Garden Rant

Redoute Revisite

When photographer Saxon Holt came to town a few months ago, I told him that I was planning an exhibit of botanical art at Eureka Books, the antiquarian bookstore we bought in December.  We have an event called Arts Alive on the first Saturday of the month in Eureka; all the businesses in Old Town stay open late, pour a little wine, exhibit a little art, and generally have a good time.  Eureka Books had always stayed open late on Arts Alive, but the store had never hosted an exhibit of any kind before we bought it.

So we've been putting up some kind of book-related art every month.  Botanical art seemed like a perfect fit since this art form began as book illustrations. In particular, I was excited about bringing in some of Pierre-Joseph Redoute's hand-colored stipple engravings of roses that he did for the famous book Les Roses, which was published in the early 1800s under the patronage of Josephine Bonaparte.

Saxon told me that when he was hired to photograph roses for  two Smith & Hawken rose books, 100 Old Roses for the American Garden and 100 English Roses for the American Garden, he was inspired by Redoute.  If you think about it, it's not so easy to photograph a rose flat against a white background.  Rose blossoms face up, but to do a good illustration you need them to face toward the viewer, not toward the sky.  You also need perfect examples of the rose in full bloom, in bud, and perhaps going to seed.  Finding all of this on one stem is not easy.  Botanical illustrators often had to piece together bits of a plant to get the perfect specimen. So that's what Saxon did.

On the right, you can see a "before" shot of the dismembered rose.  He assembled these on location, in the rose garden where each rose in the book happened to be in bloom, often working in makeshift studios in someone's garage.  The roses were pieced together with tiny bits of clay, and the clay was also used to gently lift the leaves and petals off the background to create pleasing shadows behind them.

And here's the final result.

Saxon has done a signed limited edition set of prints from the books on gorgeous watercolor paper.  I picked them up over the weekend; they're in the store now.  Over the next few days I'll be cataloging and pricing this and other botanical art, from modern  California artists to rare  200-300 year-old botanical engravings, for our  show.  We're holding a preview party Friday night and the big event is Saturday night, both to benefit the Humboldt Botanical Gardens Foundation, an organization that is in the process of building a botanical garden here in Humboldt County.

So--it's summer, the garden's overrun with weeds, and I'm inside working with pristine botanical works on paper. Not a bad deal, all in all.  You can read more about our exhibit here.

A magnificent photography collection comes on line

Girl with Carnations, a c. 1915 autochrome by George Zoller.

Well, it’s beginning to, and what I see so far is very impressive. I just received a press release from the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film that the acclaimed Rochester institution is putting a selection of its photography on Flickr’s The Commons, along with the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, Brooklyn Museum, Australia's Powerhouse Museum, and France's Bibliothéque Toulouse.

Glass dish with classical figures, ceramic bowl and vase of flowers, by H. Wormleighton

There are 219 photographs on Flickr so far, out of their collection of over 400k, but I am sure many more will be added. I’m particularly interested in Eastman, because they are known for a longtime interest in nature and gardens; their gardens are famous and every year the institution holds a spring flower show, unusual for a museum. Not only that, they hosted the Heroes of Horticulture exhibition last year, and some other interesting shows related to the natural world. These photos are not for commercial use; they’re too lo-res for that, but they’re a great resource for education and entertainment, and have no copyright restrictions (with caveats).

The pictures above were made using the autochrome process, as explained here (from the press release): The process used a screen of tiny potato starch grains dyed orange-red, green and violet. Dusted onto a glass plate, the dyed grains were covered with a layer of sensitive panchromatic silver bromide emulsion. As light entered the camera, it was filtered by the dyed grains before it reached the emulsion. While the exposure time was very long, the plate could be processed easily by a photographer familiar with standard darkroom procedures. The result was a unique, realistic, positive color image on glass that required no further printing.

"You can't plan nature; you court her."

A Garden of Color

This article in the LA Times made me more curious about Robert Irwin’s work on the garden at the Getty Center than I’d ever been and more interested in seeing it. Of course, I’ve always wanted to see the museum, having only seen the old Getty many years ago. You may remember Susan's post on this.

Garden in Early Spring

In the article, Irwin says,

It's my observation that gardeners and gardening for a very long time have had to take a back seat. … When I talk to these people [landscape designers], I'm inclined to point out that this could be their day in court, you know. When I first started making proposals for the garden . . . they said, "You can't do this." They all said, "It's not really a garden." And I was very taken back by that, because I couldn't understand approaching something with everything already defined. And it seemed to me that that's an odd way to approach the world, especially a world as rich as the world of plants. There's no palette as rich as a garden. And the intensity of it -- I make this statement all the time: You can't plan nature; you court her.

Spring time at the Getty

I have always admired Irwin’s work very much. He’s a minimalist, a color and light man, so conceivably a good choice to plan a garden, especially a museum garden. If you’re going to pick a visual artist, that is. At a museum, or really any large institution, it seems the type of busy colorful-border-type garden, the type I would probably plant, wouldn’t be the right choice. You need something a bit more organized, and probably with fewer plants and more of them. At the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, in the sculpture “garden,” there are a couple lovely specimen trees and a wide border of pachysandra around a paved area and a large sculpture. Pachysandra is probably one of my least favorite plants, but it works very well in this context, where the complex Jim Hodges sculpture (can't find a good pic!) needs a quiet backdrop.

Of course, what Irwin has done is no quiet backdrop, but as an exterior artwork designed for the Getty, judging from the photography submitted by LA Times readers (shown here), it holds up pretty well. The article notes that the oversight of the garden and its necessary changes over time are now the responsibility of its curator, Jim Duggan, not Irwin.

Great Urban Spaces

Elizabeth calls it the Best. Garden Walk. Ever.  And sure enough, there were more gardens than ever, and the gardens I visited a second time were indeed even better than last year.  Like Gordon Ballard's in the top photo, proving that a whole lotta garden can be packed in a tiny urban yard.

In the next photo Jim Charlier, Garden Walk chairman and Art of Gardening blogger, proves that outdoor garden rooms ARE cool if they're as homey and individualistic as this one, and that privacy doesn't have to cost a fortune to create.  I have great memories of lolly-gagging in these comfy green chairs back in '07 with my 3 GardenRant partners in crime (Amy, we missed you this year!)

Oh, and I ran into a veritable gardening-world celeb this year - Roger Swain, long-time host of "The Victory Garden," also of Horticulture and People, Places and Plants fame.   

AND 6 RANDOM THINGS
Recently Christopher C tagged GardenRant with the "6 Random Things" meme and I seem to remember promising him I'd play along.  Now everyone knows that the only way to make it fun is to go wildly off-topic, but we try to be good girls and stay on topic here - with the occasional stretch - so I put it over on my blog where there are no rules.

Help pick pics for Sustainable Gardening book

You may know Ginny Stibolt is a frequent commenter here and as author of Adventures of a Transplanted Gardener.  The title refers to her status as an emigre to Florida and one of the many gardeners there  having to practically learn to garden all over again.

What you might not know is that Ginny's been hired by the University Press of Florida to write the definitive guide to environmentally responsible gardening for the state: Sustainable Gardening for Florida.   After two years of research and writing - and the exhaustive vetting required for any government publication - it was just about finished when the budget guys decided they COULD afford to include 8 pages of color photos in the middle of the book, but which to choose? 

That's where we come in.  Help Ginny and her publishers pick the photos that'll grab potential readers' attention and maybe illustrate something in the text.  A selection of possible photos is here on her website and your job is to choose your top choices (up to 10) AND nominate the cover photo.   Post your choices in a comment here, through August 15.  Just so you'll know what subjects the photos may be illustrating, the chapter titles of the book are:

1. Introduction to Sustainability. 2. Gardening Strategies. 3.Compost and Mulch. 4. Smaller, More Sustainable Lawns. 5. Habitats and Meadows. 6. Trees and Shrubs.  7. Container Gardens.  8. Edible Gardens.  9. Integrated Pest Management.  10. Water and Irrigation.  11. Harvesting Rainwater.  12. Rain Gardens, Bioswales, and Bog Gardens.  13. Waterfront Gardening: Dealing with Salt, Sand, Muck, and Erosion.  14. Preparing for Disasters: Hurricanes and Fires.

MORE SWAG
Ginny will put all the respondents' names in a hat and choose 2 to receive the book as soon as it comes out next year.  She tells me that much of the book is useful for gardeners anywhere, even outside of Florida, and that, of course, the winners could give the book to a Floridian and "Doesn't everyone know someone in Florida??"

Photo right - my online acquaintance with Ginny turned real-world last week when she visited me and my garden.

Ethel Gloves--Our Winners!

And the gloves go to: 

Kim for her 'Little Glovies' song.

Benjamin for standing up for his right to fabulous gloves.

And, if she checks back in and gets an email address to me, Becca for her fabulous red dress.

Kim and Benjamin, I sent you an email already.  Just need your address, size, and style of choice.

Thanks for playing!  Wow--65 entries! That's more comments than we got for the garden cart giveaway.

Remember that you can still order a pair online and use the promo code RANT to get 10% off.

The Missing Honeybees

And now, this:

Colony Collapse Disorder: The Music Video

I'm just gonna give it to you the way YouTube gave it to me.

"It is a fact of nature: When a honey bee returns to the hive after finding a good source of nectar, it will perform a unique dance for its hive mates, detailing the distance, quality and quantity of the new food supply.

Sadly, honey bees are mysteriously vanishing in staggering numbers - a crisis known as Colony Collapse disorder - which is alarming considering honey bees are responsible for pollinating one-third of our natural food supply.

Learn more at http://www.helpthehoneybees.com"

Oh, and yes, it's all an elaborate plot to get you to eat more ice cream.

This Week in Chickens

The other day I was walking over to my neighbor's house to feed their chickens and collect eggs while they were on vacation.  On the way, I heard the familiar sound of happy hens in another backyard.  I peered through the slats in the fence and saw a dozen young hens scratching about in their pen.  And I know at least a couple other people within a few blocks who keep chickens.

So I thought it was time to check up on the backyard chicken movement.  Here's what's going on around the country; let us know what's happening in your neck of the woods.

Oh, and these adorable peeps are my own Eleanor and Dolley back in the day.  Ah, how quickly they grow up...

The Longmont, CO city council has just voted to revise its municipal code to allow backyard hens.  (They were considering a cat leash ordinance, too.  Good lord. No word on that.)

Toronto officials are being persuaded that maybe backyard chickens should be permitted there, too, thanks in part to the efforts of the people behind the website Toronto Chickens. And more charming Toronto chicken stories here.

A blogger at the Dallas Morning News reports on the rising price of eggs and the benefits of backyard hens. I gotta say, backyard hens need to be about more than saving money on eggs.  For a while we kept track of our cost-per-egg, but it only takes one coop repair or vet bill to throw it out of whack. (and no, we're not paying for hip replacements or anything that outlandish--a trip to the bird vet for us means, "We're pretty sure this is about to be an ex-bird, but we're not willing to wring its neck ourselves, so if you've got an easy fix, do it, otherwise it's curtains for the chicken."  So far, the bird vet has always had a simple fix to what seemed like a fatal chicken problem.)

Our friends in Austin--and how we love our friends in Austin--are keeping backyard chickens, which is just fine by the city council.

They're debating it in Greensboro, NC, too. And in Sonoma, CA.  And Medford, OR just wants people to use common sense.  Even San Francisco allows chickens in the city.

Most of the objections to backyard chickens I read in these articles are unfounded: 

"People don't realize how much work it is to raise chickens."  Actually, it's surprisingly easy.  Collect eggs, food and water, lock up the coop at night, clean it out once in a while.  Really not a big deal. A dog, properly cared for, requires more work for less reward.

"They attract mice."  This is, in theory, about the possibility of mice getting into the food.  But it's as easy to seal up a bin of chicken feed as it is to seal up a bin of cat food or, for that matter, your garbage can.  Not an issue.

"They're noisy."  Roosters are noisy, but you don't need a rooster to get eggs.  Hens cackle when they lay an egg (wouldn't you?) but the noise never takes place at night, as hens don't lay at night, and is certainly no louder than, say, a lawn mower, a crying child, or a barking dog.

"They'll smell bad."  Any animals kept in filth will smell bad.  Ever been in the home of a crazy cat lady?  Pine shavings and a compost pile to deposit manure are all you need to keep chickens clean.

If you're considering chickens, check out Backyard Poultry magazine, which is filled with useful articles like this on finding chicken-sitters when you go on vacation.

Anybody out there doing chickens this year?

Best. Garden Walk. Ever.

Please excuse me boring you just one last time (until next year) with an event that almost all of you will never attend. These are the wonderful things about Garden Walk 2008:

Susan, Michele, and I truly spent quality time touring around Buffalo, both architecture and gardens. We saw abandoned houses on the East Side as well as beautiful old architecture and Olmsted’s masterful park and parkway system on the West Side. We saw a green roof, a straw bale greenhouse, a co-op urban garden center, and a crazy front garden by a Vietnamese gardener who gives new meaning to the phrase “curb appeal.” (above)

We got drunk with some of the best gardeners in Buffalo or anywhere, including the beautiful Sally Cunningham (seen above with über gardener Gordon Ballard at right and behind him Garden Walk president Jim Charlier), author of an illuminating book on companion plantings (featured on our sidebar) and a passionate proponent of sensible, sustainable gardening on the local radio and in her newspaper column. We were also joined by Charlotte and Ellen, of My Sister's Garden and frequent commenter/horticulturalist Terry Etttinger and his sister Marie.

People from Utah, Cleveland, Florida, and everywhere else came through my garden, including this friendly face, Mischelle (Sorry, goofed on this before. I am senile.) Carpenter, a Garden Rant reader from Northeastern PA, who never comments, but came to Garden Walk after reading about it on this blog.

I heard some of the most gratifying comments I’ve ever heard, including those that used words like creative, artistic, lush, and peaceful. Usually it’s just “lot of work,” which makes me feel guilty because it really isn’t. (Compared to many other things.)

I still can’t believe Susan and Michele took the time from their busy summers to make the tedious drive here. I hope they found it worthwhile. I know I did, and I’m even more convinced that an event like this is one of the best ways to affirm and reinforce the importance of what we all do in our gardens.

Burning questions of the day

Susan and Michele in my garden Saturday.

One of our ideas for this semi-Garden Ranter get-together (me, Susan, and Michele meeting during Garden Walk in Buffalo) was that we would do a video blog and talk about some interesting topics. OK. What are interesting topics?

Well, this is what we came up with:

How has garden blogging affecting how we think about gardening and how we garden?

How is garden blogging different than then established garden writing, i.e., that which you see in newspapers and magazines?

What about the proliferation of food gardening?

What’s the significance of Garden Walk? What does it mean for over 300 gardeners to open their garden to the public, not to mention the over 15 local garden walks (in the Western New York suburbs, and so on) that Garden Walk has inspired?

Well it did start raining during the taping, so we didn’t get that far in our discussion, but we do have a nice little video, which, when edited, we’ll post here.

What do you think we ought to have discussed?

Bothered by check-out counter donation requests?

Our friends at Open Register asked their own readers how they feel about being asked to donate to various causes at the check-out counter and got little response, so let's see if GardenRant readers would like to weigh in.

I'll go first.  I dislike the practice but only mildly.  A related practice that I love is what my local organic food co-op does.  Shoppers buying over $25 in goods are given a poker chip, maybe several if they spend enough (I wouldn't know).  They then take the chip to the array of big jars identified with names of various Good Causes and deposit it in their favorite, which will then receive a real-money donation from the co-op.  I don't even KNOW how much the store gives Greyhound Rescue for every chip in their jar (to name my most recent choice) but I hardly care.  The chip-and-choose process just makes me feel good about shopping there.

On rubbing up against poison ivy

You've probably seen the reports of bumper crops of poison ivy these days, thanks to global warming. (Here's one on National Geo).  And last week Anne Raver wrote in the NY Times about a horticulturist cashing in on the problem.  He's Umar Mycka, a career horticulturist at the Philadelphia Zoo (the largest public garden in the area, he tells us) and he started a business called Poison Ivy Horticulturist. Homeowners too allergic to remove the toxic weed themselves (or too busy, you know) pay Umar to don his hazmat suit and do the dirty deed for them.

So Umar, I have a question for you, coz I'm seeing more of it in my garden than any year since I removed it all - as of that moment in time.  Birds WILL crap while flying over our gardens, so poison ivy is never gone for good.  So here's the question: When I think I've rubbed up against some, I should run into the house and do what? 

Raver mentions that there's conflicting advice on this score and recommends her own favorite tactic - "jewelweed, a soft, green-leafed plant with little orange flowers that often grows next to poison ivy in damp areas, near streams."  Its stems and leaves should be crushed and rubbed on the PI sap.  And guess what - Umar uses it himself and keeps it handy in ice cubes form.  Well, that's interesting but what's a jewelweed-less gardener to do?  Let's consult the handy links on Umar's site.

From Ohio State: "If contacted, affected areas should be washed immediately with soap and water as well as any clothing or objects that may have come in contact with the oil. This activity will not decrease the severity of the reaction, but it will lessen the chance of spread."  Oh, that's encouraging.

Referring to both poison ivy and oak, his California source writes:  "After coming in contact with the allergen, the best way to prevent skin irritation is to pour a mild solvent, such as isopropyl alcohol (rubbing  alcohol) over the exposed area and then follow this with plenty of cold water (warm water enhances penetration of the oil) within a few minutes of exposure. If isopropyl alcohol is not available, just wash with lots of cold water. But you need to wash within 5 minutes of exposure to prevent a rash. Even if it is too late to prevent the rash, washing the skin to remove excess plant oil will keep the rash from spreading.

"Using only a small amount of water or disposable hand wipes is more likely to spread the toxin than remove it.  Soaps can be used to wash, but only if used with copious amounts of water; otherwise, they too will spread the toxin.

"If a rash develops after exposure to poison oak, the use of a product called Tecnu, which is sold at most drug stores, will relieve the itch and reduce the rash. When applied once a day, it stops the itching for most of the day and clears up the rash in about 7 days."

Thank you, UC Davis!  This information is so complete that I want to kiss those hort geeks.  Not for them the usual tepid, CYA nonanswers given by so many academic sources.  They also confirmed what I'd read long ago, that sensitivity to poison ivy increases with each exposure, so don't anybody assume you're immune because the next run-in with it could change all that. 

ON HERBICIDES
My new best friends at UC Davis also confirm that glyphosate is the most effective herbicide against it, but only if you use it late in its growth cycle, presumably late summer.  Omar uses an herbicide called Vine-X, and here's what Raver says about that: "It is not clear how toxic it might be to mammals, fish or ducks so I, for one, would rather just pull up the weed."  Well, wouldn't we all.  And when that's not possible?

That's when dispassionate research-based findings from fat public universities really come in handy.

Photo credit.

Ten Reasons I'm About To Drive Five Straight Hours of Boring Highway Towards Buffalo

Right now, I am busy scrubbing my dirty heels and dirty fingernails, getting ready to head to Buffalo's city-wide mass-insanity garden tour, Garden Walk, early tomorrow. The drive is dreadful: five hours of Route 90 with absolutely nothing to look at the entire way. Why will I do it?  Here's why:

1. Elizabeth Licata, the Buffalo-dweller among the Ranters, makes me laugh.
2. Reunion with lovely and mysterious Ranter Susan Harris, whose fascinating personal history (more husbands than a Gabor sister) I am determined to get to the bottom of this trip.
3. Elizabeth's husband and friends all make me laugh.
4. The Buffalo gardens are an embarrassment of riches, and some of them make me laugh, too.  It's not just the disemboweled guy hanging in Elizabeth's back entry (relax, it's just an interesting piece of sculpture), it's the woman who took her pocket-sized garden and did everything in miniature--mini urns, mini plants, mini koi pond.
5. I'm particularly amused by giant koi stabled in minuscule backyards, and Buffalo is the American capital of the steroidal koi.
6. Buffalonians are clearly the biggest summer partiers on the planet. (Long, snowy winters will do that to a culture.)
7. Buffalo is gorgeous. It was one of the richest cities in America in the late 19th century, and every other traffic circle was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
8. I find house envy therapeutic. Elizabeth and her boho friends all live in glorious 19th and early 20th century houses that would be called mansions anywhere else.
9. Excellent local white wines are sure to be shoved into my fist regularly.
10. Lots of chatter about plants with people who actually care.

Ethel Glove Giveaway

We'll announce a winner on Monday, so you've still got the weekend to enter and win.

Science Experiment

Mary and Craig Barnes Consulting With My Kid, The Hybridizer

Gardens exist to make the world more beautiful, don't get me wrong. But there's another purpose to gardening that may well eclipse the drive towards beauty, and I'm not sure it's not just as important. Gardening gives the mad scientist free rein of a rather amazing laboratory.

Both of my parents worked when I was a kid, and since I lived in a suburb where nothing was possible without somebody driving you there, I spent long summers with no adult supervision in a state of crushing boredom.  As a result, I read incessantly, and when I had a splitting headache from reading, conducted science experiments of a particularly sloppy sort--frog dissections, digging up saplings and seeing how they reacted to cigarette smoke, trying to brew stink potions with skunk cabbage, you get the idea.

Surprisingly--or not surprisingly at all--no career in science followed, but I do try to keep the experimental spirit alive in my garden.  I am constantly mucking up my pretty pictures by shoehorning in new plants, digging successful things out for the sake of change, planting too many different kinds of things just to see what works, and generally behaving like a child, rather than an exalted critic of the exquisite.  And I'm alternately fascinated and anguished and in denial about what I've wrought in a way that recalls the childish Victor Frankenstein.

One of the reasons I adore Slate Hill Farm Daylilies, a spectacularly gorgeous daylily nursery just down the road from me in the country, is the fact that Craig and Mary Barnes, too, are mad scientists of a slightly more successful sort.  And they have been introducing my kids to the joys of crazy fiddling with plants in recent years by allowing them to hybridize daylilies.

This is the first year that any of my children's crosses are blooming.  The one below is a creation by my son Milo, with its parent flowers tucked into the pot beneath it.  Since I adore maroon flowers verging on black, I highly approve of monster he created out of the merely purple and red, and have a great, prominent spot picked out for it in my yard.

Another of my kids' crosses was flagged by Slate Hill's favorite critics as one of the most interesting new hybrids of the season.

Obviously, Mary Barnes is a spectacularly nice person to be following my kids around with clipboards and markers for an hour in the rain while they waft stamens over pistils.

But my kids are truly gripped--this is science made real--and beg me to stop at Slate Hill every time we drive by. They can now tell you all about daylily genetics, diploids and tetraploids and how one becomes the other. 

I wish there were more such local breeders and growers for us to visit.  As it is, I think the Barneses might turn my kids into botanists.

Texas gardeners are good to know

That statement or something really close was the message of an NPR segment that had me tearing up—oh hell, crying—on my commute home today.

Here’s the story in brief:

Tracy Pruitt's property manager gave her 30 days to leave her home of 2 1/2 years. But what about the lush garden of shrubs, trees and beloved day lilies the East Texas woman planted and nurtured there? Truitt posted a plea for help at an online gardener's forum and scores of gardeners from across Texas are helping her move them to her new home.

Basically, days after she posted on the Dave’s Garden daylily forum, explaining her situation, other forum regulars gathered and organized a rescue.

Pick-up trucks filled with soil and other plant conveyances were lined up in front of Pruitt’s home well before the deadline for her to find another place to live. It’s touching—and interesting. What happens when you don’t own where you garden, as many of us do not? A cautionary tale.

Young women garden activists in the news

Check out Adrian Higgins's terrific story of the three community gardeners who embarked on a 2,000-mile bike trip last summer to document urban farming from Washington, D.C. to Montreal. Too bad the online version doesn't include all the photos but I got a screen shot of my favorite from the Home&Garden main page.  (To show you how much attention the story is given, a wider version of this photo occupies the entire H&G front page above the fold.  Editors seem to want more gardening stories about people, and are getting them.) 

I first reported on the threesome during their road trip, then covered the prescreening of their movie about the trip.

But Higgins actually interviewed them, and this quote might be of interest to Rant readers: "People our age want to get back into farming and we wanted to get those stories out."

And Marion Nestle had this to say about that: "It's a social movement.  It's not just young people, but it's really grabbed the attention of young people because it's so totally tied to climate change and other issues that concern them."  She says the movement is "not organized and very spontaneous and grass-roots, and represents the best elements of American democracy."

Then I found this, quoting Higgins: "The three would stay with friends and remote acquaintances, and sometimes they would knock on the door of a house that gave off friendly vibes and ask to pitch their tent in the garden."  Wow, takes me back to a road trip I took in '68, when my college girlfriend and I took off on a grand summer adventure in a hippie'd-up VW bug.  We logged about 10,000 miles throughout Western North America and were proud to report that we never paid a dime for lodging.  That took some youthful naivete and lots of chutzpa, and produced not just free accommodations but invites to join farming families for breakfast and dozens of other experiences you just don't get as a tourist, some far more adventurous than farm-family breakfasts, I'll tell ya.

The Great Ethel Garden Glove Giveaway

UPDATE:  We have our winners!

And the gloves go to: 

Kim for her 'Little Glovies' song.

Benjamin for standing up for his right to fabulous gloves.

And, if she checks back in and gets an email address to me, Becca for her fabulous red dress.

Kim and Benjamin, I sent you an email already.  Just need your address, size, and style of choice.

Thanks for playing!  Wow--65 entries! That's more comments than we got for the garden cart giveaway.

Remember that you can still order a pair online and use the promo code RANT to get 10% off.

As part of our ongoing efforts to provide you, our readers, with free stuff, we are pleased to announce that three of the cleverest and luckiest of you will win a pair of the new Ethel garden gloves. Actually, you'll need to be not just clever and lucky, but also female, because the deal is that these gloves are designed to fit a woman's hand.  In fact, according to the brochure:

You're the woman who wears red stilettos to a black tie event and a polka-dot dress to a business luncheon.  When asked to give an impromptu speech--to an audience of one-hundred unforgiving critics--you never hesitate.

And furthermore:

No woman feels beautiful with torn cuticles and dirt-encrusted fingernails. Yet, tasks around the house and garden often lead to these adverse consequences.

Indeed!  I'm not sure Ethel's going to reach the stiletto-and-polka-dot crowd here, but the torn cuticles and dirt-encrusted fingernails sound familiar.  So Ethel gloves come in five colors and styles, and they're priced at eighteen bucks, and even if you don't win our big prize, you can get a 10 percent discount if you order through their website and use the code RANT.

Now, as longtime readers may recall, I burn through a pair of gloves in a single year. No garden glove has ever passed the twelve-month mark in my backyard.  The holes always appear in the fingertips, making them useless as a means of keeping dirt off my hands.  So I'll be giving Ethel a try in the garden, but it'll be a solid year before I'm able to make a report. As you can see, I've already put them to work in the garden and I've used them for that all-important task, feeding chicken scratch to my hens.  Dolley couldn't wait for me to toss the scratch to her; she flew right into my hand.  That girl knows how to get what she wants.

So here's how you get what you want:  Post a comment and tell us about the one thing you do that absolutely, positively, always requires the use of gloves. Some of us go glove-free in the garden, some of us pull our gloves on and off in frustration as we alternate between glove-worthy and non-glove-worthy tasks, and some of us glove up before we exert even the slightest effort outdoors.  Be creative.  Expand your glove-worthy tasks to include non-gardening activities if you like.  I'll choose three of the most entertaining responses and get a pair of gloves to you.

Bonus points if it involves red stilettos.  Double-bonus points for photographic evidence.

Who was your first?

This hybrid is an L. auratum copycat.

Many of the gardeners I know have a specific reason they first became interested in gardening. Sometimes it’s a particular plant. My friend Gordon, now the owner of a showplace garden that overflows with two ponds, multiple vines, shrubs and perennials and annuals seemingly on steroids got into it because he wanted water lilies. I suspect my friend Cheryl might never have established a garden had her husband not wanted tomatoes, and I know many people who got into gardening to grow roses. (They usually get over it.)

From the first time I saw one and knew it for what it was, not just a big flower in a bouquet, I was enchanted by the idea of growing oriental lilies. When I started my present garden, I rushed right out and bought a stargazer plant, which was pretty much the only kind the local nurseries had at that time. Then I learned about mail order and bookmarked every single place that sold the bulbs. I tried Madonna lilies (candidum), which bloomed once and never again, and asiatics, which failed to thrive in partial shade and heavy clay.

It turned out that species types like martagon and henryi, trumpets, orienpets, and several oriental hybrids were the best fit for my garden.

This is an orienpet whose name I have forgotten.

I don’t think I would have flung myself so passionately into gardening if it had not been for lilies; indeed, the garden wouldn’t look like much without them (mainly because I have so many and can’t plant too much where they are in fear of gouging them).

Whatever our gardens turn out to be though, I think there is usually one element that starts the ball rolling, whether it’s a small herb plot that expanded or a inspirational bearded iris or peony that deserved better companions.

Trumpet, orienpet, and hybrids, all blooming at once. Usually there's a progression.

I think of this now because for whatever reason, I have so many different lilies blooming at once.