Savannah Garden Diary

Easter lilies are out. In a surprising twist for 2008, they haven’t yet all fallen over. Do they lack calcium in their diet of something that they are usually so weak-kneed?

This is really just me fiddling around with my new camera. It’s going to take a lot of work. Never can remember the various effects of aperture and exposure.

I’ve seen some criticism of Zephirine Drouhin among the blogs, but I am still enamored of the spectacular color and her classic rose form. I’m not really smitten by most single roses (except Rosa laevigata). And the fragrance is lovely.

I really love this tradescantia with purple flowers and chartreuse leaves. I can’t remember where I found it. And whatever filter I’ve got on this camera really does do a better job on blue/purple shades than the old one.

It is lovely to have some splashy color in the garden after a gray winter. Whenever I get really depressed about climate change or the end of cheap oil (or rather about our government’s completely inadequate response to same), I go into the garden and it cheers me up. We had a tornado last night (the first in Georgia in 80 years, I believe) which knocked out our power (and that of another 150,000 people) for 12 hours.

I don’t really like this Bignonia ‘Tangerine.’ Although I think that is mainly my fault for putting it on a trellis that is too small for it. I have seen it look quite fine on arbors and on a chain slung diagonally across a space.

This California poppy seeded itself in the gravel beside the path to the pond, and luckily I recognized it before weeding it out. It doesn’t matter how many and what sort of poppy seeds I plant, these are the only ones that come back year after year. The color wouldn’t do in the back in summer when we are all white and pink and purple, but in spring any splash of color is welcome.

The wildlife is in full throttle. Brown-headed nuthatches have stolen the bluebird box in back, wrens are nesting under Richard’s dinghy. Goldfish are laying eggs in the pond, frogs reappearing, and here’s a gecko sunning on the trunk of a crape myrtle.

Here’s Lonicera sempervirens (or maybe it’s not sempervirens?) with Lady Banks on the pergola.

Scylla peruviana flowers for the first time. So-called not because they are Peruvian but because they were shipwrecked on the coast of Cuba in a ship named SS Peru. I’ve had them for 2 years. They must have been getting their strength back after traveling from Oregon or some such. They are of course a much more intense blue than you can tell from this.

I am very fond of these Thunbergia alata on the little trellis. I threw in a handful of seeds some years ago, and they just keep on coming.

This is a color combination that really appeals to me–purple viola and silver lamium.

And here is an amazing jumble of color which could only please me in early spring. Zephirine Drouhin, assorted yellow and blue violas, a species crocus (clusiana?), and alyssum which has seeded itself all over the patio, in the gravel and in ever bed for miles around. I see this color scheme is going to the even more bizarre when the California poppy in the foreground blooms!

Zephirine Drouhin is in full bloom. What an amazingly saturated color. And what a fragrance. I brought one into the house and it perfumes the whole living room.

So you might think spring has really sprung, but climate change bites again. We had an unadvertised frost last night and I lost half my pepper seedlings. Curses.

The daffodils are nice this year. I didn’t plan to pick them for the house, but they keep getting blown over by really strong winds. There’s no point in leaving them lying on the ground, so I have several vases full scattered about the house.

We have had more than 3 inches of rain in the past week. And here is the new rain gauge to prove it. On a post in the veg garden.

I’ve planted several roses from the Antique Rose Emporium this month. Two ‘Zephirine Drouhin’: one to climb up the yaupon holly and onto the pergola, and I don’t now remember where the other one is! One ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ by the small live oak in front. It can grow up the tree as the tree grows. I know ARE doesn’t recommend letting either of these get as tall as they will have to in these locations, but I fell in love with John McEllen’s ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ at the Ships of the Sea Museum, which drips down from a fairly large tree. The other climber is Thom’s favorite Cherokee rose, which is at the base of the big pine in front and I hope will grow up it among the confederate jasmine. I shall have to keep an eye on this, because the confederate jasmine is well established and liable to smother a baby rose.

The smaller roses are ‘Blush Noisette,’ ‘Champney’s Pink Cluster,’ ‘Ducher,’ and ‘Mutabilis,’ which I’ve planted around the pond. I am not real fond of the color(s) of ‘Mutabilis,’ but it does have the great virtue of flowering over an amazingly long period in this part of the world.