It was a rough winter for plants as well as people here, but the lilacs recovered nicely. Took a bunch of pictures Saturday, so for once you get to see the hard-won results of all the yard work I bitch blog about.
This is the purple-blue season in my front yard. Two months from now, the same vista will be pink roses and cream-gold-apricot daylilies — an entirely different color spectrum.
Every garden needs a tutelary deity. Ours is only a little one, but it’s a very little garden…
Didn’t have a chance to deadhead the daffodils before the irises bloomed through them.
These bushes are stranded in a three-foot-wide strip between the public sidewalk and the asphalted driveway extension. For several months this winter, they were literally buried under six feet of blower-thrown packed snow — and yet, still flourishing!
Lithodora. This plant disappeared entirely for a good two seasons after I planted it — I’d have torn it out as a failed experiment if I’d been able to find it. Normally it wouldn’t be blooming for another month, but this year everything’s timing is off.
It just isn’t spring without pansies. Every year, I can see why the Brits call it heartsease. The green ‘volunteers’ on the upper left are self-seeding nepeta; normally they’re the very first flowers, as early as February, and I leave some for the bumblebees emerging from hibernation. This year, I didn’t see any nepeta until just a couple weeks ago — the bumblebees had to settle for daffodil nectar.
I have to hurry and finish getting the flower beds into shape, because the first mail order tomato seedlings just arrived… and there’s two more shipments due in the next week or so!
What’s going on in your gardens this week?
Aleta
NICE lilacs. Did you plant them like that yourself? Ever since I started cutting mine back (a third or less a year ) mine have gotten weird. Sort of bolting away from the house, instead of blooming down low as I was trying to get them to do again. I feel bad about it. They were probably doing fine for 100 years or something, and then I mess them up in 10.
What I mean to say is, do you have any lilac secret formulae?
Valdivia
Knowing nothing of gardening I will venture to say this is a spectacular vista of purples, which happens to be my favorite color.
OzarkHillbilly
Mud, mud, more mud, and to top it all off… mud. The rains just won’t stop around here, app 6″ in the last week or so.
Anne Laurie
@Aleta: Yes, we put these bushes in maybe ten years ago, as little foot-high transplants, and when they’re not in bloom you can see that they’re still pretty weedy. So don’t lean too hard on my (lack of) expertise — this year’s glorious show is more luck & the vagaries of weather!
There’s one glorious lilac (not pictured*) that fills about a third of the front yard — it was there when we bought the house 20 years ago, and possibly since the house was built 30 years before that. We were told not to cut the branches short, apart from deadheading the old flower panicles, but to cut about a third or a quarter of the oldest stems out at the ground level every summer.
Apart from that, I fertilize them every spring (after their flowering, or lack of it, reminds me) and try to spread some lime under them in the fall (because this is New England; if your soil isn’t as naturally acid you may not need to do that).
There’s a couple of bushes in the back yard that I neglected for several years which have turned into “trees” — I do need to cut those down from the top, or more probably hire a professional to do it properly, if I want to bring the panicles down where I can smell them again over the next few years.
Lilacs are, as you say, very forgiving shrubs that can recover from almost any amount of abuse and/or neglect. But they’re also naturally ‘spindly’ and floppy. Even the world-famous specimens at the Arnold Arboretum, which get the best professional care, don’t always look like much except for a few glorious weeks of May blossoms!
ETA: *Actually, it’s at the top right of the top photo but the perspective is skewed — it’s the width of the driveway behind its younger counterparts, and a good 10-12 feet tall, twice as high as they are.
Mustang Bobby
My chile pepper vanda orchid is putting forth a stalk of blossoms for the third time in less than a year. I’ll have pictures when they’re completely out.
ThresherK
Impressive. Now I’m off to help my wife find the sweet spot between enough benadryl and enough caffiene for the benadryl.
PurpleGirl
Anne Laurie (and Valdivia): You should know what my comment is… PURPLE and related colors. My, oh, my. the colors are beautiful. Thank you AL for the pictures; must be more beautiful in person.
I have a button that says: “Anything purple is Mine.”
I liked WereBear’s idea of getting a bucket of flowers and keeping it where she could see them. I haven’t done it yet, but maybe a bucket of pansies for my terrace would be good.
JPL
Anne, The pictures are just beautiful. My yard is always a work in progress, which is code for mess. I’m hoping that it comes together in the next month.
@OzarkHillbilly: We could use some of that moisture. It rained here until, I planted shrubs.
ThresherK
@PurpleGirl: Are you a redhead?
I ask because I (and my whole family) are. I’m actually the least ginger of the lot, and I learned long ago that all shades of purple, from lilac to wine, are the Redhead’s Secret Weapon.
BillinGlendaleCA
@PurpleGirl: My wife’s favorite color is purple. She says that I hate purple, this would be a problem if it were true. I have two tats on my left ankle that are purple(University of Washington).
Ultraviolet Thunder
Our Wistaria did a weird thing this year. Two separate plants on the same trellis are clones from another larger plant that was removed, so they’re genetically identical. One is covered in blooms and has almost no leaves. The other fully leafed out and hasn’t a single blossom. I imagine the blooming one will leaf out later. The only difference is one is 18″ from the driveway paving and the other is about 10″ away. They were ‘planted’ (layered off by sticking runners into prepared holes) at the same time. It’s peculiar.
PurpleGirl
@ThresherK: Sorry, not a redhead. Before my hair turned gray, it was rich, deep brunette.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Well we just got another inch in about a half hour so I’ll send everything else we’re supposed to get today down your way.
satby
@ThresherK: I’m a pale natural redhead (strawberry blonde really) and because of my very pink skin I look terrible in purple. Like WC Fields after a bender.
Aleta
@Anne Laurie: Thanks for that. I guess I wasn’t careful enough with how I cut back. And I’ve never fertilized it. Something to work on.
Just love the effect of your different lilacs close together.
satby
@Anne Laurie: Gorgeous yard Anne Laurie! I think you and I are long lost relatives; my yard has the same color scheme occurring in about the same order.
Long time ago my community group had an arborist from the Chicago Botanical Gardens give a talk and the only think I remember him saying was that “lilacs thrive on neglect”. My best ones are in full sun from 10 am on and they’re huge, classic rounded shrubs next to the dog yard. I love them!
satby
Today in my garden, if the rain holds off, I intend to try to get the clumps from the last mow up and clear out the weeds overwhelming my attempt to reclaim a flower bed the last owners put in with all the wrong plants. It’s a shady area and they put in daylillies. I get huge clumps of skinny leaves every year.
It also looks like almost all of my roses aren’t coming back in several spots in the yard, but it’s been a funky season so I’m not ready to rip them out yet. But if I’m right I lost 6. But maybe to compensate me, my azalea is blooming for the first time ever!
Germy Shoemangler
We’ve been moving bricks into our backyard garden. Less grass, more garden, and some bricks for a small patio to enjoy the flowers.
Saw this headline in today’s NYTimes:
The Right Baits the Left to Turn Against Hillary Clinton
By ASHLEY PARKER and NICK CORASANITI
In digital campaigns, conservative groups are sending a steady stream of posts attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton, some specifically designed to be spotted, and shared, by liberals.
ThresherK
@satby: Like WC Fields after a bender? Doesn’t that pretty much describe him all the time.
I (and the aforementioned family) lean much more to the auburn side. And we’re all brown-eyed. I will get my crop of freckles soon. My “pinkening” is much more a winter ruddyness.
Green is a good color on me, but I always find green as tough color to match, almost the inverse of how sooo many people look good in sooo many shades of blue.
I have no garden stuff to contribute. Our moving from a house to a condo is a blessing to the entirety of mankind gardening simply by subraction. I can’t imagine the new owner doing anything but improving it.
Germy Shoemangler
@ThresherK: W.C. Fields loved gardening. He was upset when some friends visited, and his prize flowers were dormant. He yelled “Bloom, damn you! Bloom for my friends!”
Sort of the wrong attitude to have with flowers, but there you have it.
Baud
@Germy Shoemangler:
How can they possibly think that will work?
::scans Cole’s past posts::
Oh, right…
Germy Shoemangler
@Baud: Not just Cole; I’ve seen it on other blogs. And the RWNJs log on to laugh at us.
I think it’s the way we laughed at them when the choice they were given was…. Mitt. They thought he was too liberal, not their ideal man.
MomSense
Gorgeous flowers, AL. I love all the blues and purples and your iris are glorious.
I made the mistake of scrolling down a wee bit too far to the horrific photo on the thread below. That can’t be real. Please tell me that is not real. Holy Rafalca riding Jesus please let that be photoshopped.
My garden is very behind. I had to pull out some winter kill yesterday and did some more raking. Once it warms up a bit, I’ll go clean out two of the flower beds. I have a couple things I’d like to move and then I need to figure out what to put in to replace some of the roses I lost.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Germy Shoemangler: Many of them thought Attila the Hun was too liberal.
Germy Shoemangler
@BillinGlendaleCA: Darth Vader as well.
p.a.
@Anne Laurie:@satby: my father’s generation were all redheads. My mother said I was born blond, it turned red, then black by the time I turned 1. Before I went gray my beard was black with strong red highlights. The red hair was passed down in only 1 of 7 siblings’ lines. My father and his brother, only 5 yrs apart, were both nicknamed ‘Red’. They hanged (hung?) in different circles, even though they were good friends.
BillinGlendaleCA
@MomSense:
The video is much, much worse.
Gin & Tonic
Question for the assembled expertise. I have a Kumamoto cherry tree, planted about four years ago. It’s in a good location, gets full sun throughout a large part of the day, and appears to be growing vigorously from at least a foliage and branch perspective, but produces only a handful of blooms. The first spring I thought it was just getting settled in, but it’s been at least another two springs with not more than a half-dozen blooms. Is there anything specific I need to do to encourage flowering?
Germy Shoemangler
@Gin & Tonic: Plant a second one, for cross-pollination?
I planted three dwarf apple trees about ten years ago. Two of them produced fruit more or less every year, the third just watched and nodded in approval.
PurpleGirl
Just turned on the living room A/C. I went out for coffee and bagel (it’s Sunday so I treat myself). It’s overcast and should be raining by this afternoon. But it’s humid.
debbie
How lucky to have different colored lilacs blooming at the same time. Here, the white lilacs bloom first and then as they’ve faded out, the light purple ones burst out. I don’t remember seeing any dark purple lilacs around here, and if I’d seen one with white-edged blossoms, I know I’d try to snip a few for myself. Just beautiful!
debbie
@PurpleGirl:
I don’t know how long you’ve lived in NYC, but there used to be a guy bicycling around Central Park who was always dressed in purple. He’d stop and harangue anyone wearing leather, even the little toe bits on running shoes.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: What a squish he was.
Gin & Tonic
@Germy Shoemangler: This is (intended to be) a flowering tree, not a fruiting one. But it barely flowers. Pollination is not an issue – I just get very few blooms.
PurpleGirl
@debbie: Lived in NYC 60+ years but in Queens, not anywhere I’d see a cyclist in Central Park. I have a lot of purple and related color tops but I also where blues, turquoise, and white/off-white. I’ve never liked how red looks on me. My colors are picked as background for jewelry, which I love to wear.
MomSense
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Unpossible? I hesitate because it is the Romneys we are talking about.
Big ole hound
Picked a zuccini yesterday and the cherries are ripe, much to the birds delight. Seems like the seasons are way off kilter in NorCal this year as we had a strangely timed spring and now this cold damp May. Climate change is real out here and now a huge rainy El Nino is predicted. Soon I hope. However my water bill says my new watering system is saving an average of 100 gallons a day. Our target of a 28% reduction over last years usage has been accomplished.
Iowa Old Lady
@MomSense: So does anyone still think Mitt intends to rejoin the campaign?
Svensker
The bitter cold in Ontario this winter may have killed a 15-year-old climbing rose in our front plot. It’s been such a cool spring I keep hoping maybe some signs of life will show eventually…but it’s looking grim.
Went to a farm stand on Friday that was advertising asparagus — but they didn’t have any because it’s been too cold and the stalks are just not pushing up fast enough to cut. She said come back in a few days, they might get some…
But the lilacs are spectacular up and down our block.
jharp
Today I build a new barrier to keep the rabbits out of my garden.
And I like the idea of a tutelary deity in the garden. I think I’ll go with a stone Buddha.
And I did the tomato cages from cattle panels this year and they are awesome. Sturdy as can be and easy to put up.
p.a.
@Gin & Tonic: tried le google and about all I get are links to Japanese cherry festivals, but there’s this on cherry trees in general.
scav
@Gin & Tonic: Depending on where you are in the nation, I’m not too sure I’d count the last two winters as normal. How’s it doing in comparison to other cherry trees, especially those of similar age? Just flailing for a baseline here.
MomSense
@Iowa Old Lady:
Given that both he and Anne have no sense of how they are perceived by others, I doubt they see anything at all disqualifying about their latest misadventure.
JPL
@MomSense: I wonder how much Ann’s outfit cost. I only mention that because of the 2,000.00 cotton top she wore on GMA during the campaign.
MomSense
@JPL:
I am not the person to ask since I shop mostly at consignment stores. I have found some high end designer things but they are usually under $10.
Gin & Tonic
@scav: I’m in New England, so the obvious caveats about winter. But my next-door neighbor has a weeping cherry that is doing fabulously (although it is a much older specimen.)
rikyrah
some of the letters just hit you
………………………………
The Forgotten Girls Who Left the South and Changed History
Marcia Chatelain @DrMChatelain May 15, 2015
A “Northern Invasion” was coming, the Chicago Defender declared in early 1917: that spring, specifically May 15, would begin the Great Northern Drive. Southern blacks would abandon Jim Crow’s regime and seek their economic and social freedoms in the North. And Chicago was waiting for them. The Defender, which was founded 110 years ago this month, was the most influential African American newspaper of the 20th century, not least because its entrepreneurial founder and editor, Robert Sengstacke Abbott, used it as a catalyst for the Great Migration, a movement that would change the color and composition of American cities.
Some of the littlest members of this invasion were girls and teenage women, whose stories have yet to be fully told. Reaching across a century, their tale draws a direct line from the desperate denizens of the Jim Crow South to the striving residents of Northern cities—and all the way to the White House.
Luckily, their stories have been preserved, and in their own words. In response to Abbott’s call, thousands of letters poured into the Defender’s South Side Chicago office. Would-be migrants sought employment connections, train tickets, and any form of confirmation that ‘up North’ would be everything Abbott promised and more. Among these dream-seekers who put pen to paper to plan their great escapes were scores of girls and teenage women. These letters, printed in the pages of the Defender, and other reflections from African American girls who settled on Chicago’s South Side, fueled my scholarly search to understand how girls experienced, shaped and understood the mass exodus that roughly spanned 1917 to 1970, during which an estimated 7 million blacks settled in urban corridors.
Girls’ letters to Abbott spoke volumes of the struggles of everyday life. Girls revealed the poignancy of being a child while confronting the very adult economic pressures families endured. Girls labored as sharecroppers, domestics and low-wage workers in the post-Reconstruction South, and they hoped Chicago could provide better paying jobs. Older teenage girls shouldered the responsibility of supporting families at the expense of their education. Girls also hoped that they could use the beauty products or attend the dance venues that the Defender advertised. They wanted to remake themselves into city girls—modern, stylish and in control of their futures.
http://time.com/3857576/girls-great-migration/
rikyrah
The Talking Cure
The poorer parents are, the less they talk with their children. The mayor of Providence is trying to close the “word gap.”
BY MARGARET TALBOT
One morning in September, Lissette Castrillón, a caseworker in Providence, Rhode Island, drove to an apartment on the western edge of town to visit Annie Rodriguez, a young mother, and her two-year-old daughter, Eilen. Castrillón and Rodriguez sat down on a worn rug and spoke about the importance of talking to very young children. They discussed ways to cajole a toddler into an extended conversation, and identified moments in the day when Rodriguez could be chatting more with Eilen, an ebullient little girl who was wearing polka-dot leggings.
“Whenever she’s saying a few new words, it’s important to tell her yes, and add to it,” Castrillón told Rodriguez. “So if she sees a car you can say, ‘Yes, that’s a car. It’s a big car. It’s a blue car.’ ”
Eilen suddenly said, “Boo ca!”
Castrillón looked at her and said, “Right! Blue car! Good job!”
Rodriguez noted that Eilen had recently become so enthralled by an animated show, “Bubble Guppies,” that she had become “stuck on that word ‘guppy.’ ” She went on, “Everything’s ‘guppy, guppy, guppy.’ So when she refers to something as ‘guppy’ I try to correct it—like, ‘No, that’s not a guppy. That’s a doll.’ ”
“Guppy?” Eilen said, hopefully.
Castrillón said, “Well, I think right now the important thing won’t be so much telling her no but just adding words and repeating them, so she’ll start repeating them on her own.”
Rodriguez is enrolled in a program called Providence Talks, the most ingenious of several new programs across the country that encourage low-income parents to talk more frequently with their kids. Once a month, Eilen wears a small recording device for the day, and the recording is then analyzed. An algorithm tallies all the words spoken by adults in her vicinity, all the vocalizations Eilen makes, and all the “conversational turns”—exchanges in which Eilen says something and an adult replies, or vice versa. The caseworker who visits Rodriguez’s home gives her a progress report, which shows in graph form how many words Eilen has been hearing, and how they peak and dip throughout the day.
Castrillón presented Rodriguez with the month’s report. She leaned over her shoulder and said, “See, this shows the percentage of adult words. There were over fifteen thousand words spoken in that day.”
“Wow!” Rodriguez said.
Castrillón noted that significantly more conversation took place when the TV was off, and that it had been off more that month than the previous one. “There was pretty high electronic sound last time,” she said. “This time, there was very little.” Rodriguez nodded, studying the printout.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/12/talking-cure
scav
@Gin & Tonic: I’m in the middle but was out with my mother in the upper left in February (lilacs budding when I left) for her errant spring and am now wrestling with ours now for my aunt (I’m cheap labor). I’ve given up on normal: if any of the new plants come up, I classify them as “tough” and move on. But, near neighbors doing all right might be a clue. Have you asked your neighbor for tips?
NotMax
[email protected]debbie
There’s a woman here who wanders through the streets, the malls, etc. whom no one has ever seen in anything other than purple. And bells. Lots and lots of little tinkling bells (one can hear her coming from a half block away).
She used to drive around in a purple van (also festooned with bells). Someone informed me her license was revoked after her gazillionth ticket/infraction and she still uses the van as her abode but doesn’t drive it anymore.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Iowa Old Lady
@NotMax: Is her name Sabriel?
Renie
I live on Long Island in New York and this winter really did a number on my holly tree and aucuba shrubs. I’ve had both for at least 20 years and never a problem. Took a clipping of each to the local nursery who said it was winter desiccation. I thought that was odd since we had so much snow but perhaps the ground was too frozen for the moisture to go into the soil much of the time. The nursery guy said a lot of people in the area had the same issues.
JPL
@MomSense: Ha! I’m wearing my 5.00 Ralph Lauren Jeans with a 3.00 cotton shirt. My purse did cost me 20.00 though which isn’t bad for a dooney and bourke
WaterGirl
Stunning photos!
ruemara
@Germy Shoemangler: that doesn’t surprise me. Friends are part of the rabid anti-Hillary left and I swear they’ve lost any perspective. No matter the source, as long as it’s anti-Hillary, they will post it, share it, revel in it. Disturbing.
I have no garden but I do have a small pot of violets I’ve been raising since I bought them a year ago. They’ve rewarded me with beautiful leaves and wonderful purple blooms all month.
TaMara (BHF)
Lovely garden, AL, thanks for sharing those photos.
debit
I have raised the white flag in my perpetual war with the Creeping Charlie. Nothing can kill it, only stop it temporarily.
So I bought a raised bed kit, filled it with soil and compost and will limit my garden space to that and a few random containers. Thus far the plants inside seem happy, and I’m glad I went with a model with a tent as the low temp on Monday night is supposed to hit 34.
In the meantime, I’m going to try a concoction of vinegar, Epson salts and Dawn to clear up the area around it.
Germy Shoemangler
@ruemara: I remember friends in 1999 with the same mindset. Every time I’d hear a sentence begin with the words “There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between…” my ears would fold over to block out the sound. I suspect some of them didn’t bother voting.
I would love to see transcripts of HRC’s speeches to the financial bigshots. Does she tell them what they want to hear (“don’t worry, sweeties, I’ll have your back when I’m the big ladycat”) or does she tell them uncomfortable truths about income inequality?
I really don’t know. I read about one speech she gave at Columbia. She advocated for a “national re-thinking of the criminal-justice system.” She said “It’s time to end the era of mass incarceration.”
Are the bankers paying her to hear what they want, or to hear what she really thinks?
Again, I’d welcome transcripts if any are available.
the Conster
@NotMax:
There used to be a couple in Manhattan back in the 70s, maybe even into the 80s, called the Purple People. IIRC their names were John and Alice Purple. They were scavengers and vegan before anyone heard of it – they wouldn’t wear any leather, and dressed all in purple. They lived – more or less squatted – somewhere in the city, and grew an enormous garden in a vacant lot, in the shape of a giant yin yang symbol. Somewhere I read they characterized it as the obverse of ground zero. They composted using garbage and horse manure from the mounted police and the carriages in Central Park. Needless to say in a city of 7 million people, they were unforgettably unique.
ETA: by the power of teh Google!
https://books.google.com/books?id=09cCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=john+and+alice+purple&source=bl&ots=U3wjD2pBdW&sig=6USqPFQvBOjUBVaA0KH2QD17wP0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=q7BYVZK2N9T_yQS6_YGABQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=john%20and%20alice%20purple&f=false
Birthmarker
Beautiful, Anne!!
Debbie
@the Conster:
I believe it was John Purple I was trying to remember. Good memory!
Germy Shoemangler
NYTimes article on the liberal-baiting right wing.
And they use Homer Simpson! They know our weakness!
For months now, America Rising has sent out a steady stream of posts on social media attacking Mrs. Clinton, some of them specifically designed to be spotted, and shared, by liberals. The posts highlight critiques of her connections to Wall Street and the Clinton Foundation and feature images of Democrats like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, interspersed with cartoon characters and pictures of Kevin Spacey, who plays the villain in “House of Cards.” And as they are read and shared, an anti-Clinton narrative is reinforced.
the Conster
@Debbie:
When I used to visit my sister back then, I used to see them almost every time, then started looking for them. I wonder what ever happened to the gardens….
Schlemazel
@debit:
The key to getting rid of creeping charlie is that you have to hit it with weed killer every few weeks and twice in the fall before it goes dormant & again twice in the spring as it starts up. I was able to eradicate it but it took diligence. Then of course it comes back from the neighbors & from flower beds where I can’t spray so I don’t try any more.
Schlemazel
@Germy Shoemangler:
Not surprising. I think something that helped BHO in 08 was that they never thought he could possibly get the nomination from Clinton so did not waste any time digging dirt or smearing FUD around him. Unfortunately they have plenty of time & more than enough carriers on HRC.
Valdivia
@PurpleGirl:
I think I need to get a button like yours :)
PurpleGirl
@Valdivia: I’ll look for the name of the person I bought it from at a science fiction convention. She may have a web site. I’ll post it in an open thread for you.
Linda Featheringill
I actually have a garden this year!
[happy dance]
I FINALLY received my plants. Yes, I’m impatient.
So, I have tomatoes, six kinds of peppers, and cucumbers. And other stuff is sprouting in the kitchen.
The VegTrug elevated garden is wonderful! If you [or someone you care about] has physical difficulties, you might give this a thought. It is a bit pricey, but it’s great.
scav
@Germy Shoemangler: Must be the 21st century. Hair on the back of my neck goes up every time her differences from the simplistic ideals of the stereotypical “tree-hugging Chardo-latte-sipping brood” are highlighted. Um, duh. No new info here and not the usual concern of the media so what’s the objective? (Seriously, the Clinton years as fuzzy green liberal huggy glory years of yore that she’s since lapsed from?) They can’t really convey many of the actual issues people have with her because they deal so exclusively with theoretical opponents. So the text often reads a bit off, as do an increasing number of “just popped into a thread with a random OT good review or trailer comment” that now appear.
Thing is, weird something I seem to remember about the Clinton years is how unresponsive the opinions of the great muddily middle seem to have been to the media hysterics. Media was all over the place flopping like under watered cyclamen and the polls just soldiered along, tracing about the line most presidents always got. (Am I mis-remembering this?). Anyway, I’m just wondering if maybe opinions are so basically fixed about the Clintons that all this will end up mostly be wasted effort, an exercise in convincing the already convinced, giving the excitable an impression that they’re doing something and a clearing a space for firms to swoop up money satisfying that need. Even the uninformed have have decades of being uninformed on the Clintons so concrete has probably crept into their neurons. Will be interesting (sigh) to watch.
Linda Featheringill
Off topic and on to politics:
Probably because I’m the only registered Democrat within miles [Philly snotty suburb], the DNC thinks I’m worth corresponding with. If everybody got these letters, please don’t tell me because it makes me feel so validated.
Back to your regularly scheduled program.
Doug R
Well, a bumble bee was just enjoying my ceanothus: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=999417416742727&l=177519ae3d
Linda Featheringill
@Doug R:
How nice!
Doug R
@Germy Shoemangler: Must be the same Luddites sharing all those shrieking headlines about the SECRET TPP.deal.
SuperHrefna
Lovely garden, AL!! I love your lilacs, ours are usually such a disappointment.
My big gardening find this week ( apart from those Ketchup and Fries plants I talked about the other day – haven’t planted them yet, BTW, apparently they need hardening off first) was an oscillating hoe which makes weeding 100x easier. And I have shameful amounts of weeding to do.
Cervantes
@scav:
Not if it affects turn-out on either side.
debit
@Schlemazel: One year I actually hand stripped my entire back yard bare and did a triumphant victory dance. And then it came back from the neighbors on all sides. You cannot win. You can never win.
scav
@Cervantes: I assume you’re thinking more of the anti-HRC left not showing up rather than the anti-HRC right showing up, because the latter can hardly get more whipped up. The bigger influence in the former case would seem to be the Repub alternative to HRC. As for the muddily middle, this is ‘merca, turnout is lousy and this is rehashed, reheated old news to my eyes at least. Guess we’ll see. Or, are you thinking they’re trying to screw with who’s going to be the D candidate in the first place? And we’re a hellish long way from the actual election for the attention span of most.
J R in WV
The more the mainstream media echoed the screams of outrage from the frothing right wing, the less the Clinton’s polling was affected! Both of them got great polling, and when the right-wing-nuts actually impeached Bill Clinton for being gallant and trying to protect his wife from the Monica-gate nonsense, his numbers actually went sky high, as I recall.
So 16 years ago the vast majority of the nation thought the Clintons were good people, doing a good job in a terrible situation. Remember, Clinton was the only president to balance the budget in many decades! Unlike the untrue allegations that Ron Reagan balanced the budget, in fact Reagan spent like a drunken Irishman and drove the national debt to record highs!
Didn’t we have a Republican-troll here just the other day claiming that RR balanced the budget? Lies, all lies, Clinton balanced the budget, and his economy was a busy one with everyone working that could get to work every day!
satby
@MomSense: I now dress better than I ever did shopping thrift stores. I love the thrill of the hunt for a good piece, and there’s always something to find.
Cckids
@Iowa Old Lady: @NotMax: Is her name Sabriel?
scav
Weren’t some of the economic numbers during the Clinton years the same sort of statistical vaporware we’ve been wrestling with for a while? I remember the poll numbers being recalcitrant with the media, but not the sunshine and milk+honey universal economic nirvana. Early days of bubbles over not so great already getting a hold? Was putting an e- in front of everything the cheap thrill then? Sorry, I spent a lot of that period deep in with the Aztec, various tessellations and other eccentric obsessions.
Cervantes
@J R in WV:
That’s a bit much. If one aspires to gallantry and to protecting one’s wife, there are better ways.
Which may be your point, of course.
skerry
I’m hoping someone can help me. I had mulch put down in my flower beds and now I am getting copious amounts of grass growing in them. I’ve been pulling it, but it is outgrowing my efforts. What can I do to stop the grass but not harm my flowers?
Xenos
My figs did not die. I thought they were goners after drying out in August, dropping their leaves, and then being left out in the ice and snow for the winter.
So I pruned them, moved them from the yard to the deck, and gave them lots of water. Bigger containers for them seems to be the next step.
So not everything is dead or a mangled mess. Next year We will rip everything up an rebuild the garden, and come up with something where we want to sit and which will support vegetable life.
Valdivia
@PurpleGirl:
That would be fantastic. Thank you!
Xenos
@skerry: scrape off the mulch, put gardening fabric down, put the mulch back on top. when grass grows bach the roots will be so weak and shallow the weeding will be effortless.
raven
So I had the ulnar nerve reattached Thursday. I told the sawbones I was going fishin and he just said “keep it dry”. I hit it at 5am this morning, caught an OK blue and then , “wham” a nice big Redfish!. While we frown on posting pictures of ourselves I thought you would enjoy this. I got the dude in, put him in a bucket and then decided I needed to put water in it. I went down to the surf, put the edge in and, of course, he got away. It was shallow so I jumped on him both trashing my knee and immersing my newly operated hand in the water! I got it up to the house, gutted it and cleaned up my hand and knee. Pricelless!
Valdivia
Not garden related– any chance there’ll be a thread for the Champions League final on June 6? Will Randinho grace us with Copa America coverage?
Mary G
I thought I got up too late for garden chat, but hurray!
Your garden is gorgeous, AL. Love the purple lilac with white edges on the petals. I gave up pansies for the drought this year and miss them a lot.
I have a question for the crowd mind. We had a lovely lot of rain this week, almost two inches here, and I deployed my array of buckets to catch it. I even took a towel and soaked up water from the lagoon that forms in the low spot in the driveway and squeezed that into a bucket. Now I have about 10 gallons, which will last probably a month with my succulents.
I worried about mosquito larvae, and went on the state website about standing water. They advised a biological remedy, so I bought these “mosquito bits.”
No problem, right? Well, when they came the label said they were 2.86% BT and other bacterial strains, and 97.14% “other ingredients.” It also has dire warnings about being toxic to humans and animals. I’m afraid to use it because my cats love to drink dirty water, even choosing it over the clean filtered water in their dishes. So I’ve been putting the water in buckets with lids, but still worry about mosquito larvae.
Any suggestions?
Gravenstone
@Mary G: If you’re just using the water for gardening purposes, put enough cooking oil in it to form a thin layer. The oil will suffocate any larvae that do happen to take hold. And it shouldn’t have any adverse effects if your cats get into it.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Bon appetit!
tybee
@raven:
nice red. matches the knee. :)
p.a.
@debit: I am that neighbor. I eat dandelions and, as far as lawns go, if it’s green I keep it. There’s a woodlot behind my house that showers its blessings on my poor patch of lawn, and I’ve just grown tired of spreading poison to keep the stuff out. Except the oriental bittersweet that grows there. That is a battle to the death. I went back there last late fall and cut at ground level all I could find. Some as thick as my wrist. When the leaves drop it’s pretty easy to distinguish its bark from the grapevines.
Mary G
@Gravenstone: Great idea, thank you!
Elizabelle
This thread is not as fresh as those flowers.
@raven: Good luck w the hand recovery, and may you enjoy that delicious redfish.
ETA: Ask and ye shall receive. Miss Cracker has put up an afternoon open thread.
sharl
@raven: That’s a beautiful catch raven.
Watch out for knee vampires!
Gene108
@scav:
There was only a real bubble in 1999 and into 2000. There were significant changes in information and telecommunications technology that helped spur growth.
Whatever tech bubble there was in the Clinton years was partly due to new avenues of economic growth, coupled with a stock market boom (Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” speech about record highs in the stock market was in 1996) that left investors flush with cash.
It was not nearly as artificial as the housing market bubble that led yo the 2008 crash.
MomSense
@JPL:
Nice! I love finding good things cheap.
MomSense
@satby:
It’s so true. The clothes are nicer and less expensive than most of the crap at the mall. Plus I hate going to malls and shopping but I do enjoy stopping by my favorite consignment shops once a week or so to see what they have.
Anne Laurie
@Renie:
What I was told is that ‘winter desiccation’ is not about the plant getting water through its roots, it’s about the cold & wind damaging the stoma on the leaves. (Sort of a like a human getting a third-degree windburn / frostburn, even if they’re drinking plenty of water.) The problem, come spring, is the plant needs to be coddled to put out new leaves before it ‘starves’ because it can’t convert sunlight fast enough…
ET
What’s going on in my garden? I am being inundated with dianthus and the flower part is drying up. I a
Have so much I may have to beg someone 2 take some off my hands. I have several ginormous patches that weren’t that big a few months ago but now YEOW! But I just love the look @ least until the flowers on it die.
scav
@Gene108: Got it. Personal impression must be imbalenced due to the parts of the economy I was most exposed to information about then. Full of nonesense promises and extirely to be expected busts. (and yes, it was in tech). But I get your real underlying point about the real no-there-there quality of the housing bubble. That was pure beanie baby.
Eta: Also, had no idea flowering cherries could be so complicated. Sounds like they need a few years to hit maturity in any case. Virtual vicarious gardening.