The Pleasure Dome

The garden pod is at its best right now. Everything is in full bloom and ready for transplanting outdoors. I've repotted them all so they won't have to slow down for having cramped roots. The poet's jasmine is in full bloom again; the huge gardenia standard with the braided trunk burst open two days ago. After a dreadful winter of aphids and spider mite and whitefly, the insect forces have finally succumbed to a manageable level. Pyrethrins don't work at all for me any more; the insects chortle and frolic as they bathe and breaststroke in insecticide. More effective is organic clove and thyme oil, and it makes the greenhouse smell delightful when the spices mingle with gardenia and jasmine. But better than that is cold water, sprayed on the undersides of the leaves where pests hide. So simple, so beneficial, so nonpoisonous. Once I got the hose hooked up things started looking up for all my plants.

I love going down to the greenhouse to clip and prune and tidy things up, to water and sniff and breathe and banish the bad guys. Bill bought the little thermopane dome at a garden show years ago; it was a prototype display model that never went into production. Pity that. I count the Garden Pod as the best (material) gift anyone's ever given me. If you've always wanted a little greenhouse, just....DO IT. You only live once.

Bill took some nighttime photos of me in the greenhouse, reveling in out-of-season blossoms and fragrance, that bring to mind Coleridge's Kubla Khan, which I excerpt here, minus its second stanza which is all about war:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!...

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves:

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 't would win me

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

that's the huge poet's jasmine bush at my feet. Now imagine that with hundreds of blossoms, all stinkin' up the night air...all dome photos by Bill Thompson III

A Room Crammed with Summer

The Rex begonia "Looking Glass," from Ohio's own Glasshouse Works. Well, I got a plant there about five years ago, and this is probably its great-great-great-great-great grandchild.


It's only 9' across, maybe 12' high, not a lot bigger than a phone booth, but there is no other 9 x 12' space on the planet that brings me as much happiness as the Garden Pod.

I am a sentimental sort and seeing my plant friends die with the frost undoes me, even as I know I cannot haul them all inside for the winter. They wouldn't like it, I wouldn't like it, and the bugs would love it. If you scrutinize the photo above, you will see that I made an exception for the huge pot of Fuchsia "Gartenmeister Bonstedt" on the greenhouse floor. I just could not let it die. Later on in the winter, when it's loaded with whitefly, I'll leave it out in the snow for the polar bears, and nurture the two cuttings, already blooming, I've got going. But for now, it's got a home. This was the only plant I found for sale in 2008, and I found it many miles from my home near Dayton, and carried it over in the greenhouse. I didn't find it in '09, which mystifies me, since it is, in my and the hummingbirds' opinion, the best fuchsia in the universe. I have just finished a painting of it, in fact.

So I take cuttings in August and sometimes I take cuttings in October if the first August batch didn't root. My garden friend Nancy turned me on to vermiculite as a cutting medium and boy, what a difference. Vermiculite is free of the myriad molds and bacteria that plague potting soil, so cuttings have a fighting chance of throwing out roots before they rot. Everything I tried to root in the last October cutting harvest succeeded! Uh oh. I am definitely going to run out of room this winter. Here's one of the geranium cutting groups:
Who needs a 10-foot high red mandevilla, loaded with aphids, when you can start a little cutting like this one?
How dear of it to bloom. The nondescript looking plant in the white pot below it is the world's tiniest fuchsia, which just burst into teeny pink bloom today. Its flowers are no longer than a grain of rice, but perfect and sweet. It is a fussy plant that likes the greenhouse best. It threatens and threatens to die all summer long, as fuchsias will, and burgeons as soon as it gets in the moist heat of the Pod.

Abutilon megapotamicum, a mallow from Africa that I love. All my cuttings rooted, uh oh. Big plant. Better be giving some away.

Geranium "Bolton," developed in a town next door to sister Barbara's in Massachusetts.
One of two variegated bougainvilleas, zany plants that sulk outdoors all summer (not hot enough!) and bloom like crazy all winter in the greenhouse. Just when I need them most!
A new hibiscus, one I saw at the grocery store late this summer and snapped up like a horticultural crocodile. Now I need a big ol' hibiscus like a hole in the head but that COLOR. Please. Tangerine. Never seen it before, hadda have it. I do love my mallows.

It makes me smile and holler. Meanwhile, Mary Alice the hibiscus tree is taller than I am, with a 2" thick trunk, and she's in the living room. A cutting of Mary Alice is blooming for the first time today in the greenhouse. Nancy rooted it for me, in case Mary Alice goes south. And so it goes, on and on. Plants are banks of precious DNA, which you can split off and propagate and downsize and start over indefinitely. That's one of the reasons I find gardening so satisfying.

It's probably illegal to propagate this brand-spanking new tangerine hibiscus. No kidding, plant growers are patenting everything as they bring it out. Pah. I am a notorious scofflaw where plant propagation is concerned. Come and get me, lock me up. A plant this good should be spread around.

Time to water! Gotta go! Nothing like a warm, humid greenhouse on a dreary winter day. If you've even been thinking about getting yourself one, just do it. And you, too, can face the first frost without dread, and cackle when you open the door on your little room crammed full of summer.

The Lucky Day

I know. It's been a long time since I posted Chet. Here's a fresh picture for you, of Chetty at the top of the tower stairs, hoping to get a lift down. You may be sure he got both a kiss and a lift, a hug and a squeeze. He saves me every day, my little carved ebony lovepuppy.

I woke up at 3:30 AM yesterday morning, and my nasty old brain revved right up and said GET GOING YOU HAVE WORK TO DO and my body said WAAAAH WHY WHY WHY and my brain answered JUST BE GLAD IT'S NOT 2:30 I COULD DO THAT, YOU KNOW! AND NEXT TIME I JUST MIGHT! HERE, HAVE SOME MORE HORMONES SOME ESPECIALLY CRAZY ONES!

Can you just stop with the hormones? I am a sane, productive person trapped in the body of a cackling madwoman. Trying to claw my way out of this pod.

So I stayed up for five more hours, to get Bill off to Boston and Phoebe on the bus at 6 AM and Liam on the bus at 7:45 and I fed everybody and made sure they had all their stuff and at 8:30 I crawled back into bed supposedly to edit my manuscript but we all know that lying in bed with a couple of pounds of paper on one's chest is the surest soporific there is. The sun was streaming in on my face and Chet was warm and satiny and snoring gently by my side and my arm was draped over him and two hours just flew away while the world waited and life got better. Bluebirds were chattering and singing outside the whole time.

When I woke up I went out into the greenhouse which I had filled up for the winter only the day before

and I gazed at my plants and breathed and was thankful for this wonder, this best gift ever, this little summer-crammed room, saving my soul even as things are dying outside

for those big shrubs on the top shelf are gardenia and poet's jasmine, the things I need to survive winter...and oh I must take some heliotrope cuttings today!! I always forget!

There are hibiscus and begonia

and many geranium cuttings, rooted and just waiting to burgeon. There is lobelia seeded into every pot, already abloom. So we will have plenty of whitefly this winter.

And I walked out into the backyard and saw a bird hopping on the ground and thought, that doesn't seem right, that it should hop like that with me nearby...
so I drew closer and darned if it wasn't a male bluebird who couldn't fly.

He scuttled into the grass and hid silently but I dug him out for his exam.

and he proved to be surely the fattest most beautiful bluebird on the planet. From the shrill of his voice when I picked him up I could tell he was born this year, perhaps on our place. His wings check out, no breaks or even bruises and he's fat as butter but he can't fly so I will give him food and time and love.
and later on when he's rested up and trying his wings, a screened flight tent and we will see what all that does for him.

His two companions keep circling the yard looking for him and calling and calling. They saw me catch him and take him inside and I swear they followed me around the yard all day, calling disconsolately. I told them I'd get him back to them as soon as I could.

It was a lucky day all around. Lucky for him, lucky for me.