For Crinum Out Loud

. She has big strapping leaves with gaudy pink purple flowers that throw up their heads and scream "look at me." And I do. The Southern Bulb Company labels her Ellen Bosanquet and says she can get out of control easily.A passionate plant given to Bacchanalian excess. Her sorority sisters across the yard throw white blossoms that look like horticultural fireworks or big bow debutantes. According to the bulb gurus they all die back in the winter. Ah, yes, So much beauty for so little effort.

Neon Mormons Glean Ortega

Pear, pears, glorious sand pears everywhere. Great pear butter, jam, chutney. Folks just don't use the bounty that is theirs. Grate a little ginger into a crock pot full of pear slices, add lemon and honey and cook all night. The next day, blend the pears. Yum.
The Neon Mormons are Robo and me. We ride in a pair with our neon bike jackets. I heard one little boy tell another," They are the Neon Mormons." The name has stuck.

Rain Glorious Rain

Big juicy drops are falling from the sky and then there is a rainbow. We have been dry too long and so each drop appears as a liquid diamond; puddles are landscape jewelry of the antique excellent variety not paste gems. Why is it that only scarcity lets me value daily doings like transpiration and photosynthesis???? Without either of them, it is Gotterdamerung as Ashley said at Twelve Oaks.

Smoke Gets in the Garden

Too much smoke to toil and till. I race to the black river still. Paddle as silent as shadows now. I escape the smoke somehow.

Scarlet's Flower Double

O.K., I confess, I grew up in Jonesboro, Ga., a town of 305 in which we were the NEW people for nine years. Jonesboro’s claim to fame was its mention in Margaret Mitchell’s book Gone With the Wind, a book that has sold almost as many copies as the Bible. Indeed, for lots of middle aged Southern women, GWTW was the Bible. It provided chapter and verse about things the average belle could and could not do and remain on the barbeque A-list. Anyway, Jonesboro was the location of the main character’s home, the mythic Tara.

Because of my upbringing, I tend to see many of my garden plants embodying the characteristics of GWTW folks. That my crinum lilies for example. They always remind me of Belle Watling, the lady of ill repute with heart of gold according to Rhett Butler. According to Mammy, Belle was a dyed hair woman, a type consigned to the lower level of Dante’s Inferno.

My crinums thrust themselves on the garden scene around May. Their purple red flowers look “dyed” in that they are an uber bright red pink. They are all business, dense and prolific. Their wide strap like leaves, offer excellent contrast against the azaleas and the rosemary. Indeed, they will take over any part of the garden not visited regularly by the weed whacker.

Today, I found three young crinums in the mulch path. I will dig them up and replant them next to the Red Butler daylilies. They might enjoy one another.

Smoke, Too Much Smoke

There are fires in the north, possibly Okefenokee, and in St. Johns county to the south. A Halloween like haze is everywhere. I have an acrid taste in my mouth. The paper said we need a good tropical storm to put out the blazes. It is a little early to ask the deity for a full blown hurricane, but maybe just a class 1 tropical depression would be enough.

When I think of all the evenings I spent watching the city bed down, and now I can't see past my bulkhead. Sadness.

I know he's right. Edmund O. Wilson and the entire gang at Horticultural Therapy are right. When I wander in the garden, black cat swatting my heels, breeze wafting off the St. Johns, seeds sprouting, butterflies swooping, tomatoes ripening, lettuce bolting, compost simmering.......I'm restored.