The Month is November and We Have so Much to Look Forward to
It was hard to belt out Auld Lang Syne with feeling when there was no one with whom to celebrate the New Year. Such was the Year of The Beast!
Not only on New Year’s Eve but on nearly every other reason when, in normal times, friends and family would revel in their company. The words, made popular by Scottish poet Robert Burns, is “For the sake of Old (Auld) Times”. Seems to me that the demise of 2020 should have been toasted everywhere. Finally, the year 2021.
It is Fall, so it must be Anemone time – ‘Honorine Jobert’ For more info - Anemones on You Tube
We Always Have Something
to Look Forward to:
I am sometimes accused of being a Pollyanna, refusing to be depressed about events out of my control and trying to be positive about those I do. We always have a choice; we can constantly look over our shoulders at what might be chasing us or we can look forward to what is ahead. The trouble with the former is that you will eventually trip, with the latter, you will be occasionally disappointed.
During the Time of the Beast, Covid-19 has been chasing us all. I make light when I suggest that we must keep zigging while it is zagging, but in truth it has not been all that difficult to remain standing. It is much easier to wear a mask around strangers, and to distance than to look over my shoulder at those who don’t. It is disappointing when others do not care enough about others to do the same. While I can’t control their behavior, I can easily walk away.
So many of us have had family members and friends affected by The Beast, I have had frightening times with my granddaughter and devastating moments when I have lost a colleague. Other friends have had their own moments of fear and loss. For me, I simply walk outside to my garden. My small garden is my church and the trees and plants are my congregation. I think about my bulbs emerging in the spring and I know the leaves that are turning golden in the fall will return next spring. I also know that when I once again visit friends and present them with a bouquet of flowers, they will smile.
On A Personal Note….
We voted!! This may not sound like much of an accomplishment to most of you; I assume you have been doing so for years. However, Susan and I have been “green carders” in this country for many years. Three years ago, we became US citizens (our story of the naturalization process is for another day) and we did this so we could vote. You can’t complain if you don’t vote.
Enough of this, time for the good stuff.
I asked a few colleagues for recommendations of “things they could not work or garden without”. Apparently, Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming and birthdays and anniversaries never stop, so here are a few suggestions to make others smile. Click the image to take to you shopping links.
Adapting to a New Normal
Who would have thought that this old guy would embrace social media? I don’t go anywhere near Facebook or Twitter for opinions or to find out what people had for lunch. However, since I can’t go anywhere, I have shared by garden and other venues through Facebook Live – eleven times! I will be doing one more about foliage plants, walking around one of my favorite garden centers, The Family Tree Loganville, GA on Sunday, Nov 8, at 10 am. What a ball we have been having – if you haven’t been able to join me, you can find them all on my website. Between my Walkabouts and the British Baking Show, you may be binging for a little while.
Instagram, me?? Absolutely – join me with “Tales from the Garden” (stories about plants and their names) and “Back to School with Dr A”, where I provide five-minute thoughts about the science of gardening and horticulture. No tests involved.
Who Knew:
The fourth edition of the big book on perennials (Herbaceous Perennial Plants) has been out for a couple of months and sales and reviews are quite robust – thank you. When I initially discussed details with the publisher, he did not want to publish any hard-cover books, only softback. He did not feel that people would pay the extra dollars. I talked him into it, telling him that people I know want to refer this book for many years, and they want it to be tough, solid and long lasting.
Who knew (well, actually I did), that hard cover copies are outselling soft bound by approximately 10:1. The bad news is that they are going quickly, if you want hardbound, order soon.
And lastly, I must take off my Pollyanna glasses: I have lost a good friend and outstanding colleague to Covid-19 recently. For the people in the greenhouse industry, Dr. David Koranski was a rock star. He was one of the pioneers of everything and anything to do with plug production of annuals, perennials and vegetables. His research at Iowa State University on the interaction of light, water and nutrition on the growing of plugs opened the flood gates to efficient production in this country and abroad. If you have produced or bought an annual, perennial or any plant started in a greenhouse in the last 30 years, you have benefitted from Dr. Koranski’s work.
My friend Scott Swift runs a highly successful greenhouse concern in Iowa. Dr Koranski served as his professor and advisor first at the University and later at Swift Greenhouses. Scott too was energized and benefitted from David’s work and writes, “Dave would visit our greenhouse and basically be our consultant for free, because we could not afford it. He recommended we drop all of our houseplants and pot crops and focus on growing annuals and perennials from plugs. Dave saw the “Plug” as the future method of production! This is exactly what we did!”
Scott goes on to say that Dave mentored the business, his staff and his family for over 35 years - and anybody who knew Dave realizes he did the same with anyone who needed him. “We are extremely grateful for all the contributions Dr. Dave made our business, we may not have continued if it wasn’t for him.”
As for me, I take my hat off and raise my face to the light David brought. Every one of us reading this today benefited from his legacy. Damn you, Covid!
The Future is Bright:
What’s left to say? Life is good, we are indeed fortunate to we doing what we do. Stay smart in these times.
See you in church, with glasses on.
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The Month is September, the year is 2020, and I Learned One Thing About What we do
Rain lilies (Zephyranthes candida) in late August/September. For more info - https://youtu.be/tY3evjimhWQ
We Always Have Something to Look Forward to:
Cases of Covid-19 are still skyrocketing, deaths in this country have topped 175,000 real people. Covid has touched us all in ways we never would have dreamed of, regardless if you are driving a cab, running a restaurant or cleaning offices. However, without doubt, some people have been hit far harder than others and have no idea what the future holds.
I was reminded of this when I went to my dentist appointment. Kelly, my dental hygienist and I were chatting about these times and she said, “I just took it for granted.” I looked quizzically and she continued, “I just took for granted that I would always have something to look forward to.”
As I lay in the dental chair, mouth full of goodness knows what, I thought about what Kelly said. Right in that chair, a light came on and I realized the enormous depth of her brief avowal. I believe her statement should be the mantra of every plant-related business and every gardener today, no matter who we are. In fact, these five words should be on the letterhead of anything written or spoken about gardening
By definition, gardening is always “something to look forward to.” When we plant a seed, buy a perennial, bring home a shrub or dig in a bulb, we look forward to what those seeds, bulbs and plants will look like in the future. This has always been true, but oh my, how it resonates with joy during these dark times.
So, let’s keep being smart, staying safe, and continue to zig while the virus zags. But most of all, let’s get into the garden so we always have something to look forward to.
Dr. Scott Linder & Kelly Robertson
Enough of this:
We have a ton of things to share. The new book Herbaceous Perennial Plants, 4th ed. has been selling like hotcakes. The reviews have been wonderful, the comments very pleasing; I know you will enjoy it.
Here is a question: The softbound cover is $10.00 less expensive than the hardbound cover. Which version is selling the more copies, by how much? (Answer at end of newsletter)
It is available, as are all my books, including Naked Ladies and Forget-Me-Nots through my website, www.allanarmitage.net While browsing books, you might also enjoy the wonderful children’s book, Bitsy’s Happy Bouquet, written by my colleague Linda Copeland.
Walkabouts are still so much fun:
On August 6, I led the latest Facebook Live happy-hour-walkabout through the Trial Gardens at the University of Georgia. A trial garden is just that, and some plants are simply better performers than others. It was wonderful to be able to share some of the tremendous breeding that has allowed gardeners and landscapers to be more successful every year. Here are just a few of the plants we saw.
The next Facebook Live happy-hour-walkabout will be at 7:00 pm on Thursday, September 10, 2020. We will be going through the exceptional Children’s Garden at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. Sign up and join me.
Here is the video from the last walkabout, the sound quality is not the best due to lots of background noise! However, if you want to spend a little more time with me, join me in the Trial Garden!
The YouTube channel
IGTV:
I hope you have been enjoying the Instagram TV series, Tales from The Garden. The stories are based on the book Of Naked Ladies and Forget-Me-Nots, and are designed to make you smile. You will enjoy hearing whether there really was someone called Joe Pye; check out this story in the button below. There are many more, to be sure, under the umbrella of …...
The channel includes dozens of short vignettes of plants and garden scenes that have caught my eye. I am always adding stories of must-have plants but … you will be astonished at the Yucca video, a plant which you must-not-have! You won’t believe this …..
This is not to say that I am still not working to keep the App up to date:
The nice thing about all these videos is that I can also incorporate them in the plant descriptions I do on the App, Armitage’s Great Garden Plants. The App continues to be updated; I added a video to Ruellia and included Physostegia,, as well. Photos, videos and information are updated regularly. I call the App “back pocket horticulture”. I have also added incorporated my …“op-ed” comments of Covid and Horticulture (like the one above) to the App.
Online Courses
You can find out all about the online courses I teach on my website. Click the button below to find out more.
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The Month is July, the year is 2020 and one thing is obvious
Phlox, Delta Snow. June 2019
The Beast will not go away quietly:
Cases of Covid-19 have returned to levels in April, in some states they are higher than they have ever been. We cannot lightly shrug it off as the result of increased testing. Unfortunately, the rate of infection is soaring, more young people are getting sick than ever, and more ominously, hospitalizations are up. The forced shut down was awful; mentally, physically and economically but that “death by a thousand cuts” had flattened the curve in most areas.
The opening up of restaurants, bars, and informal gatherings had to occur but could have been done without a spike, if people were concerned enough about others to do their best to distance - and to wear a mask. I mean, really, how hard is that? A mask is a symbol of respect, that you respect the health of others and will do your best not to expose them to this virus. Good grief, did a public health issue really become a political issue? Do some people actually see political implications of protecting others from a killer? Or maybe all those people not wearing masks in shops and stores simply don’t give a flip, about themselves and others. We are in the process of losing all the incredibly hard-won gains from the shutdown, to say nothing of another 50-60,000 lives. I am going to die someday, perhaps of a car crash, of an accident or of old age. However, I refuse to die of stupid.
Enough of this:
Most of us are doing just fine thank you, and we have discovered that this gardening thing is not only fun, it is essential. Many people in the gardening industry have had banner years and I truly believe we will come out of this better than when we went in. But do we have to make it so hard?
“Something to look forward to!” On a similar but brighter note, I have discovered the new gardening/industry slogan: If we have not learned that nothing should be taken for granted anymore, then we have learned nothing. One of the things that we all took for granted was we always had something to look forward to – dinner with friends, an upcoming ballgame or simply a movie to enjoy with the popcorn.
Something to look forward to is exactly what gardening is all about. No one hires a landscaper to design hardscapes and put in immature trees and shrubs if they weren’t looking forward to the long-term improvement to their home? No one plants bulbs in the fall if they didn’t look forward to the lilies in the summer, or grows cut flowers to if not looking forward to the bouquet tomorrow?
Something to look forward to! Now that is a slogan I am going to start with every one of my lectures and walkabouts.
Speaking of Walkabouts:
The latest “Walkabout with Dr. A” on Facebook Live was on July 2. Amazingly, that was the eighth one; the first being on a Saturday morning in April. Participants ranged from about 200 to nearly 2000 on a given walkabout. The numbers got much larger when I changed the time to Happy Hour, another confirmation that wine and gardening go together. All the FB live walkabouts are available on my Facebook page.
Join me next time August 6th, at the UGA Trial Gardens and will be chatting about all things annuals. The Garden looks amazing right now! Can’t wait to show you all!
Who knew this old geezer would so embrace Instagram:
Good grief, I hardly knew what it was. However, my colleagues Kelly Garcia and Maria Zampini suggested that since I couldn’t tell stories about plants and people in person, I should tell them socially. So, we started Legends in the Garden. They are posted every week on Mondays and if you want to know why snapdragons snap or what foxgloves have to do with foxes or what beebalm is good for … then you can find them on my Instagram IGTV Channel, https://www.instagram.com/armitageallan/channel/ .
The stories are mostly based on the books Of Naked Ladies and Forget-Me-Nots and Legends in the Garden, Who in the World is Nellie Stevens? If you would rather read than listen, those books are available through my bookstore.
Speaking of Books-
HALLELUJAH, finally, amen, and at last – the 4th edition of Herbaceous Perennial Plants is truly available. I am excited, humbled and exhausted – but so pleased I can hardly stand myself. A book for everyone, from seasoned grizzled growers and breeders to my daughters and neighbors.
Soon you will not have to take my word for it, I have sent it out to respected reviewers.
Herbaceous Perennial Plants is available through Stipes Publishing (https://stipes.com/) and from Dr. Armitage (www.allanarmitage.net). The book retails for $89.80 (hardbound), $79.80 (paperback) and those copies ordered through the Armitage website can be personalized and autographed if desired. For more information about the book, contact John Hecker, Stipes Publishing, at stipes01@sbcglobal.net.
This is not to say that I am still not working to keep the App up to date:
Lugging around a 5-lb weight is all well and good but having information in your pocket on your phone is a little easier on your back. I have added herbs, woodies, annuals, perennials, to say nothing of where you can buy these wonderful plants I am highlighting. It is really cool.
*** A note to current iPhone users, we are having technical difficulties with the color contrast when your phone automatically moves to night mode. You will need to adjust your settings to day when using the app in the evening. We are working hard to figure out this problem!
Speaking of plants:
How about a few terrific plants? These can still be purchased and will flower in the fall, or at least look good in the fall:
Here are a few plants I look forward to:
Fall Anemone
Hard to beat their flower power in the fall. Deer enjoy them so be warned. My favorites are the much -lover ‘Honorine Jobert’ and the shorter ‘Pamina’
Aconitum, wolfsbane:
Everyone loves blue, and there is sufficient choice in wolfsbanes to allow for late summer through fall flowering. The common name should be a hint; don’t plant it if pets and babies are sticking things in their mouths. ‘Arendsii’ is my favorite performer.
Gomphrenas:
They have made such strides in being more robust, more colorful and more useful in the landscape than ever. Series like Ping Pong are outstanding, my favorite is ‘Truffula Pink’.
Sunflowers:
Both the annual forms (eg ‘Sunfinity’, ‘Sunsation’) and the perennials are always something to look forward to. The height is far less a problem with the annuals and disease tolerance is much improved on the perennials.
Grasses:
The fall is often their time to shine, providing handsome foliar color as well as flowers. For me, it is still hard to beat switch grass, Panicum, with their range of cultivars, and Mexican feather grass, Stipa tenuissima.
YouTube
Online Courses
You can find out all about the online courses I teach on my website. Click the button below to find out more.
Book Store
If you are interested in looking at the books I have written, check them out here. Click the button below for all my great reads.