Felder Rushing at Florarama

The answer to all of the questions at the end of the last post is Yes! I did get to hear Felder Rushing speak in person. Philo & I did get to Florarama [AKA Zilker Garden Festival]. I bought the two replacement Duranta plants, and also found another Barleria-Philippine violet, a Pigeonberry, a Denver Gold columbine, a Dwarf myrtle, a Bletilla-ground orchid, another hot pepper for Philo, raffle tickets to benefit Zilker Park, and bought Felder Rushing’s book Tough Plants For Southern Gardens, seen above with my well-read copy of Passalong Plants, which I've scribbled in, stuffed with notes and filled with post-its.

You know, that passalong book has been in my possession since the middle nineties. It had me craving Crinum lilies and wanting Banana Shrubs/Michelias when I lived in Zone 5-Northern Illinois. I’ve read and reread it, and made lists of plants I’ve been given and plants that I've given away from three different gardens.

When Felder Rushing walked up to the podium and started talking it was like hearing an old friend – a very wise and funny friend. He talked of left-brain horticulture and right-brain gardening. He talked about his ancestors and his descendents, about plant societies and rules, bottle trees like Pam’s, using plants that want to grow where you live, told how to use plants in combinations, and then he shared the his “Gardeners’ Bill of Rights”, which was quite empowering! He introduced his radio partner, Dirt, who spent decades as a chef, but is now a radio gardener with very unusual advice, a mellow voice and very interesting stories.

Can you imagine how glad I was that we were in that audience?

Apparently with age comes boldness - because after the talk I not only asked Felder Rushing to sign my book, but mentioned that the Garden Bloggers' Book Club had chosen Passalong Plants as the next selection. I even gave him one of the little business cards Philo made for me with the girl-in-the-hat icon and my blog address.

This was my second burst of courage. Earlier in the day, I approached John Dromgoole [John is the garden guru I linked to in The Gardener’s Year post] and told him that there were a bunch of Austin Garden Bloggers who were fans, that we loved his nursery and that we had links to the Natural Gardener’s website on our blogs, so that people all over the country may have heard that rooster crow. And I gave him one of the little Annie cards, too.

For the Wisteria fans, let’s close with a photo of Zilker Botanical Garden’s method of dealing with this lovely, rampant vine. Their venerable Wisteria is pruned into a tree-form on a small, manmade island in the middle of a koi pond:

THOUGHT POPS, Edition Three

I WON A MAJOR AWARD! And it was Fra-gi-lé!

Did any Christmas Story fans immediately think “leg lamp”? The box was smaller, but I won something equally cool, and all I had to do was identify this mysterious photo on La Gringa’s Blogocito:

There are lots of cycads, including Sago Palms at the Hartman Gardens, and this photo sure looked like new growth unfurling to me. Then La Gringa showed the Cycad, fully unfurled, and said that I was the winner.

La Gringa has been my guide to so many fascinating people, plants, creatures, customs and places that I was a winner just by visiting her blogocito, but she also sent me a surprise, all the way from Honduras.

First some Honduras souvenirs – note pads. Then out came a bag of Honduran-grown coffee. Philo & I brewed coffee and like it a lot – it’s a very smooth brew.

And then even more prizes appeared!


La Gringa sent the cute magnet girls to represent the ‘Divas of the Dirt’, along with this very useful case for glasses with zippered pocket and neck cord, and a beautiful windchime made of polished coconut shells, which makes a cool, clicketty-kind of sound. La Gringa put such thought into the prize that she even wrapped these treasures in interesting pages from the Honduran newspapers - even the packaging was fun!

Thank you so much, La Gringa and El Jefe ~ you made me feel very lucky, and very special!

BLOOM REPORT

The Lady Banks opened fully earlier this week and is blooming with the Coral Honeysuckle. When I planted the new honeysuckle last year my hope was that the yellow centers of this coral-colored vine would harmonize with the pale yellow of the Lady Banks. I’m pretty happy with this ephemeral combination – what do you think?

In the side garden three Bridal Wreath spiraeas are blooming with a few bluebonnets.

Can you see that iris foliage at far right? My friend Ellen was given some iris last spring and the person who gave it to her promised that it was purple. Ellen shared some with me, and now we’re both hoping they will bloom in the violet shades that we crave.

Above are both varieties of spiraea and the Lady Banks to compare their bloom and leaves. That’s Rosa Lady Banks Yellow at left, with the longer-leaved, larger flowered Spiraea cantoniensis(?) in the center. I’m not sure of the botanical name for the other, rounder-leaved Spiraea at right, but this is the kind that grew in our Illinois gardens.

FLORARAMA WEEKEND
This name is no longer in use – our annual horticultural extravaganza was already called the Zilker Garden Festival when we moved here, but some longtime Austinites like M Sinclair Stevens prefer the original name, and so do I.
The festival may be somewhat soggy – we have had some tremendous downpours here in the last few days – but the weather forecasters are still promising that the rain will have moved out by mid-Saturday.

Now for the part guaranteed to turn some of you green with envy – the bigshot speaker this year is none other than FELDER RUSHING!! Yes, the coauthor of the beloved book Passalong Plants, which has already been announced as the next choice of the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club.
Will my luck hold? Will I get to hear Felder speak in person? Will I even make it to Florarama? Will I find new Duranta plants to replace the ones that died over winter? Watch this space – I hope the answers will all be Yes.

Wisteria Gone Wild

Philo and I were on an errand yesterday and passed this amazing sight near the freeway. We were not far from the house so we went back for the camera, and I jumped out to take a couple of shots from the sidewalk.

Susan South of the River recently posted her Wisteria; and last night I saw that Gotta Garden found a huge plant, too. I’ve often wished that I had this vine, but after seeing how far it’s traveled down the creek, maybe it’s better to visit Wisteria than to own it!

The Gardener's Year

Last year I noted that that a book called The Gardener’s Year by Karel Čapek was one of the recommended books at the Zanthan Gardens site of M. Sinclair Stevens. When I saw a copy on sale last fall, I was delighted, and then was delighted a second time when it became the March selection for the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club.

The edition I bought is part of the Modern Library Gardening Series, published in 2002, with an introduction to the series by Michael Pollan, and a forward by New York Times writer Verlyn Klinkenborg. This forward has biographical information about Karel Čapek, and a note that the pronunciation of Čapek is chop-uk, which I’m trying to remember. I found this quote via D.G. Jerz:

Čapek's obituary in Newsweek (January 2, 1939) said of the play R.U.R.: "Although he believed it the least interesting of all his works, it brought him greatest fame."

In 2007, the play R.U.R. is till famous and read by students of drama, but doesn’t it seem as if this little volume of garden philosophy has a wider readership? Perhaps Karel Čapek would be amused at that.

The Gardener’s Year was written in the Czech language and was first published in 1929, then in 1931 was printed in an English translation. 1929! That’s 78 years ago, but its descriptions of ridiculous, obsessed, yet still hopeful plant people sound like gardeners in the present, even though there have been changes in gardening over the decades. We still take the weather personally, forget what we’ve planted, buy too many plants, use the feasts of saints as days for planting crops, and struggle with garden technology – and we garden bloggers are all bonding with the author over our still unmanageable garden hoses.

Josef Čapek, the author’s brother, drew the whimsical illustrations, so full of wishful thinking, with winged gardeners suspended over the flowerbeds. I don’t think we’d love the book quite so much without the drawings! When Josef caught the Czech gardeners in action, the only women seem to be a couple of flappers mowing the lawn in dresses and heels. Was this really true at that time and place, I wonder? Did women not garden? Perhaps using men was a way to avoid indelicacy in the illustrations, so that Josef did not have to draw females astraddle rock gardens with rump in the air.

For me one of the most amazing and endearing aspects of Karel Čapek’s writing was the specific way he spoke about plants and soil. He doesn’t give you three names and then add ‘etc.’ His lists tumble on, his similes stretch for paragraphs and the descriptions are complete rather than suggestive, as when he speaks of of cactus:

There are cacti just like porcupines, cucumbers, marrows, candlesticks, jugs, priests’ caps, snakes’ nests; they are covered with scales, teats, tufts of hair, claws, warts, bayonets, yataghans and stars; they are bulky and lanky, spiked like a regiment of lancers, sharp like a column brandishing swords, swollen, stringy, and wrinkled, pock-marked, bearded, peevish, morose, thorny like abatis, woven like a basket, looking like excrescenses, animals and arms; the most masculine of all plants which were created on the third day, bearing seed according to their kind.

[I had to look up Yataghans and abatis – how about you?]

The military references seem appropriate in hindsight, since Karel Čapek was only in his forties when he died, departing as the Nazis took over his land. For a heartbroken man so in love with soil, with earth, with humus, he may not have minded the leaving. As I read those passages on soil, it occurred to me that a few years after Karel Čapek’s death, another man was born with the same kind of passion for soil. And I kept imagining our John Dromgoole and Karel Čapek in conversation, spreading the word that you shouldn’t feed the plants, you should feed the soil!