Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Monday, March 15, 2010
Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day
Ta-da! Flowers!
It was a long time coming, and we could still have cold weather, even snow, but I do believe it is spring.
Blooming yesterday at Tangled Branches South were:
Crocus sieberi 'Tricolor'. Past its prime already, but still cheerful.
Crocus vernus 'Twilight'. This is only the second spring I've had these, but I'm intrigued by the color and texture. Very shiny, satiny petals of deep purple-blue. Or is it blue-purple? Whatever it is, it's unusual and interesting.
Iris reticulata 'Gordon'. The picture makes it look huge, but it's really a tiny thing. I planted some of these in the woods and some in the meadow. The ones in the meadow are doing much better than those in the woods.
Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena'
Narcissus 'Rijnveld's Early Sensation'. These had flower buds before the big snow in February and those stems were flattened and bent, but still bloomed. The current flowers are from buds that emerged after the snow melted.
Also blooming, but unphotographed:
Narcissus 'Tête-à-Tête'
Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant'
In the spring, I like to include the wild plants on the GBBD list too. I had to look this one up. 
I always just called it "alder", but now I'm fairly sure it's Hazel Alder (Alnus serrulata).
The red maples are just starting to open up too.
Oh, and a weed. Hoary or Hairy Bittercress.
I'll save the Tangled Branches North list for tomorrow. Basically it contains everything in the previous post, plus some hellebores and early narcissus. If/when it ever stops raining, I'll go out and gather some hellebores for a floating hellebore portrait.
I expect to see lots of hellebores when I head over to May Dreams Gardens to view the rest of the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day posts.
Previous March Flowers: 2009(1,2), 2008, 2007, 2006
Sunday, March 14, 2010
First Flowers and Fragrance
Nature cut us some slack and provided two gloriously warm days this week. That's all it took for the frustrated crocus (see previous post) to burst into bloom. And it brought some of its friends with it.
I was so busy working in the garden this week that I didn't spend much time admiring the garden. To that end - and this is something I need to do more often - I brought some flowers indoors to appreciate up close. The players here are Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant' (dark purple), Crocus sieberi 'Firefly' (pale blue-purple), Crocus chrysanthus 'Cream Beauty', Iris reticulata 'Gordon', and Galanthus nivalis (the common snowdrop).
I wanted to say a few words about the scent of each of these, but then realized my descriptive skill for fragrance isn't up to the task. This is the case with most people who haven't actively educated themselves about scent. To quote from a fascinating article from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute:
The average human being, it is said, can recognize up to 10,000 separate odors. We are surrounded by odorant molecules that emanate from trees, flowers, earth, animals, food, industrial activity, bacterial decomposition, other humans. Yet when we want to describe these myriad odors, we often resort to crude analogies: something smells like a rose, like sweat, or like ammonia.
Our culture places such low value on olfaction that we have never developed a proper vocabulary for it. In A Natural History of the Senses, poet Diane Ackerman notes that it is almost impossible to explain how something smells to someone who hasn't smelled it. There are names for all the pastels in a hue, she writes—but none for the tones and tints of a smell.
So for now, let me just say that Iris reticulata 'Gordon' has a pleasant, slightly sweet scent. Same for the snowdrops, but a different pleasant, slightly sweet scent. I didn't get much fragrance from either 'Cream Beauty' or 'Firefly', but 'Ruby Giant' crocus has a pleasant, but faint scent. There. How was that? Pretty feeble? I agree. I'm going to work on it.
But you know what was the best thing I smelled this week? Fresh Air! I dried bath towels outdoors in the sun and, on the warmest day, opened the house windows wide. I think spring is really here.
Labels: crocus, in bloom, iris, snowdrops
Saturday, March 06, 2010
If Spring Won't Come to Us...
...then we will go to Spring.
Last weekend, very weary of looking at piles of dirty snow, the spouse and I headed for a 24-hour respite in Virginia Beach.
Spring isn't quite there yet either, but close. We arrived late afternoon and immediately went for a walk on the beach (in our winter coats). It was sunny, but cool and breezy.
The next day we surveyed our tourist options and chose to see the Norfolk Botanical Garden on the chance that there might be camellias blooming.
Above is one of the paths in the Hofheimer Camellia Garden. The Norfolk Botanical Garden has a collection of over 1700 camellia plants, with about 750 of them in the Hofheimer Camellia Garden. I'm no camellia expert, but it appeared to me that the C. japonica varieties were just beginning to bloom. Many blossoms looked frost-nipped. We found one plant covered in brilliant red flowers and that was an interspecific hybrid - Camellia x 'Tango'.
My little old Fuji FinePix never did a good job of capturing reds and it still doesn't. Believe me, those flowers were very red.
We didn't linger too long at the garden due to the cool and breezy weather, but stayed long enough to see most of the early spring flowers, including the daffodils at the top of this post, some hellebores, a few crocuses and snowdrops, several witch hazels, and the beautiful and fabulously-fragrant Prunus mume.
The variety here is 'Kobai', and it looks quite similar to one I loved and lost - 'Peggy Clarke'.
On the way out of the garden, we discovered a novel use for wine corks.
I have the corks, now I just have to get some agaves.
Back at home and looking at dirty piles of snow again, I noticed something green at the edge of one. I cautiously raked through it with my fingers and underneath found this.
Crocus buds! Horizontal from the weight of snow and ice, but still obeying their biological alarm clock and going forth to meet Spring.
14 Days Until the Vernal Equinox...
Labels: camellias, crocus, vacation
Monday, March 09, 2009
Kitchen Gardens and More Crocuses
We spent a good part of the weekend working on the vegetable garden at Tangled Branches South. I'll have a lot more to say about this as the season goes on, but I wanted to share with you a couple of old-time resources I found while researching an upcoming post on my genealogy blog. (Yes, there will be gardening content in the next genealogy post.)
I wondered what varieties of lettuce were commonly grown in 1894. A Google search for kitchen gardens and 1894 turned up a modern-day anthology of edible-garden wisdom from the 19th century. The Kitchen Garden Guide is a free downloadable publication. I didn't have any prior knowledge of it before this morning, and I'm naturally suspicious of free anythings, but this appears genuine and non-spammy. However, if you want to go direct to the source, at least one of the books excerpted by The Kitchen Garden Guide is available in its entirety from Google Books.
How to Make the Garden Pay By Tuisco Greiner
Interesting that the author regarded head lettuce, and then only the best inner leaves, as the pinnacle of lettuce-growing. A hundred years later, confessing to liking iceberg lettuce would leave your gourmet credentials as limp as the leaf lettuce you had to eat.
I've always preferred head lettuce, and then only the inner leaves. No fowls to feed the outer leaves to here, sadly. Greiner follows up his cultivation techniques with a list of varieties. He says there are so many good kinds available now, it was hard to narrow it down for publicaiton.
I can confirm one bit of information from the book. In the winter of 2007-2008, I grew a mix of lettuce varieties (free seed) under a double layer of Agribon fabric. The leaf lettuce rotted (froze, whatever), but the head lettuce survived and made delicious salads very early in the spring.
Meanwhile, back at Tangled Branches North, the Ruby Giant crocuses have burst into bloom. This may be my favorite crocus, another one of the type called snow crocuses or bunch crocuses. Its proper name is Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant', native to hillsides and woodlands from southern Hungary through the northern Balkans. It seems perfectly happy in my northern Virginia woodland, returning and increasing every year.
That's an old clump, and the flowers really are that close together. I went a little bit crazy with the pictures and uploaded 5 of them, but it is one of my favorite crocuses.
Labels: books, crocus, lettuce, potager
Friday, March 06, 2009
Snowy Bulbs
The snow earlier in the week was a blessing in a way. For one, it's been a bit dry here and we can use the moisture. But even better, I get to take pictures of spring bulbs flowering in the snow. I always used to fall for these pictures in catalogs, imagining that the flowers forced their way up through the snow. Only much later did I realize that those pictures are taken after late snowfalls on the already blooming plants, just like this.
Even though we received about 6 or 7 inches of snow and the temperatures have been very cold, the early March sun did its work and melted much of it. The crocuses reappeared yesterday from where we had shoveled snow on top of them. They just laughed it off.
Plant photos, top to bottom, are:
Narcissus 'Rijnveld's Early Sensation'
Iris reticulata 'Gordon'
Crocus sieberi 'Firefly'
Crocus chrysanthus 'Cream Beauty'
Labels: bulbs, crocus, iris, narcissus, snow
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Crocus ancyrensis 'Golden Bunch'
Next in the lineup of spring bulbs, and just beginning to bloom yesterday, is Crocus ancyrensis 'Golden Bunch'. I'm probably repeating myself, but will say again, these flowers are small but powerful. The color, such a rich bright gold, makes up for the lack of size. And you could always plant a million or so if you want a larger impact. 
They look almost triumphant here, surviving a late-winter nibble by some critter and lighting up their surroundings so early in the season.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Best Crocus and a Cool Tool
I like all my crocuses, but I like 'Ruby Giant' the best.
A couple of warm days, a thundershower and voila! beautiful dark purple flowers magically appear. The color draws me to it - so vivid and bright after gray and brown winter.
With the warmer weather coming up, and having experienced some GRTH over the winter, my thoughts are turning to.....exercise. Not a lot of exercise, just a walk around the neighborhood. If I'm going to call it exercise, maybe I should measure it and record it in a spreadsheet and make charts of my weight vs. how far I walked and estimated number of calories burned and....oh, forget it - too complicated. But there's this really cool tool - RunningMap.com - for measuring the distance and elevation changes of your route. You give it an address or street name and it gives you a map. You can show just the map or a satellite photo or a map/satellite hybrid. Then start clicking away to draw your route. It measures the distance covered in a straight line between each click and gives you a cumulative total. Fun, especially for a map geek like me. I could sit here and draw walking routes all day...
Friday, February 08, 2008
Next Crocus
Crocus ancyrensis (meaning of or from Ankara) 'Golden Bunch'. The flowers are on the small side, but the gold color is intense. Here's another picture of them in their native habitat, where they apparently bloom in March, or did in 2006 anyway. Those flowers look larger than mine, but it's hard to compare. There's an acorn cap in my photo (and we don't have any humongous acorns) so you can get an idea of the flower size. They may be smaller than they could be, owing to the fact they're planted right next to that oak tree in an area where the birds like to scratch and feed. Squirrels too. One of the problems I have with this crocus is that the squirrels like to chew off the flowers.
I noticed in the Turkish photo some interesting seed pod remnants, looking something like Lunaria, but much smaller. Wonder what those are....
The crocuses I showed you earlier are finally doing their bunching thing after our absurdly warm weather this week. Prior to that they were only opening one or two flowers each day.
And lastly, the Galanthus nivalis snowdrops are starting to bloom. These were newly planted a couple of years ago and they seem happy in this spot. Keeping my fingers crossed on that.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Signs of Spring
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| Tangled Branches January Photos Crocus sieberi 'Firefly' |
But here are a few more signs of spring I noticed today:
- There was a robin in the backyard.
- There was a chipmunk running along the neighbors' fence.
- There was a fly buzzing around inside the house.
- I went to the garden center and bought some seeds because I was too impatient to wait for the mail ordered ones.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Spring or Winter?
Every time I declare spring, it snows. I was just thinking of declaring spring after last weekend in the country, so snow is in the forecast.
Last weekend in Central Virginia, the weather was warm enough to open the windows and air out the house. The sound of spring peepers (or something) drifted in on the breeze (more like a gale, actually). I wandered around the woods looking for wildflowers or fiddleheads, but it was still too early. The maple trees are starting to bud out. The birds were singing noticeably more than the previous weekend. Our well-fed suburban birds have been singing for weeks, but I think the rural birds were still just trying to stay alive. Now the bugs are starting to come out and they can think of other activities. I didn't see any deer, but did find their tracks in the mud, however those were nowhere near the recently planted woodies. So far, so good.
Back to those spring peepers for a moment. According to what I've read on the internet, spring peepers are nocturnal. So then, what was I hearing during the daylight? They started about 10:30 in the morning and went until late afternoon. The sound was coming from the brushy side of the stream. I tried to look for the critters, but could see nothing. I found a site with sounds of a dozen frogs and toads, but none of these sound like what I remember. So the identity of the croaking creatures remains to be discovered.
In Northern Virginia, a few more crocus flowers popped open yesterday. I do mean popped open. Sunday I swear there was nothing there - hardly even any leaves; Monday - flowers. And some of the very early narcissus are open. Pictures soon.
A rare bird stopped by this afternoon - a pine warbler. I guess they really aren't all that rare, but this is only the second time I've seen one in the backyard. Not rare at all, but very welcome, a large flock of robins was rummaging through the leaves in the woods late in the afternoon.
Did I mention there's a snow advisory for tomorrow?
