10/15/08
Should you ever suffer from conformity pressure, think of plants if you need inspiration to hang on to your individualism.
Plants routinely defy rules and expectations. This year, in my garden, a few individuals overcame the odds by surviving back-to-back killing frosts.
The Purple Wave petunias, for example, downright astonished me. These are expensive annuals, and when I planted them from seed last spring, protected and cosseted, all failed to germinate. So I sprang for healthy plants started at a nursery, and they blew me away all summer with their profuse, vivid blossoms. I covered them for the first few light frosts, but when we had 2-3 nights in a row in the 20s, I abandoned all the tender annuals to their fate. Everything within a 50-foot radius of the petunias died instantly: impatiens, nasturtiums, marigolds, tomatoes, zinnias, celosia, asters. Yet the petunias are soldiering on, in tissue-thin trailing trumpets of royal purple and fuschia. Huh?
Likewise the black-eyed Susan. This species finished blooming a month ago, long before threat of frost. Yet this afternoon, while crossing the lawn, I tripped over an ankle-high fully blooming specimen — smack in the center of the yard, with no protection from above or the side — “ground zero,” if you will, of where the frost hit the hardest. Why the heck is that thing still alive?
Some of the hardier perennials always make it until winter. The Jerusalem artichokes — surely the plant that inspired the Jack-and-the-beanstalk legend — are blooming merrrily away as if nothing happened. A few monkshood and phlox in the sheltered part of the garden are also in bloom. But there’s one phlox up on the hill in the most exposed, always-walloped part of the yard which is still blooming. Why? Everything near it (except broccoli) is a shriveled mess.
Johnny-jump-ups, conversely, seem to hold on forever. More than once I have found them in blossom under snow. And there are plenty of plants still hanging on in protected corners: one hydrangea, one Queen-Anne’s-lace, one bluebell (which should have expired even before the black-eyed Susans), and assorted carrots. I just don’t get it. Freezing is freezing. Why don’t they all die?
The fact that they don’t assures me that life goes on despite adversity and is always full of surprises. What an antidote to depression!
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart, gardens, gardening, yard, plants, cultivation — Carolyn Haley
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