Thursday, June 11, 2009

Garden envy


Eryngium
Originally uploaded by Sigrid Frensen


My very favorite garden writer is Henry Mitchell. For years he wrote "The Earthman" column for The Washington Post, and his essays have been collected in a several books. They make wonderful winter reading.
http://books.google.com/books?id=O5fRmqDualkC

He wrote a funny column once about how envious gardeners are of each other, how we like to brag that certain plants are "practically invasive" in our gardens, when friends struggle to grow them at all.

For example, for years I've been trying to grow Eryngium (Sea Holly.) It looks like a soft grey thistle, and in my opinion not all that attractive, although John likes it for some reason. This spring I bought a $12!!! bag of Eryngium starts at Costco, and tried again. As usual, most died, except for one puny plant that I'll probably rip out accidentally because it looks like a weed. Some of our friends are wonderful gardeners-- Candi, Roger, Nils, Tim and Sam for example. If I dropped by, it wouldn't surprise me to see whole beds of Sea Holly in their gardens. But then I could brag about how "I just can't seem to get RID of all the crocosima in MY garden!"

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