A slave to the Goddess Flora shares his garden adventures.
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Although this could very well be a picture of me finding a new treasure at a favorite nursery, it's actually an illustration by David Catrow for a children's book called Plantzilla.
Warning: The following images contain graphic depictions of plant death and may not be suitable for all viewers.
After arriving home on Thursday evening, I took the dogs outside and saw that the musa basjoos, whose pseudostems I'd hoped would live through our recent cold snap, made it quite clear that they had not survived.
Usually the stems remain upright through the winter because the leaves are fairly dry and light. However, this season, there was still a bit of heavy green foliage on the plants before the freeze, too much for the compromised stems to hold. Down the 15 foot mass of soaked leaves and stems crashed making a big pile of mush.
I worked a few leaves away from the camellia and rhododendron they were crushing. The weight actually broke a bamboo stake that was supporting the camellia . The banana has died to the ground before but has never collapsed in such a dramatic manner in the course of a day.
This stuff is wet, slippery and slimy, resembling snot covered fish guts. (Lovely image, yes?) The lovely bonus of this slimy mess is that it's all connected by strong fibers for which the plant is grown which makes the clean u[ that much more special. There's enough here to fill a couple of compost bins. I'll chop up as much as I can and leave it in situ to decompose, the rest will go to the compost bin where it breaks down surprisingly quickly. There is some hope that the stems beneath the breaks might hold up and give some additional starting height next spring. I suppose the good news is that I won't be putting off the banana clean up like I usually do and after doing it wonder why I didn't do it sooner because it opens up an interesting view.
What a difference a few days can make!
Or a few weeks.
That's the roof of our garage on the left side of the picture. Fortunately the banana will come back in the spring but it will take it a couple of years to reach this height again.
I don't have the heart to go check on the Melianthus major quite yet. O.K. all of you who've just been through this cold snap, do you have any damage to report yet? Bring out your dead!
We've had a nice stretch of clear weather which means that the night temperatures have been in the upper twenties/lower thirties (F) which is chilly for us. For those of you in cold climate areas, you may laugh uproariously now. Go ahead, we'll wait...
In my garden, there has not been the beautiful sparkling frost that I've seen in some areas on my short commute but the temperatures have taken their toll nonetheless. On Saturday, I wandered outside to see how things were doing.
It would seem that Musa basjoo is a little burned on top but the lower leaves are still green.
I'll miss those lazy green sails that would catch every breeze and sway ever so gently. The Persicaria at it feet is bent on world domination and may just be removed next spring along with several others in various parts of my garden.
There's a smaller clump of M. basjoo in a more protected area which has escaped damage for now.
I didn't venture out to the parking strips where the tetrapanax are/were blooming. They're surrounded by concrete/asphalt and the warmth of cars parked next to them sometimes gives a little protection. However the tetrapanax "weeds" (they've been removed several times- I gave up) inside the garden gates have had their last green days for this season.
Zantedeschia aethiopica 'White Giant' looks pretty sad. A once huge clump of tropical looking foliage has been reduced to this.
The Ensete ventricosums are in the totally toast category. I decided not to bring store them in the basement this winter. For some reason this year they were very slow to recover. I may replace one of them next year.
Or maybe I'll take this one inside. Notice that the Pelargonium "Palace Gem" whose foliage I'm crazy about is still looking perky. come to think of it, so is the foliage of that cordyline shoved in the same pot. Hmmm.
The glorious warm-colored part of autumn is over and things are beginning to look bare. I welcome the change, the cleaning that winter will bring but still wish that winter didn't have to come so soon.
From the Opera Vanessa, libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, music by Benjamin Britten comes the aria "Must the Winter Come so Soon." Vanessa sings of a harsher winter than what we in the PNW experience but I always think of this aria as winter approaches.
Must the winter come so soon?
Night after night I hear the hungry deer
wander weeping in the woods,
and from his house of brittle bark hoots the frozen owl.
I suppose that with several nights dipping down into the low 20's, the fantasy of fall gently flowing on until spring this year must be abandoned. Father time finally let little jack frost outside to play.
The frost is kind of pretty and it's sure nice to see the sun again. (O.K. I'm clinging to anything even closely resembling enjoyment of the cold.)
How beautiful to have the sun illuminate Jack's intricate stitchery of frost on leaves. (I'm not buying it either.)
For those of you in California, Arizona, etc. experiencing near-record cold temperatures, my thoughts are with you especially if you're trying to save your crops!
I hope you're keeping warm!
Heavy sigh. I was hoping that the musa basjoos might just escape heavy frost this year but my delusion is clearly over! This is the longest that they have remained green. Oh well, it was a good run and if we don't get temperatures below 19 degrees F, their pseudostems will maintain their height.
