Structures

We're into another phase of remodeling the house.  There's nothing more to do this season in the gardens except continue to weed them and apply Preen before the winter weeds germinate.  The Henbit has already begun to appear, so the time for action is now!

Our "big" summer project was shaping up the raised beds for vegetables.  This is the view of the back yard Left a week ago, the cool weather crops having sprouted.

Three weeks ago on a Sunday morning I finished the "small" summer project of contouring the ground in the middle of the back yard so that water flowing downhill from the house would not pool in the area of the circular bed in the picture below.

I killed the grass around the circle and spent several work sessions shaving dirt away to make a shallow trough that tilts toward the dock.  The last step was four car trips to the local nursery to bring back half a pallet of fescue sod and lay it on the shaped earth.  I finished that before lunch and watered it well.  You can make out small white flags I put at the edges of the new sod so that the man who mows our lawn knows where not to bring the machine.  Machinery at this stage would dislodge the small pieces around the curves.  We need to let roots penetrate the ground and fasten the sod before we use a mower there.

Here's my favorite structure outside, a new seedling of mine with a winsome face.

This is the last flower on the first scape produced by my seedling number 12-25, meaning it is the 25th seedling I've given a number in 2012.  In 2011 I assigned 250 numbers and decided to keep the best 85.  The crazy weather of 2012 depressed the bloom in my new seedling beds and I had very little to look at.  I can't wait to see this next summer!

Here is a seedling I've had in the garden for four years, number 08-55.

This was blooming on its second scape earlier this week when I took the picture on a cool morning.  There is nothing distinctive about the face of this flower.  What's interesting to me is that the patterned eye of FANTASY EYES, the pollen parent, was passed to this child by way of a toothy pod parent, ROMANTIC STARES, which seems to lack a patterned eye.

I chose ROMANTIC STARES as a parent because it is Dormant, has good plant structure, is fertile both ways, and is a child of ANGEL'S SMILE, which is known to encourage jazzy results in the eyezone.  Here is ROMANTIC STARES.

There is only a hint of that jagged edge on my seedling, but the eye is more interesting.  Here is FANTASY EYES.

You can see that there are subtle rings of blue violet color in the eye, and there's an edge with two colors.  The thing about my seedling that is most interesting to me is the structure of its scape.  Here is a picture of its second scape, a rebloom that began in late September.  Notice the wide branching extending down the scape and the beautiful presentation of the flowers.

I want to breed this seedling to other patterned flowers in the hopes of retaining the healthy plant and well-formed scape.  On the right edge of the picture you might be able to see the top of a third scape coming along in the hopes of blooming before Halloween.  We'll probably have a frost before that scape can bloom.

Our "big" fall project is the remodeling of the front entrance of our house.  We knew when we bought the house that the front door didn't suit the design of the house.  The windows belong on some other kind of house and we don't care for double doors.  We've ordered a single door with two sidelights.  As long as we were correcting the door, Kathy designed a new front set of steps and a small patio, with planters extending out on either side.  We are using the same blocks as we've used on the wall around our car park area and the same pavers we used on the patio in back.

After removing eight inches of dirt and more than a hundred pounds of old tree roots, Steve Brandt and his helper Tim Yankow worked on building footers to support the rows of blocks that will surround two wide landings before a third step down to the level of the sidewalk.

They removed a large concrete step and found a large void under the existing landing.  Here's Tim pushing gravel up into that void.  Steve is on the left inspecting the first section of the first landing.  Before they finished filling the void, they pushed two blocks under the front of the landing to provide additional support.

Steve spent a lot of time getting the level of the first course of blocks perfect.  Everything else goes much faster if the foundation is correct.  Here's where they stopped Thursday as the rains moved in.

They will put pavers on top of the existing bricks on the top landing to finish that part of the project, but first they will have to address the fact that the existing landing is not quite level.

They've already laid out the foundation row for the front edge of the next landing down.  It will be a step down from the top of about five and a half inches.  We wanted three shallow steps rather than two of standard height.  The second landing will come out to where the grass is and will be about five and a half inches above the sidewalk.  That piece of sidewalk you see on the left will be cut away to make room for the final landing.

The new door is expected in about two weeks, so its arrival should coincide with the completion of the stonework.

This is not the final project we have in mind.  I you look again at the dock at the top of this post, you'll see how decrepit it is.  Kathy will design its replacement over the winter.  It will probably be a summer project, when the lake is at its lowest level.

Duckworthy Days

Yesterday morning the ducks of Hidden Lake assembled on our piece of shoreline and reminded me of why I so love where we live, and why I named our place "The Duckworthy Estate" on the day we moved into the house in 2010.  When I was a wee lad my family lived on the shore of what was called a "lake."  It was actually a dammed up stream that flowed through New Egypt, New Jersey.  My younger sister and I were not allowed to walk across the dam on the way to visit my grandparents.  We had to go an extra block into town and play it safe.

The "lake" was wide enough for small power boats to cruise short distances back and forth from the dam up to a narrow place where boating wasn't fun or possible.  My dad owned a canoe, so canoe rides through patches of lily pads on the lake are part of my memory of boyhood.  We passed an old "ice house" and my mom explained the old-time practice of harvesting blocks of ice in winter and packing the blocks with sawdust inside an ice house so there would be ice in warm months.

We fished with bamboo poles over the wire fence that surrounded our small yard.  This was catch-and-release style, catfish and some "sunnies."  Sometimes after supper Mom gave us pieces of bread to toss to the lake ducks.

I feel enchanted by the view of waterfowl cruising our small lake.

We usually have the sound of alto wind chimes in our life.  Here's the set I bought myself as a retirement present two years ago.  It hangs over our patio.

While I took this picture a pair of swallows flitted overhead.  I turned around to see what they were up to and noticed the nest they've built on a deck beam.

Out in the yard the clumps of blue Siberian irises we brought from Vermont have come into bloom.

The daylily season began for real on May first, when little yellow BITSY came into bloom.  That plant was a Father's Day gift almost twenty years ago.  Three other daylilies were in bloom in the back yard yesterday, all new arrivals a month ago.  Here is Jane Trimmer's DRAGONFLY DAWN.  It has been blooming on "Florida scapes" for several weeks.  Lately the appearance of the flowers has picked up as the roots have begun to establish themselves.

The eyezone is composed of several bands of color.  The Trimmers highly recommend this cultivar for breeding patterns.

Here is Jamie Gossard's PHANTOM WARRIOR, part of a small collection of Tet. spiders and unusual forms I assembled so that Kathy Bouman can explore the fun of hybridizing.

And here is Jane Trimmer's LAVENDER ECHOES, a large flower with a gray blue eye surrounding an applique pattern in the throat.  Very complex and quite pretty!

Yesterday Kathy learned how to collect pollen and freeze it in gel caps for future use.  If not exposed to prolonged heat or moisture, a gel cap of frozen pollen can be refrozen for subsequent use.  I have some frozen pollen that I've used for more than five years.  On the other hand, I've spoiled a gel cap of pollen in less than a minute by dropping it onto wet grass!

What I Want To Learn

As I ponder pictures of my seedlings with patterned blue or violet eyezones, there are things I wonder that I can only determine by making test crosses.  I suppose this is true of any trait, like plant habit, hardiness, ruffling, flat opening, or brilliant color.  

All the pictures in this post are my seedlings.  I keep wondering what it's useful to try to do or find out, as I can't do everything that comes to mind and I can't grow all the test crosses I have time to make.  So...I am keeping fewer yellow bridge plants but am still going to try to develop the ones that seem to me to have something distinctive to contribute in form or size.  I still want to see if I can get into the same ballpark as the yellows I buy to improve my seedling line.

I look at my patterned blue eyezones and the forms of the flowers those patterns are on, and I consider how to narrow my range of choices, which seem nearly infinite right now.  There are a couple of important avenues I think I should try.  Structurally, I should take my consistently arresting patterns on bridge seedlings to plants with excellent vigor and scape structure -- like Vertical Horizon, Point of Divergence, Articulate Matrix, Bridgeton Finesse, etc., working for clear background colors and flat, early openers.

In terms of design, I think I should cross complex-from-one-line X complex-on-a-different-line.

In March I must inspect all the keepers from Mysterious Eyes to see which look hardy and which look tender.  I'd love to grow Mysterious Eyes again, having lost it to this past winter, but if I come up with a hardier kid with complex pattern, you know I'll want to see how it breeds with several test crosses.

I might also want to increase the level of complexity by crossing to Water Drops.  Since I now have good seedlings from Thibodaux Tantalizer that resemble TT but contain additional recessive genes for blue eyes, I will want to cross those seedlings with patterned blue eyes to find out if I get complex results such as I got from taking TT to CAST YOUR NET, and I'll surely use TT all over the place one more time.

Quickly, this line of thinking can crowd out my interest in yellow, white, lavender, purple, and pink.  I have some nice, clear lavenders now, with nice branching and vigorous plants.  I'll want to keep working for larger lavender flowers with big white edges and a shimmering quality of color to make me have to dry my tears.

I'm not going to work on red flowers with lighter borders.  Unless someone comes up with such a flower with a true cherry ice cream background rather than rosy brown bag lunch color, I don't want to see them in my garden.  Even then, what would I do with them?  I would marvel.  That would be enough, just as I marvel at a wondrous double from David's hard work or the silvery lavenders of Steve or Curt.

Today I picked blossoms from five eyed varieties still blooming here.  KING JAMES and KING OF THE AGES on rebloom, ELISA DALLAS on rebloom, SAM ABELL on rebloom, and THIEVING MAGPIE, which is not eyed but is clear dark blue purple with a blue center.  I brought them home to show house guests, who ooohed and ahed, and explained why I was interested in trying a cross of the two biblical names with "king" in them.  But then I said that my favorite blossom is actually ELISA DALLAS.  The shape and color of the eye, relative to the shape and color of the flower, and the lively green in the throat all combine to thrill, rather then please, me.  Being a guy, I suppose I'm addicted to thrill.  You should see me drive!

When I imagine colors, I'm in a zone of thrill.  I want to be swept away with feminine mystery, allure, and willingness to dance. I want to express male boldness, the haughty insecurity of the Flamenco dancer, the man who plays a mariachi trumpet and the man who sells ice cream or balloons.  I want to express the eye for balance and rightness of my general contractor and the sense of oratory of my favorite Episcopal priest.

I want to make music with color.  I want to make love with form.  This art, for me, is not about grabbing your attention for five seconds of fame.  It is about winning your heart long-term, bordering on forever.  It is a form of courtship and flirtation.  

It's also an extension of friendship.  When I'm working with David and Mort's flowers, I think of David and Mort, and their arts.  When I'm with Melanie Mason's flowers, I recall the lightness and joy of her talks and her prose.  When I'm with Steve Moldovan's flowers, I think of the eye he developed.  My garden is a reminder of a circle of friends whose respect I want to earn and whose friendship I want to keep.  It is a zone of the highly personal and social aspect of horticulture and the nurture of living things.  Those who would steal from a garden have fallen from God's grace, cut themselves off from it, and are at risk.  Pray for the thief.  His act brings failure to the love force that drives life toward the good.