Joan
Shaw
'Annabelle' Hydrangea
border North of DragonGoose Farm Barn
Midsummer
and MidSummer
I've always considered the beginning of
July as midsummer. Here at DragonGoose Farm on the Utah-Idaho border,
it's generally hot and dry by then and not a little discouraging.
The 'Annabelle' hydrangeas are in full bloom (see above), the
hollyhocks, too, are beginning to bloom, and the lilies (Lilum spp.) and Daylilies (Hemerocallis spp.)
are starting
their two- to three-month show, but the joys of spring and summer, the
excitement of a new beginning, the balmy days and nights, the early
rains, are nevertheless over – the crocus,
winter aconite, and other early spring bulbs, the thousands of
daffodils, the tulips, and then the peonies, followed by the iris, and
then the wonderful culmination in June of the rose show.
Dulling everything down by July is looming on the near horizon – the
beginning of fall classes at the end of August for Alan, the Master of
DragonGoose Farm, and the never-ending revision job
of of the computer eningineering text he
first compiled and started using some years ago, Logic Circuit Design. The worry
about getting the text in tune with the latest technologies occurs with
depressing regularity some time after the Fourth of July. Right now
there's a Sword of Damocles
hanging somewhere near the ceiling of our study, directly
above Professor Shaw's computer.
How far away all this anxiety seemed in the bright and gentle
burgeoning of the roses' first bloom!
MidSummer
Now, MidSummer is something
altogether different. Centered upon the Summer Solstice and
celebrated on or closely after June 21, it's traditional in many parts
of the world as the culmination of the increasingly lengthening of days
– June
21st is the longest day of the year – and the
beginning of the days' waning until the shortest day of the year on
December 22. MidSummer has long been believed to be a magical time,
particularly MidSummer
Eve, when herbs picked at midnight were deemed to be particularly
potent. In fact, tarragon, chamomile, sweet woodruff, hyssop, lovage,
mint, chives, and other herbs are exceptionally fresh and delightful at
this time – if
not picked at midnight, picked early in the morning before the heat of
the day.
Countries
throughout Europe and Asia have sometimes week-long celebrations at
MidSummer, many of them named after St. John the Baptist whose birth,
after the widespread adoption of Christianity, is celebrated at that
time. The attempt of displacing pagan rites of untold centuries with
Christianity was not entirely successful, however, with the pagan rites
simply incorporated into the Christian. In Russia and the Ukraine, the
celebration was especially unrestrained, inspiring Modest Mussorgsky to
write his tumultuous Night on Bald
Mountain. Igor Stravinsky's ballet, Le
Sacre du printemps (The Rite
of Spring), incorporates similar themes of fertility, the
blessings and mysteries of water and fire, and the miraculous rebirth
of the earth.
Flowers through the Season
Here at DragonGoose Farm's gardens, the
same type of rebirth gives rise to the gentle pinks and reds of the
roses, for this is the high point of their bloom. And although many of
the roses here bloom off and on all during summer – for instance, the rose, 'Bonica' (shown above right) – the
sweetest and most luxiriant blooms are by far around the summer
solstice.
The lighter rose bloom of July and August is augmented by other
displays such as this Clematis
against the orchard fence (below left). This
plant is fifteen years old and up until the spring of 2005 had two
sister plants at each of the fence posts going east of it. The
gardeners, unfortunately, tore them out by the roots thinking, in all
innocence, that they were the dreaded field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) or
worse, bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamara),
both of which we have here in abundance.This was in early spring, when
only the dry stems were twined along the fence posts. It was a year
before I could think of their loss without weeping a bit because it was
unlikely that I would live long enough to see another such wild growth,
but ... time heals. Other Clematis
are now planted in their place. I wish them Godspeed, with an emphasis
on speed.
Incidentally,
here are three types of Clematis: 1)
those that flower from old stems, in which case pruning should not be
done until the plant finishes flowering, and then only on dead and
weakened stems; 2) those that flower on the previous season's ripened
stems, in which pruning of dead wood should be done carefully after
leaf buds begin to swell and can be seen; and 3) those that flower from
new growth, in which case the old stems not showing new growth should
be pruned down. In our area, Zones 4 and 5, this usually means that new
growth would generally appear mostly (many weasel words here!) as new
shoots out of the ground. The
Clematis shown to the left is a member of the first group, this
particular
plant reaching to over ten feet and blooming heavily on a mass of old
stems. Granted, before its leaves begin to show it does look like a
weedy blight on the landscape. Notice it's scrambling into the juniper
next to it and has fallen from its post – I
suspect from being a bit yanked two springs ago – that's
propped it up for the
past decade and a half.
We have several other Clematis growing in the garden. I started adding
them to the climbing roses after reading a book on Clematis and Rose
pairings (The Rose and the Clematis,
John
Howells) but it's been an ongoing battle keeping them from
being pulled out as weeds. Rose stems are pretty obvious (thorns for
instance). But Clematis stems are fragile and, again, look very much
like bindweed. Hope springs eternal though and I keep replacing them. A
plant I tucked into a long narrow bed of Rockspray Cotoneaster (Contoneaster
horizontalis) three springs ago managed to survive to
this spring, but a search for it around rose bloom time was
unsuccessful. Another plant paired with a 'Leontine Gervaise' climbing
rose several years ago is growing vigorously only because I begged the
weeders not to go anywhere near it. There are others in more obvious
spots – against a post on the shady south end of
the carport, for instance, surrounded by a heavy tree trunk protector,
and another against another post in the brick herb garden surrounded by
the same type of protector. These have survived, but they're young and
neither are flowering yet. Another that bloomed nicely last year I'm
pretty sure bit the dust last fall because I couldn't find a trace of
it this spring. I'd better get off this subject; I'm beginning to get
depressed.
And besides, the Clematis are finished now, replaced by some other
favorites, not the least of which are the many clumps of hollyhocks (Alcea rosea)
around this place – all
singles and all busy with both bees and hummingbirds. In fact, a couple
of years ago while trying to do some close up photographs of hollyhock
blossoms, I kept getting buzzed by hummingbirds, no doubt aggravated
about their feeding area being invaded by a human. A beautiful sight,
these tiny birds hovering around these tall plants, but with a sound
resembling a convention of large moths.
Now, during the very hottest part of the summer, it's more than
pleasant to contemplate the copse that we planted years ago after
reading Sarah Stein's Noah's Garden, Stein's plea for
restoring the ecology of our backyards and increasing wildlife habitat.
This copse, now duplicated by two other small "woodlands," has had
something like twelve years of growth. The Dwarf Alberta Spruce trees (Picea glauca
'Conica') lining the walk were the smallest possible potted
Albertas available, and the growth they now show are gratifying indeed.
These trees a dense and grow to about eight feet at maturity. They
don't need shearing to keep their conical shape and make wonderful
accents at corners and in the middle of a small bed of evergreens or
low perennials. We have one as an accent on the east end of our long
bed of roses on the northwest. It stands as a beacon of sorts somewhere
to the we
st and
behind a semi-circle of white 'Julia Renaissance' roses. Moreover, the
deer seem not to like them, if you're a gardener driven crazy by these
hungry beasts. Here at DragonGoose Farm, Spencer and his crew
constructed an electric fence around the entire blessed place – the
only thing that could guarantee the absence of deer damage. (If you're
at all interested in this perennial problem, you might want to read Garden Deer.
At the point of writing that piece we'd decided a very tall fence was
the only thing that would save our sanity. Spencer did an excellent job
of slipping the electric fence inbetween shrubbery so that it turned
out to be as unobtrusive
as possible along the roadside part of our hill, so it was
less painful than I'd expected.
Keep
cool, if at all possible,
Joan Katherine Shaw
July
2006
Photos
by Joan Katherine Shaw
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All contents copyright (c) 2000-2009 by Joan K. Shaw.
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