Food for the Gods

The "fun group" had their Garden Club Meeting yesterday and it was fabulous!  As we approached the front door, there were emerging daffodils and tulips in painted tin pails and blooming primrose in a decorative urn. Our host is an artist by trade and her home is a testament to her talent.  I would compare it to Monet's garden with colors that make you feel alive, pinks, lime greens, yellow, deep pinks and white as the color that pops.  Her oils and other mediums were displayed throughout the home all blending with the bright backgrounds.  There were about thirty of us there today and we were invited for lunch and a program on olive oils and vinegars.

There were italian mineral waters, taglio and brie cheeses drizzled with balsamic vinegars with little crusty pieces of bread.  The smells coming from the kitchen were magnificant - I couldn't wait any longer -  I had to go in.  The cook (my artist friend) presented the menu, fresh roasted vegetables with cherry tomatoes drizzled with tuscany olive oil and three leaf balsamic vinegar, homeade pasta noodles drizzled with more olive oil, more balsamic vinegar, sea salt, Wow!  I haven't even gotten to the chicken yet.  The chicken was pounded flat, dipped in egg, rolled in japanese bread crumbs, topped with an apricot mixture and sizzled in the oven in more olive oil.

We learned that some olive trees are thought to be thousands of years old and that not all olive oil is the same.  In fact some may not even be olive oil but hazelnut oil mascrading as olive oil.  Do not keep olive oil indefinitely - it has about a two year shelf life from pressing.  Unless it says 100% olive oil on the label it probably is not.  We don't always know when this oil has been pressed unless bought at a speciality shop.

Balsamic vinegars are like wine although they are not wine vinegars. being made from grapes that have never fermented.  Balsamic spends time curing in kegs and comes in many different colors and flavors.  I had never thought of adding vinegars to fruit but it was delicious on the strawberries - three leaf balsamic.  The "leaf" notations have to do with the thickness of the vinegars, the thickest being four leaf.

I am always amazed how gardening interconnects throughout our lives.

Ghost Fern Versus Japanese Painted Fern

The Japanese Painted Fern (Athyrium niponicum pictum) is one of the most colorful ferns in the garden, gray-green, burgundy, green, always noticeable and adaptable.  I have a colony of  them under my Chanticleer Pear Tree along with Huchera Villosa, Lirope Spicata and Astrantia Lars Major (Masterwort).  They unfurl about the time my early bulbs have finished, and continue sending up new fronds throughout the summer season.  They will take a good amount of morning sun filtered by the leaves of the pear tree.

Last year I found a new fern that grew taller with less spread.  It was called the Ghost Fern (Athyrium 'Ghost') and literature was touting it as a companion for the Japanese Painted Fern.  I didn't want it as a companion but needed it to come up behind my Rhododendrums interspersed with August Moon and Halcyon hosta.  My tag said it would grow to three feet, although I am getting mixed messages from some of the descriptions out there.  It has more gray-green no burgundy and I really do not see them as being alike in any way.  They grow narrow and tall not broad and spreading.

At the symposium I attended last week the Perennials in Focus group was concerned that people would not purchase it because it was so similar to Japanese Painted Fern.  I didn't have an opportunity to tell them that after I purchased the first few I could no longer find it at Home Depot and had to go to my high-end nursery and pay double to fill in my plan.  It is obviously more popular than they realized!

Midwest Gardening Symposium

A whole day of just talking Gardening and Gardens what could be better?  I attended the Midwest Gardening Symposium on Friday at the Morton Arboretum.  It was a great day filled with wonderful garden books, authors as speakers and so much up-to-date gardening information:

• Slow down on the garden curves, no amoeba shaped lawns
• Go upstairs, if you can, and look out at your lawn shape
• Use more straight paths with multiple centers in the garden
• If you have a curving path keep it soft just enough to create mystery
• Your multiple centers should have a destination focus, i.e., fountain, statuary, pergola, arbor, obelisk, etc.
• Make sure there is something distinct to look at as you gaze through a window, i.e., statuary, structure, container, etc.
• Release the inside into your outside, garden should be an extension of your inside home, color, style, etc.
• Use art in your garden palette, i.e., Vincent Van Gogh colors for your patio containers, check out an art print book and use the colors of a favorite artist for your theme
• Think of telling a story with your garden, antiques with a newer home, collectibles, painted vintage chairs, some eclectic modern surprises with a vintage home
• Make vignettes such as sword (grasses), frilly (ferns) broad (hosta) all together
• Plan or redesign your garden in the winter thinking  pathways, structures, raised beds, evergreens, trees for shape and deciduous shrubs and grasses
• Use flower plantings in your vegetable garden and vegetables in your flower borders (many of us have been doing this for years)
• Use light plants against dark
• Borrow a pleasing view from a neighbor's yard, arrange your plantings so that their yard shows through
• The new outside decorating color for furniture and pottery is aqua or turquoise

Our speakers were wonderful, Gordon Hayward author of Art and the Gardener, and several other books, Pam Duthie author of Continuous Bloom and Continuous Color.  Pam Duthie is part of a new group called Perennials in Focus who are in the process of evaluating plants over a three year period in real gardens.  They have a new website  http://www.perennialsinfocus.com/  We had other expert speakers talking about using vegetables in containers and garden plantings and garden maintenance. 

I spent too much on books!!!!

"Max Frei" Geranium

I was asked by a fellow blogger the other day if I had any geraniums that seeded all over the place.  Well, I do, it is Max.  I find him in many different areas of the garden some quite far away from where he was first planted.  At first I was quite shocked because I thought I had planted this beautiful little mound of magenta flowers, and now he has morphed into a much more leggy variety of himself.

My first impulse was to yank every bit of this alien that I could find.  But, I restrained myself and watched his offspring grow throughout the seasons.  They sported flowers that looked identical to Max's but their growth was much more sprawling.  I found I could live with it, and cut them back if they became too untamed.

Max Frei is a lovely little geranium, growing in mounds throughout the spring, summer and fall.  It is flush with magenta flowers in the spring and can be lightly trimmed to keep a pleasing shape.   This trimming can be done more than once during the seasons producing a limited display up until frost.  It is not a rival to Rozanne but is perfect along a walkway as it never becomes out of bounds.

A Rose Worth FInding

I began the planting area on the walkway from my patio with three Pink Meidiland roses.  I did not know much about them at the time except that they were shrub roses which meant carefree to me.  They grew well the first year, beautiful deep peachy pink flowers with branches that looked like they would like to weave if they could. 

The following year only two plants returned.  Not overly concerned and thankful that I had two left, I headed back to the nursery to replace one Pink Meidiland only to be informed that they were no longer available from the supplier.  I headed to the internet and to my amazement, there was only one nursery that had it listed.  At the same time I decided to order some Rainbow Knockouts and the one Pink Meidiland.  I was informed by return email that this nursery no longer had this Pink Meidiland - same story supplier no longer growing this rose!

I was so upset that nobody had this great rose, I emailed back to Garden Valley Ranch in California and told my sad story, but to no avail.  I did receive my Rainbow Knockout bareroot roses, and all of them are thriving to this day.  But what I didn't tell you is that as I opened the box, wrapped in newspaper, was a fourth bareroot rose.  As I unwrapped it out popped a little note saying, "Pink Meidiland, it's all yours."  I really think the owner of the nursery dug it up from his garden!

It is very difficult to find but I did notice on this California website that there are still some available. http://www.gardenvalley.com/  I can't imagine why they have virtually taken it off the market being as carefree as it is, no blackspot, wonderful rosehips in the fall and shiny leaves.

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