Garden Capers

The Winter Gardener

In January I watch my garden from the porch, balcony and driveway, and through the windows in the house; I study the dead, dormant and living from afar. I check the rosemary and lavender to see how they're faring. From the bay window they always appear to be surviving.

     In winter the frenetic wind chimes and sound of patio furniture skidding across the deck taunt me. I count the number of cloudy days in a row- twenty-seven- and wish for snow. I need clean white to cover dead brown and nourish future green. I need snow to entice me outside and crunch underfoot. In winter gardens and most gardeners rest; I'm restless.

     Ten years ago I vowed to have a plant in bloom year round, forcing myself to garden inside in winter and startling my houseplants due to the unusual amount of attention they started receiving. My Christmas cactus blooms for months each year. I set a record in 2013; I mean the cactus set a record-blooming non-stop from mid-November to Easter.

     The green and purple shamrocks, Oxalis oregano and Oxalis triangularis, bloom intermittently depending on how often I fertilize them; whack them back when they get leggy, and let them bathe in bright indirect sunlight. The lipstick plant, Aeschynanthus radicans, blooms for several weeks in late fall, and the Hawaiian hibiscus, a five-inch twig when it arrived in a bubble wrap envelope my mom mailed from Hawaii, blooms on tropical time i.e. whenever it feels like it.

     There've been times I failed to have a plant in bloomt so I purchased a new plant to avoid a bloom-gap. I divided my fifteen year-old peace lily and it hasn't bloomed since. The dendrobium orchids produced splendid leaves year after year, same with the amaryllis. I transplanted the amaryllis; now it produces two stunning leaves outside.

     Years ago I purchased an emergency, bloom-gap Kalanchoe. The nursery owner told me the plant was sterile and I may as well throw it in the trash when it finished flowering. I took cuttings from the Kalanchoe and rooted them in water before planting them next to the original plant. Both bloomed six months later. I've taken cuttings from the original plant for eight years and used them in dish gardens, window boxes and the ABC Garden at the Kimberling Area Library Children's Garden. (It's not easy to find a plant that can survive a Missouri summer in a genus that starts with k.)

     Winter is Reading Season. Thirty magazines from 2014 were stacked on my end tables-unread issues of Horticulture, Garden Design, Fine Gardening, HGTV Magazine and Better Homes and Gardens. After several binge reading episodes, I'll donate the magazines to gardening workshops and the local library, vowing (again) to keep the magazine pile under five inches this year.

     Two savory periodicals are Baker Creek's Heirloom Seeds and Rare Seeds Catalogs. Filled with enlightening information, enticing descriptions and page after page of colorful photos with a full spread in the middle, they're porn for gardeners. Who can resist Fantome Du Laos with its glowing, creamy-white fruit and sweet flavor? How could you say no to Love-In-A-Mist; an ethereal flower with wispy, feathery foliage surrounding beautiful blue, white, pink and purplish-blue blooms that dates back to English gardens in the 1570's?

     This gardener can't go on without Japanese Black Trifeles- "Attractive tomatoes the shape and size of a Bartlett pear, with a beautiful purplish-brick color. The fruit are perfect and smooth with no cracks. The flavor is absolutely sublime, having all the flavor of fine chocolate." Ooh la la!

     When I see daffodil shoots push through the soil from the living room windows, the houseplants lose their allure and the magazines return to inanimate objects. I drop my restlessness at the front door and begin the search for new bits of green as they emerge from each plant this season.

Photo: Lipstick Plant (Aeschynanthus radicans)