Garden Rant

Except if You're a Gardener

(photo: NC State)

The New York Times reports that a man was found unconscious in a Las Vegas hotel room with a powder that may well be ricin. Castor bean seeds (which contain the poison ricin) were also on the scene.

And in spite of this information, the reporter allows this statement from the Las Vegas police to go unchallenged:

Captain Lombardo said ricin had extremely limited legitimate uses. “Ricin has no medical uses other then cancer research,” he said. “An individual citizen, other than being involved in cancer research or cancer prevention, would not have any legal means or proper means for having that.”

Uh...no legal or proper means, other than buying the seeds or plants at the garden center and planting them in your garden?  Castor is a beautiful plant--spooky and deadly, but beautiful. I've seen it in gardens all over the country.  It grows in my own garden.

It would be one thing if he was referring to some pharmaceutical-grade powder, but the seeds were found on the scene.  This could be the work of a diabolical gardener. Any individual citizen would have legal and proper means to get crushed-up castor bean seeds...if they garden.

Tweet Tweet

When I woke up at 7:30 this morning, my outdoor thermometer reported a stingy three degrees outside. However, for the first time yesterday, it was clear that it's no longer December, when there is simply no light at the end of the tunnel. Sure, the sun is getting stronger. But there is now a more abrupt and definitive sign that winter is coming to an end: I heard bird-song.

I never realize how much I miss the birds until they return again in late winter. It doesn't matter that I know nothing about birds. They are really important to my experience of the garden.

Of course by now, everybody has heard that migratory songbird populations are declining, though I can't say I perceive it in my part of the world. The National Audubon Society is amazingly frank about what's causing the problem: too many damned people in the world. Its "public policy fact sheet" on the decline of neotropical migratory birds actually includes these lines: "Over one billion teenagers are entering their most critical reproductive years. If these teenagers dramatically reduce their fertility, world population could stabilize by 2050 at far less than 12 billion." Those Audubons may be correct in the most global sense, but there's nonetheless something disturbing about the straight line they draw: If you want to save the songbirds, don't have babies.

I own 15 acres in the country that are stuffed with birds. My husband and I were only able to buy a weekend place in the country because apparently not everyone wants 15 acres of swampland, silly them, and it was cheap. I love my little landscape. We have a pair of insignificant streams, a lot of boggy ground that will suck the clogs off your feet, and a shallow pond. We're also on a really high, underpopulated road that, except for my low-lying and super-fertile place, is mostly slate ledge, so the farmers fled long ago. As a result, the land around us is fairly wild.

The birds and I are in complete agreement: The place is heaven. Great blue herons land on my pond.  There are always loads of hawks circling overhead, policing my vegetable garden. Smaller birds camp out on the arches in the garden, looking for caterpillars and beetles and staying alert for the moment any berry or grape is ripe. (This year, netting.) The reeds in front of my house are always so full of milling birds, they're like flies on a pale horse. Sometimes, the maple tree near the house fills up with so many birds, it's hard to have a conversation inside.

This din makes the humans in the scene feel small and insignificant, and somehow that's very reassuring. I like to think that we haven't completely imposed our lousy taste and rapacious personalities on every corner of the earth. Bird-song is the most beautiful sound in the world--with the possible exception of frog-song. But that's a subject for another post.   

One More Non-Pharmacological Way To Handle The Butt End of Winter

I hope you all live in climates where you are now planting your lettuces. I live in a climate where I am still shoveling out from the two feet of snow we got Tuesday and Wednesday. It's almost beyond human endurance.

Thank God for the movies--particularly movies with lush gardens. Last week, my husband brought home Judy Irving's 2005 documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, and it was as good as a week in the tropics. It's the story of a slightly unmoored San Francisco street musician named Mark Bittner who feeds and cares for the city's flock of wild parrots, who in turn lead him to a much bigger and better life.

The movie is worth seeing just for the portrait of San Francisco, which I've always considered the chilliest and least friendly of beautiful cities. Irving's San Francisco, on the other hand, is a utopia of goodness and tolerance where the sun seems always to be shining and it's always the Summer of Love. Bittner himself could not be sweeter or more intelligent. Even the supporting players are unimaginably nice, including the rich couple who allow Bittner to live rent-free for three years in a cottage on their spectacular property on Telegraph Hill just because he is an interesting person. 

Of course, no fairy tale kingdom is complete without a magic garden, and the gardens of Telegraph Hill more than qualify. Fuchsias the size of Volkswagens dangling their intricate little flowers casually over the path! Sherbet-colored brugmansias planted right in the ground! Pink pelargoniums treated as groundcover! Giant Monterey cypress making sure there's a note of seriousness in all this wonder! And cherry-headed green parrots swooping in and out of all this greenery, echoing the vibrant colors of the plants. Where do I want to live? That's easy. In Judy Irving's world.

Topless Gardening

Yeah, that headline caught my eye, too. Turns out that's only what you'll WANT to do after you imbibe a basil martini, according to the San Diego Union-Trib's cocktail writer. This is one of those summer drinks that we can only dream of as the wind howls through the rafters. So, in honor of it almost being Friday, dream away:

Muddle sugar and fresh basil
"Bathe in vodka and sweet-and-sour mix"--no proportions given.  Figure it out.  I'd go heavy on the vodka.
Squirt of lime.

That's nice, but there are other options.  Cocktail Times lists any number of herb martinis--ever floated a sprig of rosemary or cilantro in that glass?  They leave out lavender, which is suprisingly good in a cold gin martini. 

But my favorite summer cocktail is an adaptation of something I had in a bar once that we've since come to call Amy's Garden Party.  Crush some fresh basil in the bottom of a tall, skinny glass, add ice clubs and slices of fresh jalapeno, and pour a gin and tonic on top of it.  The perfect drink on a hot day.

Now all we need is a hot day.

Rant on the Road

If you're gonna be in Boston for the New England Spring Flower Show, please do come say hello next Saturday, March 8.  I'll be talking about flowers and generally doing my thing, whatever that is.

Other stops this spring:  Baltimore, New York, Connecticut, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, San Francisco.  Details here.

Amy Goldman Rocks

Amy Goldman, author of The Compleat Sqaush and Melons for the Passionate Grower, creates cast bronze sculptures of garden forms using a lost wax process. The results are amazing.  Life size, warts-and-all gourds.  Even tomatoes, with a leaf attached, if you can imagine it. (Check out Radiator Charlie here.)

These sculptures are not cheap--they'll run you a few thousand bucks, but lordy, they are beautiful, and imagine how good they'd feel to hold in your hands.

You can see them in person at the New York Botanical Garden's gift shop (her photos are also on exhibit right now), and I am totally gonna check that out when I'm there in April.

Amy Goldman's online at rareforms.com. 

"Feisty" Foursome Welcomes Washington Post Readers

Thanks to gardenwriter (and future blogger?) Adrian Higgins for his profile of GardenRant in the Washington Post, and welcome first-time readers! 

You might start your tour of GardenRant with our Manifesto on the left, followed by links to our bios, and "About Us," which covers GardenRant itself.  But we hope you spend some quality time browsing our articles under "Categories".  And if you click on the comments at the end of each article you'll soon discover that our readers ROCK (even when they're taking us to task for something or other, which happens with shocking regularity).  Or just head straight for our Hottest Rants of 2007 or 2006.

GardenRant's opinionated writers live in California, New York, and Takoma Park, Maryland right here in the D.C. area, and local girl Susan sends a special welcome to friends, neighbors, and her buddies in the DC Urban Gardeners.

An investment for the soul

Here’s an encouraging statistic from England. In 1905, less than 5% of the country was covered in forest. Now, it’s nearly 12%, and growing every year. For at least the past twenty years, private citizens throughout England have been encouraged to buy their own forests for what I would call very reasonable prices—like about $50k for 9 acres of the Coed Glas wood in Wales’s Towey Valley. It’s shown above. Nice, huh? All you have to do is visit Woodlands.co.uk, and find a region and a woodland that suits you.

Leat Wood, in Devon: around $70k

There are a few catches of course. First, I would imagine you’d have to be a citizen of the UK, though I did not see this stated on their website. You can’t build a house on it or use the wood for any noisy, smelly, damaging purpose, like racing, a commercial campsite, or other similar businesses or hobbies. Here’s what they suggest you use the wood for: walking and exploring, camping, orienteering, forestry (coppicing, planting etc.), photography, drawing, and the study of flowers. But you can sell the wood if you need to, though it must be sold as a whole, not divided. As for tree felling, owners must obtain a felling license from the Forestry Commission should they want to cut down more than one or two mature trees in a three-month period, though thinning and coppicing are allowed—indeed, encouraged. The Woodlands.co.uk group offers a considerable amount of guidance, even grants, to help woodland newbies manage their properties. It's a different kind of approach than private ownership (and neglect) of woods kept for tax write-offs.

A recent article in the Toronto Star tells the experiences of several recent woodland purchasers and states some of the benefits of this unusual conservation strategy:

In the past 20 years, the populations of Britain's rarest birds have increased by between 50 and 75 per cent. Majestic birds of prey like sea eagles, ospreys and red kites are once again flying in British skies after centuries of persecution by farmers and poachers.

There is far too much information on this to compress into a blog post and I encourage you to visit the website, if you’re interested. It has a FAQ, blogs, all the legal info, tons of beautiful images of woods for sale, and even a book you can buy about how to manage your wood, called Badgers, Beeches, and Blisters. Clearly, this is not something anyone should dive into on a whim, but even more clearly, the program is working. I wonder if a similar organization helps promote private conservation of woodlands here? If so, I'm not aware of it.

Another reason to use compost

Those of you who regularly read Waste Management and Research already know this, but it was news to me that compost can reduce greenhouse gas emissions if applied to agricultural soil. The compost would increase the carbon in the soil, and, as the article, which I found via Science Daily, says

Carbon sequestration in soil has been recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the European Commission as one of the possible measures through which greenhouse gas emissions can be mitigated.

Although I don’t have enough arable land for my gardening to be considered agricultural use, some of us are growing a lot of vegetables, and just as creating mini-native-habitats can help with biodiversity, perhaps capturing these small plots of carbon may help mitigate emissions.

Not that I need to be convinced about compost, but it's interesting.

The year of the ear

That’s what Tony Avent says anyway, and I’m going along for the ride. It must be the year of elephant ear because I don’t think I’ve ever seen half so many exotic varieties of colocasia on offer. There are yellow striations, white splashes, black veins, red stems, and plants that will grow tall enough to offer shade and/or frighten your neighbors. Last year Plant Delights offered a charming variety they’re calling “coffee cups” and I see elsewhere referred to as “tea cups.” In any case, the edges of these tilt upward, so they hold water and spill it out when full.

Even gardeners in Hawaii, where I’m thinking it must grow wild, testify on Dave’s Garden about how they use it in their front borders. As for me, colocasia is a lifesaver. Much as I would like to have a more sustainable garden and avoid plants like these, which do require plenty of water, I have too much shade to be completely happy with the all-native or low-maintenance choices. I love the graceful way the large leaves nod on their tall stems, never drooping, certainly never needing staking, no matter how big they are. And to solve the water problem: simply keep them in a pond.

Two years ago the esculenta “Illustris,” (black with green veins) was enough to wow visitors during Garden Walk, but now I think it might be old hat and am branching out to such esculenta variants as the white-centered “Nancy’s Revenge,” or the “Yellow Splash.”

And I’ve finally succumbed to this plant, which has flabbergasted me ever since I first saw it in the pages of the PD catalog:

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If it got even half this big, I’d be thrilled. (It's gigantea Thailand Giant Strain BTW. So big they had to say giant twice.)

Those aren’t even the newest of the introductions. Breeders such as John Cho and Alan Galloway are bringing out ruffled and heavily textured ears, as well as ears with chocolate, black, and deep red stems. In other words, there is a galaxy of utterly spectacular cultivars out there. What may once have been a nice foliage accent has, for me, become obsession-worthy.

Help Wanted

Susan's made me think about what kind of gardening help I'd hire, if I hired any.

Me and My Day Laborer

by Susan
Over the years I've recommended the hiring of day laborers, especially for gardeners of a certain age and gender like myself.  I've hired men from the local immigrant job bank to plant or move trees, to carry the 8 to 10 cubic yards of mulch my hilly garden gets every spring, and even to bust up an ugly concrete walkway to the front door.  And all went well.  Very little English/Spanish communication was required, though the occasional English-speaking African has been a welcome change and some delightful conversations have ensued.

But then came Adolfo, recommended by a neighbor for whom he'd laid a flagstone path.  Fluent in Spanish herself, the neighbor introduced us and explained the tasks to be done.  Here they are, with the results, post-Adolpho:

1.  For my front yard lawn-to-veggie-garden makeover, Adolpho removed sod, carried it to the compost pile, and spread bags of compost.  Fine.

2. Next, a 10-foot 'Green Giant' arborvitae fast on its way to becoming gigantic and sadly in the wrong spot needed to be moved.  Preferably without being killed in the process.  Readers, perhaps you've been asked questions by nongardeners that are stunning in their ignorance of how plants grow, the role that insects play in the garden, and other high school basics, and found it kinda amusing?  Well believe me, with the victim of that disconnect from all growing things a large and valued tree of mine, I was not amused to discover the huge, perfectly cylindrical hole Adolpho had dug, better suited to the insertion of a large concrete pipe. The scene of me trying to get him to NOT to bury the damn tree a good 2 feet up its trunk might have been laughable if it were someone else's tree and if I weren't into near-hysterical  "Get this killer away from my garden" mode.

3. Finally moving on to the indestructible world of stone, I needed a 2-foot drystack stone wall removed, 20 feet of French drain (black holeless pipe) laid, and the wall put back.  Here the absence of a common language was compounded by what can only be described as machismo, with Adolpho managing to convey to me - repeatedly - that he'd done this kind of work in his country and I should BACK OFF and let him do it without instruction or supervision.  A contest of wills followed as I watched him doing everything wrong.  What a surprise to discover that by simply understanding the utility of gravity in the drainage equation, I actually knew more about the subject than someone else on earth - that being Adolpho.  The project ended with my letting him finish, paying him through a tight-jawed smile, berating myself as I drove him back to the pick-up spot, then redoing the pipe-laying and wall-building.

LESSONS LEARNED
Isn't that what the motivational speakers tell us to do, look for cheerful "lessons learned" whenever we screw up?  Well, this daughter of a psychologist is on board with that sensible life lesson, so let's go.

1.  Sometimes you really do get what you pay for, if that.  And 12 bucks an hour generally does not buy skilled labor.

2.  It might be time for me to review my high school Spanish, it being such an easy language and there being so many people in my neighborhood to practice it with.

THE POWER OF PHOTOS
For this story I casually inserted "day laborer" into the Google image search engine and wound up HERE, a portal to a very angry world, and found the charming photo you'll see there.  I then browsed my way to the California Coalition for Immigration Reform and the Minuteman Project, which totally explain the set design on the Colbert Report (patriotic colors, stars, soaring eagles and more!)  Seems they haven't gotten the word yet about their candidate dropping out - Tancredo, of course.  Finally, I found the photo above and other, more positive depictions of Latino immigrants at sites like Monumentfutures.org and Daylaborinfo.org.   

These Internet reminders of the controversy - make that xenophobic hysteria - surrounding the very existence of day laborers prompt me to mention one lesson I didn't learn from my experience with Adolpho - that these men are threatening me and my way of life.  And while I won't be hiring that particular Salvadoran immigrant to haul my mulch this spring, I'm happy to put a little cash in the hands of people who are eager to work hard so they can send half of their earnings home to their very poor families.  I know there's an immigration problem and it's hugely complex, but can I just say I admire them and leave it at that?

GR: Honest and Unpolished

A shout-out to Patrick Berkery at PhillyBurbs, who has this to say about GardenRant:

Simply put, the from-the-hip horti-centric blog Garden Rant is one of the most honest and unabashedly unpolished online resources for gardeners out there. That is what makes it such an engrossing, refreshing read.

Send a Chicken to Washington

I've never owned rabbits, but I can tell you that hens do have a surprisingly strong moral compass.  Think they could teach our fearless leader a thing or two about how to put an end to the fighting?

Is Pink Out of Fashion?

This article in the Sunday Times about color fashions in gardens makes me feel hopelessly out of step.  Like fashion magazines that blithely inform you that short hair is in one year and long hair the next, I just don't know what to do with the news that a particular color has gone out of style. I can't manage to keep all the weeds pulled in my garden; I'm certainly not going to go yank out all the pink or purple just because it's fallen out of favor with designers. Some years, the Shasta daisies do particularly well and the feverfew explodes, and I have a white garden.  Other years, the love-in-a-mist self-sow fiendishly among the hardy geranium, and it's blue and purple whether I like it or not.

But there is one place where colors can go in and out of fashion: show gardens.  So here's what designer Rachel de Thame has to say about this year's color trends:

"It remains to be seen whether I am the only designer at this year’s show to pick up on pink. It’s certainly due for a come-back. In recent years, garden after garden has featured blue, purple and inky, near-black flowers, often contrasted with tangerine or acid green. Subtle all-white plots have become popular. Occasionally, near-pinks have crept in: purples have been combined with deep pinky reds, and there have been frequent inclusions in mixed pastel-themed planting schemes, but a garden in which it dominates has been a rarity."

I'm not a lover of pink myself, but this time of year, I think about these pink Amaryllis belladonnas (and their matching bubble gum scent) with longing.  You'll never catch me wearing a pink shirt or buying a pink pillowcase, but any flower that needs no water or fertilizer and looks like this in August is welcome in my garden.  I gotta admit, though--if it came in tangerine, I'd swap for it.

Is there a foliage or flower color you REALLY hate in the garden?  Speak your piece.

Publishers Weekly sees upsurge in gardening among the young

Here's a nice long look at the question we're always asking:  Is gardening on the up or the downswing? And it seems that PW takes the National Gardening Association's assertions about gardening's popularity at face value, unlike Rant readers, who tend to dismiss it as hype because the NGA counts people who mow their lawn as "gardeners".

But moving on, all the gardening publishers weigh in with their strategies and - no surprise - the primary focus is appealing to those Internet-savvy young folks.

Bonus items:  Domino Magazine is mentioned, and in a good way (cue Michele), and Jeff Gillman gives a nice plug for GardenRant and Cold Climate Gardening.  (Thanks!)

Browsing the natives

Some of us have been lamenting the lack of resources for native plants in our various regions. Go-to books, vendors, and other authorities are hard to come by. There is Alan Armitage’s Native Plants of North America, Encyclopedia of Northwest Native Plants for Gardens and Lanscapes by Robson, Richter, and Filbert; and the excellent database maintained by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

So, though it’s not as precisely targeted as I would like, Donald Leopold’s Native Plants of the Northeast(Timber) is a welcome addition to my growing collection of books that list plants. And, increasingly, that tends to be my favorite type of plant book, other than those of the great personalities of gardening, like Christopher Lloyd. As Leopold mentions in his introduction, he organized the book according to what he likes best to do: browse through plants, with information on how best to cultivate them at hand. I love to browse through plant books, too, especially when they’re as generously illustrated as this one.

The book is organized by type of plant: ferns, grasses, wildflowers, shrubs, and trees. The big caveat is that of course the Northeast is a huge area, and what’s native for Maine could be totally invasive and unsuitable for Southwest PA. It’s a problem that common sense and further research can solve, however. Leopold does give broad ranges within the NE area for each plant; many of the habitats stretch far further than what we would define as NE. Plants are kind of independent that way.

The descriptions are matter-of-fact for the most part, but I did notice that Leopold waxes most enthusiastic about trees—as well he should, as they seem the most important natives to plant (which Doug Tallamy so eloquently insists upon in his Bringing Nature Home). Here’s what he says about robinia pseudoacacia: “Black locust … is apparently too familiar to the public to be appreciated . Yet, few trees have such a wonderful flower display, and the ability to restore the most degraded land in eastern North America.” But then he points out its possible insect problems and indicates where it could become invasive.

Forthright, warts-and-all description are common throughout, and at the end of the book a series of lists addresses specific site needs and habitat-providing attributes.

I have two copies of this book (hardcover, large, with great pictures) and would love to send one to a reader who would find it useful or enjoyable. Here are three questions where you must give the botanical or common name of the native plant described (from Leopold’s “attributes” section of his descriptions). Whoever answers them correctly first will get the book.

1. “A fine addition to the shade garden in spring (long terminal clusters of white flowers), summer (rich green flowers along arching stems), and fall (clusters of red fruit).”

2. “Straggling shrub to about 5 feet high and wider, spreading by root suckers; leaves simple, opposite, about 6 inches long; flowers, white, in 4-6-inch-wide, rather flat clusters in summer …”

3. “12 to 36 inches tall; bright orange to red-orange to even yellow flowers in upright, flat clusters in summer; foliage rich green and narrow in shape.”

If it’s too hard (I wouldn’t think so), I’ll just draw from whoever comments.

KYLEE IS CORRECT! Interesting comments. It's a complex issue, but I think this book, though not perfect, can at least offer some plant selection ideas. Now for finding the plants!

Meat Is Murder

(photo by Jill Goodell)

Meat is murder on the conscience, as this week's appalling recall of 143 million pounds of beef reminded me. The meat was recalled because the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company was processing cows too sick even to walk to the slaughter and treating them unbelievably cruelly them on the way.  I couldn't even stand to watch the video taken by the Humane Society, so there won't be a link.

Meat is murder on the environment, too, at least the factory raised kind.  Mark Bittman, who does a food column for the New York Times called "The Minimalist," wrote a fantastic piece a few weeks ago comparing meat to oil in terms of its environmental costs and suggesting it's time to shed the "meat guzzler" as much as the "gas guzzler."

(photo by John F.)

Bittman points out that the world, getting richer as a whole, is eating more and more meat.  It takes a tremendous amount of energy to produce meat industrially.  While manure is the best gift you could give a vegetable gardener, industrial feedlots turn it into a hideous pollutant, just because of their inhuman scale.  The methane produced by cows is a major greenhouse gas.  And with intense competition for grains from fuel producers and meat producers, the losers are the world's poor, who need cheap grains to feed themselves.

Bittman's not a vegetarian and neither am I.  He suggest pasture-raised meat as part of the answer to the environmental quagmire.  And since the world cannot produce as much meat on grass as it does in factories, Bittman recommends that we all eat less. 

Apparently, I've got sustainable tastes.  I haven't bought a package of hamburger in a supermarket for the last ten years at least--the grass-fed meat from my local farmers tastes a million times better. And the food I like best is peasant food that uses meat as a garnish in a stew of vegetables and/or grains.  Give me four ounces of bacon, and I will give you dinner for six. 

But I've got other qualms that moderation doesn't answer.  All of my contact with birds convinces me they are scarily intelligent, so what am I doing, regularly boiling them up for stock?  And science seems to be knocking down that Chinese wall between human intelligence and animal intelligence block by block.  So let's not flatter ourselves that the cow soul we see behind those cow eyes is so very different from our own.

I don't flatter myself. Clearly, for the pure of heart, eating no meat at all is the answer.  But I love to cook, and frankly, could hardly bear the narrowing of horizons that would occur if I had to give up meat entirely. So moral ambiguity is the country in which I dwell, and I suspect that this has been true of humans as long as we've lived on the planet.  We like the sizzle, but not the killing.   

Step away from the orchids

On a cold Saturday afternoon, we have stopped for a drink at a lakefront restaurant, so we can watch the ice fisherman as we sip our martinis. My friend Cheryl: “What about those orchids you left in the car?” Me, shrugging: “Yeah. I’m a bit concerned.” The bartender and cocktail waitress are looking at us, wide-eyed and kind of dismayed. “You have kids in the car?” one blurts. (We were able to clear it up before the police came.)

Orchids may as well be children for all the worry and fuss that surround their maintenance. I have just dipped my toe into the world of orchid growing, with the purchase of three: a dendrobium, a phalaenopsis, and a cattleya. Two were bought yesterday at the annual orchid show at the Botanical Gardens; one a couple weeks before at Home Depot. I also have an orchid wheel, which, when properly manipulated, will help me solve all my orchid problems.

We saw a few outstanding orchid displays at the show. And by that I mean those that were not cluttered with tiny frogs and little stone signs saying “Welcome to my garden.” (Seriously: you have gorgeous orchids; why bother with the tchotchkes?) This is a show that invites local gardeners to create displays of their best orchids. Then, in the back greenhouses, they have some area vendors, doing very brisk business—everyone I saw leaving the joint had a bag of orchid plants clutched in their fist. What will happen to all these plants? If Cheryl’s experience is indication, maybe half of these people will kill their orchids before the year is out.

And that’s the thing. Except for maybe the durable phalaenopsis, which puts up with our dry, dim Northeastern home conditions rather well, most orchids are … difficult. One exhibitor (the best: he had several amazing slipper varieties, some pictured here) looked grave when I mentioned I had just purchased a dendrobium nobile. “You know that needs a chilling period; you have to let it go dry … did you talk to your vendor? Did they give you a care sheet?” “Um, no. I have an orchid wheel, though.”

Every orchid expert I have talked to is a guy. But the reason I’m getting into them is my late mother-in-law; she loved them and always assured me I’d have no problem keeping a few alive. We’ll see. According to my wheel, here’s what might happen: petal blight, leaf spot, shriveled leaves, no flowers, yellow leaves (I’m very familiar with that one), dry black patches (ew), soft rotting areas (lovely!) and, er, lack of vigor.

But I know many Rant readers have orchids and do very well with them; I may be calling on you to share your wisdom!

P.S.: The chocolate-scented oncidium Sharry Baby DOES smell like chocolate.

We have our Northeasterner - the Garden Lady

Meet the newest Regional Garden Guru.  Gardening in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it's CL Fornari, author of a slew of gardening books and articles in magazines and newspapers. In response to our call for more gardenwriters to put good regional gardening info on line, she got in the spirit and added a special new section to her existing site and it's The Garden Lady's Northeast News.  She's helping pull together more good gardening links for the Northeast, but don't stop sending us your recommendations.

Oh, and here's a little something about CL's gardens:

I have gardened in Wisconsin, California, New Jersey, New York State and Massachusetts, and I’ve grown plants in good soil, clay, rocks and pure sand. I’ve planted on Cape Cod since 1993 and in early 2008 I moved to a 2 ½  acre blank slate of a property. All I know now is that I’ve
got a weird clay/sand mix in desperate need of organic matter, and a great deal of work ahead of me. I’ll keep you posted.

Yep, that's what I like to see in a gardening communicator, in whatever medium - someone who's still learning, after all those gardens in all those places and soils.