Blue Skies and Empty Space

It is amazing how much work you can get done when you are focused, when the operating thought in your head is "This is It. It is time to be ruthless." There actually is an organized and clean nursery full of healthy plants in there. What a difference a couple of days of work makes.

Growing potted landscape plants in the tropics really is a full time job. I am confronting the plant addict in me who thinks I can grow that, so I will. My denial is slipping. Root it, sprout it, divide it, pot it, add water and a dash of Osmocote and watch out!

Things have a way of creeping up on you and creeping away from you without focus.















Empty spaces are appearing and the result is that what is left stands out more. Less clutter equals a tidier look that can be pleasing to the eye. Blocks of plants now proclaim who they are. I have a long way to go before a simple garden reappears.

My stack of pots is growing. I am a recycling kind of guy and they may be worth a few pennies at a garage sale.















Lawn creep is well under way as the perennial flowers are dug up. I haven't had the heart to yank the wild Basil yet. Perhaps I should now while the bees are distracted by the Holly tree.















I see blue skies above and in front of me. The re-invention tour is packing up for the road.
















A new garden that will have an unknown influence on me awaits. A wild piece of land that has a few rhododendrons I know, maybe some native azaleas I hope and escapees from the crazy gardeners just up above most likely. Time will tell.

Bareroot Heliconia

If I don't need a backhoe to dig it up and move it, I am willing to sell it. Here we have five starts of Heliconia indica "Spectabilis" ready to go.













Before anyone starts thinking he isn't going to leave them a bush to piss behind, I have been doing this for the last sixteen years. These five starts of this Heliconia are about one quarter of a two year old clump and I have three clumps of the H. indica.

Taking bareroot divisions of most Heliconia and many of the Gingers is an easy and quick way to get mature growth from new plants. The rhizome or underground stem is the most important part of these plants. A big fat mature rhizome is a big head start for impatient people.














This leaf is what they are after with this Heliconia, a beautiful pinstripe of pink, green and red. The whole plant has a strong red coloration to it.




















Red is the most coveted leaf color it seems for the "I want Color" crowd. It jars the eye enough for people to acknowledge there is indeed color in the garden and to approach some level of satisfaction that they are gardening and designing correctly.

The flower on this Heliconia is insignificant for the most part. It is a plain red upright bloom that blends in too much with the red plant to be distinct or showy. Even the form and size of the flower is a bit on the wimpy side so it isn't much good for cutting.

But those leaves! If you want a little more drama in a tropical flower arrangement or the coolest placemats for a dinner table, this is the plant.

Underneath the Landscape Fabric

Between selling and tossing plants the nursery is beginning to thin out. I have been able to remove the first section of landscape cloth that was laid down to slow the growth of weeds around the potted plants. A very old former bed of Lemon Grass, African Iris, and False Oregano underneath two Manila Palms and a Holly tree had been removed and covered over to make more room for growing potted plants.

Now it is being returned to open soil and what ever fate may be in store for it.















There is a lesson underneath the landscape fabric that lazy gardeners fooled by the garden products industry may need to see. To many times to count I have seen and been told by people that they are going to put down this fabric so they won't have to pull weeds. I always object.

This is what happened under the landscape fabric over the course of just two years. The roots of the Palms, Holly, Ti and Red Ginger still in the ground nearby all rose to the surface. They are gasping for air and trying to escape a putrid wet soil beneath.

















Any remnants of organic matter has long since decomposed and the soil may have shrunk a bit as well. The bare soil itself is all that is left to feed these roots. There was not a bug, a worm or movement of any kind in this tangle of roots when I lifted the fabric.

Living on the side of a rocky volcano, my soil is thin to begin with. It isn't unusual for main roots to be near the surface. This scene however with many feeder roots at the top of the soil is not the norm in the rest of my garden where there is no fabric and the beds are mulched.















This interlocking network of roots sitting on top of a stressed soil is what that pretty petunia poking out through its little hole in the fabric is going to be competing with at some point when this stuff is used in a garden for any length of time. Not Good.

Just say No to Landscape Fabric if you want a real garden.

Dr. Leda Prunes Her Roses

I had only gone out into the nursery to stand all the potted plants back up that had fallen over in the Big Wind and my two twelve foot tall long stemmed roses said, "Prune Me!"

Okay I will cut off some of your branches that are leaning from their own weight and the effects of the wind.

Snip snip.

No I said, "Prune Me and I mean Prune me Good!"

Fine I will prune the Red Rose, it is smaller and won't take long. Snip snip snip the Red Rose is done. No gloves, no shirt, no shoes, I am done. I have to make sure all the potted plants are standing up.

"Prune Me Too Damn it!"

Ok Fine. I will cut off some of your yellow flowering lower branches. I am not wearing a shirt. I don't use gloves. I am in my slippas and the skeeters are biting me. That is enough for now.

"Finish It!"

But I was saving you for Dr. Leda to prune when she gets better and comes to Maui.

"Prune me now!"















So I pruned both of my roses hard and thought of Elizabeth aka Lymphopo aka Dr. Leda Horticulture waiting for the results of her scans post chemo therapy, still not able to venture into her own garden to prune her roses, thinking good thoughts for her.















Dr. Leda didn't need my roses. Today she got to go outside in her own garden and work till she was tired from pruning her own roses. She kicked cancer's butt. Now she can go back outside and play in the dirt and get stabbed by thorny roses and not worry about the germs and a compromised immune system from chemo.

She got to love doing today what I am pretty much totally over and take entirely for granted. There is not a single day of the year when there is not some ding, some dent, some wound on my flesh from jungle maintaining. My sole precaution for my beleaguered skin is Dial anti-bacterial soap. Yea like that really helps. I was blessed with the genetics of the survivors of pestilence and plague. It works for me.
















I just pruned two roses and still have thousands of plants to unload in the next four months. There are sure to be many more dings and dents to my skin in the near future. I hear people wear more clothes up north.