Hopeful Homemaker

New Lavender

May 24, 2011 jennifer Gardening

I’ve read the first third of one of my new lavender books:

The Lavender Garden: Beautiful Varieties to Grow and Gather by Robert Kourik . So far it’s been interesting and informative.

On Saturday I added three lavender plants to my flowerbed and I thought it would be fun to introduce you to them. Interestingly, lavender belongs to the plant family of mints. This grouping is distinguished by square stems and often by remarkable fragrances as well. There are three basic families of lavender: English lavender, often called true lavender; Spanish lavender; and French lavender.

The first plant I added to my garden is an English lavender. In latin names, all plants begin first with the genus, followed by the species. The genus for lavender is Lavandula (always capitalized) and the species name for English lavenders is angustifolia . Angustifolia means “narrow-leaved.”

The picture above is an English lavender, or Lavandula angustifolia . The label on my lavender reads:

Lavandula angustifolia ‘Ellagance Purple’.
The Ellagance Purple in single quotation marks indicates that this lavender is a cultivar. A cultivar means it is a specimen of a plant variety that was specifically selected from among seedlings because it differs in some unique way from the typical or normal species plant. The specimen was something that occurred naturally in nature and is propagated from cuttings, which is the only way to keep the unique traits of the cultivar.

You can also see names abbreviated, such as L. angustifolia ‘Ellagance Purple’ or even L. a. ‘Ellagance Purple’ .

Have I confused you yet?

I wish I knew the cultivar or variety of the lavender I grew at my old house. All I know is that it was an English, or angustifolia lavender. This ‘Ellagance Purple’ cultivar differs from the lavender I previously grew in a few ways.

First, there are fewer leaves on each stem. Second, the whorls are smaller and more compact. Instead of having little flowers or blooms, called corollas, that are spaced farther apart, this cultivar has them together tightly. Each stem also has fewer corollas, which likely means less lavender to harvest, if harvesting is your interest. I’ll have to wait and see. Given the name of the cultivar, my guess is that it was selected for it’s rich purple color which also has greater visual impact because the corollas aren’t spread out. A little online research yielded this information:

“2008 Fleuroselect Gold Medal winner! This outstanding variety was selected by the Fleuroselect judges on the basis of its quick crop time, uniformity, color, and floridity.

‘Ellagance Purple’ performs admirably in the garden, producing masses of fragrant, intense purple-blue blossoms atop bushy mounds of silver-green foliage from midsummer through early fall.” (

source here.
)

Given this information, it should be fun to watch this lavender plant grow. Up tomorrow: Spanish lavender. Should be fun!

Jennifer

Planting

May 23, 2011 jennifer Gardening

Our last soccer game was finished by mid-day Saturday. I came home to blue skies, a gentle breeze, and nothing on the calendar. At long last, a day perfect for planting!

My tulips are spent, and all that remained in my front flowerbed were some spring bulbs awaiting summer sun and a few candy tuft (pictured above). I had to run to Lowe’s for another item, so I headed to their garden section for browsing.

I got lost. I don’t know how many times I walked up and down the aisles, seeing old favorites that I haven’t grown in years. I apologized to my husband when I came home, telling him that it took me a long time because it was like greeting old friends. He asked, “Did they talk back to you?” “Yep,” was my quick reply (met by an unusual look on his face). He asked what the flowers said to me. I said, “They said they miss me too.” We both laughed as he shook his head.

I put on some gloves and went to work, adding the following:

English daisy, white foxglove (happy sigh), and penstemon. Yes, I like tall flowers.

In another area I added a lilac bush:

I also added a viburnum:

I love the snowball flowers viburnum has. They remind me of hydrangea. I intend to learn how to prune this bush well so it doesn’t get too wild looking.

Here’s a front view of the flowerbed beneath my porch (the lilac and viburnum are planted further south along the side of the house):

For the amount of work I’ve put into it, it’s not much to look at. The back looks bare, but it is where I’ve planted gladiolus bulbs, two dahlia tubers, and in the very center a peony root. I actually planted six peony roots in various spots and am crossing my fingers. I got them at a discount and some look better than others. The ideal time to plant peonies is in the fall, which I didn’t know until it was too late. So I planted them anyway and if nothing comes up this summer I’ll simply replace them in the fall.

In addition to the gladiolus, I planted ranunculus bulbs on the left near the driveway and some zinnia seeds around the peony root. The tulip leaves will get uglier as they die back, which is why I planted the candy tuft so it will eventually spread and help cover the tulips when they’re browning. I’m also looking for some phlox to add as a spreading ground cover.

Best of all, I planted a row of alternating boxwood and lavender plants on the same curve the tulips are on. I was so tempted to buy larger boxwood plants but this is a good exercise in patience for me. I’m buying small, knowing that in a few years it will look how I want it to. I have a sneaky feeling I’m going to love the look of the boxwood and lavender growing side by side. It is such a joy to have lavender growing at my home again, and I’ll share more about the lavender tomorrow!

Three of my daughters worked along side me for most of the afternoon. Their interest in learning how to plant, coupled with their joy at what we were planting, made me smile. I hope they will enjoy caring for our flowers as much as I do. It would be wonderful to share that hobby with them. I’m grateful for their sensitivity to beauty and their willingness to work.

Mulch will be next but I’m afraid to add it until I see how some of these tubers, roots and bulbs do. For now, I’m enjoying my beautiful new plants. Aren’t you thankful we live in such a beautiful world? I am so grateful for flowers.

Hopeful Homemaker

One comment flowers, gardening

A Year of Habits, no. 20

May 22, 2011 jennifer Helpfulness of Habit

I don’t know what to write tonight.

If I wasn’t almost 18 months along on this habit of reporting to myself each Sunday night, I’d skip it entirely.

In Church today I had a very sweet elderly lady say to me (after watching me struggle with children for over an hour) “You have such a beautiful family.”

And you know what I did when she said that? I started crying. Lovely response, wasn’t it?

Sometimes I hear words like that and think to myself, ” What family are you talking about?
Are you talking about the teenager who pokes his younger brothers and sisters, or the girl who rubs her hair on the bench and ends up looking like an orphan before we’re done, or the baby who always starts screaming and has to be rushed out of the room? Are you talking about the little boy who lays on the floor and wails that he doesn’t want to go to class? Surely you couldn’t be talking about my family.”

Then again, maybe she is. Perhaps she sees something I don’t see. Perhaps her perspective offers a picture that’s hard to see when your shirt has peanut butter smeared on it and someone just dumped the contents of your purse on the ground. Perhaps there’s something there, something I don’t perceive when every conversation I have is interrupted half a dozen times and the carpet is buried under six inches of clothing. Perhaps she sees us differently because she’s walked this road herself and looks back on the twists and turns and mud puddles with wisdom I have yet to gain.

Still, I cried. I thanked her for her comment and said it was very kind of her to say it. She followed by saying my children are so good. Are they? I wondered. Will they end up as good as they need to be? My response: “Thank you again. I believe they’re trying.” Then I spent the rest of the day wiping away random tears that suddenly sprang from my heart to my cheeks before I could check them.

What, really, does it mean to be a good Mom? It probably means different things to all of us, or perhaps we all have the same pile of answers but we tend to sort them in different ratios in our homes. I’ll be honest. Right now I have a whole lot more questions than I have answers. I’m trying to learn. Occasionally I’ll feel like I made good progress in one area only to turn around and realize I’ve regressed in another. I find myself in an unfamiliar place right now, a place I’m struggling to master.

I almost want to laugh at the grand goals I set in January. They also make me want to cry. I see so little change from week to week, it seems a joke to try to quantify the progress. Habits? I can list the bad ones, but good habits? Do I have any of those? I hang on, however, to the thought that if I don’t give up I might look back at the close of the year and see something worth mentioning.

So here I am.

We finished our soccer season yesterday. Still to come: lacrosse playoffs and soccer tryouts for next year.

The house looks a little better.

I spent more time reading, both individually as well as reading aloud to my children.

I learned some new things this week, like how to piece curves and how best to prepare a hole for a peony root. And how to make running to your car in a massive downpour with three young children in your Costco shopping cart an adventure. (You take a deep breath, look around at the 50 people huddled near the doors watching for their husbands to drive up so they can jump in, then say out loud, “Ready, set, GOOO!” to your kids while you dash out in the rain and run through an inch of standing water in the parking lot that was dry ten minutes earlier while your five year old son yells “YES!” and your three year old daughter starts to cry, “Mommy, I’m wet. Please, Mommy, please!” and your baby looks at you like “How could you do this to me?” Then you drive home with your sopping wet clothes stuck to your back.)

Mostly I’m learning how unqualified I really am for my responsibilities as a mother, which makes me grateful for things like prayer and repentance. And I’m trying to see that beautiful family that people mention occasionally, even when our messes obscure the view.

Two more weeks of school.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can….

xo, Jennifer