Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

People are complicated. Love is not.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Let me file that under fuck it.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Visualizing Our Perfect Garden(s)

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Visualizing Our Perfect Garden(s)

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Ema Ema's Houseplants

From commentor Ema Ema:

At the top is a picture of my real life garden – two, maybe three, plants of unknown … everything.

Pretend Garden
And this is my pretend garden.

Lawn & Squirrel
My pretend garden has lawns, trees, lakes, and flowers. (Please pardon the speech bubble, couldn’t contain my inner tween.)

Tree Buds

Cherry Tree

Lake

Reeds on the Lake

Blue Bells

Pink Belly in Central Park

The only problem with my pretend garden is that people insist on traipsing all over the place. Luckily, quite often you come across a [gloriously militant] pinko belly and all is right with the world again!

[All pictures were taken over two days (3/21/20 and 3/22/20) in Central Park with a Sony a5100.]

Reader Interactions

85Comments

  3. 3.

    Jo Jo las Orejas

    Me gusta cavar en la tierra. Incluso he comenzado a cavar en las macetas de mi nueva mamá. Esas son fotos bonitas. Desearía poder jugar con ese perrito.

  6. 6.

    Jo Jo las Orejas

    @Baud: Amo mi nuevo hogar con mi nueva mamá en mi nuevo vecindario en St. Louis. Es muy diferente de mi tierra natal de Nuevo México. Hay muchos pasos aquí y algunas veces me tropiezo cuando me canso. Cuando tenía 6 semanas tuve un accidente grave y me rompí la pata trasera. Nací hace 5 meses hoy en Española, Nuevo México. Casi nací en el día de los muertos. Mi nueva mamá dice que esperamos celebrar el día de mi nacimiento el próximo año en mi tierra natal. Yo también estoy aprendiendo inglés. Espero ir a un parque hoy.

  7. 7.

    satby

    First morning in well over a week I woke up without a splitting headache. Feels good. I don’t know how migraine sufferers manage.

  8. 8.

    Lapassionara

    Good morning, everyone. It looks like garden centers and nurseries may be considered essential services here in the greater Saint Louis area. So, do I risk my life this spring for the sake of my garden?

  12. 12.

    Jo Jo las Orejas

    @Baud: Yo quería ir a la escuela de cachorros. Mi nueva mamá quiere que yo sea más socializado con otros perros y personas. Todos los humanos que conozco dicen que soy un cachorro muy inteligente. Pero estos humanos aquí están muy alejados cuando los saludo. No fue así en mi tierra natal en febrero. Quiero aprender más cosas Mi nueva mamá dice que nunca ha criado un cachorro antes, además soy bilingüe.

  13. 13.

    Betty Cracker

    Saw yesterday that we’ve got little tomatoes in the garden:

    Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Visualizing Our Perfect Garden(s)
    The variety is called “out of focus,” I think.

  15. 15.

    Gin & Tonic

    Garden people, riddle me this. I have a couple of fairly large specimens of “Christmas” cactus (in scare quotes because they typically bloom before Thanksgiving.) They summer outdoors and are taken in before first frost, generally full of buds – although one of them, this year, because of where it was sitting, ended up being nibbled on by the vermin deer. No matter, they were brought in and bloomed. A couple of weeks ago, they partially bloomed again. I’ve never encountered this before. Is it typical?

  17. 17.

    WereBear

    @Gin & Tonic: Yes. Plant interpreted the situation needed more buds and complied.

    It’s similar in Cat Rescue, where the more the kitten had to endure, the quicker Mother Nature accelerates their sexual maturation.

  18. 18.

    MomSense

    @Gin & Tonic: 

    I get two blooms from mine – usually Thanksgiving to Christmas and then again at Easter. Give them fertilizer after they finish blooming as a reward.

    Garden and puppy belly are both wonderful.

  19. 19.

    Jo Jo las Orejas

    @Baud: Necesito una correa más larga. Los otros perritos necesitan correas más largas también. Somos perros de la ciudad en las aceras cuando nos encontramos.

  21. 21.

    p.a.

    Remember Jerry Baker, k-Mart garden guy? One summer I followed his homemade lawn feed advice: brown beer, ammonia, dishsoap in a hose-end sprayer. Well it worked, spent all goddamn summer mowing.?
    The real problem: it was an excellent weed food as well. Now, through laziness and environmental concern as long as it’s green I don’t particularly worry. Have not checked the status of local garden ctrs yet. I do very basic: herbs, cherry & grape tomatoes (maybe 1 plum t plant), hot peppers, zucch, asian eggplant.

  24. 24.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Love the speech bubble!

    Went for a walk yesterday. The trail in the local park runs into the Cuba Marsh Preserve. I haven’t been there in a while, and yesterday there was a sign warning walkers to stay on the trail and keeps dogs on a leash, because this was a coyote den area.

  25. 25.

    Charluckles

    The birds are chatter boxes this morning. It’s going to be a beautiful day.

    A shipment of young apple trees and a shipment of pawpaws are on the way. I will have a sore back before this day is out.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    Been curious about it for ages, finally gonna ask.

    Any of you garden mavens ever tried growing saffron?

  27. 27.

    donnah

    @Betty Cracker: hahahahahaha!

    The Out of Focus tomatoes might be safer from garden pests because they’re harder to see.

    Our Bradford Pear tree in the front yard burst into bloom instantly overnight. It always happens like that; gnarly buds one minute and beautiful white blossoms just one minute later.

    I have already rescued a vaseful of daffodils who were bludgeoned by heavy rain, and after last nights deluge, I will have to collect some more. If only they lasted longer!

  29. 29.

    Spanky

    @Jo Jo las Orejas: @Baud:

    Good job, you two. Chrome thinks I may want to translate the whole page.

    It’s just about time to set out plants here in Southern MD. Of course, I didn’t start any seeds, and the beds I’d last used 5 years ago are long gone. Still, I’m thinking that producing a little bit of our own food may be prudent, although it would all be stolen if real shortages occur.

  30. 30.

    O. Felix Culpa

    My onion and tomato (various) seedlings have sprouted in their nursery – my office which does double duty. I had planned a morning of weeding yesterday, but it was too cold and blustery. So I had to stay inside and cook and read instead. Win!

    P.S. I enjoyed the pics and the squirrel bubble, plus doggie belly. Thank you!

  31. 31.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    The perfect garden?  That’s easy -it’s the one maintained by anyone other than me.

    The most annoying part of all this staying at home thing is that I’ve been tasked with doing a bunch of yardwork and taking care of deferred home beautification, all of which I despise as useless and a waste of time to do on a house that I’ve hated from the moment it was selected not by me.

  33. 33.

    scav

    @NotMax: My neighbor has, so it’s certainly possible.  Nothing special in the growing that I can see, it’s just a standard raised bed.  I know they check daily for blooms in fall, but haven’t seen sny details of drying the stamen.

  35. 35.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:

    You’d probably find it extremely hard to get hold of saffron crocuses, let alone enough of them for a usable yield. There’s a reason saffron is by far the world’s most expensive spice.

    Per Wikipedia:

    The saffron crocus, unknown in the wild, probably descends from Crocus cartwrightianus. It is a triploid that is “self-incompatible” and male sterile; it undergoes aberrant meiosis and is hence incapable of independent sexual reproduction—all propagation is by vegetative multiplication via manual “divide-and-set” of a starter clone or by interspecific hybridisation.

  37. 37.

    Jo Jo las Orejas

    @Spanky: Dije una mala palabra ayer. Un humano señaló en los comentarios que dije “córneo.” Ni siquiera sé lo que eso significa. No tengo cuernos, pero mi nueva madre dice a veces que actúo como un pequeño demonio.

  38. 38.

    scav

    Snow and sugar snap pea starts went in yesterday, definitely some scarlet runner bean seeds to join them and some rhubarb plants if we can find the space. My perfect garden clearly needs a little more space and I’d love a little more shade.  Ok, and an actual glass greenhouse as we’re getting all idealized.

  39. 39.

    Anne Laurie

    @Lapassionara: So, do I risk my life this spring for the sake of my garden?

    Well, at a dedicated nursery, you should be able to get curbside service, although I don’t know how well that would work for plants.   If (once) the plant tables are outdoors, maybe?

    My mail-order seed tape & pots have arrived in good order, and the various garden companies have all sent emails assuring me they’re taking all sanitary precautions with every order.  And that my plants will be shipped at the designated period (mid-May, for me).   So maybe this is the year to try your hand at seed-starting?

    I’ll confess I sent the Spousal Unit out last weekend to pick up some composted manure from our favorite local nursery, on the theory that the bags & the payment kiosk are outdoors, they’d load it into the station wagon for him, and he’s got hand sanitizer in the car.  But when he got there, they were completely out!  (Told him there *might* be some after April 5.)  So… if you do decide to risk the trip, I would absolutely call first to check on stock.

  42. 42.

    debbie

    God, I miss Central Park. I was there practically every week when I was working and just about every day after I was down-sized. Central Park is the ultimate respite.

  44. 44.

    debbie

    @Gin & Tonic:

    You’ve got a Thanksgiving cactus. There are also true Christmas and Easter cactuses (I don’t care).

    I used to have several. Some years, they bloomed twice because they like to flaunt the rules.

  45. 45.

    Anne Laurie

    @NotMax: Any of you garden mavens ever tried growing saffron?

    No, but I’ve seen it in (dedicated bulb) garden catalogs & been tempted.  Everything I’ve seen says it’s easy enough to grow in temperate climates, but very labor-intensive to get enough ‘threads’ (stamens) to be useful; essentially it’s considered a novelty for the dedicated hobbyist.

    Not absolutely sure how they’d do in your tropical zone, though.

  48. 48.

    jeffreyw

    @donnah: Our Bradfords are in bloom, too.  I walked under one and was heartened to hear the humming of honey bees.  There is a colony around that has weathered their own plague and is back in business.

  50. 50.

    Amir Khalid

    @Anne Laurie:

    I’m pretty sure it would be a fool’s errand in Hawai’i. I found an article from four years ago (in Malay, sorry) reporting that a team of U of Malaya researchers succeeded in planting saffron and getting it to flower. But ambient temperatures of 21°C-28°C cut the number of flowers by half, and at 30°C or more the plant won’t flower at all.

  51. 51.

    JPL

    My dogwoods are all in bloom along with azaleas and a weeping cherry.   The north GA mountains are beautiful this year because you can see the wild dogwoods abloom.

  52. 52.

    JPL

    @raven: The pine pollen is awful today.   My walks and deck was covered with the crap.   I blew it off earlier and it’s already covered again.

  54. 54.

    bemused

    I have several pots of Thanksgiving/Xmas/whatever cacti in three different pink shades, white and red. The white cactus flowers the most often and prolific, the red most reluctant to bloom.

  55. 55.

    Anne Laurie

    @Amir Khalid: But ambient temperatures of 21°C-28°C cut the number of flowers by half, and at 30°C or more the plant won’t flower at all.

    Makes sense! — saffron is a crocus, and like many such bulbs requires a ‘cooling period’ of several weeks if it is to bloom.

    I’m a tough-love gardener — if it can’t survive without coddling, I haven’t the dedication to keep it alive — so I’d never try saffron!  But I read garden catalogs for recreation during the winter, and some of the specialty iris & bulb companies sell saffron starters.  (Irises are mostly *very* tough, fortunately for me.)

  56. 56.

    satby

    @NotMax: they’re available from many sources for flowering bulbs, though ordering them now would mean you’d receive them in the fall. I’ve never had much luck with crocuses though I tried again this year and got several, but they never last well for me. I never had enough bloom to try to harvest any stamens.

  57. 57.

    satby

    @Amir Khalid: pretty sure you’re correct, also think they’d need to be lifted and cooled in a refrigerator for a couple of months to simulate winter temps. Way too much work!

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    Just lovely.  Absolutely lovely!

    Today, I am taking a picture of each of my garden beds – and I’ll continue to do that every Sunday. Today it’s mostly a lot of green showing up, and only a few flowers, like blue striped squill.  I think it will be fun to see how everything changes week-to-week.

    In a few weeks, I’ll send the series for each bed to Anne Laurie for Garden Chats.

    If anyone else is interested in doing that, I think it could be great fun to see everybody’s caterpillars turn into butterflies.  Metaphorically speaking.

  68. 68.

    WaterGirl

    @Gin & Tonic: I have a lot of Christmas cactus that also bloom closer to Thanksgiving.  I wouldn’t say the early bloom is typical, but I’ve seen it before so it’s definitely not in crazy-land.

    I have a number of buds on mine right now, though nothing is blooming yet.

  69. 69.

    WaterGirl

    @Anne Laurie: Thanks so much for that link, Anne Laurie.

    My fridge is not happy, as of a couple of weeks ago, when I open the door for long, I get a smell of a motor that is too hot.  On Tuesday it stopped humming as it usually does.  It’s still cold, but it’s more than 25 years old.

    I do not want anyone in my house, but I’m thinking time is not on my side, so I have picked out a fridge, ordered and paid for it, is supposed to arrive on Friday and with a bit of luck will be installed on Saturday.

    I count myself very lucky that I have a line of credit I can access with an on-line transfer at my credit union.

  71. 71.

    Miss Bianca

    Still chilly here in the central mountains, supposed to get some snow. Did see a flowering tree of some sort in Canon City the last time I was there (two weeks ago). Meanwhile, our neighbors are ramping up vegetable production in their greenhouses and gardens. We are baking and brewing, will trade for foodstuffs!

    Altho’ we are now thinking about digging out some garden spaces for ourselves and planting humble root vegetables as part of the community store. Potatoes and beets are on the agenda, and possibly carrots as well.

  73. 73.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: Oh, dear.  I hope it’s pollen and stress, and nothing more.  I felt kind of crappy late last night, went to bed and feel fine this morning.  We are not used to feeling this vulnerable.

  74. 74.

    susanna

    Enjoyable romp through Central Park, allowing the imagination(of my presence there!) to soothe and lull the mind.  Thank you!

    Hereabouts near Silly-con Valley, the blue sky and clouds reign and are welcome along with air clear of pollution.  So many vibrant colors everywhere!  Construction, which is constant in this area, is prohibited and people are paying but not using their gardeners, so it’s quiet and nature is having its way.

  75. 75.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    Enjoy the new one, you will be in receipt of some savings on energy use.

    Fridge here for many years has made a sound akin to a string of railroad cars being coupled whenever the motor shuts off. I long ago stopped hearing it. Visitors visibly twitch when they do, though.

  76. 76.

    japa21

    Spent most of this past week working at clearing up the detritus from the late fall and winter in our various “garden”. I use the word loosely because they a few plots of land with things planted haphazardly.

    On the growing front, however:

    In my almost 73 years, and roughly 57 years of shaving life, I don’t think I have gone without shaving more than two days ever. Well, since I am not going anyplace where people can laugh at my attempt at facial hair, I decided to see what would happen. It’s been 6 days and spousal unit says she kind of likes it.  I am heading into an outpatient facility on Wednesday for a double diagnostic scope. We’ll see how the staff reacts.

  77. 77.

    WaterGirl

    @NotMax: It’s the hot motor smell that concerns me the most, but I will confess that when the sound changed the next day on top of that, that’s what motivated me to call the appliance place that very day.

    Because of stocking up, my fridge and freezer are both totally full, so I’m sure that’s not helping.

  78. 78.

    japa21

    @WaterGirl: Actually, a full freezer and refrigerator is easier to keep cold. There is less air needed to cool. My guess is your refrigerator decided it was time.

  79. 79.

    WaterGirl

    @japa21: I’m glad to hear that. It has served me well for over 25 years, guessing that it’s closer to 30 or 35.  Let’s hope it continues to serve me for another week!

  83. 83.

    laura

    Yesterday afternoon I finished weeding the raised bed. It’s got some vigorously blooming California poppies, emergent shoots of Dahlias and gladiolus spears, but not one weed. That sense of accomplishment buoyed my spirits the rest of the day. I’m dreading going out this morning to see how many new weeds snuck in overnight. Will sort through seed packets and start planning planting.

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