Images of April

This post, "Images of April", was written for my blogspot blog called The
Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.

A SCANOGRAPH EXPERIMENT
Several garden bloggers have successfully scanned flowers, including Ki, Carol and Kathy. In her April 21st post, Pam/Digging displayed a rather spooky 'scanograph'. This term comes via Kathy of Cold Climate Gardening. Ki told me to give it a try, but also warned me that my brand of scanner would probably not work, since its light source would give little depth of field. Ki used M&M’s to test the colors, but bringing a bag into this house would be way too dangerous!

Two clematis vines grow in back, one on either side of the door. The larger flowered clematis had some flowers for the April Bloomday, but the other one – possibly a Clematis viticella from the appearance of the leaves and flowers - just opened the first blossoms this week.

I draped a black velour dress over one flower of each clematis, a ‘Nuevo Leon’ salvia, and one tired Mockorange blossom and scanned them, using the autolevel corrections from P-shop Elements to make it clearer. The scanograph colors look different from the flowers in natural light – one clematis is velvety purple with magenta-red bars adding a glow down the center of each petal, the other a ruby red washed with purple overtones – but the scanner seems to concentrate on the red. The live Salvia is a lighter, bluer purple.

When I looked at your flowers, on your blogs, the scanographs were interesting, but when the flowers are my flowers, from my own garden, I don’t think I like the effect – actually- it’s kind of creeping me out.

TWO CLEMATIS

The large-flowered clematis in morning light:
The possible Clematis viticella:

ANOTHER APRIL AMARYLLIS

As the peach and white Hippeastrum/Amaryllis from Bloom Day faded, this one opened. It could be Red Lion, since that was among the old Christmas bulbs which were planted out, to live or die. This flower survived in spite of 23º and an ice storm.

MORE FLOWERS IN THE LAWN


Alophia drummondii, above.These miniature members of the Iris family are native to south Texas rather than Central Texas, but in 2006, two of them appeared in our front grass. I mowed around them last year, letting them mature, which resulted in a scattering of these delicate flowers today. Because Skip Richter and John Dromgoole advise Central Texans to mow high, the flowers were able to grow tall enough to be visible, rather than be mowed before they had a chance to bloom.

Edit Jan 2008: Some photos from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center suggest that rather than Alophia drummondii the right name for my little flowers may be Herbertia lahue.

According to McMillen’s Texas Gardening/ Wildflowers book, another name for this wildflower is Herbertia, and a rather pretty nickname is Purple Pleat-leaf.

LAST ISSUE

This week I received a postcard from Premiere Magazine, my favorite flick rag since the early nineteen-nineties. I’ve stuck with it through several moves, and bought many a gift subscription over 15 years. I’d heard the rumbles, so although I will miss the magazine, it wasn’t a shock to learn the April issue was the last. Ever.

With more than a year left on my current subscription, I was interested to see what the company would do. The postcard informed me that they’ll substitute the same number of issues that are owed to me, but the magazine they’re sending will be US Weekly.

Huh? A weekly gossip magazine is considered to be the equivalent of a monthly magazine with absolutely killer writers like Glenn Kenny and Paul Rudnick as Libby Gelman-Waxner? Not in my opinion. Phooie.

This post, "Images of April", was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.

Two Much Fun

These Salvias grow at my friend Mindy’s house, scene of last Saturday’s project for the Divas of the Dirt. We Divas are a group of Austin women who work together on each other’s garden projects. I joined the group in January 2001, making this my seventh season as one of the seven Divas. On Saturday we were eight, when Mindy’s houseguest, also a gardener, joined us for great food, interactions with nature, and conversations. The Divas worked on one short project and one very long one, and as we left, Mindy shared some extra Salvia greggii and a few pots of Barbados Cherry seedlings. By the time my friend Sophia dropped me at home just before 8 PM, I looked so wrecked that a family member handed over the bottle of Ibuprofen and pointed to the shower. But any day spent with seven wonderful gardeners is a good one, even if exhausting.

Sunday was shared with a different group of seven gardeners - all of them write about gardening and are informally known as the Austin Garden Bloggers. Two April days, each spent with a distinct group of seven other gardeners – what could be more fun? Pam/Digging, R.Sorrell/The Great Experiment, Julie/The Human Flower Project, Vivé/Something About Blooming and Butterflies, Susan/South of the River, Dawn/Suburban Wildlife Garden, and MSS/Zanthan Gardens and I carpooled around the city, stopping to wander around six gardens with some delicious finger-food in one hand and a glass in the other, talking nonstop.

Certain familiar plants were seen in almost every garden, while others were unknown to all but the owner. We have may have trees that are still saplings, or venerable trees that have survived generations of Texas weather. Some of us garden where the land is flat, others with slopes. The houses vary in ages, types and designs, and the gardens used so many plants and contained so many ideas that my head is spinning now as I think about the exhilarating day. But unlike Susan and MSS, I didn’t like awake and think about it last night – for the first time in weeks, I was too tired to think, and fell asleep immediately.

It’s ridiculous how pleased I can be by a single flower. Near the back fence there’s an area planted with red flowers to entice hummingbirds in summer, and a few months ago, I planted some Anemone coronaria ‘The Governor’ to add a little red in spring. Out of 20 corms, only 2 came up, each making a few flowers - this one was gracious enough to be open when the Garden Bloggers were here. One anemone would be lost among the hundreds of flowers in the lush and established gardens I saw yesterday, but one anemone had to be enough in this otherwise green bed.

Although its bud was visible on Sunday, the Siberian iris waited until today to unfold, refusing to perform for the guests. While it’s true that Siberian Iris don’t grow well here – and this single flower took three seasons to appear – it wasn’t a foolish choice ordered from a catalog, but a passalong from my friend Barb in Illinois. We used to trade starts of Siberian iris when I lived up there, much as Pam/Digging and I have traded Iris here. I like to see passalong plants blooming, celebrating our friendships and standing as the emblem of garden friends everywhere who like to plant things just to see what will happen.

Happy Birthday, Kitty

When gardening with seeds was the subject, I wrote about my sturdy gardening grandma, who was born on a farm. This is my other grandmother, Grandma Kitty, a 4’10” bundle of spunk and style. She was born in April, and she's still remembered every April by her descendents. In this photo, Kitty is 21 years old, wearing a pleated dress that she designed and sewed.

Kitty died when I was quite young, so it's likely that my few actual memories of her have replicated themselves into memories of remembering her. But I’ve seen photos and watched old movies and heard a lot of stories about Kitty.

A city-loving apartment dweller with no chance to be a gardener, Kitty was pretty and kind, frequently taking in relatives who needed somewhere to stay for a while. The tale is that everyone loved Kitty – she’s seen in many group photos, never separated from the people near her, but always with someone’s arm enclosing her. Every Friday she baked and cleaned the house like a tornado, getting ready for whoever would drop in over the weekend. You might get her famous kidney stew, or the children's favorite Burnt Sugar Cake, or her own favorite coconut macaroons.

Having a houseful of company was Kitty's delight. With a large extended family just a stroll or a streetcar away, casual visiting was easy and children grew up in a expansive social network, where the cousins were as close as sisters, and the friends were as close as family. There was always someone in the group who could play the piano in Kitty’s parlor, so everyone could sing as they passed the refreshments – which probably included a bucket of suds fetched from the nearby tavern.

I heard that Kitty would spread a sheet of newspaper on the carpet, have one of the children lie down with arms extended to the side, and make marks on the paper. She'd send the child off to school and make a well-fitting coat by the time school was out. [Carol of May Dreams Garden posts the diaries of her grandmother Ruth, who was also a lightning-fast seamstress.]

I’d dearly love to be able to talk to my grandmother, finally find out the answers to genealogical mysteries, ask her if she remembers the Chicago World’s Fair, and quiz her about the photo taken at a pre-World War One party where all the young wives dressed as men and smoked cigars. But tomorrow, it would also be great if Kitty could clean my house like a tornado, whip up some macaroons and magically sew me some new clothes, because company’s coming and I could use her help.

Mouse & Trowel

A week ago, Philo and I rented the Christopher Guest comedy, For Your Consideration, in which actors in an independent film become entranced with the idea that they might be nominated for academy awards. As I watched Harry Shearer, Catharine O’Hara and Parker Posey, I realized that my bonds to their characters were not just cinematical.

Colleen of In The Garden Online thought Garden Blogging needed recognition, and her idea for the Mouse &Trowel awards was immediately accepted. Since the day another garden blogger told me she had nominated me as the Blogger You’d Like as a Neighbor, I‘d let myself hope for that Mousie nomination.

My hope came true! And I was given a second nomination for writing! To be placed in such company is a real honor for which I thank you.

And who are the other nominees for 'Neighbor'? Pam/Digging, Carol of May Dreams and A Study In Contrast’s Blackswamp Kim.

Well, here’s where I got the giggles, imagining the four of us living in some imaginary town [with perfect weather, of course] trading plants and livening up the street.

In our own individual neighborhoods, each of us is the neighbor with the landscape that doesn’t quite fit in: on Pam’s street, her stunning front courtyard with abundant native plants stops cars in their tracks; Carol may be more discreet in the front garden, but her beautiful, fenced vegetable garden breaks the mold for her neighborhood. Kim contrasts unusual colors, textures and blossoms with glee, under the gaze of statuary lions. And I’ve opened my garden gate, come out to the front with tools in hand and dug flowerbeds in the lawn.

Sometimes our neighbors in the bricks-and-sticks world don’t appreciate anything but manicured lawn and precision-cut shrubbery, and they are not fond of our horticultural experiments. So it’s especially wonderful to be selected as neighbors by you plant and nature lovers from the world of garden blogging. Thank you.