My blogiversary: A Year in Review

In honor of my first blogiversary, I'm re-posting the first entry of The Garden Blog (of a gal growing Southern):

We have a huge fence covered with succulent, tasty honeysuckle, but where do the aphids and fungi like to dine? My rose bushes, of course. I'm trying the "Safe" brand of insecticide and fungicide. I have a environmental guilt complex, so it seemed like the right thing to do even though I'm pretty sure it's a hoax. How could it be so safe, while the small print on the bottle says something like, "Will kill animals and small children" ?I tend to be one of those the-glass-is-half-empty-and-I'm-going-to-kill-the-bastard-who-drank-my-milk type people, so of course yesterday when I was tending my rose bushes I was focusing on the aphids and didn't notice the newly formed blossom until I'd already drenched the plant in a special "safe" cocktail of fungicide and pesticide. Then I noticed the perfect, white blossom. The chemicals glistened on the flower like morning dew and I followed the instinctual urge to smell...Fungicide.Well I haven't lost any limbs today, so I guess that stuff is safe after all.

Today, a year later, little has changed. I'm still battling the leaf spot on my favorite rose bush, and it's still rewarding my effort with beautiful blooms.

The first plant featured on The Garden Blog (of a gal growing Southern), 1 year later

And yet so much has changed!

On 6/1/06, I was still searching for a new job, as I'm reminded from a post from when I was gardening in exhile. A year later, I've just finished my rookie year at a new job, and it's obvious from my entry on post-traumatic student stress how good this change has been for me.

On 7/27/06, I first watched a yellow swallow-tailed butterfly while gardening in the dark, and I've been hooked ever since. This season I've added several new types of plants to my garden especially for attracting and nurturing butterflies, and lately I've eagerly observed caterpillars devour my fennel. Over the past year, I've started to change from a plant-centric gardener to a gardener who has an obsession with plants but is starting to admit that some animal critters are a bit fascinating.

A few months later, I started avidly reading and commenting on other blogs. (See the blogroll to the right) Thanks, I've learned so much from all of you in the past year! I also found encouragement from blogs that had nothing to do with gardening, like Neil's "Thank your First Commenter Day" post. Neil then became my first commenter on Thanksgiving Day . The days of just writing for myself, and possibly Mom, were soon over.

And of course the biggest change of all was first recorded on my blog in April, when I first heard the heart beat of our baby. And don't be concerned, this May 31th I'm *not* inhaling any fungicide fumes. My husband is in charge of spraying any chemicals this summer.

What will the next year bring? Keep clicking on that "The Garden Blog" bookmark to find out...

Off to the races...

As I continue on my path as a Gal Growing Southern, I'm going to my third NASCAR race this weekend. I'm hardly a race vetran yet, but I'm proud to have learned the names of a few of the drivers by their numbers. Below is the #8 car, driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr.

My attitude toward NASCAR is much like my attitude toward college football, another proud Southern tradition. I could really care less about the actual event, but I really enjoy the tailgating and socializing.

Photo by grandpakp

We've been taking a lot of weekend trips this summer, and I hate to leave my babies (our three cats, one guppie, and the garden) even for a couple days. But they seem to manage alright without us.

One of my early garden "mentors" was a neighbor across the street who used to pay me to water her garden when she and her husband went on vacation. She gave me extensive training on the art of watering, and the way she talked about her double begonias, I could tell these were her babies. Looking back, that was quite an act of trust to let a pre-teen manage the garden for a week.

It's Wedding Season

We had a great time at my cousin's wedding last weekend. She got married right down the street from our grandparents' house in the Golden Isles of Georgia. The marsh and live oaks made a fantastic backdrop for her wedding photos.

My husband and I were also married in the same area, and my cousin used the same florist. Once again she did a fantastic job.

My cousin's wedding flowers, resting up after the wedding at Grandma's house

Back when my husband and I were putting together our own wedding, I think the photographer thought I was a little nutty since I wanted to have a 8 x 10 picture of our flowers in our wedding album. His artistic concept was basically that photo albums are for portraits of people. But how could we leave out the flowers?

I was just looking through the digital photos that my family and friends sent us of our wedding, and I could find only one close-up of our flowers. They happen to be sitting on my head. After the rehearsal dinner, my bridesmaids thought I needed to wear them as a crown.

Furry plants

Now that we know we are expecting a girl, it's fun to think that maybe our daughter might like playing in the dirt half as much as her mom. When I was a youngster, my favorite plant was Lamb's Ear . What's more fun than a furry plant?

I first discovered Lamb's Ear (Stachys byzantina) at a local public garden, and when my mother started a herb garden, she planted some Lamb's Ear for me. So it has long been one of my favorite plants, and of course it was one of the first plants I put in my own garden.

Lamb's Ear (Stachys byzantina)

However, Lamb's Ear is not the only fun and furry plant out there. At the recent Master Gardener plant sale, I discovered this treasure. According to the donor, it's a type of Salvia. It looks like a little "Audrey 2" from Little Shop of Horrors, but this monster plant is soft and cuddly.

I also found this furry plant at Home Depot, but I forgot the name. Can anyone help? I'll try to find the tag and update this post later.

It's a girl!

We had the excitement today of seeing our baby, now almost 5 months along, on the ultrasound. All is going well, and we also know it's a girl now. So I'm posting pink flowers in her honor. I also posted the ultrasound picture on my baby blog.

Conversation with a Bumblebee

Bee: buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Me: Shew bee, I’m working here
Bee: buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Me: Hey, knock that off. I don’t like it when people watch over my shoulder.
Bee: buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Me: I’m glad you approve of the Columbine, but I can’t plant it while you’re gorging yourself at it!
Bee: buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Me: Alright, just hang on. I’m going to be done soon, then you can spend as much time with the flowers as you like.
Bee: buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Me: Hold on! I just need to water these plants in.
Bee: buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Me: Take that!

(I didn’t wait around to see how he responded to getting a little wet.)

Flowers for Bumblebees

Flowers for Bumblebees

Although this one little bumblebee got on my nerves recently, on most days I think bumblebees are adorable. Some flowers that seem to attract bumblebees in my garden:

-Herbs, especially the lavender, sage, catmint that are blooming now



-Container garden of Salvia, Columbine, Dianthus, and Verbena. They especially adore the Salvia.

-Vitex shrubs. (Formerly known as the mystery tree threatening to take over the front porch.) They are not flowering yet this year, but seem to be doing well after the severe but much-needed prunning over the winter.

South Carolina Public Gardens- Hatcher Gardens

The Hatcher Gardens features 10 acres of gardens, ponds, and trees in the middle of urban Spartanburg, South Carolina. While many cities can boast of beautiful city parks founded from private estates, the story of the Hatcher Gardens is truly unique since it was started on land reclaimed from abandoned cotton fields.

Cotton is still a major crop in the southern part of the state, but cotton fields have gradually dissapeared in the Upstate SC area. As erosion stripped the fields of topsoil, and the textile industry moved abroad, many mills were closed and fields became empty stretches of parched red clay, strewn with trash and debris.

The challenge of growing in the red clay didn’t seem to phase the Hatchers, however. The Hatcher Gardens began in 1969 as Harold and Josephine Hatcher retired to Spartanburg, SC, and begin working an acre of land claimed from these abandoned cotton fields. They started small and bought up more land over time. They worked the land themselves, and then they eventually gained the help of community organizations and local gardening clubs. Mr. Hatcher continued to manage the garden into his 90’s.

Today community volunteers continue the Hatchers' work. Spartanburg is lucky to have such a treasure within their city limits. Visiting the gardens is like stepping into a oil painting; it seems unreal to turn from a busy suburban street and suddenly find yourself surrounded by a canopy of trees.
To find out more about the garden, visit the Hatcher Garden Website.

Gardening Movies- 2006 update

Finals week is over, the grades are in, and my Netflix subscription is renewed. Life is good.

In 2005, I listed some of my favorite Gardening Movies. It's time to revise the top 10. Keep in mind that not all of these movies are actually about gardening; some are just good movies with botanical symbolism and/or flowery names.

Updated Top 10 Gardening Movies:

1. Greenfingers
2. Adaptation
3. The Constant Gardener
4. Little Shop of Horrors, the original cult classic (1960)
5. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
6. Saving Grace
7. Broken Flowers
8. Garden State
9. Bed of Roses
10. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Honorable Mention: Steal Magnolias, Magnolia, Bread and Tulips, Little Shop of Horrors the musical (1986), White Oleander


Broken Flowers
I'm a big fan of Bill Murray, especially in Groundhog Day and Lost in Translation. Broken Flowers is much in the same realm as Lost in Translation. For the first 10 seconds after this movie ended, I was dumbfounded and cursing the abrupt ending. Then 10 minutes later I realized the beauty of a non-packaged Hollywood ended and I wished I hadn't watched it alone so I had someone to talk to it over with. Thank goodness for on-line forums.

The Little Shop of Horrors, the original cult classic (1960)
Long before the Broadway musical and spin-off movie musical, there was this original cult classic B-movie. The original version offers a cameo by a young Jack Nicholson, a surprise ending, and all the frills of a typical low-budget movie. And the original is not a musical, which is a plus in my book.

Greenfingers / Saving Grace
These two movies made the top of my list because they are true gardening movies—they are focused around an obsession for plants. They are also both British comedies. Greenfingers is based on a true story of a British prison that gave inmates a chance to become gardeners, while Saving Grace is about a woman who finds herself penniless after her husband’s death and resorts to utilizing her gardening skills and resources on a special plant much different from her prize-winning orchids.

The Constant Gardener
Somehow this movie is both a thriller and a contemplative drama, and it blends perfectly together.
Rachel Weisz really deserved the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this movie.

Adaptation
With Oscar-nominated performances by Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep, Adaptation is a strange but mesmerizing journey loosely based on the novel The Orchid Thief.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Based on a best-selling novel, this movie handles tough subjects like poverty analcoholismsm, but still manages to be heart-warming.

Bed of Roses
This movie is a romance, ergo traditionally a chick flick, but my husband actually likes it, too. If you are a true plant geek you will swoon over the most beautiful rooftop garden IÂ’ve ever seen on film, not Christian Slater as a florist.

Garden State
This film resonated with me I was going through my quarter life crisis. Zach Braff wears many hats as writer/director/actor in this film. (He also stars in one of my favorite TV shows, Scrubs.) Hey, and there's even a blog for this movie- Zach Braff's Garden State Blog.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
Another cult classic. Whenever someone gets all hysterical about genetic engineering I think of this movie. Yeah, when we put a ethylene resistant gene into tomatoes, they could turn into the Tomatoes of Wrath! Whatever.

Any other suggestions? Please comment!