WEEKLY PIC: JUNE11 WEEK5

I know choosing lifeless cannas, straw-like lawns and endless grey twigs is bound to invoke a rather cheerless picture of winter, but I’m not there yet. That happens in early August; the way Northerners feel in Feb. At this stage I am still revelling in the water which seems so green now that it is so cold, the monotones and the shutdown that happens after heavy frosts. Perhaps the next photo, of Leonitus ocymifolia  gives a cheerier impression. This is a self-planted wilding, and its winter baubles give me more joy than its furry orange salvia-like flowers do, sticking out of the balls in fours and fives in summer. It is so wintery, and yet so graphic. Now all I need do is get there early in the morning and catch the baubles frosted in the first sunlight. Deal!

I watched for the otters, but the water was still. A Woolly-necked Stork flew over, but either we disturbed it or it was on its way to nest elsewhere anyway. I think they have found the bluegum rather chilly of late. Two Black Ducks flew over at low altitude, complaining, and moved on to Freddy’s Dam. The dogs ratted amongst the cannas, and Mateczka took herself on a mad run, slicing through the cannas at times for the tearing-silk noise it made. God was around also.

 

WEEKLY PIC: JUNE11 WEEK2

We’re five days into the second week of June, and I only post now. I did not even realise I was running late; besides end-of-term, I have also been replacing my car and a lot of time and energy has gone into that! We’ve had REAL weather, and I’ve been able to prove a theory I’ve held for some time: when there is bad weather out there, ours gets better. My night-time temps went up dramatically. We are sheltered from the wind in our valley, so we don’t feel the wind chill factor  much. Instead the air turbulence prevents the coldest of the air from drifting down our valley, getting ever colder. And so, where others experienced colder weather, ours was warmer, around 5 degrees C. However June has been cold enough for everything to be decidedly wintery, the tree fern fronds brown and broken, the grasses bleached.

 

Those trees that still have autumn colour are therefor precious – and of these the cinnamon swamp cypresses are currently the most precious! So here is my official pic-of-the-week – a twig of swamp cypress, Taxodium  distichum. Several of them feature around the Makou Dam, pictured above. To left and right there  are three in full glory, but further to the right,  on the very edge of the dam, is one that has lost its leaves completely. There are four in the centre, of which one still wears a hood of leaves; the others are bare. Curious.

 

WHAT MAKES WINTER–AND MONTY DON–SO SPECIAL?

Saturday I did You Tube, the light sliding in. Sunday I did detail – and completed Monty Don’s The Ivington Diaries.

I have two disconnected issues top of (horticultural) mind at the moment, yet there is definitely a link. On the one hand there is the infinite and obsessive fascination with my own garden in every season and every mood, and the desire to describe it and record it. And on the other hand there is that rare occurrence, especially when one is skidding down the wrong slope of fifty: I have found me a hero.

Over a year ago a dear friend, mother of varsity friends, lent me her copy of Monty Don’s TV series Around the World in Eighty Gardens. I was smitten. Not so much by the gardens, as by the man, and his passionate fascination with what makes gardeners tick, and gardens resonate.

I could relate. And I could learn. And above all, I could appreciate his intensity. I immediately sought out his  books, finding first  The Complete Gardener (I think –I’ve lent it to a friend.) It is a highly personal ‘how-to’ book. Then Louis gave me the book version of the DVD series, Extraordinary Gardens of the World; an extraordinarily beautiful book. Then I went onto the net and ordered The Ivington Diaries, compiled from 15 years’ diaries of his own garden.

This is a unique account of one gardener’s responses to his garden, and his life. I kept marking pages to get back to. I used extracts in class to illustrate style and structure in writing. I moved with him through the garden as it developed, saying sometimes yes!  and sometimes really?, and all the time I felt as if I’d always known him.

An example: on 30 September 2001, recalling a conversation about 9/11, he writes: Someone said that things like gardening and cooking seemed unbearably trivial at times like these, almost disrespectful…But I am sure that this is not just wrong but a real misreading of the times…I am sure that certainties will now seem doubly precious. Verifiable honesty matters more than ever. The flash, the glib and all things phoney will be exposed in this new, rawer light as the dross that they are. Growing things, making something beautiful, eating simple, fresh food – these things matter now more than ever. I often think of how Aldous Huxley, after years of intense exploration, came to the conclusion that all religious and spiritual learning could be summarised into two words: ‘Pay attention’.

Pay attention.

I like that!

Monty Don – The Ivington Diaries, 2009, Bloomsbury, ISBN 978 1 4088 0249 6

 

A CLOSER LOOK AT LIGHTING–AND AT AUTUMN TOO

I set off this morning – a perfect sunny Saturday – with the intention of focusing on the close-up or macro picture I need for Gardening Gone Wild’s May ‘Picture This’ competition.

The brief is to specifically look at the effect of effective lighting in close-ups and macros. I took 172 shots; I have processed 23 to share. Not all are for the competition; and some I took for the competition didn’t even make it to the shortlist. Above: Cotoneaster horizontalis. Verdict: not competition worthy.

From about the same position as the cotoneaster, I took the above shot down the Long Border towards one of the Swamp Cypresses on the Makou Dam. They will feature in the following shots as well.

The Swamp Cypress or Taxodium distichum is a deciduous conifer from the eastern USA. Its leaves turn a lovely cinnamon colour. but none of my close-ups qualify…

The interesting thing about them is that each tree marches to its own drum. Some turn early, some late. But year after year they are consistent.

As we make our way around the Makou Dam, there is the opportunity to photograph the progress at the site of The Garden Celebrating an Imperfect Universe. Don’t know about it? Find out more here.

The Bugle I bought on auction from which the water will spill – the Celestial Trumpet – has arrived, and I’ve discovered that the dogs’ water-bowl, a flat, rectangular copper vase that was demoted when I tired of having a plastic bowl in the middle of everything, has the proportions of the Golden Rectangle (1:1.618)… I do think that the trumpet should rise from it…(besides anything else, I like the progression: vase>water- bowl>symbol of perfection)

But I set out to take close-ups…

Here is The Avenue – the Tulip Trees (Liriodendron tulipifera) which make their way up through the Arboretum in a double avenue with azaleas between them and hydrangeas beneath them. (I took several hydrangea photos, but they don’t feature today.) The fallen leaves, in various stages of decay and catching the light, proved very photogenic.

A detail from the previous photo, this does not quite qualify for the competition.

But this one does…

…As does this one.

But this one doesn’t!

Many azaleas are blooming. As always in autumn, the semi-deciduous mauve ones are putting on a spectacular show… perhaps there is a competition entry here…

However I do anticipate my entry being an autumn shot…

This photo is exactly as it came off the camera. I’m not at all certain if it is an accident or was planned!

The Japanese Maples  are an obvious choice, though. This one and the next are Acer palmatum ‘Tricolor’ and the pink/cream/green variegation results in interesting autumn shades as well.

Hmmm – those two are more similar than I realised. The next is almost not recognizably a Japanese maple.

I grew it from seed. It is a mutation, slow growing, actually rather messy in appearance, but fascinating. Instead of having hand-shaped leaves, they are reduced to just the central finger or, as in the leaf pointing upwards, separated into three leaves. In addition they are congested and appear at the end of twigs only, on a narrow, upright tree. It is now about 2.5m tall, and becoming more and more interesting. Although truth be told – it is more interesting in concept than in reality…

This glimpse, stolen across Freddy’s Dam towards a Parrotia persica coming into its own, is rather romantic, I think. And forms a modulation between possible entries.

One of my proudest possessions is this plane tree. Instead of having yellow autumn leaves, they are red. What is more, they start turning in mid February and last till mid May. That is three months of spectacular autumn colour. I found it in a rural nursery in KwaZulu-Natal amongst yellowing plane saplings, and sneaked it away nonchalantly…This photo was taken up into the light, with some leaves showing their backs and others their upper surface, I liked this so much I cropped it closer:

I like this photo. It might be called an elegant composition. Sparse. Simple. To the point: this IS what the red plane is all about.

One last photo, of the Japanese Maple avenue on my way home, before – well, before the very first photo I took. The one I believe might well be my entry. And literally the first of the day. There were several more of this subject, but the first, impulsive and unconsidered, was the best. Interesting…

These Elephant Ears , or Alocasia, came to me from England, of all places. I bought the seeds, from Thompson & Morgan, as I recall, because they were said to repel moles. I doubt that they have done so, but in the process I obtained a wonderful foliage plant of a family that does not cope – usually – with our cold winters. These grow dramatically outside the staff’s house as one enters Sequoia Gardens – thus the pinkish background – and I intend introducing it into a few of my borders in spring. For simplicity and effectiveness of composition, for textural detail as a result of the lighting, I think this is the best of my attempts to date. Think of the theme: Lighting: look closer.

 

JUNE10 – WEEK1

I returned from Johannesburg last night and this morning found frost on the lawn for the first time. Typical of a sunny winter’s morn, there is the slightest mist rising off the water – and autumn is still a strong presence, with the swamp cypress in the right centre not yet at its peak and various maples, cherries, sweet chestnuts and dawn redwoods contributing. The green tree left of centre is a Liquidambar formosana. It has a three-fingered leaf rather than the five of the more common L. styraciflua. Less impressive than the five-fingered tree in autumn, its virtue is the lateness of its turning, carrying autumn through into July in a good year. In the foreground the zinnias have now really gone to seed – but are contributing very fashionable ‘winter interest’ as well as ‘winter food/cover/accommodation’!

 

Spring green

Many of the oaks are a limy yellow and abuzz with billions of bees tending to the fleeting flowers; the willows and swamp cypresses glow against the light, a green so clean it can only be spring… (sorry; corny moment; it reminds of a poem I loved to teach about  trying to write a poem that doesn’t rhyme, but it keeps rhyming. Should find it and post it!

This afternoon from my parents’ veranda I took the following picture…

Backlit afternoon view from my parents' veranda

The driveway crosses just beyond a narrow strip of lawn. A little further the main lawn lies below a brick retaining wall. To the left of the picture a pair of box plants in pots mark the top of the staircase that divides the  Upper Rosemary Border into two. To their left a clipped Abelia ‘Francis Mason’ and beyond them a strip of clipped endemic Hypericum; beyond that the swamp cypresses on the water’s edge. To the right of the swamp cypresses is a witch-hazel in full flower. It stands alone on the lawn. The various plants to the right of it are part of the Upper Rosemary Border

 

View from the Makou Dam

A late winter view from the dam below my parents' house up the valley towards my dam; the skeleton trees in the distance on the left are the liquodambers on my dam beyond my house. Makou means Muscovy duck; I don't know if there were Muscovies on the dam back in the early '50s when my grandfather bought the farm. One of my earliest memories is the name of the dam, and asking what it meant. The two trees to the right are Swamp Cypresses (Taxodium); beyond the huge shadow of the bluegums - see views across the arboritum in 'A walk in my garden' - are two Pin Oaks (Quercus palustris). on the very right Alfred's Arches can be seen beyond the Upper Rosemary Border. It is difficult in the dead of winter to remember how lush and green the garden was!