inconsistancy, thy name is humanity (and other thoughts in the garden)

So after carefully applying non-toxic corn-gluten-based pre-emergent herbicide in the puppy pen and spendng hours on my hands and knees pulling already-emerged weeds so as not to poison my puppies, I spent an hour this evening spraying the place with Round Up.

I did keep it away from the puppy pen as much as possible, but there is so much crap growing around this place (I know--one gardener's crap is another gardener's garden treasure) that it would take 3 strapping teen-age sons, a chain saw, and a giant chipper-shredder to keep it all under control. Not having any of those, I spray.

And I'm sure I got at least two patches of poison ivy. The place was rank with it when I first moved in--I got my first case of poison ivy EVER the year I moved in, which is one reason I delayed starting a garden of my own here until about 15 years had passed... One patch had sneakily started up at the base of the jackmanii clematis that grows up the lilac bush, inside the piece of chicken wire put there years ago by the original planter to give the clematis something to climb, so it was a bit tricky to get to it--but I'd rather have a few deformed clematis leaves and no poison ivy, so I got in there and tried to control the spray as best I could. This is the kind that comes out as a foam, so you can see where it's going, which helped.

I'm also the person with a "compost pile" on the north side of the garage where it gets next to no sun and never gets turned, so instead I use Miracle Gro pellets and rose fertilizer stakes. Hm, organic gardening? Not quite, I'm afraid. I like to think I'd do better if I were raising edibles, but I wouldn't advise anyone to bet on it. At any rate, I did go around and throw fertilizer pellets around the shade garden, the various day lilies and clematis, the irises (which after a promising start in the early too-warm spring never quite recovered from the freeze, and besides are planted in a place they clearly feel is less than ideal), and the blue spiderwort. I'll get the rose bush fertilizer stakes driven in tomorrow night.

I'm not in a huge passion to buy plants this year. I would like to get one of the petunias that grow out and over the edges of things--are those wave petunias?--a deep wine-colored one, I think; a flat of silver dusty miller to plant around the base of the birdbath, and some Casa Blanca lilies if I can find any. I have terrible luck with them--they perform magnificently one year and then vanish forever. But the scent of hyacinths, lilacs--which we haven't had this year--and oriental lilies, roses, gallium, lavender, tuberoses when I have them--coming through the windows in their season is a deep, sensuous pleasure, so I'm willing to buy 3 to 6 Casa Blanca lilies every year.

David Austen roses are highly touted for their scent, but none of mine have been noticeably scented--nothing you catch a whiff of as you walk by. I'm thinking of trying a bush or two of old-fashioned Albas or musk roses. Some of the hybrid teas are heavily scented--a few--but it's hard to find any that don't have a lemon or fruity scent. I want a rose that smells like a ROSE. I wish I had the room and the sun for a variety of the old shrub roses. I was thinking that one could grow one of the great ramblers along 3 acres of fencing... Chain link put up specifically to support one, perhaps (one wouldn't of course, fence 3 acres in chain link unless one were rolling in dough).

Sweet autumn clematis is supposed to be scented, too (hence the "sweet" part of the name), but either mine isn't, or my nose isn't set up to smell it. Cats are genetically programmed to either like catnip or be indifferent to it; and human noses are programmed to either be able to smell the odor of sweet violet or not, and I believe the autumn clematis odor is similar to sweet violet. Apparently I don't have the genes for it.

I want honeysuckle--real honeysuckle--and sweet clover, too.

But to return to the original thought of buying plants for this year--wave petunias, dusty miller, lilies, and either Persian Shield (also called strobilanthes--isn't that a cool name?) or heliotrope for the front yard rose bed, and possibly a pink petunia, if I can't find anything else pink to put out there. Yes, I know there are dozens of pink annuals; the problem is finding one out here in Forgottonia. And if I should just happen to see a Golden Showers climbing rose, I'd like to try one against the south side of the garage. After I paint it, of course. I'm still looking for exactly the right shade of blue-grey-fading-toward-lavender. It's one of those I'll-know-it-when-I-see-it colors, and I haven't seen it yet.