I Love Elizabeth Park!

My grandfather left me a trunk full of slides, many of the park in the 50's

Day 56
The Daily DuBrule

Tonight I spoke to a large group of people at the Pond House in Elizabeth Park in Hartford. I got there about a half hour early, about 5 p.m. and the parked was packed. Folks on blankets, basking in the sun. Teenagers playing frisbee. Joggers. Mothers pushing strollers. The greenhouse was packed to the rim with gorgeous flowering plants. There were beds of yellow daffodils in bloom. The birds were singing, the ducks were quacking, and everyone was happy. I LOVE Elizabeth Park. It sits on the border of West Hartford and Hartford. I spend my childhood there. My grandparents took us there constantly to run in the rose and flower gardens, listen to band concerts, swing on the swings, and skate on the pond. As an adult and a professional gardener, I was thrilled to return to find this park is a horticultural mecca.

I spoke tonight on blending edibles with ornamentals. This is a really fun topic. I explained that you need to understand exactly what an edible plant does for the entire growing season in order to successfully incorporate it into you flower beds. Some edibles like dill or coriander bolt to seed quickly when it gets hot. Ditto for lettuce and spinach. As pretty as they may look in the spring, they won't go the distance in the flower garden. Other food plants are absolutely gorgeous. Swiss chard comes in rainbow colors of red and golden yellow. 'Bull's Blood' beets have deep burgundy red, glossy leaves. 'Ruby Streaks' mustard is a frilly green. Peppers have glossy leaves and grow to a manageable size in any garden. Scarlet runner pole beans can climb up a trellis. Their brilliant red blossoms are edible and taste like beans! The flowers attract hummingbirds, an added bonus.

As with the other talks I have given this winter on growing food, everyone had questions. There is such a lot of interest in this topic. No matter where people live, how small the yard, even if their gardening endeavors are limited to containers on the deck or patio, you can grow food. Edible figs. Purple carrots. Kale. Yum. Give it a shot. As I said at the end of my talk, stretch a little this year outside of your edible comfort zone and grow a few new types of food in your gardens this year.

Peepers!

Day 55 
The Daily DuBrule

So am teaching my basic design class tonight at the Zion Episcopal Church in North Branford. This church backs up to lots of inland wetlands. Of course its been amazingly mild and warm for the past few days. I didn't have much time to linger while setting up but in my mind one word kept repeating over and over...peepers! 

I happened to mention this to the class. I have had quite a bout of spring fever lately with 70 degree temperatures, soft winds, flowers opening before my eyes. One student said "they're here!" She told me to listen when I stepped outside after class. She was right! The first peepers of the season! 

What a magical sound. It strikes deep at the heartstrings. It drills down into my psyche. Once you hear the peepers, there's no turning back. It's a milestone of the spring (or in this case pre-spring) season. 

I should have known this day was right around the corner. On Saturday afternoon, when I left class, I went back to Natureworks to unload my car. I opened the door and stepped outside. The joyous sound of a bright red cardinal singing joyously in a tree top at the edge of the parking lot made me jerk my head instantaneously. It was SO loud. Look at me. I'm singing to the universe. This is my season. Join me and sing too! I broke into a broad grin.

Little by little, the tiny milestones that mark the entry of springtime are unfolding. It's a couple of weeks early but I'm not complaining. It is such a welcome gift, an early and gorgeous March. I am appreciating every minute of it. 

The Harvest is In!

Black pussywillows (Salix melanostachys)

Day 54
The Daily DuBrule

It was way too hot today. I LOVE warm days in March, but this was crazy. I didn't know how to deal. I was in my car after giving a garden club talk in Farmington and opening the windows didn't cool me down. It's MARCH for God's sake. Anyway, I got through the day and came home to a yard filled with piles of cut pussywillows.

One of my criteria for my new yard was to grow stuff I could harvest and sell at my store. Pussywillows among them. So, I planted lots of plants a few years ago and lo and behold, they LOVE my yard. Thick wet clay. Perfect for pussywillows. Sunday I took out my father's pruning saw and my faithful loppers and cut every bit of harvestable growth off of these plants. Don't think I did it to be spiteful. No. With pussywillows, a hard pruning encourages tons of new growth each year.
 
I was left with a HUGE pile on Sunday at which point I was done. Time for dinner, wine, and a movie. Isn't that what a day off is for?

Fasciated pussywillows are like living sculpture

When I got home this afternoon, the warm, gorgeous day enticed me outside. I tried to be a good doobie and work on my class Tuesday night and the one on Wednesday and the endless email correspondence and the myriad issues at Natureworks. But NO. The day was too warm and beautiful. So, I reverted back to a previous image of myself as "harvester".  I harvested pussywillows for an hour. I cut all the branches into various lengths, sorting them by size and shape. It was so relaxing. A complete hour of forgetting that I am a business woman and a person responsible for 25 people's jobs. At this intense time of year, when spring is busting out all over 2-3 weeks early and I am trying to get a handle on who, what, and where I will be sending my four crews never mind how my retail staff is going to handle the new computer cash register and all of the accompanying trials and tribulations that go with it that I NEVER imagined possible, it felt REALLY GOOD to just cut and sort and bunch pussywillows. 
 
Sometimes, getting back to basics is just what the doctor ordered. 

A Beautiful Day in the Garden

Day 53

The Daily DuBrule

Rose 'Moje Hammarberg' got a good cleaning out and cutting back today

What a magnificent day. Warm, sunny, spring-like. A flock of robins flitted about on my front lawn and as they pulled worms out of the ground all I could think was "thank God I don't use poisons on my lawn". I spent the day doing more cutting back in the garden. Silly me, I thought I was done with that but I just keep finding more stuff I missed.

Top of the list were some summer blooming shrubs that bloom on new wood. It's really important to cut them back in the spring. This encourages lots of new, young growth which is where all the flower bud action happens. Some plants I worked on today:

Leptodermis oblonga, which only grows 3-4' tall and has tubular lavender purple blossoms in July and August.
 
Symphoricarpos albus, also called snowberry, an old fashioned shrub that flowers in August and gets big fleshy white berries in the fall.

Cephalanthus or buttonbush, a late summer bloomer with white round orbs of flowers that the butterflies love.

Clerodendrum trichotomum, the glory bower shrub, with fragrant white fall flowers followed by stunning seed pods. 

Finally, I cut all my pussywillows. I am going to bunch them and bring them into Natureworks to sell. Every year it is important to really prune pussywillow shrubs hard. This gets rid of the old wood and encourages tons of young, new wood which has the best pussywillow catkins the following winter. I got out my father's pruning saw and had at it, cutting out tons of dead branches and doing some major cuts, really shaping the shrubs. Quite a harvest of pussywillow branches for a beautiful day in March. 

I watched bugs hatching and flitting through the air. I watched Allium foliage emerge and grow two inches in one day on the south side of the house. I opened pruned quite a few of my roses and have the battle scars to prove it.

All in all, it was a fabulous March Sunday afternoon. I'm LOVING this early spring warm weather. Yes! 

Food Glorious Food

Day 52

The Daily DuBrule

Anyone remember the musical Oliiver? Food Glorious Food. I was in the chorus of this musical in summer stock in high school This is the refrain that ran through my head today as I watched dozens of people walk into to an already popular class called Eating From Your Garden from April until November. I wasn't kidding when I made up that title. That's what I do, actually eating from March into December and beyond at this point .

I was SO THRILLED with the response to this class. People are hungry (no pun intended) for every scrap of information I can put forth on the subject of growing food. Why? Well, it hits a very deep chord in the human psyche, that's for sure. AND, we are all worried about poisons,  genetically modified organisms (gmos's) and other creepy things happening to our food supply that we don't understand and that scare us.

That aside, we all have a primal urge to grow food. It's in our DNA. It always brings me back to reality when I teach a class like this. Most people just are hungry for the basics. Succession cropping. Rotation of crop families. Testing the soil. Understanding how to deal with pests organically. Basic stuff that I take for granted, as does my staff. Yet, we realize over and over that our job is to teach the basics to people who just simply say "Help me learn to grow my own food". For me, it is simple. I want to know my food isn't grown with poisons and doesn't contain genetically modified organisms (gmo's). I want to KNOW where my food comes from. It is, when you really thing about it, the staff of life, the substance I am made of. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

We take food for granted. We waltz into the local grocery store and buy strawberries in January. Where are they from? How were they grown? If we dare to ask those questions, it is a different reality. In my world, yes, you can enjoy strawberries in January at a special occasion party in the winter, but strawberries are a JUNE celebration! Radishes in July in CT? That ain't natural. Once you've grown radishes, you will know that. So, get into the rhythm of growing food and you will never shop at the grocery store with the same mindset again.

The point is, if you eat food in CT you should understand the food that grows in CT. The more you understand it, the more you will want to eat locally and in season. Even if you don't have the time or the yard or the inclination to grow any of your own food, you can still be aware of how it is produced and what is natural in this climate, in this state, in the various months that we can grow and harvest food. With that in mind, look to your local farmer's markets, C.S.A's (Community Supported Agriculture programs), and anyone else that supports local food production in CT. Support them with your dollars, your emails, your blogs, your facebook posts, and anything else in your power to move the local, organic food movement forward in our state. This is about our health, our well being, and the fabric of our communities. This is REALLY IMPORTANT right now. Spring is almost here. Vote with your voice and your buying power to make the CT organic local food economy strong and healthy in 2012 ,

Feverfew

Feverfew mingles with Physocarpus 'Center Glow'

Day 51
The Daily DuBrule

Now that I have passed the 50 day mark, blogging every day for 50 days, I might as well let you in on a secret. I love feverfew. So many people I know rip this plant out because it self sows so rampantly. Not me. I LOVE it. It blooms all summer long in deep shade and full sun. It makes a great cut flower. It is an aromatic herb, used in Europe for helping migraine headache sufferers. In my gardens, it weaves itself into pretty much anywhere I let it, adding a cottage garden feel and helping to fool the noses of the deer.

Herbs are just the best plants to have growing everywhere. When you are tired of the everyday world of computers and business and cars and problems, you can wander through your gardens, even if it is dark outside, and an herb like feverfew (being white and glowing in the dark) will say "hey, look at me!"  I pluck a bit of foliage and inhale the pungent, herbal scent. Yup, I can surely believe that this is a medicinal herb.

Does it bother me that this plant self seeds a lot? Nope. I can easily spot it in the spring and if it's too much, I pull it up. I don't try and transplant it an save it, I just say "bye bye" and off to the compost pile it goes. Meanwhile, for months and months into the growing season, feverfew adds a pretty filler flower to every bouquet I create.

I have a favorite woodland garden in Guilford with a long, winding driveway. In the spring, the drive is lined with daffodils and Virginia bluebells and bleeding hearts. In the summer, when my client is away on an island, feverfew takes over. Slowly but surely it has been seeding in, a welcome presence when all of this spring glory recedes and goes dormant. 

I guess I am just a cottage gardener at heart. No matter how much of a sense of order I try to bring to my world, plants like feverfew melt my heart. 

It's Spring On the South Side

Foxglove plant in leafing out along the concrete foundation on the south side of my house.

Day 50
The Daily DuBrule

How is it possible? I have blogged for 50 straight days! And I still am finding things to talk about. Today we continue with a late winter tour of my garden. It was really REALLY warm today, so warm that for a while I sat in my courtyard and just watched the honeybees nectaring on the crocus and snowdrop flowers. What a wonderful sound, the buzzing of bees. It's been many months since that was a part of my world.

Everywhere I went today, the world was waking up. I saw rose leaves fully open. I spotted Aconitum (monkshood) and globe thistle (Echinops) foliage emerging. While discussing the possible pruning of Clematis, I saw swollen buds on vines that from a distance looked completely dried up and dead.

Euphorbia lathyrus (gopher spurge) looking gorgeous against my foundation.

Daffodils in bud

It's really a kick to have an early spring after the craziness of 2011. I am in heaven. Every day brings new surprises. I was tempted to plant spinach seeds this morning as I was examining the garlic breaking through the surface of the soil. I found bronze fennel foliage up high enough to nip a piece and rub between my fingers. Yum. Egyptian topping onions have enough top growth to cut and toss into salads. It's March 8th and it feels like early April. Woo Hoo!

Phlox subulata 'Betty', the tiniest of miniature creeping May pinks. Love this plant! It is especially charming with an amethyst heart shaped crystal nestled in the clump.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the butterfly bushes ever really lost their leaves this year. I spent lots of time today discussing how much to prune off of these summer blooming shrubs. The answer: as much as you want!