I read about gardeners like master gardener and author Pat Welsh, and this wonderful young lady, and this guerilla gardener and agave propagation genius, (don't miss the propagation and bulbils pages) and I think: why even bother? I'll never be that talented, that knowledgeable, that dedicated. I'll just have to keep learning and working, and hope I'm 1/10th of the way there someday. Sigh. Back to work!
Abe Darby Update
Foliage: beautiful!
Flowers: toast! Abe don't like hot weather. He bloomed again just in time for the heat wave:
Abe had beautiful flowers and horrible foliage this spring, now it's time for beautiful foliage and horrible flowers. The heat has done bad things to the most delicate roses, but other plants have been managing. The mailbox roses look good. Counter-clockwise from top right, 'Day Breaker', 'Top Notch', 'Bill Warriner', 'Eureka', and 'Trumpeter':
Intense July sun ruins Abe, but filtered by an Alocasia leaf, is transformed into something like stained glass:
Ahh, that Abe...he's on the watch list here-finally replaced the floppy scrawny grafted Abe , with an own-root from Heirloom , but don't see much improvement. And in fact the Fabulous First Flower of the year, which has been his reprieve just when I am about to wield the shovel did not happen. I see a future looming ahead without him. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteWatch out, just as you go out there with a shovel there will be one more absolutely perfect flower...and I thought 'Evelyn' was fussy...
ReplyDeletelol,Evelyn is on the hit list too !
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about some of the roses. The flowers on many of mine bloomed just in time for the heat wave. Toast.
ReplyDeleteI have 'Evelyn' and she is not terribly fussy. At least, not my fussiest! Her flowers are fried but there is lots of new growth. And those flowers . . . when they are not burnt up . . . what outstanding flowers! The fragrance is the best.
I have some own-root from Heirloom but mine don't seem to be happy. Two years in the ground and they barely grow. They don't die, they stay almost static. I just don't know.