Hurrah for Prairie Plants

Illinois is pretty bleak this week as far as looking at the garden beds. It's cold walking around; I even painted the front porch stairs without getting very warm. But the tulips are opening as though it were a warmer spring, the muscari is kind of opening. I saw a tiny leaf yesterday of my pride and joy, the cimicifuga.

And wow! even in the dismal day, today that cimicifuga is taller than peonies, more than eighteen inches tall and with more than a dozen rising stalks, all well leafed. Unimaginable progress. Well, I should just call it cohosh, I guess; I'm just so stiflingly happy to have it; and I should admit there are two of them, and the "other" one, surrounded by daffodil leaves, is almost as tall, but much slimmer and not much leafed out. It'll catch up.

There's another prairie plant, that fake indigo, Baptisa, that hasn't even broken ground in the back garden, where this is its third year and last year again it didn't bloom. Just three stalks, leafed mildly. The other one, from the front garden, I moved to the oldest side bed last fall to see if it could do better because it wasn't even that far along. If the cohosh can do so well, maybe I should be praying more for the indigo?

And the other really nice guy, growing in the deep shadow of the north of the house, is the goatsbeard. Nicely up, leafed out, looking virile. Near it, that astrantia that didn't bloom last year, came up and leafed its little bit -- maybe this year I'll see it? Maybe the spot is too dark. The man that sold it felt that our Illinois summer demanded that it be in the dark, but I wonder. It's not a prairie dog.

But you should see black cohosh!

Even a Trillium Is Up

Illinois had a couple of remarkably warm weeks. Wear shorts if you can find where you put them last fall; wear sandals; give up on finding light shirts and buy a new one! Of course, now it's settled down to forecasts of storms and possible snow, and salesmen in Home Depot trying to remind people that it was too early for tender annuals are now trying frantically to get more delivered.

For two years, I've been trying to find a source for the burgundy-colored hen-and-chicken plants that are so easy to buy in Seattle. Finally I bought one of the ubiquitous plastic strawberry pots sold at all the supermarkets filled with purple H&C and brought it home and took 'em out, and put 'em in singly where I want them.

All those tulips I put in last year? The pink ones have already bloomed, and they're the ones I used as filler for so many spots all over, so they're very gratifying. As the early daffodils dropped, these pink blazers came on, and now more and more of the older tulips are open too. Actually, the colder weather doesn't hurt tulips at all. The two surviving stands of Christmas Rose are sturdy and spreading. The white ones were blazingly white and very early, and now they're green; the Oriental ones are purple, and they've gotten taller and taller after they bloomed, and paler, too, so they're pink and purple and a very healthy stand. The foetidus, though, may have died for good. I don't see any sign of it.

And between these two hellebore groups, to my great delight I find the trillium that I brought home from Joe's last year. Two big purply leaves. No bloom yet, but the colder and wetter weather should be wonderful for it!

I bought a copy of Troy and if the weather is really icky tomorrow, I'm going to sit down and study hunks.

Help Wanted

Dear me, I brought home the neatest little phone from Walgreens. What I wanted was the caller id, and it has so many other little functions, it's actually a telephone, a speaker phone, -- made of aluminum in China, ten dollars, just darling.

And I find it causes all the outgoing calls I want to make via modem or telephone to get one answer: "this line is out of service". I had a grievous hour before I actually diagnosed what was happening here and unplugged the darling little phone.

Help, help? Is there some way I can keep and use the thing (I do enjoy its structure) and neutralize it so it doesn't kill my whole connectibility to the world? What a strange way to kill, anyhow -- how does a phone manage to get every number I tried to be "out of service". ??

No, I haven't yet tried making an outgoing call on it. It's just staying unplugged for now.
Help, help?

Spring Comes On

The crocus have pretty much wilted, although the little iris last and last. The darker iris reticulata in back actually have silver-white markings. Daffodils have started opening. The ones in the back garden have been there since Jim and I went to Las Vegas. I did cut, a white one and two yellows, and a piece of the neighbor's forsythia that's on the lot line, because we are expecting bad weather that hasn't actually happened.

And the scilla that I thought would be a month away -- a couple have opened. Lots of periwinkle, and the GLory of the Snow, even one old one out in the grass.

I took the Christmas lights off the lilac bush without losing any buds. Maybe the lilac would have enjoyed having them turned on while it buds, keep it warm?

Little Iris

April is a wonderful time to look at tiny little iris. In that largish raised bed under the linden tree, all the little iris reticulata are blooming. They start out very very close to the ground but daily their stems get a bit taller, as if they're lifting their blue or purple heads to look out at passers-by. They smell good.

The little iris have markings, like gold on the purple, bright yellow on the light blue ones. Before the hail the other day, I cut one, with some little greenery, and had it inside to enjoy in that frail little glass vase I bought with Alex at the Naperville fair.

Sniffing it inside surprised me, the fragrance lasted so many days.

There are bright little yellow crocus with them, and one or two chionodoxa.

I put in blue scilla along the driveway last year but they won't show for another month, I guess. Here we only have big crocus, even Ladykiller (still!) and the yellow aconite. I have the iris in front because I loved them in back, and the older ones are still a more vivid purple, more robust, and in bigger bunches. Just blazing away.

Those old First Crocus by the side of the house in the sun still come up, big and first. I ought to get a whole bunch more next fall and stick them in with all that periwinkle, why have just one yellow and one blue for First?