An apology

I owe all the bulbs of the world an apology. Yes, an apology.

Because after ripping bulbs a good one for their chronically uninspired performance (in particular the 50 or so apparent no-shows I planted in my backyard last fall), it now appears I have a collection of bulbs coming up. At lease 25, and maybe more, at last count this morning.

I have no doubt the squirrels nicked a few over the winter, but 25 of anything purposely planted and now blooming in my garden is no less than miraculous.

Mea culpa, bulbs.

Amputating a pumpkin -- Finis

P3 is off life support, discharged from ICU and has been reunited with his family. They do make a handsome trio, don't they?

27 days till Halloween and counting.

Amputating a pumpkin 2

P3 is turning orange.

I'd like to think it was because my heroic horticultural efforts a couple of weeks ago, starting with deciding to fight the odds (no pumpkin death panels on my watch, Sarah Palin), setting up a pumpkin IV, creating an outdoor pumpkin ICU, etc, etc, but honestly, I think this miracle on the vine is simply nature is taking its course. An amazing series of days in the mid-80s to low 90s -- with a few more on the horizon -- hasn't hurt.

It's not the most attractive element in our backyard right now. But certainly the most interesting.

Amputating a pumpkin 1

Today, I managed to sever Pumpkin 3's lifeline to the mother ship. In other words, I accidentally cut the vine that connects it to the rest of the GD plant. I was bushwhacking my out-of-control heliopsis (or "yellow flowers" as they're more commonly called) and, oops, it was clipped. Dang. And it was starting to turn orange as fate would have it.

After a few choice words, I accepted P3's mortal blow. Accidents can and do happen in a garden. It is, after all, a jungle out there.

And, of course, even without accidents, a plant's life is essentially transient anyway.

With an silent apology, I gently placed P3 next to the garden waste I would dispose of later and went back to work.

And of course got to thinking. Was it even remotely possible P3 might go from green to orange without root and water? What would happen if he just sat quietly in a warm, sunny spot for a week or so? (Once Junior started to change color, the process went FAST.) Even better, what would happen if P3 somehow stayed hydrated, nourished AND sat in a warm, sunny spot for a week or so?

Curiosity, along with necessity, is a worthy mother of invention. Out came a coffee can, in went water with a generous pinch of plant food. A small flower pot was commissioned to serve as hospital bed, and voila! I started a pumpkin IV. A narrow concrete walk in a sunny corner of the backyard (all the better to absorb and store sunlight) is the temporary ICU.

Pray the rosary. Send a memo to the deity du jour. Make a small sacrifice to the pumpkin gods. For my green pumpkin on life support.

Turning into a pumpkin 4

My somewhat newly discovered pumpkin is turning orange at an astonishing rate. It was only about 10 days ago when I first detected a faint trace of orange gracing Junior's crown. A check this morning reveals more orange than green. It's sort of an awkward combination, a little unattractive, really. But I know from years of as a purchaser of carving pumpkins that full-on Halloween orange is just around the corner.

As is fall.

It's the middle of August, and true to form, the last two mornings have had a distinct chill. The air is clear. The lazy haze that days in the 90s leave behind each night is gone for now. My roses have perked up, enjoying a respite from the heat.

Thankfully, there will be more days in the 90s before the leaves (and snow) fall, but a cool warning shot has been fired across our seasonal bow.

There are other little signs. My sedum blooms are beginng to go from chartreuse to dusky pink on their way to a brick red that melds nicely with autumn colors. A rogue sunflower has taken up residence in what use to be my night garden. The goldfinches' bright yellow feathers are giving way to a darker, more somber tone more in keeping with winter.

And there's my pumpkin. Turning orange. Just in time for Halloween.

P.S. And see what I mean about our cherry tomato plant?

Turning into a pumpkin 3

I. HAVE. A. PUMPKIN.

I REPEAT.

I. HAVE. A. PUMPKIN.

Amazingly, I wasn't even aware of its presence till about a week ago. I'd been carefully coddling a couple of other blooms that were showing the baby beginnings of pumpkins when one morning, out watering, I pushed back a leaf and there my pumpkin was in all its green glory.

Nearly scared the crap out of me.

Sometimes horticultural success does that to you.

And truth be told -- there may be more. Between the pumpkin vine and the most wildly robust Sweet 100 cherry tomato plant we've ever had (the damn thing's taller -- and wider -- than me and loaded with tomatoes to boot), it's kind of hard to tell what exactly is going on back in that corner of the garden. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, we have Junior is resing comfortably on a plastic footstool so he won't stress his vine too much (I read that in a book somewhere.)

And I shout to the world -- I. HAVE. A. PUMPKIN.

Blooming

An age-old gardening question -- is the garden a sum total of all its parts? Most will answer yes. And it is. Mostly.

That's the beauty of gardening -- the melding of color with texture, hardscape with yard art, long-blooming botanical warriors with short-lived floral flibbertigibbets. It takes time -- and effort -- to arrive at the right balance of color and space.

But there is a pay-off : For me, it's the the end of the day when the garden is almost animated -- a gentle, dusky palette of colors bobbing and swaying gently in a light breeze.

But, recently, I discovered a new pay-off -- dead heading, or the process of picking off dead blooms to encourage new ones. I was dutifully flying through a perennial bed a few weeks back when I accidentally snipped off a healthy bud. I held it in my hand for a moment and, for the first time in a long time, actually looked carefully at a single flower in bloom.

It was a wondrous composition of angle, curve and color -- a type of transient perfection that we can often miss when we look at our gardens as just a sum total.