Of Noise and Nibbles...

The din of the cicadas is unbelievably loud these days. It's something you notice when it first starts in July, but then it becomes white noise--only noticed when it suddenly stops and starts back up as it does periodically. But when I open the door to let the dogs out, I'm shocked by the volume, and I have to push Phoebe, our golden retriever/lab mix, out the door. She hates loud noises, and this is not only deafening, it's weird. It can only be described as a huge chorus of tinny humming. Thank God the bugs only make noise and leave their empty molted carcasses hanging around; they're pretty harmless otherwise. Ryan likes to collect their remains in a gallon-size baggie each year to see how many he can find around our yard. Yuck!

I'm looking out my window at some of my container plantings and something--I think a chipmunk--is eating my gorgeous sweet potato vine, among other things. I love containers, but I'm going to think hard before deciding whether to plant them next spring. They take constant watering, and the critters apparently think they're a salad bowl. I had the sweet potato planted with a glow-in-the-dark red tuberous begonia and spotted dead nettle--glorious! Then last month I found the begonia broken off at the base and now the sweet potato is turning into a mass of vine and petioles--no leaves. Another container of velvety, dark purple Supertunias with lavendar verbena and Osteospermum 'Orange Symphony' was also ravaged by something digging. A good amount of dirt was tossed--along with the osteospermum. I tried to replant it, but it was a goner. Damn the varmints!

On the other hand, my nanho blue butterfly bush is a real success story. I got it on sale in mid-July and really thought there was no way it would survive the heat being planted so late in the season. Within two weeks of planting, it was covered with flower spikes, which have continued non-stop. Even now, with many of my plants looking exhausted, it looks fresh and lush! A definite keeper.

That's where I am in my gardenology--still experimenting and learning. And I'm realizing how individualized it all is, too. For example, books and articles say this climate is perfect for 'Butterfly Blue' pincushion flower and I know quite a few people who rave about it in their gardens. But I've given it two summers in two different locations and it's bailed on me both times. Life's too short to keep messing with what isn't working, so forget 'Butterfly Blue.' I'll replace it with something else that catches my eye and hope it takes.

The Early Bird...Not

Here I am, writing after midnight again! I just can't seem to squeeze enough hours out of a day! I've always been a night person, which I drastically want to change. I think being a morning person is part of being a gardener. Up with the sun, birds chirping, dew on the leaves, coffee brewing while pulling weeds...I love the imagery until it's actually 6 a.m.! No matter how hard I try, I can't get to sleep earlier than midnight, and rarely get up before 7. With school back in session, I'm getting up by 7 a.m. to get Ryan, my youngest, off for the day, but I can't get myself moving early enough for that private, quiet time!

Weeding is on my to-do list, but I've been putting it off because of the heat. And you know that while everything else may be sluggish right now, the weeds are growing like, well, weeds! So why was I shocked when I looked out the window today and saw weeds nearly swallowing a hosta? I've got some serious work to do, so I may have to force myself to do the 6 a.m. wake-up. That way, I'll get the work done before the heat sets in. Dread...

It rained again today, so the weeds should be easy to pull. I think I'll try to sleep, hence to weed!

The Verdant Gardener

Well, I'm starting this not knowing what in the world I'm doing! I just know I've got a lot to say, and this seems to be the best way to do it. I'm a fairly new gardener on the Kansas/Missouri border, although I'm NOT a fairly new person. I've been around almost 50 years, and I'm just now getting around to doing things that I want to do. Maybe I am a fairly new person after all! I have three kids--two in college and one in 5th grade, and my husband of 26 years is a landscape architect. We're both first-borns, so we are responsible, meticulous and perfectionistic in our decision-making process, meaning we research and mull things to death! That's why, even though we've lived in this house 11 years and I've drooled and oogled over gardening books/catalogs the entire time, I've only just begun the process. I'm a Master Gardener in my head and heart, but I feel amateurish and unsure when I walk through the garden center doors. Perhaps part of that is my husband's profession. He believes there must be a PLAN before you PLANT. And, like the cobbler's children who have no shoes, his landscape is the last one to get a plan! So I'm moving forward alone, with trepidation and without direction, determined to turn our yard into the envy of...someone.

I probably also should note that my profession is writing and editing--I think I'm freelancing now, but more on that in another blog. I have edited a newsletter for a large gardening organization in Kansas City for 16 years. A lot of what I've learned about gardening has come from that connection, which brings up a good point--you learn a lot about things when you get involved and interact with others who know about those things (you're wondering why I wasn't a philosophy major in college)! Seriously, though, I want to learn from others, so I'm trying to get myself out there in the world a bit more. You should too.

It's finally raining and my single planting bed is thanking God because it knows I've given up on watering! This summer's been incredibly dry and hot, and our lawn looks like one big shredded wheat biscuit. I was watering more than once a day, but finally decided my hormones--which are challenged at this point in my life--don't like the heat. I decided to forgo 103 degree waterings, so the plants pretty much have been sucking wind.

Even before global warming--that's a Kansas/Missouri summer for you. July and August have a lot of humid, 100+ degree days, and we're always short on rain. Think prairie. Parched prairie. Our winters can have several days below zero and snow- and ice storms (though they're tending to get milder--global warming?) in December to March. We still get freeze warnings in April and early May. Nearly every spring, early bloomers, like magnolias, are zapped by frost. But if you don't have things planted by Mother's Day (mid-May), you've almost waited too long. So we have a very small window of time to get our act together (between damaging hail storms and tornado threats), hit the garden center and get it all planted! Even then, you're not out of the woods yet! Oh, no! In fact, you'd swear you're deep in the woods as you wrestle your new seedlings from the mouths of our biggest plant perils--bunnies, squirrels and deer. Many gardens here in May look like fortresses of wood-and-chicken-wire cages or plastic-mesh tents covering the tender plants beneath--definitely not a garden's finest moments.

But gardens here are resplendent in June, and that one month is the prize, the plum, for which all Kansas City gardeners toil. If you don't throw in the trowel in August, which is the most disgusting month ever invented, you may have a second chance at the "ahhhh" factor in September to early October. Then the freezes begin. It's a vicious cycle that sometimes makes me wonder why anyone here even bothers, but that month of June is the zenith, and, like the pain of childbirth, we tend to forget the rest.