Saucer Magnolia Puts on a Show

Subtitle to all of my posting here is that these are "essays on the mundane".  So be it.  I am fortunate in that I do find enjoyment of those mundane things that pass all to quickly through my life.  My example this week is the Saucer Magnolia, or Tulip Tree that I planted in our side yard two decades ago.  If the frost has not been too severe and if it does not come too late in the season, we are bound to get a good show for a few days from our Saucer Magnolia.   I am delighted to find such a display in my side yard each year if the weather has been kind. This year we have a bounty of brilliant contrasting dual toned blossoms of gaudy pink on the shy undersides and a pure pacific creamy white on the upward showing face of her showy flowering. 

With many petals already fallen and strewn at her base as if she were the princess leading the procession of the coming spring, scattering radiant pink and white favors across the greening carpet, I took the opportunity to quickly catch a bit of what I know to be in the realm of  the mundane - because it happens every year.  But I think such fleeting moments are worthy of note:

Enjoy along with me the Show of the Saucer Magnolia -

Good Seed

I have not gotten around to creating and mailing Christmas cards for many years now.  A few folks still send us their seasonal greeting cards, despite my lack of reciprocity.  These are good people, though the list of people that still have us their mailing list is composed mostly of Sue's friends from undergraduate days plus a smattering of close relatives of mine.

But one of the consistent correspondents that regularly fills our mailbox toward then end of the year is the seed catalog companies.  Sue says it is a dysfunctional relationship, where she buys items like foxgloves (seen blooming in high rocky mountain meadows) and then plants them in thick, hot-humid aired Dallas, Texas; only to see them fail to thrive and then ultimately die a death from heat "protestation".  This sad misalignment of botanical expectations and climactic reality has played out more than once - for more than a handful of species.

But the lure of the winter's seed catalog is powerful and well nigh irresistible for some.  Last month, Sue was thumbing through the colorful pages of vegetables and posies, each with seed variety advertised with photos along with encouraging captions like; "this hearty variety is easy to grow and produces abundantly!!!", or "summer-long bounty of beautiful colors can be enjoyed in any garden north of Tierra del Fuego!!!!", "you and all the butterflies in the world will be attracted to this bloomer, well-suited to any sunny garden spot!!!!".  Such are the claims in the seed catalog.  Sue would read and consider each and every claim in her seed catalog, and then she would dog-ear a page that had a promising packet of seeds for her garden.  By the end of the evening, she had dog-eared 81.47% of the seed catalog pages.  Her reasoning: For a very minimal cost, I can try these seeds out.  What's the harm?  She is hooked.

The seeds have arrived along with high expectations.  Her plantings include: Globe Artichokes (she has grown a tiny French artichoke the past 2 years), tomatoes, bell peppers, fennel, heritage banana squash, garlic, spring onions, Milkweed (for the migrating Monarch butterflies), sunflowers, Asian poppies, zinnias, marigolds, plus her Christmas gifts of crocus and daffodils that went in late, but are coming up nicely at this writing.  An empty egg carton serves as the nursery for some of the seeds. This nursery bed of a dozen seedlings is lovingly transported from kitchen table to back deck during the day and then back inside for the evening - depending upon the forecast low.

Each and every tiny seedling is encouraged and exhorted daily with daily words from the gardener; "You are such Good Seeds.  Keep on growing!" 

Archival photographic proof that Sue can coax her seeds to do good things in our bad dirt: