Whirled Piece: Ginger or Mary Ann? Julia or Lucetta?

Costus pictus, spiral ginger

The ginger that does grow
In tropical garden isle
Makes its way onto the blog
And so the garden file

It traveled here all potted up
Last year from lakeside yard
It grew but didn't bloom 'til now
A spiraling upwards guard

With gaze that grows from inward out
To focus on a whirled
Piece on Earth, on entwined fates allowed
To mingle here, so gradually unfurled.

Hedychium coronarium, butterfly ginger

JULIA: What is't that you took up so gingerly?

LUCETTA: Nothing.

JULIA: Why didst thou stoop, then?

LUCETTA: To take a paper [blog] up that I let fall.

JULIA: And is that paper [blog] nothing?

LUCETTA: Nothing concerning me.

JULIA: Then let it lie for those that it concerns...

(from William Shakespeare's The Two Gentleman of Verona, Act I, scene ii)

*******************************************************

I never dreamed I would become such a ginger gardener. But who can resist the tropical allure of these beauties? They grow so effortlessly, with so little care and attention, quite unlike a blog, I'm afraid. I never dreamed I would become such a "gingerly" blogger. If a blog is let go, allowed to drop out of sight and mind, it might just die on the vine, so to speak. And the entwined fates (faithful readers/followers/thinkers) will stop mingling here and remain unfurled. Impressions either never arrive or quickly leave, unseen and unspoken.

If you're wondering what Ginger or Mary Ann have to do with this whirled piece, blame SAM. When he saw the ginger unfurling its flower bracts, he suggested that I ask the question. Are you a Ginger or Mary Ann? Gilligan's Island fans will know what I'm talking about. You might even remember dramatic Ginger as Ophelia in this episode. There, now. Shakespeare>Ginger>Tropical Landscaping>Gilligan's Island. Everything comes together in this whirled piece. Oh. What about Julia or Lucetta? Read the play and let me know what you think.

But Soft! What Twilight Garden?

Peanut by twilight garden

"But soft! what [Twi]light [Garden] through yonder window breaks?"

The gardener softly shuts off the light and out of doors her way she makes.

Daylight fades and night begins to fall but just before it does,






The gardener takes the cap from off the camera lens and blows away the Peanut fur and fuzz,

'Cause camera obscura is not the tack she wants to take
as flowers show their peak.

The gardener's figure softly hides in twilight's cloak,
and softly does she sneak

To savor and to archive twilight's bloom for future garden plan.
Whilst present, pleasant, daytime life is fat and full and may be whipped up cream,

"O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard,
Being in night, all [that] this is [we've learned from life thus far may be nothing]
but a dream..."

(Words in quotes, it's true, are gathered from bits and pieces of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet,
but those in brackets and all the rest come from Walk2Write, direct to you, via blog and Internet.)

Schwarmerei or Wrought Irony?

It might not look like it here, but Peanut the cat is exhibiting a severe case of Schwarmerei ("extravagant enthusiasm," the losing word in the 2012 National Spelling Bee). She is usually more demonstrative, but it's about 6 p.m. in this picture, and her action has run down for the day, I'm sorry to say.

She prefers a little morning light to be shed on her behalf. I'd say it's preferable to what she sheds on our behalf. Cat hair is everywhere to be found on the new tile floor. But it blends in quite well with the new color scheme, don't you think?

SAM chose the flooring, and it's no surprise to me why he picked this particular color and style: Now that he's working from home, he and I share the cleaning chores--it's so easy to overlook those hair balls lurking underfoot...

and there's a piece of picture sandstone placed prominently on the great room wall near the front door. That piece of rock is not the only geological feature in this house.

SAM's rock garden has outgrown its former, more humble home (seen here and in the second pic in this post, way at the back, where it holds my German china).

SAM is not particularly Schwarmereic when it comes to gardening outside, but he did design the tropical garden where we buried all of that exhausted cardboard.

It's funny how things have turned out: I'm now working away from home, building my massage practice. SAM's become quite adept at garden design and cleaning the house, among other things. The rocks have a nicer home than my china. Age before beauty, I guess.

Burying the Past--A Cardboard Box Base for a Tropical Garden

"We were in April then: the weather was sweet and warm, the grass as green as showers and sun could make it..." (from Nelly's account of Heathcliff's last days above ground in Wuthering Heights)

Life grows sweeter when a difficult past is given a proper burial. We certainly hope that's the case with this new tropical style garden we are constructing in the backyard. Cardboard boxes from many moves over the past several years have been laid to rest as a base. It's a little eco-friendly trick I learned from working with the Gardening Friends of the Big Bend on the Demonstration Garden at NFREC in Quincy, Florida. The cardboard helps prevent or at least slows the growth of weeds, especially when it's covered with pine straw and other mulch. I prefer recycling cardboard to spending a lot of money on expensive ground fabric.

Secret Aging Man did the dirty work of removing the sod so that I could arrange the plants, lay the cardboard, and spread pine straw and cypress mulch to cover the whole bed. The triple-trunk palm was left by the former tenants. I'm not sure what kind of palm it is, but I have learned it's good to keep some distance between it and my skin. Another thorny plant! It serves to replace a large windmill palm that the tenants moved from the front yard and subsequently killed, either by neglect or the shock of moving it. We burned those palm remains along with some other yard debris a couple of nights ago.

Rain is falling as I write this post, washing new ashes and old regrets deep into sandy soil. It nourishes and settles the new plants we've added to our tropical garden here in subtropical Northwest Florida.

Happy Earth Day 2012!

'Get a Life!'

We now live in a tree house!

"Get a life!" Early on Saturday afternoon, these words rang out from the property across the street. I was on the front porch showing Daughter my new plant acquisitions. I do like that word better than "purchases" for some reason. Maybe it's because it doesn't cause someone else's eyebrows or blood pressure to go up. We won't mention here who that someone else is. Anyway, the "acquisitions" came home with me from a tropical plant workshop at NFREC that morning. Get a life? Who, me? Neighbor lady--that I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet but hear yelling fairly often--do you suppose I have nothing better to do than take pictures of plants and get all excited about adding more of them to the collection on the porch? You have no idea...

It could be that the cat generates an unfavorable impression of us. Peanut does tend to irritate the dogs across the street. She's free to roam, and they're not, at least not very often. Not that she ever does wander off. There's a chance she would miss some of the excitement around here.

I spotted this beauty, Hymenocallis 'Tropical Giant,' while helping move plants from the shade house at NFREC to the main building. There were quite a few pots to shuffle in order to get ready for the plant sale after the workshop. After helping clean up in the kitchen after the event, I was glad to see this plant still available for purchase. Four dollars seemed like a reasonable price to pay for such a stellar member of the Amaryllis family. The proceeds of the sale of this plant and the other ones we shuffled go to Gardening Friends of the Big Bend, an organization which supports NFREC's research efforts and organizes events like the workshop. Do you suppose being active in that kind of group qualifies one for Getting a Life? 



Hymenocallis 'Tropical Giant'



Of course, I didn't bring my camera to take pics of the speakers, the beautiful flower arrangements designed by some of the more creative volunteers, or the many and varied plants for sale. I did, however, take copious notes of the speakers' presentations. Click on the pic below if you're interested in reading some of them.

One of the workshop presenters is a renowned ginger expert, Dave Skinner, who lives right here in Tallahassee. A retired state employee, he has his own website, GingersRus, dedicated solely to the many species of ginger, and he travels around the world scouting out and collecting new specimens.  



Ginger Costus pictus 'Red Stem Form'



Mr. Skinner had his own plants for sale after the workshop, and I decided to add a couple of them to the ever growing collection of potted plants on our front porch. They did "cost us" a bit more than the GFBB's plant selections. I've come to the conclusion that it's not healthy to be a cheapskate all of the time. Gingers are fairly hardy in this zone, but I don't want to take any chances with this investment. The past couple of winters have been especially severe, and who knows what surprises await us for this next one? 



Ginger Costus productus



I hope the 'Red Stem Form' gets a pretty flower bract like this one, but I won't be too disappointed. The spirally arranged leaves of the Costus gingers are enough to keep me fascinated. It doesn't take much to entertain me. Maybe the neighbor lady is right...



Malvaviscus arboreus 'Dwarf Pink' Turk's Cap



I was glad that NFREC's own Dr. Gary Knox talked a little about his work with tropical plants. He offered visitors a tour of the display gardens around the main building to give them an idea of what kinds of plants do well in this region. Hibiscus plants have always been a favorite of mine, but the kind that most nurseries sell are meant for real tropical climates. It's nice to know that there are hardy varieties we can grow right here like this Dwarf Pink Turk's Cap. According to this Floridata article, it's better suited for Zone 9 or higher, but it will grow and bloom in Zone 8. Even if frost nips it back, it's still fine underground and will send up new growth the next spring. Blooms might appear a little later in the summer than usual.

The other speakers besides Mr. Skinner included Hayes Jackson, an Extension Agent from Alabama who described his experience with a number of plants suitable for "tropicalesque" gardening. What does that mean exactly? According to Mr. Jackson:

"It's a landscape with a tropical feel to it."

"It's the utilization of tropical plants with bold textures and colors."

"It's the result of an overwhelming need to recreate a tropical resort in a climate not necessarily ideal for growing tropical plants."

Given the weather that many parts of the country have endured these past few winters, it's not unreasonable to expect that most people wouldn't mind escaping the harshness of winter to spend some time in a tropical resort, real or imaginary.



Secret Aging Man, a true Florida "afishionado"



While various gardening aficionados were spending time on Saturday morning learning about tropical landscaping, other "afishionados" were busy getting hooked (again) by their own particular passion. It's not unreasonable to expect people (especially those married to each other for a really l--o--n--g time) to have some different interests in life. I just wish I knew how to share that idea (politely) with the lady across the street. Do you think the offer of a few fish or--even better--a dinner invitation would help?