Back to the Butte

For many years we maintained a family membership to Red Butte Garden.  We haven't had one for the last two or three years, but Monday night we joined up again.

We read that the Salt Lake Scots Pipe Band were playing for family night, so we thought we'd check it out.

They were great!  We enjoyed the stirring rendition of Amazing Grace.  They talked about the history of bagpipes and tartans and they took audience questions.  They were very personable.

Melinda saw one of her home school friends there.  Their family makes kettle corn for events.  It was excellent, salty, sweet and very tasty!

Saffy and Nigel had fun marching in the fountain to the sound of bagpipes.

The kids loved playing on these lizards when they were small.  It's funny how things don't seem as big as they once did as you grow up.

We had forgotten how much we loved to walk the paths and enjoy the foliage and flowers.  Nigel discovered the children's garden and was in heaven running around among the plants. Saffy and Nigel had fun hiding under this tree.

We enjoyed seeing how much the garden has grown since we started going many years ago.  The trees are more mature, there is more plant diversity, and they have developed new areas.  We will definitely be going back again soon.  

Here is the schedule for their family nights in July:

MONDAY, JULY 9 - Capoeira (Afro-Brazilian martial art)

MONDAY, JULY 16 - Bien Flamenco

MONDAY, JULY 23 - Kenshin Taiko

Beautiful Garden Thugs

In one of my favorite gardening books,The Undaunted Garden, Lauren Springer refers to Epilobium angustifolium, or fireweed, as a “beautiful rose-purple thug.”  Fireweed is known to be invasive, but I’ve put it in rather difficult little spot in the back, and so far it hasn’t proven too bad.  It is such a beautiful flower, and I have such great memories of seeing it all over in Yellowstone, Alaska, and in the Utah mountains.  My garden seems to be rather Darwinian anyway, so at least for now it stays. My mom even made jelly out of the flowers while my parents were still living in Alaska, and it was quite delicious. 



Below is a picture of a type of pincushion flower named Knautia macedonica.  I have had to pull these out in massive clumps because their prodigious reproductive behavior.  These flowers would truly take over everything if I let them.  But they are so beautiful that I put up with prolific ways. The original ones I planted were the deep purple-magenta color, but they have also spawned some lovely pink-melon colored flowers as well.



Here they are all together in my back yard, fighting it out for garden supremacy.

The Joy of Night Stock

I’m so happy and excited that my Evening Stocks are now in bloom!  It’s not even officially summer and they are already out in force.  These are one of my all time favorite flowers, and they bloom almost all summer.



Several years ago I took a seed starting class at Red Butte Gardens. It was a lot of fun, but the best part was all the new flowers I was introduced to.  One of my favorites was a lovely annual called Stock or Matthiola.  It is a lovely flower and it has a wonderfully intoxicating scent, heady and sweet and never cloying.  I’m always disappointed when I can’t find Stocks in the garden stores.  That’s one of the best reasons to start seeds; to start plants that are hard to find.

In the Matthiola family there is a variety named Matthiola longipetala which blooms at night.  It is now one of my very favorites (yes, I have a lot of favorites but that is another topic).  I started these from seeds one year and planted them in a couple of spots.  Much to my delight these lovely annuals self-sowed with abandon and they come back every year without fail.  I keep a spot open for them in my annual garden where they grace it with their delicate white and lavender-pink blooms.  I also enjoy seeing how a few of them inevitably weave their way amongst the the perennials in my back flower border.

The thing I love most about them, though, is their lovely scent.  I love sitting in the backyard in the summer, when it starts to cool.  Every evening they put out new blossoms and fill the air with their sweet perfume.  Yesterday I could even smell them from the front yard.  I’m in the house writing now but I just opened the window and a cool breeze just brought their wonderful aroma inside.  I count them as one of the simple, joyful pleasures of life.

Of boulders and weeds

This evening I was walking around the yard and noticing all the new heat loving weeds that have sprouted up overnight in the lawn. Sigh. Although I can't say I completely hate it, weeding seems like such a Sisyphean task. But as Camus says in "The Myth of Sisyphus" "one must imagine Sisyphus happy" as "the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."

I can sometimes find some enjoyment in weeding, though I can't say it exactly fills my heart. So for tonight I ignored the weeds and enjoyed the more floriferous greens in the garden.

Here are some purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) flanked by a sprig of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and a some white yarrow (Achillea.)


I used to be such a flower snob and I always turned my nose up at petunias. But they are so colorful, fragrant, and they bloom so long that's it hard not to love them. Everytime I took Saffron to Millcreek Gardens I let her buy a pack. We planted them in a big pot around some Genovese basil. There's some flowering tobacco (Nicotiana alata) in the background.


Here is a cheerful combination of various common garden pinks (Diantus plumarius.)


Saffron saw me taking snapshots and just had to get in the picture of the fragrant night stock (Matthiola longipetala). Some golden tickseed (Coreopsis tinctoria) popped up in the middle.


Melinda really likes the fluffy seed heads on the Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa) which is such a great contrast to the feather reed grass on the left (Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'.) I really like the unusual flowers of the Mexican hat (Ratibidia columnifera) in the front.


Maybe I'll get to the weeds tomorrow. Or maybe not.

Gardening in reverse

After we bought our home in 2000 I became much more interested in gardening. Accommodating my increasing need for more places to plant has usually meant one thing: ripping out grass.

The first portent of this habit happened quite early on. The first week we moved into our house I flooded (just a little bit) one of the basement rooms because I left the sprinkler running on the side of the house too long. It was just a narrow strip of turf on the west side and it was doomed. I ripped it out so we wouldn't have to water as much, and it since then our grassy areas have been systematically shrinking.

So the irony is not lost on me that my latest project involved laying sod. After pulling out so much grass, I was today buying grass and increasing the footprint of our lawn. Shocking!

The grass by our back patio was really patchy and weedy. I also wanted to decrease the dirt that washes down on the cement. The rounded part on the left side of the picture used to be garden space.

Thanks to Arden we now have a truck to borrow!

Ian grabbed the camera to document this very rare event in case it never happens again.

Miles and Saffron pitched in. We all knew exactly what to do because we watched videos of it on YouTube last night.


Miles unrolled the sod with precision.


Here we are, almost done! We just have to remember to water it twice a day for a couple of weeks, and hopefully by fall it will look like it was always there.

Cousins at Red Butte

Today was a beautiful day, and an especially beautiful day for gardening. The sun was out, but it was still cool. It had rained in the last couple of days so the soil was moist and perfect for plucking weeds. I was very content to have a few hours to weed, spread compost, transplant, and enjoy the day.

This afternoon we all went to Red Butte Garden. All of Melinda's siblings are in town visiting so our kids have their cousins to play with. Two of their cousins live in Texas and four of them live in Minnesota, so they don't get to see each other too often. They've really had fun playing together this last week.

Here's Grandma and Grandpa relaxing near the pond, enjoying watching their 10 grandchildren.

This bee is enjoying the nectar from this allium.

Miles took this picture of a stand of Golden Peas, Thermopsis montana.

Here are the cousins riding the moose. Only Asher and Miriam are missing, they were in the stroller.

The ducklings and goldfish are glad to be fed.

The kids loved feeding the ducks and the fish. Scott make sure that Saffron and Lili didn't fall in.

Red Butte Garden was beautiful and even more fun with family.

Garden proselytizing

Tonight a taught a class on Square Foot Gardening to a group of senior citizens. Only about 10 people came, but it was still a lot of fun. I always like it when I can spout off about gardening topics to a captive audience.


Square foot gardening is a great way to garden. It eliminates the grunt work and leaves you the fun part.


They have an plot of land behind their apartments, but it's really rocky and the soil looks poor. It would be a perfect candidate for square foot gardening, but I don't think they're going to go for it. I'm not sure if they have the energy or means to build the garden boxes, which is too bad, since gardening would be a lot easier and more fun if they could.


I have to admit I was pretty skeptical when I first attended a square foot garden presentation for the Master Gardeners. But I have since been converted; I have seen the light!


Square foot gardening is great! You don't have to weed, rototill, dig, or thin! You fill your garden box with 1 part peat moss, 1 part vermiculite and 1 part compost. The plants love it and it's so easy.
It's also really fun getting the kids involved. I made 4 boxes so the kids can have their own garden plot.

It's really cute watching them choose what plants they want and how excited they get when they harvest their crop. We'll all be planting soon!

The big nap

Tomorrow I'm teaching a class on Square Foot Gardening to a group of retired folks. I've been working on my presentation for a couple of days now and it's almost done.

After I got home from work I felt like I was trudging slowly over wet sand. So instead of finishing my presentation I put in some earplugs, donned by sleeping eye mask and crawled into bed.

I woke up 3 hours later at 9:30 PM. I thought about just going back to sleep until morning, but I decided to get up. It's amazing how much happier and calm I felt. Amazing. Maybe I need to read The Promise of Sleep again. Hopefully now I'll be better rested so I won't be ornery or yell at any of the senior citizens tomorrow.

Dwarf irises

After the crocuses, the Iris reticulatas are the next flower to bloom. These are great little flowers that get better every year. We planted the bulbs about 5 years ago and now we have several sizable colonies growing in the front yard.

This sky blue variety, Iris reticulata 'Harmony', is starting to collect snow flakes during the ides of March. It doesn't mind the snow at all.

Lisette doesn't mind the late winter snowfall either.

These little gems were completely covered a deep blanket of snow, but as soon as it melts they look as good as ever.

I believe this purple clump is the most representative of the species, but they are several varieties, including white ones. They bloom for about 3 weeks and they definitely get me excited for spring!

March is for skiing

Yesterday Miles, Ian and Saffron helped me do some garden cleanup in the front yard. We cut down all the dead stems and leaves from the flowers and grasses to make way for the crocuses and the other spring blooming bulbs that will be coming up.

I love it when the kids come and help me in the garden. I think the boys especially love using the pruners and grass shearers. It's so nice to be outside and out in the garden again.

Miles and I went night skiing at Brighton Saturday night. It was a most excellent skiing trip. We got there right at 4:00 and I realized I left my ski pants home. Doh! I didn't think I could ski all night in my shorts, so Miles and I went to the pro shop to see what they had. Luckily everything was half off, so that wasn't too bad. I needed new pants anyway; my old ones are about 13 years old and were getting several rips.

I think March is one of the best times for night skiing. The slopes aren't crowded, the snow is still very good, it's warmer, and the days are longer. We didn't have to wait at all to get on the lift.


Miles and I skied really hard. We got in 10 runs before we packed it in. We were trying to get in an even dozen, but we got a little tired. Miles even talked me into trying the half pipe. I thought I could just go up the sides a little bit, but I was wrong. I ended up going almost all the way up the wall! The first time I slid down on my back, but after that I did pretty well. I was surprised how much momentum you get on it.

I'm so glad Melinda took Miles for lessons when she did a couple of years ago. It's so much fun to have a little ski buddy to hit the slopes with.

Sites of spring

I love crocuses. They are such lovely little flowers. After you plant the bulbs in fall, you don't ever have to worry about them again. Every year they multiply and bloom in bigger clumps. They're so endearing because they're the first flower to bloom in spring.

Usually they will bloom in late February, but this winter was harsher than most, so they didn't come up until now.

They orange crocuses are especially fun; their color is so vibrant contrasted against the plain brown earth and the tawny dead leaves and foliage. They also have this great dark green pine needle-like leaves.

This early-rising honeybee is happy to have some nectar to sip and some pollen to collect.

Here's a purple Iris reticulata that's already in bloom. The rest of them will come up in full force later this month. Spring is on it's way!

Rebloom

Last winter we bought an amaryllis bulb as part of Ian's life science curriculum. It grew tall and bloomed right away. We've kept it on the kitchen window sill since then and watered it now and then.

I wasn't completely sure how to correctly care for amaryllis bulbs so we were very happily surprised when a little green shoot started popping out of the dry bulb a month ago, and quite pleased to see such a lovely bloom this month.

Having flowers in winter seems so hopeful. We have a little bit of iris reticulata and crocus foliage poking out of the ground right now, too. It feels like spring is around the corner and we've just about made it through winter.

Hmm... I better get my seeds started and a few more ski runs in before it's too late!

Purple Haze

This year Miles planted a variety of carrots called Purple Haze. True to their name, these psychedelic vegetables would make Jimi Hendrix proud. They weren't as sweet as some other varities, but they tasted like any other regular carrot. Check out those funky shapes!

We ate these fab veggies raw with broccoli. Then Melinda made them into some really groovy technicolor soup. The taste was out of this world.

It was really hip, man. Can you dig it?

Sunflowers

I really go for the naturalistic look in the garden. It's fun to see what flowers reseed themselves and how the patterns in the garden dynamically change from season to season and year to year. This purple coneflower Echinacea purpurea just popped up between the vegetable boxes, and it looks much better than the ones I planted.

Fall flowers are really nice. I love the color in the late season. We get a lot of it from our sunflowers Helianthus annuus. When we first moved in to our house and I saw the sunflowers pop up I was so excited. After a couple of years, though, when they started spreading all over, they kind of moved over into the weed category for me. I pull out a lot of sunflower sprouts every spring, but I always miss some, and I can't bear to pull all of them out.



Plus the birds love them, and it's so entertaining to watch the little birds lite on the stems and twist around to pick out the seeds out of the flower heads. Plus they have such an unassuming, simplistic beauty that's hard to ignore. It's also nice that they don't require any additional watering at all.

The state flower of Kansas is the sunflower, yet it was once on their list of noxious weeds. Here's an excerpt from an article that chronicles the status of this flower.

Despite a glaring sun and 94-degree heat on the afternoon of Aug. 9, 1820, zoologist Thomas Say could hardly take his eyes off the Kansas landscape as a U.S. Army mapping party rounded the spot on the Arkansas River that is now Great Bend.

"The soil was a deep fine white sand, which rendered the traveling very laborious," Say wrote in the daily logbook. "The chief produce of these tracts of unmixed sand is the sunflower, often the dense and almost exclusive occupant."

Thus began the recorded history of the sunflower in Kansas, a journey that has taken the lowly wildflower on a rags-to-riches ride - -- from a once-scorned noxious weed to a cheerful, globally recognized symbol of Kansas and the Great Plains.

More than 182 years after Say's written reference, historians credit the sunflower's dramatic reversal of fortunes in Kansas to the late Morris County state senator, George P. Morehouse, whose two- year effort in the Legislature led to the designation of the sunflower as the official state flower nearly 100 years ago --- on March 12, 1903.

"Kansans have always taken what we have and made something special," said Kansas historian Roy Bird. "The sunflower is a good example of something that most people would consider a weed and (we) made it into our state symbol by celebrating adversity. It's a real example of what Kansas character is all about."

Though Morehouse's bill became law in 1903 without a dissenting vote, Kansas lawmakers haven't always honored the prairie flower, having declared it a noxious weed in 1895.

- Sunflower: Enduring symbol - The Topeka Capital-Journal, Jan 29, 2003

Even if some still call it a weed, what a glorious weed it is. If only more weeds were like it.

Ode To Tomatoes

When Melinda and I were dating, she told her family that I had several bad qualities. I skied, swam, hiked, wore shorts, played the guitar, played the oboe, and worst of all - I liked poetry. Melinda was sure that anyone who liked poetry couldn't possibly be stable. I'm not really "into" poetry and I haven't even read some of most famous poets. But I had recently had a Spanish literature class and I really enjoyed some of the poems we read, so I happened to mention that to her.

Really, the only poet I know much about is Pablo Neruda. The way I see it, who else matters? I know I'm prejudiced toward him because he is Chilean, and I have a soft spot for all things Chilean, but really he is the best. He is know in Chile as El Poeta, The Poet. If anyone refers to The Poet, it's Pablo Neruda.

Interestingly enough, Chile has two noble prize winning poets, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. He was actually a student of hers when he was very young in the south of Chile. There are statues and monuments to Gabriela Mistral all over Chile, and she has her own currency; she is on the 5000 peso bill. But Neruda was much more prolific and important poet than she was, but his politics made him more controversial.

Some of my favorite poems that he wrote are in Odes to Common Things. He was the voice of the common person; all the hard workers of Chile. In Chile a very common dish is ensalada chilena, Chilean salad. It is made with cut up fresh tomatoes, onions (they usually soak them in salt water first to make them milder), olive oil, lsalt, and parsley or cilantro. It's a basic food that everyone eats. So before the tomato harvest is over this year, let's give it up for the tomato!

Ode To Tomatoes
Pablo Neruda

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

Down with weeds

Ahh, the wonders of laptops and wireless Internet! I can sit out on the back lawn enjoying the cool breeze and enjoy the hummingbirds and bees flitting around the flowers and post entries on my blog! Right now I'm enjoying the views of Purple Coneflowers (Echineacea purpurea), Blanket Flower (Gaillardia grandifloria), Globe Thistle (Echinops ritro), Hummingbird mint (Agastache cana), Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida), and other miscellaneous blooms.

I feel somewhat better after getting some weeds out the ground tonight. It seems like every August the little devils creep in and before you know it you have a full-fledged invasion on hand. July has been so hot this year that I haven't wanted to get out into the garden much. But luckily today I got some recruits.

Ian last week decided he was dropping out of swimming. (He must have gotten the idea from his cousin.) Melinda told him that he would have to pay her back the $25 swimming fee and he said that was just fine. I wonder if his being dunked on the tube at Bear Lake had anything to do with it? So he will be mowing lawns and weeding for me for a couple of months. Miles wants to continue skateboard lessons, so he will be weeding for me too. We decided that $2 a for a 5 gallon bucket of weeds was pretty fair.

So Ian and Miles both filled up a file gallon bucket full of weeds. I filled two and a half. Just 20-30 more to go!

Garden junkies

In May of 1999 we bought our home. It was great having more space for our growing family (2 kids in a one-bedroom basement apartment is pushing it just a little). The change that was most surprising to me, however, was my new found interest in gardening.

I hated gardening as a kid. It was always Dad making me weed; Dad making me dig up potatoes; Dad making me pick up rocks in the garden. Even worse was dinner during summertime. It seemed like every night all we had was corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and potatoes. Dad would always brag, "Everything here on this table came from our garden." I was OK with corn and potatoes, but I couldn't stand tomatoes, and cucumbers were even worse.

Inexplicably, after I had a plot of soil of my own, some long dormant gardening gene started to sprout (sorry, but that pun was just unavoidable). It all started with just a few little potted plants. It couldn't hurt; everyone was doing it, I told myself. But then I moved on to starting my own seeds under shop lights in the basement. After a while I ripped out some lawn to expand the flower bed "just a little." "Just this one little spot won't hurt." Years later my front lawn is almost non-existent, and I found myself needing more and more unusual plants to get by. I stay awake at night scheming about some little spot where I can shoehorn in some more plants.

I started out with just flowers, but I all too soon branched out to vegetables (sorry about that pun, I couldn't help it). I was getting a very suspicious feeling that I was turning into my dad. My brother, Clair, was telling me about how he was really into plants. My cousin, Cameron, spoke at his dad's funeral and talked about how his dad would always make him garden and he hated it, but now he loves gardening. Even my sister, Carrie, is now planting tomatoes.

What's going on here?! I can't decide if it's just part of getting older and more mature, or if there is some deep primal need in our souls to make something grow. Maybe it's the farmer heritage that runs in our veins that compels us to till the soil and plant. Whatever it is, it feels right and is very satisfying to me. What do you think?

I'm addicted to nicotine patches...

I officially have a new favorite Nicotiana. I've tried several different flowering tobacco plants the last few years, and this year I found a new one (drum roll please); Nicotiana mutabilis! I was browsing through the Select Seeds catalog this winter and this tobacco was just calling my name.

Select seeds has a great catalog with lots of heirloom flower and vegetable seeds and they've always worked out pretty well for me. I started the seeds down in the basement under a rack of neon lights. The all germinated great and when I later took them outside they all hardened up well.

This tobacco doesn't seem to have too much of a scent, but in every other way it has exceeded my expectations for a plant. It has big interesting dark leafy foliage and it is even growing in a tough spot. It's over 4 feet tall and the flowers came on early and they are still going. I love the dainty little flowers on the longs stems. The hummingbirds seem to love it as well.

Nicotiana tabacum is the kind you can smoke (I don't) and can grow 5-6 feet. Although it has pretty flowers, but the leaves at the bottom always seem to go yellow and it doesn't bloom until late and it's a lot of foliage with not so many flowers (just a few up on top).

Nicotiana sylvestris is very nice; my second favorite tobacco. It is 4-5 feet tall and has long white slender tubular flowers and is fragrant. It's very pretty and looks great at the back of a border.

Nicotiana alata is also nice. There are many varities of this one and is probably the most commonly grown. It is fragrant and usually only a couple of feet tall.

So next year I think I'll have a whole section with all the tobaccos in it (except mabye not the tabacum).