Finally! Web-Only Rarities for Sale Today

        Your wait is over. The treasures we told you "won't be available till January" are for sale today at our website. As a Gazette reader, you're the first to know – and you know they won't last long!
        DAHLIAS
        Jane Cowl -- One of our most sought after dahlias, last offered in 2004.
        Stolz von Berlin, 1884 -- Plump, pink, and 125 years old.
        Catherine Becker -- Family heirloom from Wausaukee, Wisconsin.
        GLADS
        Lucky Star -- Fragrant! And we have only 50 corms to spare.
        Firedance -- Small and exotically patterned like a cymbidium orchid.
        Starface -- Be still my heart! Tiny, complex, and rapturously beautiful.
        Melodie -- Small, cute, and rosy-peach splashed with red and gold.
        CANNAS
        America, 1893 -- A canna we can believe in! Red with burgundy leaves.
        Konigin Charlotte, 1892 -- Short and bright, with "painted lady" exuberance.
        Centenaire de R.-B. -- Deep, pure, true, radiant rose.
        Liberation -- Apricot flowers marbled with orange, gold, and pink. Alberich -- RHS award-winner, luscious, creamy peach. Of course you're welcome to ADD any of these bulbs to an existing order, too. Our website makes that hard to do for less than $30 worth, but you can simply call us at 734-995-1486 or email charlie@oldhousegardens.com and we'll make it work.

The Frugal Gardener: Cheap Thrills and Hope

        Times are tough, and the Frugal Gardener is here to help. He can't fix the economy overnight, but every month he'll be doling out tips, deep thoughts, and a bit of hope right here in our Gazette. You can help him and thousands of your fellow gardeners by sending your own thoughts, tips, and success stories to frugal@oldhousegardens.com.
        To get things started this month, below you'll find (1) an article about Claude Monet and his frugal love of bulbs and (2) our Book of the Month which focuses on something we can all grow at home that's possibly even more important than flowers: food.

No Need to Buy a Monet, Just Garden Like Him!

        For the last twenty years of his life, Monet painted only one subject: his gardens in Giverny. Many bulbs played a leading role in those gardens, and it seems his taste for bulbs was shaped, at least in part, by financial difficulties in his early years.
        In Monet: The Gardener (2002), Sidney Eddison writes: "Today, water lilies continue to float on the pond at Giverny. In May, irises in every imaginable shade of blue and violet bloom in their long, narrow beds; in June, roses smother the metal arches along the front walk. By midsummer, gladioli stand tall among the nasturtiums, which have begun their headlong rush toward the middle of the path. And in the fall, dahlias lavish their rich colors on the beds. The gardens, now open to the public, are the property of the Academie des Beaux-Arts. But Claude Monet still owns them."
        In the same book, Robert Gordon writes of Monet's early career: "Given his precarious finances and the temporary nature of his abodes, many of the plants he chose were annuals . . . or corms, such as gladiolus, which can be dug up in the fall and saved from year to year. At Argenteuil, Monet planted gladiolus corms by the hundreds. In a painting simply titled Gladioli of 1876, . . . [Monet's wife] Camille . . . gazes wistfully at cheerful ranks of pink, red, and bicolor flowers. . . . Two years later, in a work depicting Monet's new garden at Vetheuil, gladioli appear again, but this time growing in decorative blue-and-white ceramic containers -- a reminder of the impermanent nature of these early gardens. The same containers ultimately found a home at Giverny."

Book of the Month: Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

        My wife loves Barbara Kingsolver's novels (best-sellers like The Bean Trees, etc.), but this is the first of Kingsolver's books that I've read -- and I loved it. A diary of sorts, it tells the story of Kingsolver's family and the year they decided to turn their backs on fast food and out-of-season asparagus and "eat locally" instead.
        Though sympathetic to the cause, I worried that I might be in for a sappy or polemical read here. But Kingsolver is funny as heck, never pretends to have all the answers, and loves gardening. You'll learn a lot from her about the science, history, and socio-economics of food, and you'll have fun doing it! Like many people, Kingsolver is convinced that eating locally is good for our health, our neighborhoods, and our planet. I know this: she's got me looking at what I eat from a whole new perspective, and at the end of the book I got a little emotional rooting for the family's first turkey eggs to hatch.
        For an excerpt from the book, see below.

"Tranquils" and Other Flower "Gifts from a Previous Century"

        In this excerpt from our Book of the Month, Kingsolver describes what is most likely Narcissus pseudonarcissus, the early yellow trumpet daffodil of the South -- and reveals herself as a kindred spirit to heirloom-flower lovers everywhere:
        "The greatest rewards of living in an old farmhouse are the stories and the gardens, if they're still intact in any form. We are lucky enough to have both. The banks all around us are crowded with flowering shrubs and hummocks of perennial bulbs that never fail to please and startle us, like old friends leaping from behind the furniture to yell, 'Surprise!' These flowers are gifts from a previous century, a previous dweller here -- a tale, told in flowers, of one farm wife's fondness for beauty and this place.
        "In a few more months we'd be drunk on the scent of Lizzie Webb's mock oranges and lilacs, but the show begins modestly in April with her tiny Lenten roses, white-petaled snowdrops, and the wildish little daffodils called jonquils that have naturalized all over the grassy slopes. As Lily and I walked single file up the path to the greenhouse, I noticed these were up, poking their snub, yellow-tipped noses through a fringe of leaves.
        "'Oh, Mama,' Lily cried, 'look what's about to bloom -- the tranquils.' There went the last of the needles of ice around my heart, and I understood I'd be doomed to calling the jonquils tranquils for the rest of my days. Lily is my youngest. Maybe you know how these things go. In our family, those pink birds with the long necks are called flingmos because of how their real name was cutely jumbled by my brother's youngest child – and that was, yikes, twenty years ago."

Proof that Spring is Coming

        For those of you shivering in the grip of Arctic cold, here's a preview of what's sure to reach us all before long: Spring, glorious, unstoppable spring.
        On January 9 our terrific Louisiana grower sent us a photo of his Minor Monarque narcissus in full bloom under his pecan trees. "The first one bloomed on Dec. 11," he wrote, "and this week they are just past their peak. Early Pearl are a week behind them, and the Campernelles are just starting to bloom now." Woo-hoo!

Mourning Ed McRae, Champion of Lilies

        American gardening lost a great friend with the passing of lily expert Edward McRae late last year. Born in Scotland, Eddie moved to Oregon in 1961 and spent the rest of his life growing, hybridizing, and promoting lilies. In 1995 he launched the Species Lilies Preservation Group, and in 1998 he summed up a lifetime's worth of knowledge in Lilies: A Guide for Growers and Collectors.
        Most importantly to us, Eddie was "our" lily grower, and opening his boxes of freshly dug, beautiful bulbs was always one of the highlights our fall shipping season. A small clump of his stunning red form of Lilium canadense soldiers on in our garden, and I'm sure we'll enjoy it more than ever this summer, remembering and missing him.

Did You Miss Last Month's Newsletter? Read It Online!

        December's articles included mulching with Christmas lights, "berserk" cannas, tuberoses at Versailles, wedding dahlias, Pittsburgh's 250th, and more. You can read all of our back-issues -- by date or topic -- at oldhousegardens.com/NewsletterArchives.asp.

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