Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

This really is a full service blog.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

No one could have predicted…

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

He really is that stupid.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Mrs. Raven’s Flowers

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Mrs. Raven’s Flowers

by | 125 Comments

This post is in: 

cherry blossoms & wisteria

From eminent commentor Raven:

I’m not big on descriptions but these are picture of the yard beginning with the cherry blossoms and wisteria mixed together.

Wildflowers & roses

Centerpiece Roses

She planted wildflowers on the side of the house and the roses are the centerpiece of the backyard.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Mrs. Raven's Flowers

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Mrs. Raven's Flowers 1

We also took down a big bradford pear and started butter beans in a bed where it was.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Mrs. Raven's Flowers 2

***********
IIRC, the sprawling (climbing) rose in the second picture above is Zephirine Drouhin, an heirloom dear to my heart. The two we planted by our front door almost 20 years ago are just sprouting fat buds, here in New England, where the rich scent of their blooms will perfume our yard shortly after the lilacs now doing so give up. The bushes will keep flowering, off and on, all summer and well into fall, sometimes throwing out one last perfect rose as late as November. They are ‘messy’ bushes, shooting out canes that need to be tied out of the way, prone to yellowing leaves (mildew) and extremely attractive to aphids & Japanese beetles. But they’re lovely to look at, delightful to smell, just about thornless, and extremely forgiving of both neglect and erratic weather. Great choice for those of us who don’t have the skill or patience to be serious rose gardeners!

Spring continues to be frustrating here, but we’re finally getting some warm dry Spring days to highlight the transition from dreary mud season to humid high summer. I’ve just planted out some mail-order sweet peas — high hopes for these, even if last year’s delightfully scented plants didn’t self-seed as promised — and have another batch of freshly-deboxed tomatoes to transfer into rootpouches later today. No annuals (yet) this year, since the Spousal Unit doesn’t trust the local nurseries (or, rather, the other clients at those nurseries), but the irises are blooming along with the lilacs. Also the blue-purple vinca, which is everywhere, but I can’t praise that while I’m busy ripping up patches of the Spousal Unit’s favorite all-purpose ground cover!

What’s going on in your gardens, this week?

Reader Interactions

125Comments

  8. 8.

    JPL

    The pictures are lovely.   One thing about the virus is that I’m saving money staying away from nurseries and home depot.

  9. 9.

    raven

    @WereBear: Yea, he’d dad was an old school builder and architectural engineer and so many elements of our house were either designed by him or built art “the company”. We have bookshelves, all the kitchen cabinets and island and our sun porch all from him. He demoed a house in Appo and salvaged two of these gingerbread pieces that I installed. We have a picture of the one-armed confederate officer on his horse in front of that house but you can’t see the pieces.

    Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Mrs. Raven's Flowers 7

  16. 16.

    WereBear

    @satby: Wanted you to know my new lotions smell to good I’ve found the cats sitting on the bathroom counter sniffing the dispenser :)

    Mr WereBear loves them too!

  18. 18.

    satby

    @WereBear: Thanks, I tried to reply to your email but my phone is having funky typing issues. And then when I got home I forgot. So delighted you’re enjoying them, and that Mr. WereBear also approves.

  19. 19.

    satby

    So I have no real gardening news because it’s been raining so much that we’re under our usual spring flood watch along the river. The weeds are already running amok in the raised bed in the back yard. But the front bed has been ok, and if it ever stops raining while I’m not working I have the mulch ready to put down. Put the first two tomato plants out a couple of days ago, and expected to put the last few out today, still will if there’s a break in the showers. And it’s time to dig out the summer bulbs to sort out for planting in another week.

    Funny little experiment I did worked. Cannas make seeds, and a neighbor gave me a handful. I tested starting a couple, and got one plant. They need heat and constant moisture. In case anyone wants to try.

  20. 20.

    Immanentize

    @raven: Great work by the Bride (and you too I’m sure). There is something very “hazy hot days” about the Wisteria in the Apple tree.  Love the poppies.

    So, she gets the butter beans….

  24. 24.

    Kristine

    @satby: raining here in far NE Illinois too. We’re under flash flood watch through this evening. The ground was still saturated from Thursday’s deluge—there’s no place for the water to go.

    Lovely photos. Wish I were there now instead of here.

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Beautiful, Raven! Gorgeous, flowery spring in Georgia is one of the main reasons I’m not in any hurry to leave the south, despite everything.

  26. 26.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Rain rain go away
    Come again…
    in June?

    Now into day 6 in a row of rain. Flash flood watches everywhere, not that that is a problem for us here in our ridgetop refuge. I still have beans and corn to sow, as well as cukes and melons. Next week is supposed to be dry so I’ll finally be able to get the seeds in the ground, hopefully on Tuesday. Once the mulching is done the veggie garden work will be just weeding and picking. I look forward to that 2nd part.

    My gardening goal for today is to get a couple bee houses built.

  27. 27.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: June rains have killed my gardens in the past.  But May rains have rotted my bush bean seeds in the ground….

    It’s a pretty normal Spring regarding sun and rain here.  But the temp swings have been wild — almost freezing two nights this past week, seventies the last two days. Finally got some more tomatoes in the ground (Rutgers and yellow pear) planted my Tomatillos and seeded the green bean rows. Potatoes are already pushing up.

    My Service Berry is great this year — largely because we haven’t had many winter-moth inch worms this Spring. Small blessings….

  36. 36.

    R-Jud

    After four years of living in a flat, I just agreed to a lease on a HOUSE with a GARDEN. Some pals are the landlords so I get quite a lot of freedom in what I do in terms of planting. I am so, so stoked and crossing everything it doesn’t fall through before signing next week.

     

    Also, they can’t take their cats with them when the move, so I’m adopting the cats, too. ?

  38. 38.

    stinger

    Okay, now I’m going to have to plant a wisteria and a cherry tree. That’s just gorgeous. Ethereal.

  42. 42.

    WaterGirl

    Gorgeous, raven!  You didn’t mention the azaleas in pink and white!

    When do we get the photos of the crepe myrtles?  They should be in bloom about now, yes?  I totally fell in love with those on a trip to North Carolina.

    (I went back and added photos into your comments, so anyone who had already read the thread might want to go back up and see everything else.)

  46. 46.

    MomSense

    So so beautiful.  The growing season is so short here.  Do you have a bottle tree in your garden.  I remember a discussion of one here a long time ago, but I can’t remember the details.

  47. 47.

    WaterGirl

    @satby: Yes, rain last night and all day here, too.

    All the blooms on my tree peony seem to open on the same day, and we ALWAYS get a big rain on the day that my tree peony blooms.  They started opening yesterday and would have peaked today, so of course we had to get the big rain!

    I snapped some pics last night before the rain started, and I tried covering it with a tablecloth – will know more about whether that worked by the end of the day.

    Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Mrs. Raven's Flowers 8

    These pictures look like Impressionist paintings.

  52. 52.

    Baud

    @satby:

    and I hate weeding so much!!

    I just let the weeds and the pretty greenery settle their dispute Darwin style.

  54. 54.

    stinger

    @raven: I know there’s a “good” wisteria and a “bad” wisteria — Japanese vs. Chinese? — and will try to plant the good kind! Need to do a little research!

  60. 60.

    debbie

    @raven:

    Okay, so you’ve already seen it!

    I came upon this pine tree covered in wisteria three years ago. Thought it was so beautiful. Checked it out a couple of days ago and it’s dead. I don’t know if wisteria would be the cause or not, but it’s a sad sight now.

  61. 61.

    raven

    @debbie: That’s what I worry about, the big vines sure look like they could strangle anything. I have to say the stuff is all over here in Athens.

  65. 65.

    Nicole

    So gorgeous!  I love the  pictures.

    I called my stepmom on Friday to check in and she  said she’d been outside all day.  Pleased (because she needs the sunshine and is pretty isolated as she lives alone in the suburbs), I said, “Oh, you’ve been gardening again!  Great!” and she said. “I’m not gardening.  I’m weeding.”  Heh.

  66. 66.

    satby

    @debbie: wisteria is beautiful, but hugely invasive and will overwhelm and strangle any plant it runs over. It needs regular pruning to control it, and that includes the millions of suckers and runners it puts out. I planted one in Chicago to go over a trellis we planned to put up as a carport. It never bloomed in four years though it grew enormously, and so we decided to cut it down. Took me almost four full years of cutting and brush killer to eradicate it.

  68. 68.

    debbie

    @satby:

    My mom had wisteria growing over a pergola on her back patio. It began climbing up the brick wall of the house, and that was all she wrote.

  72. 72.

    Immanentize

    @satby: Just a tip from the climbing vine assassin’s book — salt the area from which the vine grows.  It will do a job on the soil, but it will certainly kill the vine.

    ETA when Harvard killed the ivy growing on it’s buildings that was destroying the pointing of the brickwork, that’s what they used.

  74. 74.

    Argiope

    @Nicole:  I find if I’m in the right mood, weeding can be really satisfying: instant results for labor.  It’s like editing but with much more clarity on what stays in and what goes out.  If I have to do it because I’ve let it go too long, it feels like drudgery and I resent it.

  77. 77.

    JPL

    @Immanentize: When I was removing bamboo, I was able to get a backhoe into the area.   The natural approach was salt and the other roundup.   Because I didn’t want to wait decades before I replanted, I used the herbicide.

  79. 79.

    Immanentize

    @JPL: The late great Molly Ivins once gave a commencement speech at St. Mary’s Lawschool in San Antonio when I worked there.  She started:

    The role and goal of the graduation speaker is to provide you with some clear cut advice that you can, hopefully, take with you throughout the rest of your lives…. Never plant bamboo.

    Actually, I have a beautiful clumping bamboo in my yard here near Boston that has not yet run amuk.

  81. 81.

    oldgold

    When I see photographs of beautiful gardens, like the garden featured here this morning, I wonder why West of Eden, season after season, fails to measure up.

    After years of deep reflection,
    while sitting comfortably in my den, I believe I may have at long last figured it out. It is the lack of water. This despite living in an area with abundant rain supplemented by a state of the art garden watering system.

    The water West of Eden lacks – perspiration.  

  82. 82.

    Nicole

    @Argiope:

    If I have to do it because I’ve let it go too long, it feels like drudgery and I resent it.

    I think that’s the state of mind my stepmom was in when I called. :)  She’d stayed inside for several weeks because she was really scared about getting the virus, but I think either we kids finally persuaded her she was okay outside by herself, or the weeds just  finally got to her.

  83. 83.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    I wish all of you with too much rain would send some across the Atlantic to me.  We haven’t had a decent soaking rain for weeks.  I am in a rental of course and both the front and back gardens are mainly gravel so all of my gardening now is mainly containers.  Without a good soaking rain I have to lug a heavy watering can around.  I don’t have an outside faucet either.   We just got an hose reel and some adapters to connect to the kitchen tap so hopefully that will work and save my aching back, but I need rain!

  84. 84.

    Gvg

    @stinger: Both Chinese and Japanese are rampant and invasive here. The “good” wisteria is the native species but it doesn’t have as large a blooms and isn’t as showy. Unless you like a lot of work, enjoy it in someone else’s yard, hopefully not next door.

    i have once seen wisteria grown safely contained in Florida. A lamp shop had wisteria trimmed as hedges in a bed in the middle of their parking lot.  The wisteria evidently could not get it’s roots under  a minimum of 20 feet of hot blacktop to come up again like it does in normal yards. I have also seen it done well in England, with large heavy wrought iron pergolas and gazebo’s, not wood which it is strong enough to break.

    the native is safe and pleasant to enjoy but not spectacular.

  85. 85.

    WaterGirl

    @raven:  I imagine your bride is pleased to have been featured in the Garden Chat today?

    I don’t recall whether it happens in the spring summer or fall, but I am guessing that her annual dog event can’t happen this year?  That must be a huge disappointment.

  87. 87.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WaterGirl:

    I don’t recall whether it happens in the spring summer or fall, but I am guessing that her annual dog event can’t happen this year? That must be a huge disappointment.

    IIRC, it usually happens around Hallowe’en, so it could possibly happen this year. Hope so, as I always love those pictures!

  90. 90.

    jnfr

    I have tomatoes and peppers and onions growing in one raised beds. The newly-replanted strawberries are doing well in their cage. I’m messing around now with a lot of the flowers on the patio – lilies and sedums and some new gladiolus I’m trying this year.

    Then I have one last bed to prepare for squash and maybe some basil. The soil is just getting warm enough for summer crops.

    I’m very happy to have a yard where I can get outside a little to garden, at least most days.

  91. 91.

    satby

    @Immanentize: interesting! I had flowers I didn’t want to kill, so I used a paintbrush to paint the brushkiller just onto the wisteria stumps. But I may use the salt trick around the base of house to keep the ivy from coming back here.

  94. 94.

    MoCA Ace

    Hats off to Mrs. Raven!   I love the crowded almost unkempt look of a wild garden.  I say that in the most complimentary way.  I never have liked the formal English or Japanese gardens… too sterile.  I get the feeling I could spend a whole year in her garden and never experience the same view twice.

    Myself, I just don’t have the time or inclination to maintain a flower garden (maybe when I retire).  I do plant a lot of vegetables but its all I can manage right now.  Yesterday I brought the hammer down on my perennial/weed bed in a terraced stone retaining wall between the garage and the house.  It’s now a raised pepper garden.  I put my cherry tomato plant in a circular terraced bed at the end so they can spill over the rock wall and I can graze on them every time I walk by.

  96. 96.

    WaterGirl

    @SiubhanDuinne:   Thanks!  Fall is good.

    I love the celebration, too.   I bet she would need to be planning already, though.  It’s hard to plan when you don’t know for sure that something can happen.  Maybe Raven will fill us in.

  98. 98.

    WaterGirl

    Still raining here, but at least the peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs I planted on Friday should be happy.   And the grass seed!

    I remember the first time I put out grass seed.  I checked every day for nearly a week.  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  Then we had an all-day rain, and when I looked out the window the next day, baby green grass was up everywhere.

    I was elated.  I would gladly take a repeat of that.

  101. 101.

    raven

    @WaterGirl: Oh, right now it’s cancelled for this year. Her friend in Oakland told her about a fundraiser where they had non-artists do painting or drawings of pets and submit them for a fee thingy.

  102. 102.

    WaterGirl

    @Kristine: Those are Raven’s flowers – the pics he didn’t send in with the rest, but wished he had.

    I updated my comment to make that more clear.  But they are truly lovely!

  103. 103.

    Kristine

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Friends out West are begging for rain, too. I so wish I could send it to them. The two rainiest Mays on record in Chicago are May 2018 and 2019. This May is already in the top 20 and it’s only half over. After today’s rains, it’s expected to move way up in the rankings.

  105. 105.

    raven

    @WaterGirl: We have had several small groups come and visit the yard. Not that she isn’t appreciative of the nice comments here but she’s a F2F person.

  106. 106.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: We have an annual Garden Walk here where various gardens are featured.

    Come to think of it, I haven’t heard anything this year so that obviously isn’t happening.

  107. 107.

    raven

    @WaterGirl: She also is a founding member of the Boulevard Gardening Club

     

    “Established in 2006 to educate, beautify and build community through the love of plants and gardening”

     

    She’s a go-getter.

  109. 109.

    laura

    Raven that yard’s a treat! Just lovely and colorful. Today’s the day the raised bed gets planted with annuals. I’ve got seeds and a couple of odd cartons with a 1/2 shell in each. Those will get there own spots in the bed among the mulch I spread after weeks and months of hate-weeding. Giant red amaranth, zinnias tall and small, cosmos every type of sunflower, 1 or 2 Hubbard squash some chives correopsis salvias and the trio of tomatoes basil and marigolds. On the shady side of the yard there’s about to be a riot of blooms on the hydrangea the milkweed is forming blossoms and the gardenias are fixing to unfurl  and remind me of my mother.

  110. 110.

    MazeDancer .

    Nancy Pelosi was supposed to be in Northampton, today, to deliver the Commencement Address at Smith College.

    She is going to deliver her speech virtually.

    Nancy Pelosi inspiring young women. Going to be great.

    Livestream at noon:

    facebook.com/smithcollege

    o

  111. 111.

    Miss Bianca

    @raven: Nice-looking horse – betting it’s a Saddlebred.

    Interestingly, I was just following a discussion on FB about learning to ride again with disabilities. Turns out there are a lot of one-armed riders out there kicking ass.

    ETA: Oh, I’m sorry – this is the gardening and gingerbread thread, isn’t it? Nice gingerbread! : )

  113. 113.

    opiejeanne

    @raven: Really pretty yard, Raven.. I love the mix of poppies and cornflowers (bachelor buttons). We had two wisterias at the Anaheim house, one at the edge of the patio that ran up onto the roof and started picking up the shake. We cut it way way back. It was the standard color, and some previous owner had planted it.

    The other one was white and we planted it away from the house, on a little pergola we built to mark the entrance to our little rose garden from the lawn. It was fighting with the Sally Holmes roses for dominance when we sold the place, and it was a gorgeous display but we had to keep after it to keep it from taking over.

    https://flic.kr/p/Gn3Fm

    https://flic.kr/p/HGkcZ

  114. 114.

    Elizabelle

    Non-garden related, but continuing the purple theme:

    Youtube has a free Prince and the Revolution concert from 1985 (Syracuse, NY) up.  Cannot say for how much longer; maybe only today.  Part of a fundraiser for COVID and the WHO.

    The Root:
    Want to Party Like It’s 1985? Prince and the Revolution: Live Concert Will Stream on Youtube For a Limited Time
    Watched this twice yesterday.  While at first I thought the vast middle of the concert was kinda slow (albeit with some wicked Princeness — his dry humor), it was way better second time through.

    Video is not great, but sound is better and the costumes and stage structure and lighting are first rate.  Watch for all the costume changes.  Prince dances and sings way more than he plays guitar.  Knowing how it all ended, one watches all the floor moves and thinks about the impact on his hips.  Prince was an incredible athlete, too.

    It was really interesting to watch this in the wake of Little Richard’s death, because you can see his disciple up there.  So many owe a debt.

  115. 115.

    WaterGirl

    @Gin & Tonic: I love it when people use old-fashioned phrases like pulling your leg.  I think I’ve said before that Preet uses the phrases I grew up with, too.  I don’ think they get used enough.

  116. 116.

    satby

    Well in the few hours since I posted this morning about the rain it’s been steady and we now have flood warnings. The river is expected to top the banks on the low side by tonight and start flooding the park land along it (all of which is kept as park land just because it’s the flood plain). I’m on the high side, so not in any peril of a flooded basement. Going to rain all day tomorrow too. I wish we could divert it out west where it’s needed ?

  120. 120.

    Kent

    I’ve pretty much given up on vegetable gardening in my back yard, at least for the time being.   Our yard backs up against a greenbelt and we get deer passing through daily in addition to a bazillion rabbits.   I don’t want to put up a giant fence because that would make our yard feel much more tiny.  As it is now, it feels like the greenbelt and stream is ours too.   I do grow herbs and to tomatoes on the upstairs deck and that works nicely.  And this year I’m growing squash in planters.

    When the kid leaves for college I may put her trampoline on craigslist and then re-claim that space with a small raised bed garden that is enclosed behind deer and rabbit proof fencing.  But that’s at least a year away.  She still uses it a bunch.

    This spring’s project was putting up a bat house.  We have bats every summer in the greenbelt.  Maybe some will come a bit closer and keep the mosquitoes at bay.

  121. 121.

    Brachiator

    @opiejeanne:

    @WaterGirl:

    Fun little article on the origin of 12 silly sounding compound words.

    Hodgepodge – If you don’t know what a hodge or podge is, join the club: The word is a corruption of the 15th century word hotchpotch, which itself is a corruption of hotchpot, hochepoche, or hotpotch. In Anglo-Norman, a hochepot was a blended stew of minced beef or goose and veggies.

  122. 122.

    Mai naem mobile

    Those are some really pretty pics. I love climbing roses especially this pink kind you have. The tree is to die for.  I love natural looking gardens where stuff looks like it just popped up instead of the matchy matchy color coordinated  topiary look.

  123. 123.

    Elizabelle

    @R-Jud:   Cannot wait to see what the young one has to say about all of this.

    Good luck with your move.  Enjoy!

  124. 124.

    J R in WV

    Great stuff, Raven, thanks for sharing !!

     

    @Mai naem mobile:

    …I love natural looking gardens where stuff looks like it just popped up instead of the matchy matchy color coordinated topiary look.

    You would like our place, totally wild and out of control, mix of stuff we planted many years ago and wild plants run amok. Ramps have shriveled away now, the longer established beds of ramps will put up seed pods come fall, depending upon the fall weather.

    The nearly hard freezes didn’t manage to damage the not-very-hardy ostrich ferns… they took a wee bit of a set back, but didn’t turn into green mush as sometimes happens with a really hard freeze after they’re sprouted. If I get around fertilizing they can get really big.

    The winter-hardy autumn ferns are started spreading by casting spores on the wind, we have one growing on the nearest boulder. We will have to water that baby once it gets dry. I’ll try to send a pic of that in soon, it’s a really big bronze fern sprouting out of solid rock covered in moss and sedum and wild local ferns.

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