Warm days shake up local garden scene

Tag: Tiller Blades

Here's something you didn't read in last Saturday's paper: I felt the earthquake that hit Illinois.

I offered my story to the editors here at The Eagle, but they have some kind of rule about reliable sources. It's kind of like them not quoting me a couple of weeks ago when I said that Wichita priest James Conley, just named auxiliary bishop of Denver, would be the first American pope. (Mark my words.)

But with the exception of an online comment from Rose Hill, I didn't hear of anybody else coming forward locally to say they experienced the temblor, so far from its epicenter. It's one thing to connect to the earth through the garden; feeling it in the alleged safety of your own bed in the darkness of early morning is quite another.

I had woken shortly before 4 a.m. that Friday and was just falling back to sleep a little while later when a wind came up and I heard the chimes ring and felt my bed move. I didn't know what to think. The wind had not been that strong. I discounted Satan and a structural failure as time went on and the movement didn't recur. I fell asleep and didn't think of it again until I heard about the quake at work. And then my nerves got jangled.

It was the beginning of a streak of earth-moving days. The third weekend of April brought sunny, hot weather, giving me my first sunburn as I sat with friends on the earth the next day at Bartlett Arboretum, listening to Robin Macy sing her "Songs From the Garden"

The earth will always heal the soul? I guess that happens after it tosses you out of bed. I definitely felt my nerves healed under the sun, against solid unmoving earth, surrounded by towering loblolly pines and sweet music.

Sunday was even warmer. I put together a lemon tart and wondered whether it was too hot to turn the oven on. I looked out the open windows to see the male neighbors doing their yard work bare-chested. I wondered if some wordless signal had gone out -- it's warm enough to shed the shirts, fellas.

I wanted to make this tart because it's topped with lemon curd and strawberries, and I mostly abstain from strawberries during the winter -- they're out of season, they're expensive, it just ain't natural. But now I took a bite of the fruit, and spring exploded in my mouth.

Carrots, corn and sugar peas

Robin Macy was back singing her songs from the garden, this time on my stereo.

On Monday it was time for a visit to Dutch's Greenhouse, where I'd missed out on some popular plants last year because I waited until May.

I was relieved this time to snag the Painted Coral calibrachoa that had been sold out last year, but Ron Marcum told me I was too late for the Vista Bubble Gum supertunia (though Dutch's hopes to have more). Ron showed me a new Pink Sugar arctotis (African daisy) that people are snapping up, and I grabbed it out of his hands. This year's consolation prize.

The garden center was hopping on this Monday, further proof that "the weekend" has spilled out beyond the traditional measly two days, and who can argue against that? Ron told me that things had been crazy over the "weekend," but the weather was making it crazier, because the 40s were still in the forecast, and vinca, for one thing, doesn't like the 40s. Neither do basil or calladiums or sun coleus.

Other popular picks among the new annuals are Flamenco Cha Cha cuphea (not just one dance will do) and Ragin' Cajun ruellia, with red tubular flowers and foliage that's so much different and more rounded than other varieties, Ron said.

A returning favorite annual is Diamond Frost euphorbia, the slender white flowers that dart about like shooting stars.