June

It felt great outdoors today -- after two weeks of temperatures around 100 degrees. Heat and humidity in NC summers make gardening a challenge.

Plants that normally get no respect (Hemerocallis fulva, for example) shine during tough times. When I was a new gardener, orange daylilies were the first plants I tried. I used a hatchet to chop a hole in the compacted soil beside the driveway. When the daylilies bloomed the first year, I concluded that gardening was easy in NC. That is true, as long as you stick with orange daylilies.

Monarda 'Jacob Kline' likes a moist sunny spot. He wandered around my garden for a few years and ended up in a large plastic pot. Last year, I tore fistfuls of Jacob out of his pot and planted him along the pathway to the front door. He grew tall and stately, but when the scarlet flowers were at their peak, the stems flopped over onto the blue Brazilian sage, Salvia guaranitica. Jacob was humiliated and I cut him to the ground. This year, he returned.

Native passionvine (Passiflora incarnata) thrives in the heat and humidity of Southern summers. Bees love to crawl through the intricate flowers. Chipmunks are said to enjoy the fruit, although I have never seen any evidence of this in my garden.

Disappointment

Last weekend was spent at a family reunion in Indiana, and I left my garden in the care of my husband. I appreciated his willingness since he has rated my garden as too large to manage.

Four days later, I returned at midnight and I woke early the next morning to walk about my garden. I put fresh water in the birdbaths and noted the need for a vigorous scrubbing. I pulled the passionvines (Passiflora incarnata) off the salvia (Salvia guaranitica) and the crossvine (Bignonia capreolata) off the blue mist shrub (Caryopteris 'First Choice'). I gave the potted plants a good dose of water. Then I noticed the tub pond. The fish were dead and a small bird was floating on its side, covered in maggots. The water was a murky brown with a bad odor.

I asked my husband if he he knew what had happened with the pond. He had fed the fish on Sunday and everything had seemed fine. He expressed his regrets, especially for disappointing me.


A memory came to mind:
One Sunday morning when I was 17, I asked my aunts Esther and Rena to take me to Mass with them at the Cathedral downtown. My aunts were unmarried career women with one child between them. At the time, my mother was in the hospital, having birthed her 13th child. As I left the house, my father called me to his bedroom and told me how disappointed he was in me because I was not taking my younger siblings to our parish church across the street.

As Esther pulled the car out of her garage, the door hit my shoulder. It hurt but not terribly. In the car, I cried for several minutes while everyone sat in silence, as is our way.

God's creatures

Many creatures are at home in my garden. While my amateur camera skills prevented me from photographing birds this weekend, a few creatures were kind enough to remain still for a second or two.

Birds throw seeds from the feeders to the chipmunks waiting below. This little one has a mouthful.

Our garden has 16 oaks, with a squirrel's nest in almost every one.

Bumblebee on Salvia guaranitica. Bees and hummingbirds love blue Brazilian sage. In March I dug out and discarded a big clump of it because I thought the roots were diseased. Mistake. Tony Avent reported in his newletter this month that the tubers store water during dry spells, making the plant drought tolerant.

Behind the bee balm (Monarda 'Jacob Kline') and daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva), a sweet creature is willing me to go inside our cool house on a hot afternoon.

Pond

When we purchased our house in 1987, the spring peepers chorused their mating songs in the wild swampy areas around our neighborhood for a few weeks each spring. Once these areas underwent development, these sounds faded until they ceased altogether.

Late one winter, I bought a round black tub at the garden center on15-501, as well as two water plants, corkscrew rush (Juncus effussus) and golden club(Orontium aquaticum). I set up the tiny pond and waited for months, but no spring peepers appeared.

In the summer, my friend Ellen found a green frog in her own small pond. The frog attracted the attention of her cat, so Ellen scooped the frog into a bucket and released him into my pond. He seemed happy enough. Ellen and I celebrated our success at lunch at Shanghai, but when we returned, the frog was floating in the water, dead.

When Ellen returned home 30 minutes later, there was already another frog in her pond. She didn't offer to bring it to my pond, not that I blame her. She assured me that another frog would find its way to my pond before the end of summer. But by October, my pond was still barren. In the winter, I moved it to a shady part of the garden, where it was partially hidden by cinnamon ferns (Osmunda cinnamomea) and common daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva).

This spring I bought goldfish. They disappeared into the black water. After a week, one fish was discovered floating on it's side in the pond. That night, I brought a flashlight to the pond and tried to pierce the darkness with light. There was only the reflection of the round white beam. I wondered about the still water. I plunged my hand deep into the black pond. It was colder than I imagined. I felt around for goldfish, but came up disappointed.

Lily

He had a few friends, but most people he met instinctively distrusted him. When I met him, he was a young man, in his mid-20's perhaps. As I grew to know him, I learned that he had come into this world addicted to cocaine. He had only met his father a few times and was estranged from his mother. Once she paid a surprise visit to his house and stole from him.

He gave my daughter two pink lilies as a gift. They were left in their pots, largely neglected. They came into my possession at the end of summer, but I waited until spring to plant them. I used leaf mold and compost to give them a good start, knowing that without tender care in the early years, life is a continual struggle.