Closing Gardens and Verse Two

Have you already blazed past me in memorizing Psalm 100 for Thanksgiving?

I get it. 

But if not, here's verse two.

We closed the gardens this weekend. 

Meaning: my husband used the weedeater on everything that grew this spring and summer

 while I stood by cheering. Now the flower beds and container gardens are 

peacefully blank, resting until spring flings open the door to a new growing season.

One of the winter arrangements I made from the leftovers to keep things looking cheerful -

Some of the hydrangeas heads still had a little bit of color—so pretty!

Leaving the stems in wet dirt for the winter months sometimes results in 

a nicely rooted new hydrangea in the spring.

(fingers crossed)

Neglect

Through pure neglect, we enjoyed a clematis tower this year. 

In the fall, especially after a scorching hot summer, I find garden chores to be especially 

loathsome. So instead of cutting the year's vines back, we just left them to flap in the winter storms. 

Yep—I busied myself with all things pumpkin and never gave it a second thought. 

Until April. 

And then ... it was too late. 

You see, jackmanii clematis grows from the ground and sprouts from leftover old vines.

So by the time I approached it with my shears this spring, it was already hard at work ...

... making itself GLORIOUS. 

What resulted was a huge tower of dark-purple blooms—probably ten feet of jaw-dropping, 

breathtaking, botanical wonder.

Sometimes neglect turns out to be the best gardening strategy after all.

Side Notes 

* Tips on how to grow a jackmanii clematis here.

* Yesterday we celebrated Father's Day around the table with my parents. They live nearby, so gathering with them is not such an unusual event. Yesterday though ... something was different. I sensed an air of mystery overhead as the old stories were shared "just one more time" and old jokes were told from yet another angle. Childhood memories of visits to our grandparents' farm were re-examined, as one tests the frail fabric of hand-me-down table linens. And for the thinnest moment, I caught a whiff of that old farmhouse kitchen. For one second, right at the edge of my sense of smell, it was there—then vanished. Has this ever happened to you? 

* A marauding horde of tiny chipmunks devours every single sunflower seed I plant.    Every. Single. One.
And so I will not have any sunflowers this year. I hope you're growing some in your garden for me to gawk at.

It's Happening Again

Spring plants stretch from damp dirt and toss their heads in the breeze.

 Weak rays of sunshine penetrate nearly-transparent peony leaves. *

Red-winged blackbirds are first to announce—SPRING IS HERE! 

Side Note -
My neighbor, an elderly spinster lady, passed away last year. In the late fall, her brother invited me to take her peonies plants.

"She set such store by those, but we don't care about 'em." 

I just nodded, but, oh, I felt the horror my neighbor would have experienced at the lowly description of her prized "pie-knees". So, shovel and containers in hand, my Wonderful Husband and I began a search-and-rescue mission. It's not easy to find dried-up peony branches under a carpet of fall leaves and pine needles. We brought three clumps back to our yard, and I broke those into even more parts. I thought it might be too late to set these in the ground and have any chance of seeing them in the spring, but in her honor, I tagged each clump of tubers with her name.
And they're coming up! I know she'd be pleased.

Overwintering Geraniums - A Casual Tutorial

As promised in my post at A Bird and A Bean, I want to show you how to keep the same geranium plants year after year instead of buying new ones every time the garden stores open for business in the spring.

There are probably some containers outside on your patio or porch which have geraniums

waving pathetic and mostly dead stems around in the cold November air. Maybe you even have some geraniums

out in your flower beds that were lovely this summer and fall, but which you now consider a loss -

along with once vibrant impatiens, petunias, periwinkle and lobelia.

You might think it's too late to save them now, but geraniums are a pretty hardy lot, and what do you have to lose? It only takes a few minutes to prepare them for overwintering, and if it works, you'll have geraniums for free next spring. And free is the very best price for any plant purchase!

So here is a very casual tutorial - a scheme to get a few free plants.

******************

Here's a container with one geranium plant mixed in with other annuals and perennials.

Can you see it pointing up at us? 

Use a hand spade or the blunt part of your trimmers to pop the entire plant out of the pot, roots and all.
Does this photo make my wrist look fat???

Shake off most of the dirt, especially if the soil was very wet.

Trim the stems to about this height.

It's not rocket science, so don't obsess about exactly how much to leave. 

The new growth will erupt right out of the stems that are left.

Pack the  geraniums in a box where they'll have plenty of room for a sleepy winter. Remember - Nobody likes a crowded bed!  The box should close loosely so that a little air can circulate around and keep rot from forming. A friend of mine has great success wintering her geraniums in paper bags. Whatever you have handy is fine.
Go for broke and try both methods! Carpe Diem!

Make sure to label the box and store it in a cool, dry, dark spot like a garage or a basement shelf.  I'll be storing mine in the Maid of Honor dry sink in my greenhouse - someplace I'm sure to look when winter begins to finally fade away. As you can see, it's one of my favorite stashing spots. I meant to use those paper lanterns all summer but never did. I must do that in the spring!

Sometime around the end of February and certainly by the beginning of March, you'll want to get out there and check on them. You might open the box to find new growth already on the stems, but don't think your experiment failed if they look like they're goners.

Go ahead and trim off any dead bits and place them directly in a basin or bucket of water for a few hours to moisten up the roots and jump start their new lives. Then place them directly in some slightly moist potting soil. Leave them in a warm spot, with plenty of direct sunshine. New leaf growth should begin to sprout in about three weeks!

Now you can spend money on a new pair of spring flip-flops instead of buying geraniums! Yippee!