SUMMER BLUES

They called May: Maybe.
They called June: Juneuary.
What will they call July?
Yesterday was sunny but today a gray, low ceilinged sky, threats of showers on the radio and Mc Cain warning us to wear sunscreen.
I love the prolonged lilies. The cool dry air keeps them in suspended animation. Summer or at least summer’s flowers are in slow motion. An eternal anticipation as spent flowers gracefully decline along with our hopes for a hot summer.
Are we blue?
Why don’t we say “I’m gray” , when we feel under the weather?
We’ve got the grays. Cloud cover again. Long stretches of cloudy summer gray. It’s making a lot of people blue.
The sky, if it were blue, could change that in a heartbeat. Could make the lake shimmer with blue-ness and fill with swimmers. Blue could actually undo this mood.
Yet this gray sky has a magical effect, intensifying yellows, keeping the Copper King lilies blooming longer than expected, making the greens less heavy-handed, more fluid.
But it’s the blues that become luminous. Hopeful blues. enigmatic for seeming so unnatural. Attractive as a sunny day, not lemony yellow, but a bright blue.

GARDEN TOURISTS

Hollyhocks!!!

I’ve been garden touring lately. ‘Tis the season. A few weeks ago it was the Georgetown (WA) Arts and Garden Tour. Last weekend the Woodinville Garden Tour. And Just 2 days ago I hosted a private tour at one of my gardens.
Gardening touring is fun.
Often the reason for making a garden is to show a garden. It makes me think of gardens as stage sets. Backdrops for the little (and Big) dramas of life. So are tours really about gardens? Or are they about the people who make the gardens, and the people visiting? A garden is not a garden without a gardener; and art is not art if unobserved. If it is the interaction that makes the tour, then why am I so disgruntled? So many people in the garden you can’t take a decent picture. I selfishly want the garden to myself, a private little affair. To be alone in the garden encourages intimacy. The whiff of rose, the plush touch of lambs ears, the subtle variables of green are all easier to approach, more available, when one isn’t negotiating other garden touristas as they “ooh”, “aah”, pause and forward like hens plucking grains.
So what did I expect of a garden tour?
Did I want to pilfer ideas? Shop, so to speak? How many new plants would I discover as I lethargically maneuver through cameras and people? How many new combinations?
When I was in Delhi, the presidents garden was open to the public. The route was roped off, the tourists innumerable, like box cars in an endless train, clickity-clacking through in a paced and mundane rhythm. I thought it would have been nice to be the president and look down on Lutyen’s beautiful geometric designs and the indian clutter of color. But then I thought again. I would want to be the gardener in early morning, before the heat and glare of mid-day tarnished the glory. I would open my eyes for the first time, while the birds chittered and chattered. I would hear the crisp hush of green. I would enter a bed and let the dewy foliage dampen my pants. Smell the roses.
But on tours I have found people in the forefront. The conversations with friends, the meetings with strangers. What better place than in the green embrace called garden. People soften, become friendly. We all hid our envy of Tina Dixon’s immaculate conception, lushly restrained, truly designed, meticulously maintained. It’s no wonder she won a Golden Trowel form Garden Design magazine. In Georgetown I could not hide my envy, though. The stunning hollyhocks, so difficult in the Northwest, stood like an exclamation point in the Hat and Boots Park. On the tour I conducted I wanted to apologize for not having done enough. For not having let go enough. For spending too many mornings listening to birds in my dew soaked pants and sniffing as for the reason why I’m here.
But always, if only in the back of my mind, I am preparing, setting the stage for the dramas of my clients lives. The celebrations, the dinners for two, the quiet evening strolls.
And the tours.

[ Please imagine in all the photos a person who has just stepped out of the view finder. Click.]




Blue pears in the Dixon garden.



A beautiful combination in a shady Woodinville garden.




The lovely Soldanella alpina, a new ground cover for me.




Chittering and chattering

CARNIVAL COLORS

Sometimes when I look at the the clownishly colorful borders I’ve created instead of perking up i get disheartened. It seems so much like graffiti; a great scribble; notes. I feel unhinged by h these feelings. I long for a mysterium to emerge from what I do, not an entertainment. And then a hummingbird flies into sight, skittering across the tops of the orange peruvian lily ( Alstromeria aurantiaca ), zipping and sipping. He was ernest and playful. Happy and intent. He showed n me mystery is not always hidden, gloomy, dark. He showed me mystery can flash, like his iridescent ruby throat. He showed me that rapidity as well as stillness expresses mystery. He showed me like the purloined letter, that sometimes what is most secret, most hidden, most mysterious, is that which is obvious.
And I realized I am obviously oblivious to many mysteries.

MONKSHOOD

I dug out the monkshood. I was tired of it flopping in full bloom.



I love the dusty silver blue flowers of 'Stainless Steel', a hush to all the orange and yellow screaming going on right now.



I "cleverly" treated this pink monkshood like a vine and planted it inside a 'Black Lace" sambucus. The shrub acts as a support, and the dark foliage is a great foil for the baby-girl-pink flowers.



The beautiful native monkshood ( Aconitum columbianum )


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It gracefully nestles in among the other meadow plants in this sub-alpine meadow in the Cascades.

WITHIN SUMMER

I was trying to avoid my usual precursory ramblings. You know, I start writing an bout spring in winter, summer in spring...and now fall in summer. It’s hard to avoid saying: “What a fall-like morning.” Fog’s hugging the river valley. Dew drops, big as rain drops drip from the tall grass. A chill clings to the damp air. I can avoid avoid saying I’ve already seem some vine maples turning red.
Our heat index is rather low, that’s why I moved here. The cool mornings and the cool evenings with the perfectly comfortable blast of heat mid-day is just about perfect for human functioning. though I do love a prolonged hot spell, when it’s uncomfortable to sleep and the morning requires very little clothing. I can easily be nostalgic about those muggy midwestern summers i moved away from though, because I don’t have to live through them any more. But I also don’t get giant vine ripe tomatoes or cantaloupe.
This morning once again confirms my thoughts about the climate of the Pacific Northwest. They call it mediterranean, summer drought and winter rain. It seems though there are seasons, they don’t really follow one another, but are nested in one another like russian dolls. So at any time, in any season one can open up a tiny bit of the previous season, or the coming season. Like in January when I found a scabiosa flower. [ see archive: “Daniel Mount’s Garden Journal” Jan. 1, 2008 ]
I don’t find any snow flakes today, and the tulips are gone. But just a trace of chill in the air, and a certain blush on the apples lets me know fall is with us already. But summer better not move off yet. The tomatoes are still green.

SUM AND SUBSTANCE

LAVENDER ROSE

I only know of one lavender rose, the grandiflora rose, ‘Karl Lagerfeld’. In my rose hating days it really appealed to me because it was such an anti-rose in it’s dingy elegance. The fragrance too is as far from the classic “rose” scent as the color was from red. I don’t know if I’d like it as much if saw it today. I have moved on from dingy roses to yellow and orange roses. And now I even like red roses.
But there is another “lavender rose”, that is not a rose at all. The fragrance is austere, if non-existent. And it’s thriving in the shade. What I’m talking about is not a rose at all but a hosta : ‘Sum and Substance’. The petal-like bracts enclosing the flowers are a lavender-gray. The apex of the inflorescence appears like a rose bud, more stunning then the pallid lily-like flowers. I like twists and turns in the garden. When roses are lavender, and hostas are roses.
But not as much as I like mid-summer green. Deep, protective green, still sopping up spring. The frothy crest of a wave before it begins to fall into August. And crash in October.