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I’ve been away from the garden for most of this month, which explains my lack of posts. But before I left, I snapped a few photos one evening of interesting texture in the garden. Here’s a mini sampling.
Up next: posts of some amazing gardens I visited during my weeklong trip to New England for the Perennial Plant Association Conference. Now, to go slog through the hundreds of pictures I took…
Chanticleer has had some nice rains recently.
It’s really summer here. As I walked the garden this morning, I was remembering what things looked like earlier in the summer and spring. The Entry Garden is one of the areas I helped transition from the Spring to Summer display with Jonathan Wright, the gardener in charge of that area. When the spring blooms began to lose their excitement in the first week of June, we spent two days ripping them all out and planting the tropicals. This shows a bit of that transformation.
In the spring mix:
- mustards
- snapdragons
- columbines
- foxglove
- bronze fennel
- blue fescue
- purple kale
- stock
- Corydalis
- daffodils
- Ranunculus
- Ornithogalum
The summer mix:
- bananas (Musa spp.)
- bromeliads
- pineapples
- elephant ears (Colocasia)
- canna lilies
- cape fuchsia (Phygelius aequalis ‘Purple Prince’)
- and more!
What a weekend! My great friends Junita and Louise came to visit me this weekend for the best July weekend ever (I know it’s only the first one so far). They escaped the hustle and bustle of New York City to spend some quality time in the “country” with me. The goal was ultimate relaxation with only two conditions: 1) swim in the Chanticleer pool, and 2) visit Terrain.
The priorities of the weekend included cooking a lot and being in bathing suits as much as possible. So, we made lots of sangria and cooked with as much fresh produce as possible, especially berries. Here are some of the weekend delights:
- Strawberry-rhubarb-orange sangria (with Prosecco)
- Watermelon-cantaloupe-mint sangria (with Sauvignon blanc)
- Tomato, basil, and mozzarella salad
- Deviled Eggs with Basil Aioli and Capers
- BLTs, Asian cabbage slaw, and peach-blueberry cobbler
- Chipotle Pork Cheeseburgers and grilled corn on the cob
- Blueberry Lemonade with Ginger and Basil
In addition to all the eating, we managed to find time to stroll the garden, watch the red-tailed hawk, go to Terrain (more in the next post), eat ice cream at La Michoacana, roll down the big grassy hill, and watch fireflies. Best weekend ever!
Maybe it’s all the Kanye I’m listening to, but I got to believe that I’m living the good life. And, today was exceptional. I think I’ve decided that I’m ready for the country life (or at least small town). Because I don’t know if I could see all this in the concrete jungle: crazy caterpillars, bullfrogs, foxes, fireflies, and a big night sky full of stars.
First I came across a pipevine swallowtail caterpillar while working in the Asian Woods this afternoon. It was really startling - armored in a leathery coat with orange spots and devilish horns - and it lay kind of comatose on a bed of moss. Looking to the robust pipevine growing up a tree, I saw more of them, clinging to the undersides of the heart-shaped leaves. These particular caterpillars only feed this one type of vine (Aristolochia species), so I felt quite lucky to witness the feeding frenzy.
Later, I took an outdoor yoga class at Mt. Cuba, which was led by my friend Erin. We practiced our postures by the upper pond, where our soundtrack was a waterfall and an occasional crooning bullfrog. While reaching and balancing, I looked to the canopy of trees above me, and the clearing of sky in the middle. During twists, I gazed out on their trunks, some illuminated by the soft afternoon light, and others in shade. After the class, we guided ourselves on mini-tour, stopping along the meadow to see what was blooming. Pockets of saturated color dotted the lush green hillside, where Stokes asters, butterfly weed, oxeyes, liatris, and echinacea were in full bloom.
Driving back from Delaware later in the evening, a wily fox dashed jauntily in front of my car. And when I finally arrived home, the woods lit up with the sporadic greeting of a thousand fireflies. I looked up as if to ask how I could be so blessed, only to find a sky shining bright with the constellations I know so well.
Welcome to the good life!
Summer harvest
There have been a lot of cruciferous veggies coming out of the garden these days! We’ve been eating a steady diet of kohlrabi, kale, and cabbage, and now broccoli. I had to prematurely harvest my little garden last week, because excavators came to start digging the foundation of a future greenhouse. So, I raced out at 7 a.m. to collect my baby cabbages and broccolis, armloads of kale, and one single beet. My cabbages looked big and beautiful, but the heads only ranged in size from golf balls to tennis balls. Ah well.
Later that day, Doug Croft harvested more kale and cabbage from his garden. So, with the bounty of veggies leftover this weekend, I made kale chips and a simple cabbage salad (recipe below). My recipe called for candied almonds, but I didn’t have any almonds lying around, so I made a simplified version. I never knew how much sweeter home-grown cabbage was! Though I had to fight off the cabbage worms from chewing through them all, I’ll definitely be planting cabbage again when I have the space again.
Simple Cabbage Salad
- 1 head of green cabbage (or 3 baby heads), shredded or julienned
- 3 green onions, thinly sliced
- 2 Tbsp. sugar
- 1/4 c. slivered almonds
Cook almonds and sugar in a pan over low heat until sugar melts and begins to stick to the almonds. Set aside to cool.
Mix cabbage and onions, and then add cooled almonds. Toss with dressing below.
Dressing:
- 1/8 c. rice vinegar
- 1/8 c. olive oil
- 1/8 tsp. salt
- garlic (optional)
More Garden Tours
This week was the exhausting APGA (American Public Gardens Association) conference in Philly. Chanticleer hosted an amazing party on Wednesday night, which was later coined “Chantastic” by the attendees, and we all worked really hard getting ready for it and cleaning up afterward. So, after a lot of sweating and not a lot of sleep, it was a treat to attend a garden party hosted by someone else. That someone being Andrew Bunting, the curator of the Scott Arboretum. I went with the two other Chanticleer interns and my dinky old camera. My photos don’t do his garden justice, but they offer a hint of the magic.
It was a really hot week, and the humidity was typical of a the July nights I grew up with in DC, except it was June and not DC. So, you get the picture - it was hot and muggy. Upon arriving at the entrance garden, the heat just seemed to melt away. Cool blues and greens washed over me as I made my way to the front door. Amsonia billowed and spilled out over the bluestone entrance patio; big bluestem grass stood feathery in front of a smokebush; and Rudbeckia maxima picked up the glaucous blue of the Amsonia’s new growth in the distance. The front door color and trim around the windows beautifully complimented the hues in the garden and created a soothing backdrop to better see the garden’s dynamic textures, shapes, and subtleties of color.
The back yard was a different world entirely. Off the back of the house stood a summer house, nestled into the garden and appearing like a sort of historic stable with ruinous and crumbling stone walls around it. A collection of agaves clustered together in a gravel seating area off one of the bays of the summer house. I walked back deeper into the garden to a blue picket fence surrounding a quaint vegetable garden and guarded by a bespectacled sculptural monkey. Rounding back to a property line I never found, I came upon a pond, and just beyond it a window looking out on a scene that looked familiar. And then I surprised myself, because it was not a window but a mirror, and I was the familiar figure in the scene.
The garden was full of surprises and wonder, and we encountered one last surprise as we were leaving. It was a Taxus hedge that appeared to close off the garden. But, as we drew nearer, it became two shrubs, offset to appear as one, and we walked through it to depart.
I’ve imagined gardens in my dreams before, and I think this was one of them.
Look at this moth!
Coming home weary from Philly last night, my friend Erin and I came upon this strange moth outside the train station. It seemed a bit stunned, positioned against a wall in a highly trafficked area. After some googling today, I learned that it was a royal walnut moth (Citheronia regalis). What a gorgeous thing it is!
The website Butterflies and Moths of North America told me all that I now know about the royal walnut moth. They live really fast lives. No, not the kind with flashy cars, booze, and drugs. But this kind of life: “Adults emerge in late evening and mate the following evening. Females begin laying eggs at dusk the next day…Eggs hatch within 6-10 days, and the caterpillars (known as the Hickory Horned Devil) feed alone.” Whoa.
Have you ever seen one?
Orange!
What a surprise it was to find an island of orange in the Gravel Garden this morning, among a sea of green at Chanticleer. I was out the door by 6:30 a.m., because it was perfect morning for a walk with my camera - the sky was overcast and everything was coated in rain drops from the heavy rain last night. After pulling on my muck boots, I made a bee line to the Ruin and Gravel Gardens, attempting to dodge the swarms of gnats and mosquitoes, but they were fierce.
I first caught a glimpse of a peach colored poppy at the Ruin, and then turning a corner, I came upon the shock of orange butterfly weed. One of my favorite plants, it’s a sign that summer has arrived, and a reminder of my favorite prairies in Minnesota. The warm oranges in the Gravel Garden offset the cool purples and silvers of the lavender and thyme along the steps, whose fragrance I took in as I brushed past them.
