All these years of making New Year's resolutions have taught me one thing: they don't have much of a shelf life and are usually spoiled by February.
Undaunted, I will try again, resolving to make 2011 a better year -- in the garden.
Here are my 2011 garden resolutions. What are your garden resoltuions?
Now, if we could just just get Mother Nature to cooperate with our resolutions....
Photo credit: AFP/Getty
"Just about now, I remember that the trees on this farm will be bare for the next six months. It always comes as a surprise."
Verlyn Klingenborg writes about the rural life in essays for The New York Times. In this week's offering, he talks about the change of seasons on his farm and about how he is still in August, though he can feel January creeping up behind him.
Those of us who love the mild autumns of the Mid-Atlantic still grieve the loss of summer because we know that winter is at hand and it is a dark, long, sometimes sad time.
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Algerina Perna
Can these pansies feel the cold?
Most gardeners say they garden for the contemplative nature of the activity - this despite its back-breaking chores.
In an attempt to satisfy the thoughtful side of gardening, let me refer you to a column in the New York Times by Jeff McMahon, a philosophy professor at Rutgers, who wrote earlier this month on the moral consequences of eating meat.
His post on a Times blog called Opinionator drew such a response that he felt compelled to write a reply and in that reply he addressed one of the objections made - that a completely herbivore human race would be too large to be fed by what we could possible grow and, beside, don't plants suffer, too?
It seems like a silly argument, but McMahan takes it up in his response and I will share it here.
Gardeners are often at the front of the vegan/vegetarian debate with those who like their steak and chicken, so it is worth reading both McMahan's original piece and the response.
But if you don't have time, here is the part about all those suffering plants.
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Doug Kapustin
In this lovely essay in the New York Times, Michelle Slatalla writes about her aging lab, Otto, and the last day of his life.
He spent it in a garden, a place she returns to after his death and a place that for her, clearly, represents a fresh start.
Photo credit: "Dogs in Their Gardens" by Page Dickey
My father gardened the way most husbands gardened in the 60s.
He mowed the lawn.
He planted shrubs along the foundation and pachysandra everywhere else. There were some roses across the back fence, but I think that was a status symbol.
But when he retired, my father became quite the plant guy. He planted a couple of tomato plants for my mother. (He hated fresh tomatoes, for some reason. It is an aversion both my children share.)
And he nurtured African violets in the dining room window. And he had the most amazing success with them! He propogated them as easily as if he had a truly green thumb. He gave them away to friends and still had enough to fill the window sill and the sideboard and a couple of hanging plant stands.
Photos courtesy of Violet Gallery
Thanks to my friend, photographer Danielle Bradley, for sharing this with me.
Gardening feels a lot like Christmas.
You no sooner finish with it than it is time to do it all over again.
I spent an unseasonably warm day in the garden last week, picking up months of debris, raking up last fall's leaves and cutting back last season's dead stock. I felt like I had a head start on my spring chores.
And then a windstorm hit.
Photo credit: Michael Weishan/Old House, Old Garden
It was one of those days that fulfills the promise of Mid-Atlantic gardening: a 58-degree day in the middle of January.
There will be more of them before spring comes and stays. It is what keeps gardeners around here sane. That it came on a holiday from work was a double bonus.
The garden at this time of year can be overwhelming. Everything is a mess. Leaves, fallen tree debris, all the plants that you didn't cut back in the fall are limp and grey.
This is when it is important to be a "mindful" gardener. To divide the work into bite-sized pieces; to never look ahead to what is not done; to enjoy the simple pleasure of being in the garden when the calendar says you should be by the fire.
Photo credit: Winter gardening for summer dreams: Susan Reimer
Continue reading "Martin Luther King Day: Mindful gardening" »
One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is actually 118 woodblock landscape scenes of mid-nineteenth-century Tokyo by the artist Ando Hiroshige, and it is considered one of the greated achievements in Japanese art. It celebrates the Japanese culture at the end of the shogunate.
Landscape designer and garden blogger Susan Cohan has taken the Views of Edo as inspiration for her own attention to the world around her.
Wondering what she would have learned if she had paid close attention to her garden over the last 10 years, Cohen, who works out of Chatham, N.j., has resolved to record her observations every Monday for the next year.
A hearty 2010 thank you to the Garden Variety readers who are responding to my question, What makes a gardener happy?
I have 10 copies of the new Proven Winner's Gardener's Idea Book, and I will be sending them out to the first 10 happy gardeners who email me their snail mail addresses: susan.reimer@baltsun.com.
And absolutely anybody who sends me their snail mail address will get a Garden Variety fridge magnet by return mail!
It makes me happy to know you are reading!
What makes you happy?
That's the topic of my op-ed column in The Baltimore Sun.
In the column, I mention that gardening -- full-contact gardening that produces an honest sweat -- makes me happy.
There are some other things about gardening that make me happy....
The miracle of spring, and the emergence of plants you were sure were dead. And the appearance of plants you completely forgot about, and of the half-price sticks you bought in late September at the garden center.
Harvesting compost makes me happy. Sounds gross, but the miracle of all those kitchen scraps and leaves turning into rich, black dirt always amazes me.
(Keep reading, there's a prize at the end!)
Generally, gardeners don't abandon their New Year's resolutions until about August, when the drought and the insects combine to make gardening a real chore.
That's a better track record than smokers and dieters, but let's not kid ourselves. Not many of the garden notes and plans I wrote on my black-and-white, marbled composition book in September will come to fruition in 2010.
Still, we are determined to begin anew each January.
I have asked my garden friends to tell me their resolutions for 2010. Here are a few of them.
Angela Treadwell-Palmer of Plants Nouveau resolves to plant more containers with "low-water" or drought-tolerant plants. Not only will it reduce the chores (and the stress on the plants) of a hot summer, but it will be a challenge to find new varieties.
Margaret Roach, author of the very popular blog A Way to Garden, says she makes the same resolution every year: to label all the plants in the garden. And then she breaks it.
Michelle Cobb, posting a comment on Jodi Torpey's Web site, Western Gardeners, resolves to compost more and plant a new variety of an old favorite. Lisa Gustavson, commented on the same site, said she wants to spend more time teaching and inspiring others to garden. "With a little encouragement, more people would try gardening."
Kerry Senser, an editor for National Wildlife magazine who tweets as klsnature, resolves to expand her backyard habitat and learn more about the creatures who visit.
Speaking of visits, New Jersey landscape designer Susan Cohen resolves to visit more public gardens because they need our support.
Jan Bills, of Two Women and a Hoe, resolves to stop and smell the roses. "Literally!"
Resolve to keep reading...and to add your resolutions in the comments!
Garden Variety pals! What are your New Year's garden resolutions?
Send them to me, with a link to your blog or home page if you like, and I will post them.
I will also try to live up to one or two of them myself!
During the holidays, you can decorated WITH plants - perhaps a colorful collection of poinsettias, greens, red roses and white carnations.
Or you can decorated THE PLANTS!
That's what is going on over at Gardening Gone Wild, where Debra Lee Baldwin as decorated her agaves with tiny Lego skiers and snowmen, tiny Christmas balls and itty-bitty Christmas packages!
Take a look at her photos, which will be included in her new book Succulent Container Gardens, and you will never think about Southwest Christmases in the same way!
As Debra says in her post: Merry Crassula and an Agave New Year!
Photo credit: Flickr/biofriendly
Garden Variety will be away for a few days.
The man who edges my beds and the young lady who cooks with my herbs and I will be flying to San Diego to spend the holiday with the Marine who hates vegetables and his beautiful vegetarian bride.
It was May the last time I visited San Diego, and it was like visiting another planet. The hills were brown and pocked with boulders, but where there were plants, they were astonishing.
In the town of Carlsbad, so near the ocean, the mists keep the temperatures moderate and my son and his wife do not even have air conditioning in their new apartment complex.
Further inland, the air heated up and the flowers were scarcer. It will be fascinating to see what is there now, as the mountains and the coastal regions approach winter.
I'll bring back pictures to share with you. And memories to sustain me.
In the meantime, there will be a new garden quotation to inspire you every day, and a Thanksgiving Day treat. So check back.
While I am away, just talk amongst yourselves....
It is nearly Thanksgiving here in Maryland and only the oak trees are hanging on to their leaves and, still, we are in the middle of a 70-degree day. Its the second in a row, with promises of at least one or two more.
How I love the Mid-Atlantic region. Weather like this allows you to garden well past the time when the rest of the Northeast has oiled its pruners and put them to bed.
I was out this weekend, planting bulbs in containers (more on that later this week in my column in The Baltimore Sun), trimming back the hosta foliage and picking up all the twigs that landed in the yard after a wind storm.
My neighbor Bob and my neighbor Ruth think I am nuts, and that I "make work" in the garden. Bob gardens on a principle of benign neglect and Ruth is grateful when the chores are done for the season.
But I will continue to find things to do until the snow flies. And after, if we have a break in the weather.
Years ago, I wrote a column about my determination to keep gardening. It was about my son, Joseph, too. He was just a teen-ager when this column appeared in 2000. It seems like a million years ago now.
The column remains one of my favorites, and I share it here.
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Gene Sweeney (1998 file photo)
Nancy, Susan and Connie
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer
Garden Variety is taking a day off today.
Nancy, my best friend since the seventh grade, is in town with her husband, and I think we will do some touristy stuff.
Nancy and Connie and I have been best friends since junior high, which is what we used to call middle school.
After the three of us finished the heavy lifting of raising young children, we began to plan weekend getaways for just the three of us every year or so. One of us would do the planning and the other two would simply make plane reservations.
One of our trips was to New Orleans, where we stayed in a funky B&B and toured the Garden District of the city. This was, of course, before Katrina.
For another weekend, we went to Deep Creek Lake in Maryland - in the cool and quiet late fall - and walked in the woods and talked for hours.
We have visited New York City. St. Michaels, MD, upstate New York and Bucks County Pa. All three of us did not make it every time. But whenever two of us are together, the other is there as well.
One of our most memorable trips was arranged by Nancy to Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington State, where she and her family now live.
We stayed in a cottage that was more like a doll's house and visited the shops and restaurants on the tiny island.
I am telling this story because my vivid memory of that trip is of the flowers.
The cool, moist weather on that tiny island produced the most beautiful and abundant window boxes, containers and tiny front-yard gardens.
The colors, perhaps enhanced by the droplets of water in the air, were almost unreal.
Nancy will only visit for a little more than a day. She and her husband drove across country to bring furniture to their daughter in Baltimore. They have other friends and other stops, and then they must head back to the left coast.
The pressure is on me to make Nancy's brief time here memorable.
There are plenty of museums and monuments and art galleries in Annapolis, Baltimore and Washington.
But I will try to find some flowers for her, too.
I was tending to the plants on my deck in the last rays of the day when I was struck by the smell of ... wood smoke.
Someone somewhere in my neighborhood had built a fire in their fireplace, and the air was lightly tinted with a scent I had not encountered for many months.
After days of rain, I was expecting, I guess, the smell of moist earth -- that rich, muddy smell. Or of wet leaves beginning to decay, that slightly tangy smell.
But the smell of smoke kind of startled me for a minute and jolted me into a new season more certainly than the cool nights had done.
And it caused me to think about how the seasons smell, each as distinctive as different pots of soup or bottles of perfume.
The smell of the earth thawing in the spring and the dry, dusty smells of August bring me into the moment. They are the right smells for the time.
But that smell of wood smoke threw me. Threw me into the future. Threw me into winter, which is not here yet and which can stay away just a little longer.
Because I will know when it is time for winter. It has its own smell, too: Sharp and stingy and bright.
Photo credit: Flickr/jaaron
Photo by Kerry Michaels
Halloween is my husband's favorite holiday:
"No cards to write, no presents to buy and your mother doesn't call you and ask 'Are you coming home for Halloween?'"
As if to substitute other holiday chores for these holiday chores, every Halloween he decorates the garage in a more elaborate fashion (this year he bought fake mice.) And we invite the neighborhood to make our house their last stop.
There is cider (and rum) for the grown-ups and donut holes for the kids. We just hang out until the last of the trick-or-treaters has come and gone.
This year, I have something to add to the garage decorations.
Kerry Michaels over at about.com's Container Gardening blog, has a great inspiration for a great pumpkin (tip of the hat to Linus) planter!
I like Kerry because her ideas are so do-able. This time, she planted a pumpkin with -- hair! using sage, stonecrop and heuchera to create the look.
Too cool.
There are lots of good reasons to work in your garden, but one of the best reasons is ... the people who walk by while you do.
It is hard, in the heat of late summer, when the garden is a mess and the mosquitoes are relentless, to gin up the motivation to spend a day in the garden.
But your neighbors, strangers and passersby can make it worthwhile.
My neighbors Ruth, Patsy, Ginger and Bob are reasons to take a break, stand in the shade and talk. One or more of them is always outdoors, and they always give me an excuse to talk about the other subject of which I am so fond...my kids.
But three times in the last couple of weeks, complete strangers, out jogging, walking the dog, the husband or the kids, have stopped by to tell me how much my gardens mean to them.
"Even in winter," the woman jogger stopped to say, breathlessly, "I know I will see something in your garden. I wait for the hellebores."
I am embarrassed and I laugh and say that if they like my garden so much, they are welcome to stop and help me with my chores. Then I thank them and tell them that their words will keep me going.
Gardening isn't about snipping roses and placing them gently in a basket on your arm. Gardening is hard, sweaty, dirty work. And the rewards, especially in late summer, can be few and far between.
Sometimes those rewards are walking up the street to see you, and to saw something nice about your gardens.
Gwen Bruno writes on Dave's Garden, a particularly helpful Web site for gardeners, about St. Fiacre, patron saint of gardening.
Though it is St. Francis's statue that we often see in gardens, he is actually the protector of the living creatures who venture there, including the squirrels that dig up the bulbs. But I am sure that's just an oversight.
Ms. Bruno writes that St. Fiacre was an Irish monk, whose feast is celebrated in Ireland and France on September 1. (OK, we're a little late here.)
Here is more from her essay.
Born in Ireland in the 7th century, Fiacre was raised in a monastery. During the Dark Ages, monasteries were repositories of learning, and it is here that Fiacre became a skillful user of healing herbs. As he earned fame for his knowledge of plants and healing abilities, disciples flocked to him. Fiacre sought more solitude and left Ireland for France where he established a hermitage in a wooded area near the Marne River. Here Fiacre built an oratory in honor of the Virgin Mary and a hospice where he received strangers. He himself retreated to a solitary cell, living a life of prayer and manual labor in his garden.
The miracle upon which his sainthood is based is this: He asked for more land for gardening and was told that he could have however much he was able to till in a day. Though the exact area of ground is not clear, he did overturn trees and remove rocks and briars to clear the land in a day.
The effort was declared miraculous, as I am sure many gardeners today would agree.
Photo credit: Flickr/ TravelingMermaid
Photo credit: Kim Hairston, Baltimore Sun
Well. Not much to do with gardening, anyway.
I went kayaking yesterday afternoon in the quiet of Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis. It was cooler there than any place else in my muggy town. And apparently mosquitos can't fly that far out into the water.
I took the opportunity to spy on the gardens of the homes that back up to the South River. When you drive through neighborhoods, exercising your garden envy, you only get to see the front of houses. And that is often the showcase.
But backyards reveal a lot about gardener's inner selves, I think. It is the side of them they are not showing to the public.
Some of the lawns that sloped down to the water were just that. Lawns. Manicured, but no beds.
Other gardeners actually appeared to be landscaping at water's edge, around the bulkheads or down to the tiny beaches.
Still other gardeners had little patios at the end of their docks, complete with chairs, tables, umbrellas and a planter or two.
Kayaking gives you the chance to get up close to the water's edge in the uncivilized parts of the bay, too.
Branches from broken trees dip into the water and provided cover and respite for ducks and other wildlife. And someone had fashioned driftwood into giant teepees, making the perfect place for waterfowl to build their nests high off the ground and away from predators.
I worry about the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Every report is worse than the last it seems. But on this afternoon, the bay was the perfect refuge ... for me and for the blue herons that were watching me, watching them.
In my column in The Baltimore Sun Thursday, I talk about freshening up your garden and your containers, replacing plants that look leggy or tired, adding fall color or filling bald spots in the garden with something new.
There isn't room in the newspaper to include pictures of all the plants I mention, so I thought I would post them here, on Garden Variety.
Unless otherwise noted, photos are courtesy of Proven Winners
Million bells "Tequila Sunrise"
Sedum "Neon"
Sedum "Angelina"
The death of David Carradine has put me in mind of all the wonderful lessons the monks took from nature when they instructed their young "Grasshopper," itself an image from nature that suggests the inattentive energy of youth.
As Kwai Chang Caine (KCC), Carradine flipped back and forth from the present to the past and the Shaolin temple where he was taught. I was a fan of the show, and I remember being struck by the life lessons the monks found in nature.
Among the lessons were these, which I found on line in old scripts.
David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine/ ABC
Photo credit: The Sun/Nanine Hartzenbusch
My inspiration for this week's garden column in The Sun came, in part, from reading Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food.Pollan makes the case for eating "real" food, food that has not been invented by marketing departments and is not made of 25 ingredients we don't recognize and can't pronounce.
He talks about the "Western diet," and how unhealthy it is, mostly because we are consuming highly processed fake foods that have no real relationship with the farm or the garden.
He also talks about the importance of soil - and that's what got me thinking about the dirt in our gardens and how to make it better.
Soil, Pollan writes, is part of our food chain.
"It follows that when the health of one part of the food chain is disturbed, it can affect all the other creatures in it. If the soil is sick or in some way deficient, so will be the grasses that grow in that soil and the cattle that eat the grasses and the people who drink the milk from them."
I am getting ready to go out to the gardens for the first time this week. I know what to expect.
After all of this rain, there will be a remarkable, magical transformation. Everything will have exploded and grown as tall as anything in the Giant's garden in that folk tale of the Goose with the Golden Egg.
I am also heading out to pick up some flowers from Susan Iglehart in Glyndon. Every February, she plants seedlings of all sorts of annuals, perennials, herbs and vegetables and sends her "friends" a list of them. We choose what we think we want and she has them ready for us in May.
Of coarse this is another kind of Christmas morning. I can't remember what I ordered in February.
Photo courtesy of Susan Iglehart's Flowers
A friend who was going through a rough time said to me once that she could get through her days if she could have fresh flowers in her house. She bought them for herself, but at least she knew they'd be waiting for her.
Fresh flowers. That seems such an extravagance in these economy times. Even $6.50 for a handful of tulips seems careless and irresponsible.
There were never fresh flowers in my house growing up. They were reserved for formal arrangements - ones that usually arrived only at funeral homes.
But I have begun to believe that I, too, can endure these difficult times if there are fresh flowers in the house.
So on weekends I make a stop at my favorite grocery store where I am greeted by this wall of flowers, and I make my modest choices.
There is research out there - probably funded by the fresh flower growers of America - that indicates that fresh flowers can elevate your mood and, therefore, improve your health. That would be hard to argue with.
I am no flower arranger, although my friend Nancy has tried hard to teach me on the occasions when she has helped me create beautiful arrangements for parties at my house. I am content to have a single-flower arrangement in a pretty pottery jar on my kitchen table. A fistful of roses, daisies or tulips.
It makes me smile to seem them there. And it makes me feel like I can face just about anything.
Photo credit: Susan Reimer
Sherwood Gardens, 1959
My colleague Paul McCardell, who writes the blog "A Century in Maryland," posted this memorable picture of Sherwood Gardens in Guilford, a floral sanctuary on what was once part of the estate of A. S. Abell, this newspaper's founder.
Sherwood Gardens is Baltimore's most famous garden. It was a gift of John W. Sherwood, who opened up his gardens to the public. Today the Gardens are in the care of the Guilford Association with help from Baltimore City.
Paul also posted links to a gallery of photos of Sherwood Gardens through the years, as well as a link to a column by our own Fred Rasmussen on the history of the gardens.
Check out Sherwood Gardens, in person or here!
It is Saturday morning, and all the household chores that don't get done during the work week are staring me in the face.
A sink full of dishes from dinner last night with friends waits for me. A week's worth of dress clothes is scattered across the bedroom, making me feel like a lazy teen-ager.
Groceries need shopped for. Nothing has been crossed off my list of (stupid) errands. Mail needs opened and the bills paid.
But if I don't pull on my work jeans and my work shirt and tie on my old shoes and head straight to the garden, I will never get there.
Gardening isn't something you do at the end of a Saturday, after doing a bunch of other stuff. Gardening is what you do first, with the full force of your daily energy allotment.
So, on Saturday mornings. I go straight to the garden. I do not pass "Go" and I do not collect $200.
Photo credit: istockphoto.
I am showing my age here, but wasn't it Jimi Hendrix who wrote a song about a purple haze?
Me? I like the red haze.
You can see it now, in the woods that line the highways on your drive to work.
Against the backdrop of evergreens and the gray trunks and limbs of deciduous trees, there is the faintest cloud of red.
I am no arborist, so correct me if I am wrong, but I think that red haze comes from the buds of maple trees. The October Glory in my backyard has lots of them right now.
That red haze - more than the red breast of the robin - is the surest sign of spring for me.
Soon, perhaps by the first of May, the red haze will be replaced by the softest, green haze.
The green haze means the trees are leafing out. And that means spring is no longer just arriving. It means spring has taken hold and the long dark night of winter is behind us.
To paraphrase Jimi, "scuse me while I kiss the sky."
Photo credit: Susan Reimer
No One Gardens Alone. That's the title writer Emily Herring Wilson gave her biography of famed garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence (1904-1985).
It is an ironic title, because, in a sense, everyone gardens alone.
For me and so many others like me, the garden is the place I go to think alone or work alone. It is a good gardening day when I can spend a couple of hours in my garden without interruption from the outside world.
This blog, Garden Variety, will be my tip of the hat to author Wilson. It is where I hope to meet you and hundreds of other gardeners, a place where we can share our passion, our frustration, our failures, our successes. Garden Variety will be a place where we gardeners can be with other gardeners.
So join me on this cyber-gardening adventure, whether you are gardening for the first time this season, or whether your garden is a regular stop on garden tours.
I want you to send pictures of your garden or your favorite flowers. I want you to send lots of pictures. You can e-mail them to gardenvariety@baltsun.com.
I want to hear about why you garden, and what drives you crazy about your garden. I want to hear your questions, and I will try my best to get answers for you.
I want Garden Variety to be a clearinghouse for garden events, so send me news of your plant sales, your garden tours, your lectures and seminars, your meetings and your trips and anything else you have on your garden calendar.
And I want Garden Variety to be a place you go when you can't get out to your garden, a place where we do not garden alone.
My Garden. Photo courtesy of Susan Reimer
Susan Reimer has spent 16 years writing about raising kids - among other topics - in her column for The Baltimore Sun. And every time son Joseph or daughter Jessie passed another milestone - driver's license, college, wedding or a move to a new military duty station - she has planted another garden. Now she will be writing about those gardens - and yours - here on Garden Variety. 
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