Totally nothing to do with horses, books, ponies or even chronicles

Daylilies, looking like the thugs they are


It was over 80 degrees today, and didn't get dark out till 7:30pm. A day to drive home from work with the windows open and Springsteen playing. And then start hauling out the gardening books.

Suppose a wicked uncle who wished to check your gardening zeal left you pots of money on condition you grew only one species of plant: what would you choose?
My Garden In Spring by E.A. Bowles (1914)

Lily

He chose the iris. While I admire the fleur de lis, particularly the little yellow ones that grow wild around here, I'd choose dahlias or zinnias (possibly peonies). I'm not the tastefully understated sort of gardener; I like flowers that meet you halfway and knock you over. At the moment, though, I mostly confine my gardening fervor to wildflowers spotted and photographed on walks. This allows the dog to get some exercise, and me to avoid that finance-shattering temptation, the nursery.

Spatterdock

Milkweed

But I may buy some pansies. They have sweet faces, are fragrant, thrive in shade and have the good grace to die by mid-summer, just when you have completely gotten over the whole gardening mania for another year. And I've managed to beat back the English Ivy just enough to clear a small border where they'd look wonderful.

There is one link between horses, books and gardens - they're bankrupters, all of them. I find gardens the worst because I can, just about, manage to resist the temptation to purchase livestock, and books can be bought cheaply unless you're fussy about editions and conditions, which I am not, as a rule. But good, healthy plants never come cheap. And like horses, they have an uncanny ability to sicken, to get into accidents, and to languish in a semi-useless state of non-productivity for no apparent reason.

And next time, back to horse books with a review of a fairly new acquisition, another frail Whitman Book.