Text and photos ©Nancy J. Ondra
The idea of having four seasons may make sense to some people, but we gardeners know that’s a woefully inadequate framework for what actually goes on outdoors. Dividing each of those seasons into early, mid-, and late helps somewhat, but something’s still lacking, particularly at this time of year, when spells of mild days alternate with freezing, snowy conditions. It’s not winter, and it’s not spring. It’s not even late winter or early spring. It’s unlocking.
Text and photos ©Nancy J. Ondra
When I read seed-catalog descriptions that tell me a plant “tastes just like [fill in the blank],” I have to wonder, well, why don’t I just grow the original plant, rather than the taste-alike? Sometimes, it seems like the substitute might be the easier route, but we all know how shortcuts often have a way of turning out to be disappointing, to say the least.
If I’d put some effort into getting a good bed of real asparagus going last year, for instance, I’d probably be able to harvest a few stalks this spring, and they’d really be asparagus. Instead, I went for the seemingly simpler route of growing asparagus peas and spent months waiting for hardly a mouthful of pods that weren’t all that asparagus-like anyway.
Text and photos ©Nancy J. Ondra
In The Softer Side of Yellow, I trotted out some images of what I thought were relatively tasteful combinations of yellow with green, yellow with yellow, and yellow with blue. As I was choosing those pictures, I also found some combinations that showed a bit more zip, so I figured I’d put those in a separate group. This combination, featuring ‘Screaming Yellow’ false indigo (Baptisia sphaerocarpa) could have gone either way: Paired with the ‘Walker’s Low’ catmint (Nepeta), the effect is rather soft, but the intense purple-blue of the ‘Caradonna’ salvia in the back saves it from being too sweet. Can you imagine this grouping without the catmint? That would definitely be zippy.
