2007 Year in Review

rosie]I’m pretty sure Pam over at Digging thinks that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. She beat me to the punch with her Year in the Garden post. But honest, I was thinking about doing the same here.

I committed to really give blogging some effort last winter. (I started the blog in August 2005. But it took awhile for me to get into the habit.) So there wasn’t much in the way of gardening to post about last January. ‘Rosie’ (right) took up residence in my office (where I wrote a popular article about the warm winter, hitting 59 F on Jan. 6), Cal Lane’s artsy shovels caught my eye, I ordered my veggies seeds, and blogged about music. I may have lost my lunchbox, but I’m still here.

In February, blogging was still slow. I praised weeds mined images from 2006, and reviewed Anna Pavord’s The Naming of Names.

swamp milkweed
Swamp milkweed.

heuchera and lysimachia
Heuchera and lysimachia

In March, the gardening season kicked in along with the spring ephemerals. I love to watch them as the snow retreats. I discovered Iris histrioides ‘Katharine Hodgkin’ had hitchhiked in with some minor bulbs from a friend. I enjoyed the floral foreplay that is March. I couldn’t get Duncan Shiek’s White Limousine out of my head.

<em />Iris histrioides ‘Katharine Hodgkin’
Iris histrioides ‘Katharine Hodgkin’

crocus
Crocus

tulips and cyclamen
Tulips and cyclamen.

April was a busy month. It hit 64 on the 3rd and the peepers came out in force. The early spring bulbs flowered in profusion. I reviewed Amy Stewart’s Flower Confidential. Kurt Vonnegut died. I did my first bloom day scan. We got hit by the Tax Day Nor’easter and Jade had a ball in the snow. I discovered that you could see my pickup truck from the aerial photos at local.live.com. I snarkily reviewed garden footwear. And turned 50.

Chionodoxa and verbascum
Chionodoxa and verbascum.

April bloom day scan
April bloom day scan

Me, Corey and Fred by the water garden.
Me, Corey and Fred by the water garden on my 50th.

In May, there were mulch races outside my office window. Such joy does spring bring to students’ hearts. We visited our son in Jacksonville, Fla., May 9. It was 69 F there. 81 F in Ithaca. Go figure. The rescued tulips bloomed, as did primulas, the double bloodroot and other spring favorites. In the wetland, the lone crabapple and marsh marigolds did their thing. I visited my friend Marguerite at MotherPlants nursery, where she and her partner supply the burgeoning green roof trade.

Mulch races.
Mulch races.

Rescued tulips
Rescued tulips

Primulas
Primulas

Lone apple
Lone crabapple.

Demo dog houses at Mother Plants.
Demo dog houses with green roofs at Mother Plants.

I kicked off June, with an exploration of sex, antiquities and modern garden statuary in bondage in Honey, does this peplos make my butt look fat? My Early June picture purge will fill you in on what actually was going on in the garden. I had fun with Fun with fish and Photoshop. I celebrated the saving of the pink famingo factory, the anniversary Doc Ellis’s LSD-fueled no-hitter and the release of my favorite CD of 2007, Gogol Bordello’s Super Taranta. Also took my best garden picture to date. June is all about the light.

Nectoscordum
Nectoscordum

First peony from seed.
First peony from seed.

Fun with fish and Photoshop.
Fun with fish and Photoshop.

Acoustic version of Supertheory of Supereverything

June light, borrowed scenery
June light, borrowed scenery

July. High summer. Cuisse de Nymphe roses. Verbascum. More great weeds. Sunsets. From Idiocracy, Brawndo’s got what plants crave. A Living Wall Installation. Lots of bees, despite CCD. Pink filipendula.

Cuisse de Nymphe roses.
Cuisse de Nymphe

Verbascum.
Verbascum

Sunset.
Sunset.

Bee on echiniceae.
Bee on Echinacea

Bee on verbascum.
Bee on verbascum.

Pink filipendula.
Pink filipendula.

In August, I ‘Simpsonized’ myself. The bananas in the garden outside my office made a statement, along with the blue alliums. I went to a tomato tasting to sample crosses between modern cherry tomatoes and heirloom varieties. There was a surfeit of purple in the garden. I made a floral mandala.

Me simpsonized.
Me Simpsonized. I should have added more gray.

Bananas in Minns Garden
Bananas in Minns Garden

Experimental cherry tomatoes.
Experimental cherry tomatoes.

Echiniceae
Echinacea

Floral mandala
Floral mandala.

September. I played around with video to record plants in motion. A sod sculpture went up at Bluegrass Lane. Saw Nanci Griffith at the State Theater. Considered what statuary might look like in the garden. But September is really the month for grasses.

Statue in the garden.
If I could afford statuary.

September bloom day scan.
September bloom day scan.

Secret garden anemone.
Secret garden anemone.

September morn'.
September morn’.

Water garden.
Water garden.

Grasses.
Grasses

October brought Colchicum autumnale ‘Alboplenum’ and Eupatorium purpureum ‘Joe White’. Cover crops blanketed the veggie garden. The Dalai Lama visited Ithaca. Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. First frost came the 16th. We discovered that the beavers had been busy. Fall colors were only mediocre. Janis Ruksans shared his bulb expertise with our rock garden group.

Colchicum autumnale ‘Alboplenum’
Colchicum autumnale ‘Alboplenum’

Eupatorium purpureum ‘Joe White’
Eupatorium purpureum ‘Joe White’

cover crops
Cover crops in the veggie garden.

Frosted dahlia.
Frosted dahlia.

Mediocre fall color.
Mediocre fall color.

Scilla armena, Photo by Janis Ruksans, used with permission.
Scilla armena, Photo by Janis Ruksans, used with permission.

In November, Bill Millers perennials class planted a bulb labyrinth at Bluegrass Lane. Jay Hart’s ‘Terrain art’exhibition opened at Mann Library. Mornings were frosty. Textures got fuzzy. I shot Art of Horticulture class projects.

Bulb labyrinth at Bluegrass Lane
Bulb labyrinth at Bluegrass Lane.

Transitions by Jay Hart, used with permission of the artist.
Transitions by Jay Hart, used with permission of the artist.

Variegated Polygonatum
Variegated Polygonatum

Frosty morning.
Frosty morning.

Fuzzy grasses.
Fuzzy grasses.

December’s short days featured bittersweet, the mystery of the Christmas Amanita, and I confessed to my houseplant problem.

bittersweet
Bittersweet.

In the Liberty Hyde Bailey Conservatory.
In the Liberty Hyde Bailey Conservatory.

December Bloomg Day scan: Bittersweet and lunaria.
December Bloomg Day scan: Bittersweet and lunaria.

Thanks to all of you who stopped by and shared comments, as well as all you lurkers out there. Best wishes for a safe, healthy and peaceful New Year.

Christmas Amanita

Christmas Amanita

We used to have an old, very bizzare Christmas decoration that we inherited from somewhere on my wife’s side of the family. It was made from some kind of early synthetic rubber material, and had Santa riding in his sleigh landing on this huge red mushroom. I never really got it. We just thought it was weird.

This morning I was listening to the podcast of yesterday’s Thom Hartmann radio show, and he related this story: Though he did not identify the mushroom by name, the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) grows in association with evergreen trees in the boreal forest. It is both poisonous and hallucinogenic.

But apparently reindeer can metabolize the toxin and excrete the hallucinogen unscathed. So Norse shamans would cultivate the mushrooms, encourage the reindeer to eat them, gather up the yellow snow and make a psychoactive brew.

And you wondered where the jolly man in the red suit, flying reindeer and elves from the North Pole got their start.  I think we should thank the Amanita.

Hartmann’s story differs from the Wikipedia entry, which has the reindeer prancing from the effects of the agaric. But it still makes the connection between Amanita and Christmas traditions.

Michael Pollan on CCD and CAFOs

In Our Decrepit Food Factories in today’s New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan ties together the problems of antibiotic-resistant bacteria from factory farms and Colony Collapse Disorder in bees. Here’s his bottomline:

From this perspective, the story of Colony Collapse Disorder and the story of drug-resistant staph are the same story. Both are parables about the precariousness of monocultures. Whenever we try to rearrange natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared to treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice word.

Bee on Colchicum autumnale ‘Alboplenum’
Bee on Colchicum autumnale ‘Alboplenum’