Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Azaleas
The azaleas have started to bloom. Having come from the frozen tundra of northern Illinois, I'm still fascinated by these "Southern" plants. Almost as soon as I got to northern Virginia though, I started to read disparaging remarks about them. Too common. Well, I still like them, but never planted any until we opened up the woods to a bit more sun by having some tall pine trees cut down. I put in some about 5 years ago and a couple more last year. The first ones are just now getting big enough to put on a show, but of course I don't know their names because I don't know where my records are. I think they are all Gable Hybrids though, and I think the pink one now blooming may be 'Boudoir'.
Last year, I added 'Mildred Mae' and 'Kathleen Gable', two more Gable Hybrids, both of which are now in bloom.
Oh, and I just remembered that I planted 'Northen Lights' many years ago in a place where it is waaaaay too shady to grow it. It grew (survived, really) for a few years, but never bloomed. I was always intending to move it, but never got around to it.
Now that I look at what I have, it seems they are all varieties intended to be cold-hardy. Why is that. I wonder?
2 Comments:
I have a friend who weighs about 90 pounds soaking wet, and was always cold during the winter here in Iowa, even with several layers of clothes on. She moved to Mexico after retirement, but she recently told me it took about two years for her to feel warm again, and to not need extra clothes to feel warm.Midwest winters stay with you.
Don
Don, thanks for sharing that anecdote. We keep thinking we're going to retire someplace really warm. Mexico might be perfect; we can exchange the azaleas for bougainvillea.
This week is the Washington Post Sunday magazine's "Spring Home & Design Issue". There's a humorous article by Tom Toles, editorial page cartoonist, about moving from a large garden in Buffalo to a small city lot in DC. He mentions that when he would tell people here that he had a garden in Buffalo, there would be an odd pause, and "if I looked closely enough, I could see in their eyes a tiny image of me in overalls and ushanka (earflaps down), lurching forward into a snowdrift, sometimes even being set upon by the wooly tusked tundra bison". He also mentions that his new garden here came with "assorted" azaleas from the previous owner. :-)
But I once read a statement by a Midwest farmer something like this: There are places on earth that get hotter, and there are places that get colder, but there is no place that gets hotter AND colder than the Midwest.
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