And finally - I have managed to get not one but two roses to grow up a tree. The pavement rose, 'Grouse' doesn't surprise me as its nature is to ramble on long canes. But the alba Meideland is a shrub rose - and yet it has surpassed 'Grouse' in its race to climb the purple smoke tree.
A surprise - the calla lilies that I didn't get around to digging up last fall are coming up and looking quite healthy. Of course living as they do in a walled garden, they are probably protected from the sort of winter that plants in more open areas must suffer. This pleases my husband - as does the gradual browning off of a mysterious weed that invaded this entire garden, and which he spent a day dousing with Round-Up applied through a PVC tube so that the spray didn't touch any of the plants we like.
And so we pass through the rose arbor and into the main walled garden, where a white wicker chaise now holds pride of place. While most of my gardens have increasingly become somewhat simplified, with only a limited palette of plants, this one is a crazy quilt of flowers - enough different things to look at that one can sit for a very long time, just observing what is new. So I allow my husband to recline on the chaise while I pick up my pruning shears and start to deadhead 'Heritage' and 'Abraham Darby.' I then pull out all the poppies that don't have fringed edges and fling them onto a messy little pile of discards that I really must find a place for. But before I have pulled the last poppy I find another surprise - and not such a pleasant one.
Two Japanese beetles are copulating in the bowl of a poppy blossom. I tell Roger that part of his rehab duties can be beetle control - a coffee can of water with a bit of soap - and he can shake any errant beetles into the can and straight to their doom.
While he ponders this bit of questionably good news (after all, he wants to feel useful - but there is useful and then there is - well, repulsive!) I spot another small wonder. Or rather it is an unusually large wonder. I've seen double poppies before, but this one must be quadruple! It is totally round, the size of a softball, covered with countless pale pink petals. A drumstick allium in drag? I fantasize about propagating it, selling it and making millions but refrain from saying anything to my husband - we don't want him to get too excited and copulating beetles might have been stimulus enough for one outing.
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