rose

Prospect Of Shade




Shade, we love it. It is cooling and pleasant to stand beneath the transpirating canopy, but it also completely changes the world beneath it. The Russian Zelkova trees planted by the city four years ago (has it been that long?) are fast growing and have forced the plants formerly in full sun to be on the move or die trying. Some, like the Phlox seem to relocate their young each year to the east, toward the gap in the trees. Others offer a slow decline, like the yarrow and some asters, where others reach, reach, reeaach as the lily, and some simply disappear like our perennial ageratum. We've moved what we can, having only so much sunny space in the side yard.



Not long ago this area baked under full sun in all four seasons.



New Dawn is known to tolerate some shade, but even our hardy specimen has less leaves than in previous years. It has bloomed, although less vigorously, but will need to be moved to a sunnier district in the Autumn. That will be a tough move for a plant with a thorny trunk the size of my arm.



Underneath the New Dawn, the Spirea. It too will need to move on.



Tickseed, Coreopsis, likes the sun and gets some, a couple of hours worth, as it resides in the shrinking gap between two Zelkovas.



As does my grandmother's tea, which has bloomed more than ever before, a feat for a plant in declining sun and over fifty years old.



And we couldn't live without its scent, which is bested only by the iris and maybe our lilies. But we've no place to relocate it for the next season and may just have to relocate ourselves so it may live on.





The Rose By A Nose



I went out, quick, to do a small round of errands after a day of organizing and cleaning. Two things: fully unexpected, but instantaneous, allergic coughing and sneezing and my grandmother's rose so full of blooms. Its scent competes only with the iris, which is also blooming now, but in the side yard. I clipped some to bring inside and get away from whatever allergen is floating about on this darkened day.






Rose Colored Evening


I took the red line from Columbus Circle to the Brooklyn Museum stop after work, with an hour to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden after hours. There was music, wine, roses out the wazoo, hats and garden wear. 


So many more people than the last time I made it to this event (most were under the cherry trees just over the hedge).


A tidal wave, no an avalanche of roses greets you as you turn lilac corner.





The sheer quantity of Hesperis matronalis decorating the rose garden frees me from the guilt of cultivating just one of these in our garden. Then I thought of the purple loosestrife, Lythrum salicaria, which decorates City Hall Park, and then I imagined ecologists outside the city gnashing their teeth.


Hell, I should know what this it, saponaria, lychnis, what?










Happy 97th Grandma!



My grandmother's roses, or what I could salvage from her garden, just before her house was sold. I'm impressed with the vigor of this rose, over 50 years old. Beautiful and vigorous, just like her.

Rain Heavy




New Dawn, or any rose I suppose, doesn't like the heavy rains. It droops and sags, petals wither and drop.

 But it bounces back when the sun returns, albeit a little further from the wall than before.




Sun To Shade




The three Zelkovas planted two years ago (or was it one?) are growing rapidly. The front yard garden used to get sun until 2 or so in the afternoon during May. Now, the shade sweeps across the garden from morning on; only a band of sunlight remaining during the early hours. The Zelkovas are not yet tall enough to block out the noon day sun of June, but they will be by next year, I think. This whole garden will change from yarrow, sedum, and roses to dicentra and monkshood in a few years.

The city planted these three trees, which form a wide V-shape, less than 8 feet from the building. Not well considered. One is directly in front of our stoop. When you stand at the top step you can tickle your face with the Zelkova's lanceolate leaves. The branches of the Zelkovas are low, and we are ducking under them to walk the sidewalk, yet unwilling to prune after neighborhood stories of fines for doing so. No, I do not want to become a certified pruner or whatever the title is. I understand the city's rationale, it's understandable, but I'm busy. Maybe this summer I will concoct a post on the "dumbness" of the Million Trees Program, maybe.

But it's not all complaints. This stretch used to be awfully hot in summertime, and now there is a light shade, a real comfort. Eventually our apartment will be less hot, reducing ac use, which we will like. The trees decorate this stretch of our small block, overall it makes the neighborhood softer, somehow more generous.

The New Dawn rose is becoming a monster with a twelve-foot span and ten foot height despite being increasingly shaded by the Zelkovas. This rose is incredibly healthy, even though it was ripped from another garden 4 or 5 years ago. The main stem is massively thick, and I can hardly keep the leaders under control. All three roses in this garden are exceptionally healthy and I regard the 8 hours of early sun and the heat reflected from wall and concrete to be the reason. Too much humidity, dampness, high dew points, and shade will take a rose down. Given the growth of the Zelkovas, I'll need to move mine before it comes to that.

A New Perspective



Grandmas' tea, with van, from the window. It's grown to new heights lately.

Let seeing this old flower from a new vantage be a lesson to me. Constant worrying about my dead-end job that at the same time I fear to lose due to academic politics has me on edge. My old boss was demoted, my new boss is green, and a new school year begins tomorrow. Continuing to ask myself what it is I really want to be spending my time with, how it is I suppose to do better than today. 

I have a flurry of posts to get out over the next week, and then, posting will need to be somewhat intermittent for the time being. I have an exhibition coming up this winter, and possibly another this November, on which I must spend more time working.


Thorn Turd



This is one side of our lovely building.

In November, the landlord decided to start replacing windows. His guy started with the upper apartments. He said he would do ours this January. So far, nothing. The window above is one of the new windows. It appears that he wanted to redo the windows before he did the siding, which he has been threatening to do since the expulsion. That sequence makes sense, and while I am loathe to open my place to the dust and debris of removing rotten window framing and walls, better now than when the garden is in season, right? I can take the dirt, the cold, but the plants, abuse them while dormant!

Unfortunately, many pieces of the old, rotten framing are tossed down below. One particular good toss unseated my rose trellis. Now the whole thing hangs lopsided. When the debris whacked the trellis, it snapped the main branches of my honeysuckle. I suppose that's not all that bad, it's never done well here anyway -too sunny and hot.

Amazing enough is how it sprouts new leaves despite the coldest winter in some time. I will move this plant this spring to the other side of the house. Where over there? I do not know. I gotta start giving things away.

One great pleasure of my neighborhood is that many people actually bag their doggy doo. So too bad that some folks decide it is then okay to wing the thing into my climbing rose. Particularly thorny the rose, particularly stuck sack of shit. Public gardening is a thorny enterprise and I grow weary.



Another Bloom



They keep coming, one by one. The landlord is threatening again to reside, and also do new windows. If this is true, this 'New Dawn' is going to be removed, set aside until after the siding (if it really happens), and then replanted somewhere else, maybe the side yard.


Early Autumn Cleanup



This is the side yard now, after I yanked two failing tomato plants and all the green beans from their wooden planters. I cut the remaining brandywine to the base before we left for Minnesota. One month later it's leafing out and I haven't the heart to say no to it just yet. Plus, the spider lives there, the same type of garden orb weaver as last year's.

I dumped the potting soil all about, giving the neighborhood cats the perfect sh*tting pot. I saw the flies this morning. On the poor man's patio are four black plastic pots that I threw some broccoli seed into -just for giggles (thanks Marie, it's that seed). I will re-use the brandywine planter for the sage, which gets heat stroke every summer residing in its current terra cotta (root-bound for sure). I have no idea what to do with the green bean planters. Taking them apart sucks. It felt really good to get rid of those ugly yuckling tomatoes, and I like the room to breathe, imagining perennials in that space.

In my brief stint at the corner nursery, one of the questions most fielded was "How big of a pot do I need for this tomato?" Most of the time the person had already selected a small pot, often a very small pot. Well, here is a picture of our cherry tomato's roots having gone through the hole in the bottom of the planter into the mulch below. The planter is about 14 inches deep.

Mushrooms growing around the new street trees in the mulch put down after planting.

The Threadleaf Ironweed, Vernonia lettermanii, and Bluestem Goldenrod, Solidago caesia, both of which I purchased at the New England Wildflower Society's Garden in the Woods in Massachusetts. These will be moved later.

Zinnia.

Grandma's Tea.


Lilies and Roses

The front yard garden yesterday evening.

This lily is blooming its head off.

I was excited to see the lily well-timed with the second bloom of grandma's tea. In the first two photos you will not see any roses. Someone enjoyed snipping them all off yesterday -for a vase or to make up.





Good Prospects



Today I had some red and some black raspberries in the park. I was caught eating only once.

These roses (swamp rose, Rosa palustris?) are blooming as well.

The bees adore them.

These roses, molded from putty, are called...?

Again, they're called...and can we eat the fruit?

I found these high bush blueberries. Today I ate just one.

Every year I pass by this forsythia shrub, on a path south of the lake. Invariably, it has this yellow venation on the same branches each year.

Are all leaf variegations the result of endemic viruses that do not kill the host plant?