Studiology

January

Before this month leaves I wanted to share a few photographs from my annual trip to New Orleans. This trip was one of the best with a full schedule and things falling into place. The workshop that I attend is planned around assemblage art with our hilarious teacher Michael deMeng. Katherine Engen is the organizer, thankfully it's a big city with lots to do because there have been 8 such trips (in 8 years) and the fun continues. Full of exploration, food, music, and drink, although many of us have become very familiar with where to go and we fill any extra time revisiting some favorite places.   

The art was so spectacular, our theme was Tarot cards, we were to pick a few to build from and also design our costumes with that in mind. For the first time I traveled with no idea what was going to happen when it came to creating, usually I have at least 2 projects, often put together (to some degree), to make sure I finish. The week goes fast!

I built my assemblage based on the cards "The Hierophant" and "The Lovers" no deep meaning here, I just worked with the cards and added some bits that make it significant. 

Some folks made more than 2 pieces, which was very impressive. Here is a small representation of the art that was made in our limited time. 

The big breaks in our schedule include 2 parades. One is our own Second Line Parade. It's a long walk with lot's of hand waving so I don't bring my big camera, but there will be photographs, I will post them in the next blog. The larger parade is the first of Mardi Gras called the Krewe du Vieux. Every year I make the trek, even though this year there was a threat of rain,  in fact the possibility for some downpours and a thunderstorm. Fortunately it was fine and the parade was a huge success. 

I have been to so many Krewe du Vieux parades that I am starting to recognize faces. This year was one of the best, the threat of rain kept big crowds away. 

This is classified as an X rated parade but I thought it was a little tamer than usual. I did blur this ladies sign, but otherwise there was the usually spanking, throwing of unusual charms, and crude floats. All in all, a good time was had by all!

 

Temptations

The seed catalogs are arriving, sometimes two or three from the same company. Smaller, duplicate editions are trying to get your online order, or so I suspect.

Mine are dogeared, pages marked, and folded. I'm not a seed starter, or I should clarify, I'm not an indoor seed starter. I know the beauty of greenhouse propagation with heat mats, copper trays (to divert slugs), soft mist watering, and bright light with high humidity. The only way I would be persuaded to sow indoors might be with a very good artificial light setup. 

In my early twenties, that was my garden. I lived in an apartment facing north with a very large maple tree at the window of my growing room.  A two bedroom apartment, I dedicated the extra room to growing tropical plants with artificial lights. Timers clicked on a off; the closet, multiple shelves and a floor display were all lit with fluorescent lights. A fish tank kept the humidity up, high enough to tint the window green. Small fans moved the air and the results were amazing. 

I have neither the space or the desire to try and replicate that in my current home. It would fail, I'm certain. 

But, direct sowing outside is a breeze. Lettuce, pumpkins, cucumbers, squash, watermelon - of course you just sow them outside. Sunflowers, cosmos, zinnias, and marigolds are just a few that are often better if seed is set directly into the garden. My temptations, the earmarked catalog pages are often the same from one to another. A new cosmos is called 'Cupcakes'. The petals curve upwards and there appear to be extra petals inside, a trait that occurs occasionally, or on a small percentage (so some catalogs warn). Of course there are stunning photographs of the few that do. 

Another temptation is a daylength neutral, yellow cosmos called 'Xanthos'. The petals are the softest, sulphur yellow. There were a couple of years when I grew the yellow hybrids but their trigger to flower were short days. Flowers would not arrive until October and last only a short time before freezing. I'm giving them another try.

Medium and large sunflowers are circled, so successful were my gigantic sunflowers last summer with stems over eleven feet tall. And I want to cut more (lots more)!  

Every gardener should have a bulletin board, a place to put torn out catalog pages. The White Flower Farm catalog has eleven pages dedicated to great container combinations. Happy thoughts come when I see various plants so artfully placed. This I want to revisit in spring.

 My seed orders will go in soon, even though we are three months away from summer sowing. If you wait too long, some are sold out. I have made that mistake plenty of times. The other mistake would be sowing too early with just a windowsill for light. Wait till the end of March, or even early April if that is what you intend to do. Winter has been long, the gardener wants to speed it along, but it's a common cause for failure. Seedlings also benefit from fieldtrips outside.  Days when temperatures rise above fifty-five degrees are good, but shelter them well, and shade them a lot. Any wind will dehydrate them within minutes, so be ready to check often and water frequently. When we hardened seedlings at the plant farm, a close eye watched, ready to re-hydrate. 

When it's finally time and the soil is warm enough, I direct sow in beds that are topped with sterile compost. A small furrow, literally made by dragging a stick is as fancy as it gets. I drop seeds like cosmos and zinnias six to eight inches apart. The gigantic sunflowers are fifteen to twenty-four inches apart.

One of the greatest joys for a gardener is seeing the little ones sprout and imagining them in bloom. Winter browsing of seed catalogs may be even better!

Backcountry

Just home from a road trip that was filled with road trips. My youngest sister moved to southern Virginia, between the hills of the Jefferson National Park, where it is divided into a north and south. Her tiny town sits between the two, something she researched by reading maps, knowing that this could be a good place. The land of steep hills, cows and sheep, mules, and farm dogs. There are also gorgeous wild areas with rhododendrons, mountain laurels and frozen waterways. 

Our tour guide loves to drive, finding backroads and local points of interest. It's music country here, the town of Galax is home to a large and famous fiddler's convention. The town is also named after Galax urceolata, the native perennial with evergreen foliage that is harvested for the florist trade (to the point of restrictions because of overharvesting).

The town of Fries, pronounced freeze, is a sleepy, beach front town on the shores of the New River. The Big Walker Lookout sits on top of a mountain, a little country store sells art from local artisans. It was snowing and 17 degrees. We woke up to 8 degrees so things were warming up. 

A church in Rural Retreat has a small, historically significant cemetery filled with headstones of soapstone. The stonemason, a second generation German, carved the headstones with gothic outlines, often tripartite in shape, like a bed's headboard. Acid rain has worn the designs, lichen has grown and softened the details. A typical design is a pinwheel or a heart, of which there were several. This is the Kimberling Lutheran Cemetery, high on a hill, surrounded by cows, and beautiful vistas.

My sisters new home is still in the remodeling phase and a few boxes needed unpacked, namely the families 3rd generation hand collection. My grandmother started with hands and it still grows, filling two large display cases. It's a spectacular collection. One day I will photograph them all, if not the most significant. These are a few examples.

A good time was had by all with road trips, and a 3 day weekend! We watched horror movies at night and explored by day, a close family of like minds. Love these sistas!

And just a little "by the way", don't watch the movie "The Corpse Grinder", one review says "it wallows in its cheesiness", yep, that it does.

 

Fantasy in January

Create, complete, sell and repeat. A mantra that goes with the sales of creators. I'm pretty certain if an item did not sell, the inventor or creator may not repeat it, or they might do it again but with improvements. 

I surprised myself with the first creation in 2018, a repeat of the clown I built in 2017. How interesting that the cycle was almost an exact match to the dates in the previous year. I know people do repetitive things on an annual basis, when I had my nursery I kept a journal of customers that visited each day, or at least those I got to know really well. The crazy thing, they came on the same day or within a couple days of that date, each year. The trigger might be a seasonal thing, like the flowering of something they had bought from me, or the return of a nasty weed we talked about.  For this to also drive an artist's projects kind of surprised me. So I completed "Sammy Spins", another clown with a spinning propeller. 

I am delighted at how he finished. Next came the restocking of altered Pez dispensers, the Alice in Wonderland theme has been very popular, and the White Rabbit is the most popular. Here you have today's lineup. 

The Mad Hatter holds a tea cup, the rabbits have their watches. The Chesire cat; with a C for Chesire. No two alike (only similar), the rabbits were both lambs in their previous Pez life. The Chesire cat was Fred Flinstone, the Mad Hatter was Jack from The Incredibles. 

All are on sale at Art A La Carte, at 310 Mill Street, in the quaint town of Occoquan.

The Winter Chill

Last fall I failed to take extra precautions with my outdoor plants. So of course here we are in January with a deep freeze. This test will prove the hardiness of gardenia and farfugium. I have no expectations for canna, dahlias, or even fig fruit, which is a pessimistic prediction. Last year I dug everything and covered everything that might be tender, it may have been my fault that the winter of 2016/17 was so mild, and so it follows that it might be my fault this winter is so cold. 

If you are a non-gardener, you might think that we are disappointed. The gardener may have lost some tender things, but the deep freeze makes plants happy. Peonies, tulips, iris, are all happy to slumber so soundly. Better than the fitful naps of last winter when we experienced 80 degree days in early February.

 On the flip side, the gardener may also be happy with a few losses. Spring catalogs are arriving daily, timed to take advantage of our weak moments, our garden deprivation. We might feel free to order replacements, actually hoping they don't return so we can try something new. Like so many of you, I'm trying to figure out where to put a large bed of tall sunflowers, new roses, a sea of butterfly weed, or just a few new dahlias. Bed expansion is always on our minds, a load of compost is the simplest way, an existing bed oozes into expansion with a load of rich compost. 

While I still had the plant farm, a very regular customer once explained to me how he had fooled his wife by increasing the size of his beds each year without her knowing. He laid out a single row of begonias as an edger, adding an additional foot to each flower border, each year. 

This gentleman was an incredible gardener with such an eye for his plants and their changes that he was one of the first to notice damage from foliar nematode, something that most people missed entirely. He was also a poor gardener, retired on a fixed income. I always made sure that he could afford everything he needed with a little price adjustment. I admired him very much.

I'm pretty sure he is no longer with us, but if he were, I could expect an entire review of his gardens. The lack of helleborus buds, the richness of the red on the leaves of Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red' in January, or the beauty of eupatorium seed heads. Phlox divaricata is evergreen and makes a great groundcover with tiarella, despite the cold. 

Gardeners can be so hearty and so delightful. We learn to live with changes, we live in the now and in the future.