Plants root themselves. [...] Except life doesn't end there. They grow toward one another, sharing space, building the community we call a garden. Plants stretch upward toward the sun. They dance on the wind. We can learn a lot from plants.  Mary Agria, RANGE OF MOTION, copyright: 2019 - Contact agriainc@msn.com to arrange for a reading, signing, or talk on gardening/aging and our spiritual life.

While brutal cold grips much of the country, my amaryllis blooms. Gardeners everywhere know to connect with their beloved 'green' where and how they can find it. The delicate, trumpet-shaped blossoms make my heart smile. Sadly transitory, I remind myself.  But then life is that way. Here's to blooming flat out, wherever we are planted.

So many plants and so little time. Thanks to a lovely Christmas gift from my husband, I am spending time up close and personal with an amaryllis. I've never had one before. I suspect my husband was fascinated by the fact that the bulb arrived in a casing of wax that contains all the nutrients and water needed for the plant to sprout and flower. To me, the mystery of it unfolding every day---from shoot to budding stem to this glorious flower that becomes more intricate and lovely every day---is simply astonishing. Instead of the familiar red variety I've spotted in other people's homes, this one is a pale greenish-white with burgundy streaks and veins.  I'll admit, I've managed to do in my share of corporate poinsettias over the years and felt sorry for those much abused plants. But this elegant plant is another category entirely. I will be sad to see the flowering end.

Plant communities are fascinating things. In the garden, the gardener likes to pretend he or she calls the shots. If plants are unhappy with their lot, they use passive-aggression---losing leaves or otherwise wasting away---until a gardener gets the hint and moves them. In the wild, plants scatter  whimsically across the landscape. A clump here and a clump there. Those islands of color may or may not become a carpet over time. The Sonoran desert doesn't make it easy for them. But as these desert poppies prove, it can be done.

Sometimes it pays to put away my smartphone or point-and-shoot and get out the pen. Plants and their structures are studies in light and shadow, not just color. This lone evening primrose blooming in the warm spring morning at North Mountain was calling out to me along the rocky trail. No other plants of that species around anywhere---just this guy. Beautiful. Perfect. It was lying right tight to the ground in a low-growing circle of foliage. The desert is going to bloom gangbusters this year with all the rain in January. The little primrose was just the beginning.

We hiked three miles in an hour-and-a-half on North Mountain on a rock and scree covered trail. For long stretches, rock outcroppings made the going tricky. I not only survived but thrived. Every day I give thanks to the amazing surgeon, Dr. Ott, for making good on his promise to give me back my life with a new hip. The trail was a true deja vu moment only better the second time around. The hike a year ago at that spot wound up with me laid out on a decorative wall at the end, trying to stretch out the painful tight muscles in my hip. I barely made a fraction of the distance we covered today. And it HURT.  This time around I gloried in the stunning
scorpion-weed and primrose blossoming along the trail and the sun beating down. A beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Just saw an incredible exhibit soon on its way to Los Angeles:  Teotihuacan...City of Water, City of Fire. Among the amazing artifacts were some phenomenal murals from homes in that ancient city and sacred site. Not surprising, one of the themes was vegetation including these spectacular trees. The artists mixed hematite and pyrite with the pigments in the plaster and the results positively glowed. If there are a lot of superlatives in this post, the exhibit deserved every darn one. And lest we think we invented love of green things growing, these peoples in 60-450 AD beat us to it.

Landscaper versus gardener---a lot of managed communities experience the difference up-close and personal. Our condo HOA in AZ is no exception. Given their druthers, the crews head out seasonally with an impressive collection of power tools and basically turn perfectly lovely bushes into lollipops and weird bowling balls. My mom's former condo association in WI had the same problem. The results look like a demonic cross between an Addams' family cartoon and Disney on steroids. Especially in the Southwest it is ridiculous. Gorgeous flowering plants like bougainvillea and oleander never bloom or if they do, it is a sad scattering of flowers. Even vintage native American fences are allowed to flower. Landscapers chop, gardeners prune---a question of timing and scale Makes all the difference in the world.

The blood moon fizzled thanks to bands of high clouds that obscured the view. The blossoms on the tips of the bougainvillea froze last week all over the community. We find ourselves watching Monty Don on TV and dreaming of our Petoskey garden. Plan is to try strategically placed grasses and lavendar to soften the one problem bed which so badly needs everything tied together. "Cram it in," says Monty. What we are hoping for is that cloud-like effect we saw in some of the formal gardens in France. Another possibility is creating a water feature in the elbow between the patio bed and the one running parallel to the garage. Will let you know how it all turns out. But then planting season is still one heck of a way off. A lot of dreamin' can go on between now and then.

Ferocious storms in the Midwest on the East Coast have translated into chilly weather and rain, rain, rain in the Southwest. For the first time in days the sky this morning is blue but with high clouds. I share this homage to springtime in Michigan. This too shall pass.

If you head south and west at any point, a must-see are the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. We are lucky to be less than 10 minutes away and visits to the place are tops on our to-do list in the area. Even our teenage grandkids loved the place on a visit here: what started as an hour outing turned into almost three. The variety of plant structures is simply mind-boggling.

To me one of the most exciting trends in modern gardens is the mixing of veggies with flowering perennials. Whether a tiny pocket garden or a window box, there is no such thing as 'too small' a space to make the concept work. In scrolling through my collection of flower photos over the years, I found some intriguing examples.

Gardens are not about perfection, they are about growth. Especially for those of us who are 'rescue plant' gardeners, the chances we take on clearance shelf plants don't always pay off. We can learn a great deal from those failed experiments. And the joy that results when one of those stragglers goes on to flourish and flower is enormous. My husband and I are totally enjoying Monty Don's BBC series Big Dreams-Small Spaces for those very reasons. Time and again England's 'master gardener' urges fledgling gardeners to think big when planning their gardens: cram in the plants, dare to risk and adjust as they go along. There is a unique creativity about gardening with plants as the paint and the earth the canvas. As I anxiously await another summer of gardening in Northern Michigan, it is fun to reach out discover those sources of inspiration that fortify us for the growing season ahead. The days are getting longer. Spring WILL come.

Blogging is so weird. It is like writing a personal diary and then broadcasting it on Channel 7, never knowing for sure if anyone is even tuning in. I only know that especially on these chilly winter days, conjuring up images of green things growing is the consummate tonic. On a recent trip to Ikea (yes, we finally bought a genuine Full-size sofa bed), I found myself indulging in a silk plant for my bathroom. There it sat at the checkout---a faux hellebore, its rich burgundy petals a credible version of the real thing. It was a hefty 70 percent off, one of several kinds of Holiday floral arrangements that were being cleared out at the end of the season. After watching Monty Don's programs on European gardens, I couldn't help wondering if American consumers realized what they were seeing, what important garden plant hellebores are abroad.  In both my New York (shown in the photo) and now Petoskey gardens, I have had good luck with growing them. They may be finicky about transplanting, but once reestablished, they grow like mad.  The white or dark burgundy blossoms---so-called Christmas or Easter roses---can change and morph over time, although some hellebore hybrids promise stable colors. How fun to find this usual faux plant choice amid a collection of 'traditional' holiday evergreens and poinsettias ! It's a small world. We discover something new every day.

We've been enjoying a fun BBC show with Monty Don about big dreams for small gardens. While some of the results are more successful than others, it is amazing what the largely inexperienced or non-gardeners in the program have been able to achieve. One of Monty's statements struck me especially because it has fit my own gardening style over the years. It is worse to underplant than overplant, he urges.  Cram it in, he encourages timid souls who are obsessed with the perfect placement for their plants. Fill the space and worry about weeding things out or moving them later.  Having started my Petoskey garden from scratch, I can empathize. It is easier to be patient and let things grow if the newly planted garden doesn't look like a wasteland from the get-go. Even as I write, I am imagining my garden and wondering what will survive the winter, what is crowding out everything around it and what my strategies might be for correcting the situation. A garden is a living, ever-changing canvas upon which to paint a highly personal portrait of 'beauty' and 'community'. The days are getting longer. Spring will come---an exciting thought. Photos: Jamming in the plants in my Petoskey garden.

I've been thinking about color in the garden after my post yesterday on that topic. Monty Don's wonderful BBC series on  Italian gardens made an interesting point. The assumption is often made that that the key Italian design principle is monochrome formality:  using the green of  bushes, shrubs, trees and plants without flowering plants. When Renaissance and post-Renaissance villa and palace owners 'restored' earlier Italian gardens, they took their clue from what had survived---geometrically planted and pruned hedges. This could have given the impression that flowers were not part of the picture. Experts believe that both flowering planters and in-ground perennials were used in Italian garden design. But since those flowering plants were the most fragile, over time their legacy was lost. A similar misconception exists  about ancient temples and buildings themselves. All that austere white marble gives a false impression about the original design that simply is not accurate. Originally most of those buildings were brightly colored, so much so that seeing reconstructions of the ancient paint schemes actually can seem shocking. Photos from a Wisconsin museum garden illustrate how vivid color contrasts can give a playful air to even the most severe formal garden design.  Kudos to the gardeners for making relatively small formal gardens lively and fun.

Perennial gardens are often all about flowers, when and how long they bloom, their colors, shapes and fragrance or lack of it. But foliage is not an incidental factor in plant choice.  The shapes of leaves and stems, their relative sturdiness and longevity can be as effective as the blossoms themselves in creating a beautiful garden design. Obvious examples come to mind such as the massive-leafed hosta, spiky iris and feathery astilbe. Some of my favorite photos of plants are in black and white for that reason. Through the eye of the lens, we see those patterns more dramatically. A few favorite illustrations from my upcoming novel, RANGE OF MOTION, are cases in point. The spiderwort or tradescantia was a particular childhood favorite of mine from my grandmother's garden. The leaves are similar to the common daylily also shown here. But spiderwort's three-petaled flowers are fascinating and exotic. Although it is technically considered a 'wildflower', it is a lovely addition to any garden. The flowers of the lamium can be invasive but I love it in borders where its purple, yellow or white flowers pale compared to the showy leaves. The leaf variety shown here is marked with a stripe down the center.

Oops. I had a column to write. I wound the warp for and dressed my loom to make placemats for our daughter. I finished a tough edit of my novel and a new version---hopefully the second to last---should arrive by Monday at the latest for reads by my husband and editor in PA. I've been working on the 1000-piece puzzle from hell. And we had two wonderful weeks with our granddaughter on her midwinter break doing one craft project after the other. Time to refocus. So am watching Monty Don's series on gardening in small spaces. And am picking up my neglected blog for the New Year. Funny, because my column for January was about indoor gardening in winter in the Midwest and pot gardening in AZ in the brutal summer heat. Both are about as small as it gets when it comes to gardening. I ran across a couple of neat photos we took some years back of interesting pot gardens to stimulate the imagination. One mixes herbs and perennials. Another is a topiary worthy of Versailles from a museum's garden in WI. The last is from that same garden but mixing a tropical palm and petunias.  Hmmm.  Bottom line, never say never.