DIRTIER Volume 26

This lovely lily study is by the attractive young son of Sibyl Heijnen.
The garden is filled with lilies.  My fondness for the
species and Turk's cap type increases
while my enthusiasm for the
big blowsy Orientals wanes.
 (I am deeply considering digging up all the Casablanca types - too big - too white)

Or this gorgeous Formosa lily just blooming now.

BELL  JAR  PARADISO

I thank Hope Sandrow for the Bell Jar metaphor.  She is a wonderful artist who raises chickens in a perfect habitat with her husband Ulf and they are all about seeing the beauty and what is good in the world.

                And so it goes that the world might be falling to pieces around us, but from my vantage point on the East End of Long Island  my world often appears to be just heavenly.  As if I live under a Bell Jar where everything is peaceful, beautiful and under control (much like the Victorians kept their ferns in perfectly moisturized tact under curvaceous glass jars) and nothing really bad encroaches.  I've even made friends with the garden snake.

No deer
No voles
No beetles
Nothing bad, really

 Errors and blunders are often indecipherable from the best laid schemes.  For example, look at this gorgeous combination of what some others might call plants too aggressive for the garden or thugs (my friend Geoffrey Ross calls it Jardin d'Invasives).  Here is a happy comingling of Angelica gigas, Ostrich ferns, Fallopia, Carex and the indomitable Houttuynia  --- an invasive if there ever was one.  I am just letting them duke it out at the bottom of The Dell.



Or the Drancunculus, which came back on its own accord this year - harsh winter and all -that suddenly doesn't look so vulgar against the
softness of the Indigofera.



                But then again, look at this mess which I schemed and plotted   to make a white melange .



                These mixed white variegates just did not want to be coaxed into a
mellifluous white melange.

And then there is the sad tale of the two dead Albizia (Mimosa 'Summer Chocolate') to consider;
this came as a horrible blow but Ray Smith explained that it was a graft
and the winter was hard and then, I had to admit,  maybe they were getting
too leggy anyway.






…so good bye Albizia.
At least the luscious burgundy one in my dear client Gloria Appel's is
thriving...even flowering.

Once in a while in our Garden Utopia there is a little Bad Luck
But though the harsh winter killed the mimosa…my Voodoo lilies
are thriving...

I like to believe that things always happen for the best.

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