Congratulations, Chris!

Thank you to everyone who visited the Transplantable Rose during the blog tour and entered the drawing for a copy of Nightshade, the sixteenth mystery in the China Bayles series by Susan Albert.

Congratulations to the lucky winner - Chris Quinones of Massachusetts!

Welcome Susan Albert and the Lifescape Blog Tour!

Today's post is written by Susan Albert - author of the China Bayles mysteries, set in the Texas Hill Country, and a series called The Cottage Tales, with Beatrix Potter. A couple of days ago more than thirty garden bloggers from all over the USA were part of the first "Spring Fling" held here in Austin. Meeting Susan at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center here in Austin was part of the fun! Today it means something extra special to be able to say...Wecome, Susan, to the Transplantable Rose!

“Unbecoming a Gardener”

A big thanks to Annie for hosting me here at Transplantable Rose today. This blog tour celebrates the launch of Nightshade, the sixteenth China Bayles mystery. China is a former criminal defense attorney who has opted for a quieter life as the owner of an herb shop in Pecan Springs TX. Of course, her life isn’t really very quiet (there are all those dead bodies!) but the time she’s able to spend in the garden helps reduce all that stress. That’s how it works for me, anyway, and for gardeners all over the world.

From Garden to Native Grasses

I’ve had a garden here in eastern Burnet County, on the northern edge of the Edwards Plateau region, for over twenty years. On the 31-acre place we call Meadow Knoll, I have tended a half-acre of garden, composted, mulched, saved my own seed and grown my own seedlings, experimented with new varieties, and canned my own produce. I’ve spent hours every day in the garden and loved (almost) every minute of it. (You’ll find a somewhat fanciful map of our place here.)

But I’ve grown older and creakier, my writing work takes more time, and we’ve acquired a second home—which means I’ve had to cut back. The veggies went first, since they were also irresistibly attractive to raccoons, deer, and various voracious insects. (Bet you know about that!) I stopped planting flowering annuals because they were work- and water-hogs. Then last year (2007), we got over 20” of rain in July, which did in many of the non-native perennials. We were gone in August and September, and since it didn’t rain during those months, the rest of the garden—except those brave old roses, survivors all—gave up the ghost. Instead of replanting, Bill and I spent most of the winter returning everything (except the roses, a few vines, and a daffodil border along the woods) to the native grassland from which we originally wrestled it. Enthusiastic and unrepentant, I plead guilty, as Sara Stein puts it in Noah’s Garden, to conduct “unbecoming a gardener”—a phrase that has a great deal of significance.

Wild Gardening

But I’m not garden-less, and I know I never will be. One of the things I’ve learned over my gardening years is that nature can do a lot better job of it than I can. She knows what grows best, where and when and how. So I’m turning it all over to her—the whole job, from planting to watering to growing. And having lived in this place and observed it for over two decades, here’s what I’m expecting from my Hill Country wild garden.

Color. In April and May, the fields and roadsides will be blue (bluebonnets and mealy sage), purple (winecups and redbuds), and pink (paintbrush). In June, there’ll be a blaze of yellows, reds, and oranges (gaillardia, coreopsis, and standing cypress, which grows along our creek and along the railroad tracks on the ridge). In July, the incredible blue of gentian, and blue ruellia, and in the fall, a burst of azure sage along the fence row. Oh, and goldenrod, and sunflowers and coneflowers and Englemann daisies—my, oh, my, all that astonishing gold.

Shape and form. Landscaping, I’m told, is all about shape and form. My wild garden offers plenty. In winter, there are the strong trunks and bare limbs of pecans and hackberries and mesquite—the mesquite decorated with hanging gardens of mistletoe. The firm, rounded shapes of Ashe juniper, the free-form sprawl of the mustang grape that grows along the fence, the spiny paddles of prickly pear, the spiky thrusts of yucca, the massed forms of Lindheimer muhly grass, the pyramids of bald cypress, bright with autumn color. I can’t take credit for any of it—all I can do is appreciate it.

Harvest. If beauty isn’t enough bounty, consider this. The yaupon holly and roughleaf dogwood that grows at the edge of the meadow provide a feast of red and white berries for the robins in winter, and the cedar waxwings will line up to strip the junipers of their generous purple fruit. The raccoons love the mustang grape in August, the lime-green hedgeapples in September, and the tart-sweet flameleaf sumac berries in November. The oaks and pecans feed the squirrels all winter, and the winter-tourist goldfinch love the dried sunflower heads. The hummingbirds adore the native salvias, Turks’ cap, desert willow, and fall obedience plant, and the native bees are wild about the buttonbush in the marsh and the buffalo gourd along the edge of the lane. The abundant fruits of that enormous buffalo gourd support whole communities of mice, voles, gophers, and such. (Recently, I found a cache of last summer’s seeds neatly tucked under a rock by some furry creature who must have forgotten where he put them.) The wild turkeys join the raccoons and squirrels in enjoying the mesquite seeds, dogwood and sumac fruits, and mustang grape. In the wild garden, there’s something for everyone, and—in a good year—enough to go around.

You get the picture. Instead of feeling that I have to go out and weed, I go for a walk. I don’t bother with loppers or shears. If the mustang grape wants to take over the fence, have at it, my friend, there’ll be more for the raccoons. I’ve hung up my rake, for the leaf litter is home to insects and microbes and lichens, the wild garden’s recycling team. And I don’t bother to spade, either, since the wind and birds and insects and animals carry seeds, and I’m learning to let them do the planting.

But please don’t think this change of heart and habit comes easily. I’m clinging to my old roses, I’m growing my favorite culinary herbs in a wheelbarrow, and I wintered over some really spectacular geraniums for the planter on the deck. But I’m no longer hostage to the garden. I’ve shifted into “admire” mode. I’m not only loving it, but finding it easier to live with.

I live in the country, and my wild garden is all around me, like a green embrace. But people who live in the city can enjoy their wild gardens along roadways, in vacant lots, in untended back yards, in far corners of the neighborhood park. It’s all in what you look for, you know. If the ungardening bug bites you, sit down for a spell with Sara Stein’s Noah’s Garden or (if you’re a Texan) Sally and Andy Wasowski’s Native Texas Gardens. That’ll give you something to think about while you resist rushing out to buy that exotic plant you just read about in one of those glossy garden magazines.

Thanks, Annie, for giving me a place to celebrate my wild garden. And thanks to all the readers who are following this blog tour through cyberspace. If you have questions or thoughts to share, post a comment. I’ll be around today and for the next couple of days to answer questions and carry on a conversation.

About the book drawing and Susan’s blog tour

If you’d like to enter the drawing for a copy of Nightshade go here to register. But you’d better hurry. The drawing for Transplantable Annie closes at noon on April 10, 2008.

Want to read the other posts in Susan’s blog tour? You’ll find a calendar and links here.

Sprung

I'm too exhausted to say more than "Thank You!" to Pam, MSS, Bonnie and Diana for planning so well - another big thank you to the lively, cheerful group of garden bloggers who traveled to Austin from all over the country.

Spring Fling not only let us welcome those who'd come as visitors to Austin but also allowed local bloggers to meet, many for the first time. Driving around together is a great way to bond as map-flapping passengers 'help' the drivers navigate Austin roads and everyone talks at once! Before my forehead hits the keyboard I'd like to shout out to my road buddies, Rachel In Bloom, VDBD of Playin' Outside, Lori from the Gardener of Good and Evil, Kathy from Cold Climate Gardening and her cool friend Cynthia, darling Dawn of Suburban Wildlife Garden, and the super-human Pam/Digging.





Some plants refused to follow the Spring Fling schedule, hoarding blooms until today ...May Dreams Carol - this is how the 'Julia Child' rose was supposed to look when you were here! [Although my camera doesn't want to take normal photos, the flower icon for close-up still works.]



While I recover from this wonderful weekend let's welcome a guest blogger. Susan Albert will bring her Nightshade Blog tour to the Transplantable Rose, sharing her thoughts on Unbecoming A Gardener on Tuesday, April 8th.

As an Austin-area author/blogger, Susan joined us at Spring Fling - one of the warm and wonderful people who stepped off the screen and into our lives.

Shovel Pruning the Vignettes

This post, "Shovel Pruning the Vignettes", was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.


The Garden Bloggers arrive in Austin in a few days and we who live here will no longer be photos on a page but living, breathing human beings with gardens that are actual, not virtual. You've seen Pam/Digging's photos and the garden she designed and built from below the ground up, yet Pam has confessed to some pre-Fling jitters! MSStevens just posted about her mixed up, exuberant, wild at heart meadow garden , complete with poetry she wrote as a 17-year old prodigy. The also jittery MSS says she wrote this post to set expectations for visitors to her garden and the laid-back, artistic neighborhood around her. Dawn's garden blog is just fine but her real garden is on hold. She must wait for long-planned construction to be completed before she begins to turn her dreams into reality. While she waits, she takes us on tour around the Austin area and shows us places we might otherwise miss.

I don't have much to be nervous about - only a few bloggers are intending to trek northwest to my bits-and-pieces garden, full of passalongs and plants I grow just to see what will happen. There's a hint of Lady Bird Johnson in the front yard and a lot of plants beloved by Mrs. Whaley in the back yard. And one rather cranky, gettin' older lady trying to keep the plants in control.

Last fall I planted ranunculus bulbs after reading a post about them by the wonderful Julie of the Human Flower Project. I gave them a good spot in the long fence border.

This spring the ranunculus opened their delightfully rolled flowers. What fun to see a chrome yellow followed by an orange - the flowers were more vivid than I'd prefer, but they seemed to blend with the lighter yellows, purples and silvers already blooming in this border.

Then number three opened deep fuchsia pink and I couldn't stand it. For nearly thirty years I've made one garden after another with layers of small trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals and bulbs to form vignettes - small pleasing scenes with the center focused and the edges blurred.

On my series of small small suburban lots I used these vignettes to draw the eye to a defined area of horticultural interest, away from neighboring house roofs, TV antennae, garage walls, basketball hoops and backboards, pool slides, sports banners, trash containers, compost heaps, oversize vehicles, boats under blue tarps, power and electric lines and dead trees.

You'll find every color of the rainbow somewhere in my yard and in a large sweeping meadow I'd love them all swirled together, but vignettes are small. Certain areas have limited palettes - this secluded corner is mainly corals and lavenders -

The hummingbird bed is predominantly red and the pink border near the gate is the spot for pinks, magentas, whites and burgundies. Those ranunculus bloomed in a bed of yellows, blues & silvers along the fence.
A few days ago Pam/Digging told us one of her bluebonnets bloomed pink instead of blue and she wavered between moving it and letting it bloom. Most of her commenters told her to let it be. I said to move it. I follow my own advice.

I used the garden fork to lift the deep pink ranunculus with a nice chunk of soil, relocating it to the bulb bed near the anemones. Two days later the flower doesn't seem to have noticed that it's on the opposite side of the yard. Julie says these bulbs usually bloom once without returning, but if it does decide to act like a perennial, it will be in the right place.
This way I can enjoy both the deep pink ranunculus and the more coherent long border without being annoyed each time I looked at that 'riot of color'.
More shovel pruning was needed in the front yard. When we worked on the Pink Entrance Garden, last spring, I planted a bareroot rose labeled 'Therese Bugnet' toward the middle of the bed, a good spot for this pink shrub rose. When the rose bloomed dark red I was surprised but decided to keep it since the flower was lovely, nice for cutting and the color looked okay with the pinks and burgundies.

But in the last few months our 'Not-Therese' Rose started making long, wandlike canes... not only was it not pink... it was also not a shrub! When the Divas of the Dirt came here a few weeks ago, DivaMattie volunteered to adopt the unmasked red climber and took it home.

The Pink Garden still needed a Pink Shrub Rose. Instead of taking a chance on another bareroot rose, I bought a shrub rose in a container that was already blooming pink ... it's supposed to be the Texas-tough 'Belinda's Dream' and this time the girl looks like her photos.

The styles of M.S.Stevens' garden, Pam's garden, Dawn's garden and my garden are as different as the style of our garden blogs and our styles of writing. I think these differences are something to celebrate - if you'd like to read more on the topic of rejoicing in the differences among bloggers , please see Kate's thoughful ode to individuality, "A Gentle Plea for Chaos" at her KateSmudges blog.

This post, "Shovel Pruning the Vignettes", was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.