Cotton

The only way I can describe cotton flowers is: Tattooed. The petals are a freckled complexion, and the husk they emerge from is an ink-speckled scroll.

Matt brought two seedlings home from a friend at the farmers market in the spring. We are well north of the cotton belt, but of course growing zones and geography do not stop the inquiring mind.

The seedlings waited in static perfection under the grow lights, forever. We planted them, and they went out of sight, out of mind, dwarfed by peppers and eggplants. Then one day a flower peaked out, and we were entranced. I did not get any pictures of the pink ones, probably because I was chasing the woodchuck with a pitchfork. Oh well.

I would have loved to see the pods split and the cotton poof out, but our season is apparently too short, even when it's long. So oh well, again.

Weeks after peppers reached their knee-high potential and eggplants slumped under weighty fruit production, the cotton stood up tall, with straight strong stems. It was purple and cream and green, and sort of built like a praying mantis, with slim angles and soldered joints.

Happy Halloween

This is me, dressed up as a polyphemus larva!

Just kidding. Yesterday, Matt found this caterpillar on our hike. It is Antheraea polyphemus (I had some ID help from a professional). If it hurries up and pupates for the long winter, it will turn into a beautiful, brown giant silk moth in the spring.

Long, tall, and purple: Three fabulous flowers

Ageratum, probably self-seeded from 'Dondo Blue'.
Grows to about 24" high.

I pretty much threw a temper tantrum this year when my tall cutting ageratum seedlings all got damping off and croaked. I maintained my funk for two months, and then all of a sudden, little baby ageratums starting sprouting in the garden! One, two, ten, two hundred! The freakin' things were everywhere, having (apparently) seeded themselves quite successfully the year before. They waited to germinate until July, and I feared they wouldn't mature before frost. But they took off gangbusters and made a pillowy blue-and-purple late summer display.

Ageratum, probably seeded from 'Red Sea'

This honeybee passed away on a blue powderpuff, in the night.

During my extended conniption over not having tall ageratum, I searched at local nurseries. This caused much cussing and stomping of feet. Five inches may be a fashionable height for spike heels, but it is an abominably dumpy height for ageratum, if you ask me.

Instead of ageratum, I found something I'd never grown: Lavandula multifida. It's the lavender that smells like a skunk! Who wouldn't want one? It has soft, ferny, blue green foliage, and rather unobtrusive flowers that go on blooming forever. I really like it.

Lavandula multifida

Also during my ageratum anxiety period, I dug up little Verbena bonariensis volunteers with their clods of soil and poked them in the garden hither and thither, like a mad squirrel-woman caching her snacks. I am at a point in my life when I have to have tall, skinny purple flowers everywhere. Or else my garden is all for naught.

Verbena bonariensis blooms, bobbing high above
a patch of purple sage and dark purple nicotiana.

I heart garlic

I planted garlic this week - 15 different kinds, about 120 cloves altogether. Not nearly as many as in years past, but this year space is limited. All of the garlic is our own seed, except for the purple Italian, a gift from a friend.

To read about how I plant garlic, see Garlic Harvest 2010.

Above, Laika lords over the strawbale. I mulch garlic beds with six inches of straw for a few reasons... First, without mulch, it is very convenient for a squirrel to yank out a garlic clove and pop in a peanut (and a squirrel can do that approximately 120 times in half as many seconds). Mulch also keeps cloves from heaving out of the freezing and thawing ground over winter. And mulch will keep weeds down next summer. Here are all the kinds we keep.

Whistlestop

Brown tempest

California

Carpathian

Chinese red and white

Colorado black

Continental

German red

German white

German extra hardy

Legacy

Music

German porcelain

Purple Italian

Romanian red

Garlic makes the heart grow fonder.

(For further good instructions on planting garlic, see Curbstone Valley Farm's Planting Garlic post.)

The vespertine

I first started datura from seed for the garden at the Summerhouse, a restaurant my boyfriend, Matt, was then an owner/chef at. The trumpet-shaped flowers unfurl in the evening, when late diners enjoy a dusky supper on the patio, or when kitchen staff unwinds at the firepit in the after-hours.

That first year's datura seedlings were dispersed between my own garden, my mother's, and the restaurant's. Every year thereafter, seedlings germinate in the garden of their own accord. This one sprung from the edge of Mom's compost pile, and didn't begin blooming until just before frost.

A bouquet was composed

I told Matt he had to be the first to look out the window this morning. If it had frosted, I was not going to get out of bed to see the crystal-rimed wreckage of the world I once knew, loved, and frolicked in. I was not going to get up today, tomorrow, or ever again until my doom and gloom had come full circle and things actually seemed more bleak on the dark side of the down comforter.

Matt looked out the window and gave a non-committal report, something like, "well a little bit maybe or not at all a tad, shall we have scrambled eggs now?"

Clearly I was going to have to do the deed myself, or risk rotting under the blankets for no reason at all. So I stumped out of bed and down the steps and into the garden.

And infuriatingly, Matt was right. It had frosted... Well, a little bit - maybe. Or not at all. A tad?

The morning glory leaves were slumped and black and wet looking. But as the day bloomed and the dew wore off, nothing important had been damaged. My two swallowtail caterpillars went all the way from inanimate to lethargic in the course of a few short hours, which meant that they weren't dead, which made me happy.

I spent the rest of the day sort of ricocheting in slow motion around the garden, becoming absorbed in a task for a moment and then inexplicably propelled away and in a diagonal direction, to smack into something more engrossing down the line a bit. So most of the tomatillos were harvested, and some of the jalapenos, tomatoes, and eggplants. Cotton blossoms were admired. Tobacco budworms were plucked and flicked. The little lemon tree was carted back outside for pollination purposes. And a bouquet was composed.

Black swallowtail on a bruised day

It stopped raining for a bit, and I wanted to be free from the house, to feel the autumn air, to take pictures of the dill, and to sniff it...

And I noticed amongst the drops someone cold, and clinging.

And then another someone.

Black swallowtail caterpillar on dill