between a kiwi and a walnut.  He kept them in his pockets, and every time he would meet anyone new, he'd give them a buckeye.  He'd done it for years, and almost everyone in our small town had one of his buckeyes.

His health began to fail in 2002, and he died in September 2004.  The Saturday before he died, I took him down to see if we could find any buckeyes.  I gasped in horror to see that his buckeye tree had fallen over and was dead.  He was so disappointed, and I was just sick.  We started riding further down the lane, and I happened to look over and see a spindly little tree with what looked like khaki colored eggs hanging from the branches.  Buckeyes!

I pulled over and rolled down Daddy's window, and he reached up and pulled off the capsules, which were beginning to open.  We took them back to the house, and he had a great time pulling out the shiny brown seeds, some almost as large as a ping-pong ball.

At his funeral the next week, we passed out buckeyes.  My niece and I had gone back down there to find  dozens more small trees laden with fruit.  I wrote a tear jerker eulogy about how the big tree was a metaphor for life.  It had fallen over and had its day, but a lot of fresh new trees had come along to take its place.

To end on a cheerier note, I'm glad to say the buckeye trees are still producing, and I have a great time riding around the farm and picking weeds for arrangements at Thanksgiving and cedar and sweet gum branches for Christmas.  All that stuff is still there on my kitchen counter, in addition to the six jars of okra pickles I put up this year.  I'd like to try my hand at some soup mix.  We grew okra, tomatoes and Silver Queen corn this year.  Next year, we'll have to grow some lima beans.  Then, all you have to do on a winter day is cut up some onions and potatoes, boil a soup bone, and you have yet another good memory.

Memories from a mixed-up still life

I like to stick to photographs of plants and gardens, but I kept coming across this picture I'd put on my blog list.  I'm not sure exactly why I included it among landscape features and close-ups of flowers and such.  It was a haphazard, unplanned arrangement - it must have caught my eye one day - and I snapped a picture.  Upon examination, it brings back a lot of unconnected memories.

First, see those tiles on the backsplash?  I bought them in a little town in France sometime in the early 80's.  They came with either green or blue hearts in the corners.  I'm a regretter, and the moment I had them packed up so I could carry them on the plane (remember those days?  I also brought an iron rooster weather vane home on the same flight), I wished I had bought the ones with the green.  Sorry to say, I haven't ever let that go.  I did go back to the little town (name escapes me now) in 2002 to see if they still had the green ones.  They didn't.  Nor did they have anything similar in any color.

The trip to Provence in 2002 yielded the peeling still life painting that is propped up in back of this little kitchen scene.  I was staying with friends, but I rented my own car and drove over to a tiny village where I found a very scrubby market, just as it was closing.  I bought some mustard colored pottery pieces and this painting.  It's not very good, but it goes with my kitchen.

The market basket belonged to my mother and daddy.  They were great vegetable gardeners, so that basket was filled many, many times over the years.  And, the canned soup mix and tomatoes were put up by my mother.  The date on the piece of masking tape on the tomatoes:  2001.  My mother was born in 1910, so that meant she was 91 when she did that canning.  It also meant that Daddy and Mother had grown the Silver Queen corn, the baby limas, the okra and the tomatoes.

The bronze fig was made by Frank Fleming, a well-known sculptor from Alabama.  His large animal figures sit in a fountain at Five Points South in Birmingham.  Frank was a subject for an episode of A Gardener's Diary.  He took objects from nature and used the forms for sculptures and pieces of furniture.  His most famous works, though, are of whimsical animals.

The yellow bowl I picked up at Scott's Antique Market in Atlanta, and the vase, I'm embarrassed to say, is one of the few survivors of my attempts to become a potter.  That effort back in the early 1970's mercifully didn't last long, as I never could get anything balanced on the wheel.  If only I'd spent the pottery lesson money on some nice pieces from a talented artist.  The bouquet consists of Sedum 'Autumn Joy', and a bunch of weeds and grasses from my late parents' farm.

Last but not least are those buckeyes in the yellow bowl.  My daddy believed that buckeyes brought good luck.  Every September he would go down to this little lane on the farm where a 20 foot tall buckeye tree grew.  He would collect the shiny dark seeds that came out of a shell that sort of looked like a cross between a kiwi and a walnut.  He kept them in his pockets, and every time he would meet anyone new, he'd give them a buckeye.  He'd done it for years, and almost everyone in our small town had one of his buckeyes.

His health began to fail in 2002, and he died in September 2004.  The Saturday before he died, I took him down to see if we could find any buckeyes.  I gasped in horror to see that his buckeye tree had fallen over and was dead.  He was so disappointed, and I was just sick.  We started riding further down the lane, and I happened to look over and see a spindly little tree with what looked like khaki colored eggs hanging from the branches.  Buckeyes!

I pulled over and rolled down Daddy's window, and he reached up and pulled off the capsules, which were beginning to open.  We took them back to the house, and he had a great time pulling out the shiny brown seeds, some almost as large as a ping-pong ball.

At his funeral the next week, we passed out buckeyes.  My niece and I had gone back down there to find  dozens more small trees laden with fruit.  I wrote a tear jerker eulogy about how the big tree was a metaphor for life.  It had fallen over and had its day, but a lot of fresh new trees had come along to take its place.

To end on a cheerier note, I'm glad to say the buckeye trees are still producing, and I have a great time riding around the farm and picking weeds for arrangements at Thanksgiving and cedar and sweet gum branches for Christmas.  All that stuff is still there on my kitchen counter, in addition to the six jars of okra pickles I put up this year.  I'd like to try my hand at some soup mix.  We grew okra, tomatoes and Silver Queen corn this year.  Next year, we'll have to grow some lima beans.  Then, all you have to do on a winter day is cut up some onions and potatoes, boil a soup bone, and you have yet another good memory.

Beauty along the driveway

One particular editor at the Atlanta Journal and Constitution admonished me, "You are writing about Margaret Moseley way too often.  What's the deal?"

One visit, and he understood, and pretty soon, he was writing about her as well.

Truth is, I had trouble not writing about Margaret.  First of all, she was eminently quotable, but mainly her garden was a treasure trove of good subjects.  She collected camellias, sasanquas, hydrangeas and viburnums.  She also had a variety of ground covers that included epimedium, ajuga, lamb's ear, hosta, yellow creeping jenny, and selaginella, just to name a few.  All sorts of ferns were mixed in among hundreds of hellebores.  She had about every shrub I could think of, and she was always adding the newest selections.  If she heard or read good things about a vine ( Schizophragma hydrangeoides 'Moonlight' comes to mind), tree, shrub or perennial she didn't have, she called around until she found one.  Thus, her garden was also a sort of laboratory for figuring out what would grow well in our area.  If  something didn't work, she got rid of it.

In addition, the photo ops were great.  Granted, you could never capture the incredible beauty of her garden as a whole, but you could always zero in on individual flowers or a path here or there.  Margaret is also a master at plant combinations, so you could marvel at a row of deep blue iris growing in front of a yellow Exbury azalea.  One of my favorite slides (wish digital had been back then) is of a purple jackmanii clematis blooming in a maroon colored smoke tree.  Stunning.  Another combination I loved was a clump of dark maroon hellebores next to a daphne with dusky pink flowers.

Margaret, who is now 95 and who called this afternoon to tell me how beautiful her garden looks today (it was 32 degrees this morning and in mid-afternoon, it's 48), has scheduled things to bloom all year.  Of course, most years we can get away with that in Atlanta.  But even with setbacks with drought or early freezes or below zero temperatures (haven't had those since the 1980's), her garden bounces back and keeps blooming.

One thing I've taken for granted is the fact that when you pull up into Margaret's driveway, there's usually something in bloom.  I took the above photograph in late October.  In the foreground is Abelia chinensis.  Why this plant is so unknown in Atlanta, I don't know.  It starts blooming in July, attracts butterflies like crazy, and then fades to green in fall.  The flower panicles are shaped like lilacs.  In this photo, it is shown with Camellia sasanqua 'Pink Snow' in the background.

So, here I am writing about Margaret again, something I've done over and over on this site.  But, I can't help it.  There's always a new or old variety you haven't seen, the newest "Hosta of the Year" to check out, a miniature ajuga to admire that came from her friend Lindy, or a great combination to copy, like this cascade of flowers along her driveway.  

Beauty along the driveway

One particular editor at the Atlanta Journal and Constitution admonished me, "You are writing about Margaret Moseley way too often.  What's the deal?"

One visit, and he understood, and pretty soon, he was writing about her as well.

Truth is, I had trouble not writing about Margaret.  First of all, she was eminently quotable, but mainly her garden was a treasure trove of good subjects.  She collected camellias, sasanquas, hydrangeas and viburnums.  She also had a variety of ground covers that included epimedium, ajuga, lamb's ear, hosta, yellow creeping jenny, and selaginella, just to name a few.  All sorts of ferns were mixed in among hundreds of hellebores.  She had about every shrub I could think of, and she was always adding the newest selections.  If she heard or read good things about a vine ( Schizophragma hydrangeoides 'Moonlight' comes to mind), tree, shrub or perennial she didn't have, she called around until she found one.  Thus, her garden was also a sort of laboratory for figuring out what would grow well in our area.  If  something didn't work, she got rid of it.

In addition, the photo ops were great.  Granted, you could never capture the incredible beauty of her garden as a whole, but you could always zero in on individual flowers or a path here or there.  Margaret is also a master at plant combinations, so you could marvel at a row of deep blue iris growing in front of a yellow Exbury azalea.  One of my favorite slides (wish digital had been back then) is of a purple jackmanii clematis blooming in a maroon colored smoke tree.  Stunning.  Another combination I loved was a clump of dark maroon hellebores next to a daphne with dusky pink flowers.

Margaret, who is now 95 and who called this afternoon to tell me how beautiful her garden looks today (it was 32 degrees this morning and in mid-afternoon, it's 48), has scheduled things to bloom all year.  Of course, most years we can get away with that in Atlanta.  But even with setbacks with drought or early freezes or below zero temperatures (haven't had those since the 1980's), her garden bounces back and keeps blooming.

One thing I've taken for granted is the fact that when you pull up into Margaret's driveway, there's usually something in bloom.  I took the above photograph in late October.  In the foreground is Abelia chinensis.  Why this plant is so unknown in Atlanta, I don't know.  It starts blooming in July, attracts butterflies like crazy, and then fades to green in fall.  The flower panicles are shaped like lilacs.  In this photo, it is shown with Camellia sasanqua 'Pink Snow' in the background.

So, here I am writing about Margaret again, something I've done over and over on this site.  But, I can't help it.  There's always a new or old variety you haven't seen, the newest "Hosta of the Year" to check out, a miniature ajuga to admire that came from her friend Lindy, or a great combination to copy, like this cascade of flowers along her driveway.  

If dreams came true

A friend of mine went through a phase of telling me what she had dreamed the night before.  You may agree that there's nothing harder to listen to than someone's stream of consciousness tales that make little sense.  My eyes would glaze over the moment she said, "You'll never guess what I dreamed last night." (Not to worry; this was long ago, and the person isn't reading this).

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I had a recurring dream (please, don't yawn) that I had a garden packed with sunny flowers.  It was a small garden, but I would go out and pick armloads of larkspur (don't know why that particular flower).  At the end of the dream I would discover that the garden really belonged to Ruth Mitchell, who in reality had acres of flowers around her 19th century farm house (the pilot for A Gardener's Diary on HGTV was shot in her vast garden).  I never knew what the dream meant.  It probably had to do with the fact that I longed so for full sun and had only shade (I now appreciate what one can grow in the latter, having seen so many great shade gardens).

There are so many types of gardens I admire and would like to have.  The above photograph was taken in Monet's garden at Giverny.  Oddly enough, this is not the garden of my dreams, although I would wish to be able to grow all those flowers.  I would need a little more green structure to reign in the chaos.  I think this is because I am such a disorganized person, always longing to be neat, but never am.

Anyway, yesterday's post showed a stiff, formal garden, so I thought I'd counter it with an opposite look.  Both are in France and couldn't be more different.  Given a choice of the two, I'd take this one, of course.  But, I'd definitely borrow some of the green borders from that stiff, formal garden in Paris, just so I would feel a little less chaotic.

Note:  I've tried to focus in on which flowers are in this photograph.  Here's what I can discern:  cherianthus (the orange which dominates), sweet william (one of the dark reds, but I'm not positive), hesperis (dame's rocket), poppies, iris, creeping jenny, lady's mantle and pansies.  The white in the background has me stumped.  I have a photo of a single white rose, but it's over by the lily pond.  In another view, I can see lots of white hesperis.  That may account for some of the white.  I tried to zoom in, but it was too digitized for me to figure it out.  Any ideas?

If dreams came true

A friend of mine went through a phase of telling me what she had dreamed the night before.  You may agree that there's nothing harder to listen to than someone's stream of consciousness tales that make little sense.  My eyes would glaze over the moment she said, "You'll never guess what I dreamed last night." (Not to worry; this was long ago, and the person isn't reading this).

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I had a recurring dream (please, don't yawn) that I had a garden packed with sunny flowers.  It was a small garden, but I would go out and pick armloads of larkspur (don't know why that particular flower).  At the end of the dream I would discover that the garden really belonged to Ruth Mitchell, who in reality had acres of flowers around her 19th century farm house (the pilot for A Gardener's Diary on HGTV was shot in her vast garden).  I never knew what the dream meant.  It probably had to do with the fact that I longed so for full sun and had only shade (I now appreciate what one can grow in the latter, having seen so many great shade gardens).

There are so many types of gardens I admire and would like to have.  The above photograph was taken in Monet's garden at Giverny.  Oddly enough, this is not the garden of my dreams, although I would wish to be able to grow all those flowers.  I would need a little more green structure to reign in the chaos.  I think this is because I am such a disorganized person, always longing to be neat, but never am.

Anyway, yesterday's post showed a stiff, formal garden, so I thought I'd counter it with an opposite look.  Both are in France and couldn't be more different.  Given a choice of the two, I'd take this one, of course.  But, I'd definitely borrow some of the green borders from that stiff, formal garden in Paris, just so I would feel a little less chaotic.

Note:  I've tried to focus in on which flowers are in this photograph.  Here's what I can discern:  cherianthus (the orange which dominates), sweet william (one of the dark reds, but I'm not positive), hesperis (dame's rocket), poppies, iris, creeping jenny, lady's mantle and pansies.  The white in the background has me stumped.  I have a photo of a single white rose, but it's over by the lily pond.  In another view, I can see lots of white hesperis.  That may account for some of the white.  I tried to zoom in, but it was too digitized for me to figure it out.  Any ideas?

A garden to look down on

Lately I've been thinking a lot about garden styles since I've lost so many big trees and now have some sun - something I've never had here in 38 years.  I used to dream that I had a cottage garden full of sun-loving flowers.  Of course, the house and lot didn't look anything like mine (dreams are like that), but I do think that my obsessive longing for sun must have had an impact on my sub-conscious.

So, what does this have to do with the above photograph, obviously a formal style I would never want or even have a grand space for?  The fact is, I've already borrowed something from this garden, something I never dreamed I would do.

 I took this photograph in Paris from an apartment I rented in the Marais district when my two daughters and I took a trip to celebrate birthday/graduations.  I never saw one person in the garden, nor did I ever see anyone enter the opposite building.  I don't know if it was another apartment building or some kind of business headquarters or offices.  There was no one to ask, since the rental was through an agency.

I do have good memories of sitting by the open window with my breakfast (part of a fresh baguette slathered with unsalted butter and cherry Bonne Maman preserves - I haven't found that flavor in any store here) and a piece of Caprice des Dieux cheese (can't find that here, either), along with my cafe au lait.  I would study the garden and try to identify the plants they'd used - I could see peonies and an allium, and I thought those variegated trees could be some sort of cornus.  There is Clematis armandii over on the left. And those espaliers in the boxes looked like sasanquas, but why would the left one have flowers at the end of May?

If I looked to my right or left out of the window at my level, I saw something much more to my liking - charming mansard roofs with window boxes overflowing with ivy geraniums.  The photos I took almost looked like paintings of an old, rustic Paris.  The style was in total contrast to the scene below and was something that pleased my eye much more than the stiff lines of the formal garden.

Yet, here's what I did.  I have a rectangular space surrounded by a rather unkempt hemlock hedge.  When I go on the back balcony (actually, I've always referred to it as a concrete deck), I look down on that area.  This past May, as I was staring down at the tall hedge with boxwood borders, wondering what on earth I could do now that two large oaks were gone, it hit me.

I came in here to the computer and brought up this picture.  See the two squares flanking a rectangle on each side of the center lawn?  At my house, where there used to be a rectangular lawn that never had enough sun to survive, I have made this same configuration, only I just have a single row.  Right now, I have cobblestones as the outline, and I haven't covered the surrounding hard pack clay with gravel (may have to go with sand to save money).   I put a wire obelisk in the middle of each square.  In the rectangle I have a taller tuteur I bought 25 years ago.

Right now, my composition looks awful.  There is a jumble of moribund tomato vines clinging to the wire frames, and some zinnias flopped everywhere, a couple still producing bright red blooms.  These temporary plants are headed to the compost bin soon.  Then, I'm going to make some decisions about what to put in the middle and how to make a very low box border to replace the cobblestones.  For the winter, I'm going to put two tall ivy topiaries in each square (that is, if I can get the containers moved - I'm afraid the ivy roots have grown into the ground where I plopped them some years ago by the basement door).

So, by next summer when I have it all together, I should have two squares and a rectangle within a rectangle surrounded by two rows of boxwood and a hemlock hedge (both already there).  Of course, it will be much smaller and narrower than the garden above and looser in feel.

 I've dreamed of gardens I wanted, but never, ever would I have thought I'd ever choose this one to copy.  I must say, though, that I love it already, as crudely done as it is, and I look forward to next year when I can show you my version of a garden to look down on.

A garden to look down on

Lately I've been thinking a lot about garden styles since I've lost so many big trees and now have some sun - something I've never had here in 38 years.  I used to dream that I had a cottage garden full of sun-loving flowers.  Of course, the house and lot didn't look anything like mine (dreams are like that), but I do think that my obsessive longing for sun must have had an impact on my sub-conscious.

So, what does this have to do with the above photograph, obviously a formal style I would never want or even have a grand space for?  The fact is, I've already borrowed something from this garden, something I never dreamed I would do.

 I took this photograph in Paris from an apartment I rented in the Marais district when my two daughters and I took a trip to celebrate birthday/graduations.  I never saw one person in the garden, nor did I ever see anyone enter the opposite building.  I don't know if it was another apartment building or some kind of business headquarters or offices.  There was no one to ask, since the rental was through an agency.

I do have good memories of sitting by the open window with my breakfast (part of a fresh baguette slathered with unsalted butter and cherry Bonne Maman preserves - I haven't found that flavor in any store here) and a piece of Caprice des Dieux cheese (can't find that here, either), along with my cafe au lait.  I would study the garden and try to identify the plants they'd used - I could see peonies and an allium, and I thought those variegated trees could be some sort of cornus.  There is Clematis armandii over on the left. And those espaliers in the boxes looked like sasanquas, but why would the left one have flowers at the end of May?

If I looked to my right or left out of the window at my level, I saw something much more to my liking - charming mansard roofs with window boxes overflowing with ivy geraniums.  The photos I took almost looked like paintings of an old, rustic Paris.  The style was in total contrast to the scene below and was something that pleased my eye much more than the stiff lines of the formal garden.

Yet, here's what I did.  I have a rectangular space surrounded by a rather unkempt hemlock hedge.  When I go on the back balcony (actually, I've always referred to it as a concrete deck), I look down on that area.  This past May, as I was staring down at the tall hedge with boxwood borders, wondering what on earth I could do now that two large oaks were gone, it hit me.

I came in here to the computer and brought up this picture.  See the two squares flanking a rectangle on each side of the center lawn?  At my house, where there used to be a rectangular lawn that never had enough sun to survive, I have made this same configuration, only I just have a single row.  Right now, I have cobblestones as the outline, and I haven't covered the surrounding hard pack clay with gravel (may have to go with sand to save money).   I put a wire obelisk in the middle of each square.  In the rectangle I have a taller tuteur I bought 25 years ago.

Right now, my composition looks awful.  There is a jumble of moribund tomato vines clinging to the wire frames, and some zinnias flopped everywhere, a couple still producing bright red blooms.  These temporary plants are headed to the compost bin soon.  Then, I'm going to make some decisions about what to put in the middle and how to make a very low box border to replace the cobblestones.  For the winter, I'm going to put two tall ivy topiaries in each square (that is, if I can get the containers moved - I'm afraid the ivy roots have grown into the ground where I plopped them some years ago by the basement door).

So, by next summer when I have it all together, I should have two squares and a rectangle within a rectangle surrounded by two rows of boxwood and a hemlock hedge (both already there).  Of course, it will be much smaller and narrower than the garden above and looser in feel.

 I've dreamed of gardens I wanted, but never, ever would I have thought I'd ever choose this one to copy.  I must say, though, that I love it already, as crudely done as it is, and I look forward to next year when I can show you my version of a garden to look down on.

My avoidable baseball error

Finally, I am able to look at the above photograph of this beautiful chartreuse version of Boston ivy and not cringe.  But, it's taken me a while.

Back in the era when I depended on catalogs and books for plant information, really before we were googling everything, I wrote something that was totally wrong in my column in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.  Before that day, I had made mistakes (misused the word "peltate", said a tree was an oak, when it was really a pecan, etc.), but nothing like this.  I still remember the sting of embarrassment over making such a glaring error that it caused an uproar among readers.

Here's the story:  My husband died suddenly of a heart attack in 1999.  He had many passions, but at the top of the list was baseball, and at the top of that list was the preservation of Fenway Park, the venerable home of the Boston Red Sox.  He was beside himself that the old ball park was in danger of being torn down.  He wrote letters and talked to anyone who would listen.  He even had a bumper sticker on his truck that read "Save Fenway Park".

He was such a devotee that the evening before he and I were to take our daughter to St. Paul's School for the first time (she was going into 9th grade and was petrified over the whole boarding school idea), the three of us sat shivering in the misty cold to watch the Red Sox play, so he could experience Fenway Park.  A couple of years before that, our family was touring Boston, and he had begged a worker to let us into the ball park even though there was no game.  My husband showed us the famous left field wall known as the Green Monster and explained that it was so high a player could be robbed of what would be a home run at any other ball field.  I took a photograph of him pointing to the Green Monster.  He framed the picture and put it on a shelf in his library.  I must have looked at it a zillion times.

Fast forward a handful of years after his death.  I was looking through one of my favorite catalogs and saw a chartreuse form of Boston ivy called 'Fenway Park'.  I went crazy.  What a great plant to have in his memory.  I could put it on the wall of the family cemetery in Tate, Georgia.  Also, I was excited about introducing a fabulous new cultivar to readers of the AJC.

I found someone who had a good specimen so I could take a photo (on the above mailbox) to go with my column.  But here came the error.  The writer of the catalog said the plant was a sport from the Boston ivy growing on the Green Monster at Fenway Park in Boston.  I repeated the information.  It never occurred to me to verify the story, nor did I think to look at the picture of my husband.  I did think about how pretty the Boston ivy was at Wrigley Field in Chicago and how Cubs fans valued the vine, even though at times balls had gotten stuck in the foliage and caused problems with plays.

But that's all the thinking I did. 

The paper came out on Thursday, and the e-mails started. The Features editor called.  The "Corrections" editor called.  There was no vine on the Green Monster and never had been, one man informed me.  A woman wondered if I had gotten Fenway Park mixed up with Wrigley Field.  Another irate man said you never call a ball park a "stadium".  Even his eight year old son knew better (I used "field" and "ball park", but I also used "stadium", as the writer of the catalog had done).  

I called Dr. Michael Dirr, who was kind, but said he knew the minute he read it that the information was wrong.  He gave me the telephone number of the man from the Arnold Arboretum who had discovered the sport so I could write a correction for the paper. 

The real story was that Peter Del Tredici, a senior research scientist at the arboretum, was walking to a baseball game with his son in September 1988.  He looked up as the sun was setting and noticed that some of the Boston ivy on an apartment building a few blocks from Fenway Park seemed to be glowing.  The lower portions of the vine were the typical dark green, but the leaves up high were bright yellow.

A few weeks later, Del Tredici obtained cuttings. When he determined that the plant was stable and would hold its color (depending on the exposure, either chartreuse or chartreuse/yellow), he sought permission from the Boston Red Sox to name the vine 'Fenway Park'.

I'm glad to say that I'm just about over the incident and am ready to buy the vine (sorry to say, I can't plant it in Tate due to a family feud over spaces in the cemetery).  But guess what.  When I looked on-line, there it was - the exact story about its being a sport from the Boston ivy growing on the Green Monster.  That's okay.  At least Parthenocissus tricuspidata 'Fenway Park' is still for sale.  And, maybe all those readers no longer remember the lady who "needs to go to a Red Sox game so she'll know what she's talking about."

My avoidable baseball error

Finally, I am able to look at the above photograph of this beautiful chartreuse version of Boston ivy and not cringe.  But, it's taken me a while.

Back in the era when I depended on catalogs and books for plant information, really before we were googling everything, I wrote something that was totally wrong in my column in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.  Before that day, I had made mistakes (misused the word "peltate", said a tree was an oak, when it was really a pecan, etc.), but nothing like this.  I still remember the sting of embarrassment over making such a glaring error that it caused an uproar among readers.

Here's the story:  My husband died suddenly of a heart attack in 1999.  He had many passions, but at the top of the list was baseball, and at the top of that list was the preservation of Fenway Park, the venerable home of the Boston Red Sox.  He was beside himself that the old ball park was in danger of being torn down.  He wrote letters and talked to anyone who would listen.  He even had a bumper sticker on his truck that read "Save Fenway Park".

He was such a devotee that the evening before he and I were to take our daughter to St. Paul's School for the first time (she was going into 9th grade and was petrified over the whole boarding school idea), the three of us sat shivering in the misty cold to watch the Red Sox play, so he could experience Fenway Park.  A couple of years before that, our family was touring Boston, and he had begged a worker to let us into the ball park even though there was no game.  My husband showed us the famous left field wall known as the Green Monster and explained that it was so high a player could be robbed of what would be a home run at any other ball field.  I took a photograph of him pointing to the Green Monster.  He framed the picture and put it on a shelf in his library.  I must have looked at it a zillion times.

Fast forward a handful of years after his death.  I was looking through one of my favorite catalogs and saw a chartreuse form of Boston ivy called 'Fenway Park'.  I went crazy.  What a great plant to have in his memory.  I could put it on the wall of the family cemetery in Tate, Georgia.  Also, I was excited about introducing a fabulous new cultivar to readers of the AJC.

I found someone who had a good specimen so I could take a photo (on the above mailbox) to go with my column.  But here came the error.  The writer of the catalog said the plant was a sport from the Boston ivy growing on the Green Monster at Fenway Park in Boston.  I repeated the information.  It never occurred to me to verify the story, nor did I think to look at the picture of my husband.  I did think about how pretty the Boston ivy was at Wrigley Field in Chicago and how Cubs fans valued the vine, even though at times balls had gotten stuck in the foliage and caused problems with plays.

But that's all the thinking I did. 

The paper came out on Thursday, and the e-mails started. The Features editor called.  The "Corrections" editor called.  There was no vine on the Green Monster and never had been, one man informed me.  A woman wondered if I had gotten Fenway Park mixed up with Wrigley Field.  Another irate man said you never call a ball park a "stadium".  Even his eight year old son knew better (I used "field" and "ball park", but I also used "stadium", as the writer of the catalog had done).  

I called Dr. Michael Dirr, who was kind, but said he knew the minute he read it that the information was wrong.  He gave me the telephone number of the man from the Arnold Arboretum who had discovered the sport so I could write a correction for the paper. 

The real story was that Peter Del Tredici, a senior research scientist at the arboretum, was walking to a baseball game with his son in September 1988.  He looked up as the sun was setting and noticed that some of the Boston ivy on an apartment building a few blocks from Fenway Park seemed to be glowing.  The lower portions of the vine were the typical dark green, but the leaves up high were bright yellow.

A few weeks later, Del Tredici obtained cuttings. When he determined that the plant was stable and would hold its color (depending on the exposure, either chartreuse or chartreuse/yellow), he sought permission from the Boston Red Sox to name the vine 'Fenway Park'.

I'm glad to say that I'm just about over the incident and am ready to buy the vine (sorry to say, I can't plant it in Tate due to a family feud over spaces in the cemetery).  But guess what.  When I looked on-line, there it was - the exact story about its being a sport from the Boston ivy growing on the Green Monster.  That's okay.  At least Parthenocissus tricuspidata 'Fenway Park' is still for sale.  And, maybe all those readers no longer remember the lady who "needs to go to a Red Sox game so she'll know what she's talking about."

To my favorite veteran on 11-11-11

Dear Uncle Claude,
It was so great to talk to you on this Veterans' Day.  You and I were on the phone at the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day in a year that ends with 11.  You sounded so good, so sweet and friendly and caring, as always, and you called me by my name.  I can't tell you how much that meant to me.  Aunt Wynette tells me that you won't remember our conversation, but that's okay.

The picture I've posted today is of Flanders Field poppies in a Georgia garden.  I noticed the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were wearing plastic ones at a benefit last night for England's National Memorial Arboretum.  You, of course, served in World War II, but the poppies are a reminder for all veterans everywhere that we'll never forget your bravery.

I am so happy to have a DVD of an interview with you, conducted by Georgia Public Television for their World War II veterans' project. The only thing is that you didn't tell the really horrible things that happened.  You were so humble and never took any credit for your great courage.  Nor did you complain about all you endured.

Until the last decade (you are 88 years old), you never talked about what happened to you during the war.  I found the letters you wrote to your mother (you were the youngest of nine children, born when your mother was 43 years old).  My grandmother never knew what you were really going through.  You told me a couple of years ago that you didn't want her to worry.  Not once did you say that your feet froze as you crawled along the ground in the cold forests of the Vosges Mountains in eastern France, hoping to avoid the Germans whose shouts you could hear only a few yards away.

I won't go into the terrors you experienced as you made your way all the way to Berchtesgaden or how you came to have the swastika armband of an SS officer.  You were so young, from the community of Rico in the Georgia countryside,where there was only a crossroads with two churches and a one-room country store.  And, to think how many there were just like you.

Okay.  You would not like all this maudlin carrying-on.  I will, however, say how much my mother and her six sisters and brother all loved you, as well as your son and daughter and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and your many nieces and nephews.  You have been the executor of so many wills and have carried out the wishes of your aunts and sisters and have been the backbone of my mother's large family.  You and Aunt Wynette have comforted all of us when we've needed your strength.

So, I think of you today and am grateful for you and for everyone who has served in the armed forces.  Thank you so much.

Your loving niece,
Martha

To my favorite veteran on 11-11-11

Dear Uncle Claude,
It was so great to talk to you on this Veterans' Day.  You and I were on the phone at the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day in a year that ends with 11.  You sounded so good, so sweet and friendly and caring, as always, and you called me by my name.  I can't tell you how much that meant to me.  Aunt Wynette tells me that you won't remember our conversation, but that's okay.

The picture I've posted today is of Flanders Field poppies in a Georgia garden.  I noticed the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were wearing plastic ones at a benefit last night for England's National Memorial Arboretum.  You, of course, served in World War II, but the poppies are a reminder for all veterans everywhere that we'll never forget your bravery.

I am so happy to have a DVD of an interview with you, conducted by Georgia Public Television for their World War II veterans' project. The only thing is that you didn't tell the really horrible things that happened.  You were so humble and never took any credit for your great courage.  Nor did you complain about all you endured.

Until the last decade (you are 88 years old), you never talked about what happened to you during the war.  I found the letters you wrote to your mother (you were the youngest of nine children, born when your mother was 43 years old).  My grandmother never knew what you were really going through.  You told me a couple of years ago that you didn't want her to worry.  Not once did you say that your feet froze as you crawled along the ground in the cold forests of the Vosges Mountains in eastern France, hoping to avoid the Germans whose shouts you could hear only a few yards away.

I won't go into the terrors you experienced as you made your way all the way to Berchtesgaden or how you came to have the swastika armband of an SS officer.  You were so young, from the community of Rico in the Georgia countryside,where there was only a crossroads with two churches and a one-room country store.  And, to think how many there were just like you.

Okay.  You would not like all this maudlin carrying-on.  I will, however, say how much my mother and her six sisters and brother all loved you, as well as your son and daughter and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and your many nieces and nephews.  You have been the executor of so many wills and have carried out the wishes of your aunts and sisters and have been the backbone of my mother's large family.  You and Aunt Wynette have comforted all of us when we've needed your strength.

So, I think of you today and am grateful for you and for everyone who has served in the armed forces.  Thank you so much.

Your loving niece,
Martha