A new hardy begonia?

Unnamed begonia hybrid (August 2014)

I'm leading with a photo from last summer because that's what this blog post is ultimately about.  And hoo-boy, could I use some warm weather right now!  This has been a slow winter for me, with MANTS being an isolated bright spot of horticulture in the middle of January (see Beating the winter blahs at MANTS).  This hasn't been a bad winter for Washington, DC but I'm just back from an extended visit to Buffalo to help out with my dad, who is in a nursing home following a major stroke and was in the hospital for the last 6 days of my latest visit.  This was an exhausting visit, and to add insult to injury the weather was awful but for once it worked in my favor: there was a weather advisory on the day of my scheduled departure and I was able to extend my stay for an extra 3 days without any additional fee.

What is it about jack-in-the-pulpit?

Fruiting jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphylla)

When I in was in western New York last month, visiting my parents, I took a walk in the woods behind their house--the house where I grew up, another lifetime ago--and spotted something brilliant red in the distance.  It turned out to be a jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphylla) bearing its fruits among the poison ivy and detritus of decades of neglect.  Not far away I spotted a patch of them, and near those, another even larger.

Two very different gardens

Lily, Pine Ridge Gardens

While visiting my family in Buffalo last weekend, I had the privilege of visiting two very different private gardens: Pine Ridge Gardens in Orchard Park and Smug Creek Gardens in Hamburg.  Both are participants in Garden Walk Buffalo but since I was in town for such a short time, the owners were gracious enough to accommodate me on a weekend day when they were not normally open to the public.  I wish that my photos could do justice to these gardens; it was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for garden touring, but not ideal for photography.  I had to adjust the contrast in some of the photos but I hope they give some idea of how wonderful these gardens are!

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, June 2014

Because today is Father's Day, my first foray into "Garden Bloggers Bloom Day" is dedicated to my dad, Martin E. Boggan.  My father had a major stroke last November (see "The Roots of a Gardener") but he has come a long way since then, and recovered in ways that we never expected.  Sadly, he is currently in a nursing home and unable to see his rhododendrons in their spring splendor.

What a week!

Wedding cake

A wedding (not my own!) was the perfect way to end an exhausting 9 day stretch when I attended my 30th college reunion at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY; spent 3 days visiting my parents in Buffalo; spent another day in Buffalo after my flight was cancelled due to weather in the DC area (with the rescheduled flight the next evening delayed and nearly cancelled for the same reason); got home late and exhausted for exactly one night in my own bed; did a quick check to make sure no plants were in dire need of water, and then headed out of town again the next morning for a wedding in the hills of southern Pennsylvania.

Happy birthday, Mom

I was going through some old photos last night and came across this one from my high school graduation in 1980.  I really like this photo because we all look so happy, and I especially love my mom's smile.  It's hard to believe that in this photo from 34 years ago, my parents are both younger than I am now.

Cold rhodies

Rhododendrons (and rabbit) at 10 degrees

I'm just back from Buffalo, having spent a week with my family so I could help out after my father's stroke last November.  Buffalo being Buffalo, it was ten degrees (F!) when I got up early this morning to spend one last hour with my dad at the nursing home before flying back to DC.

I've written previously about "fatsia flop", when the leaves droop and look like boiled spinach.  These photos show my parents' rhododendrons doing much the same thing this morning.  It is apparently a common characteristic of broadleafed evergreens to droop or curl in cold weather, looking seriously damaged but miraculously recovering when temperatures go back above freezing.  It's hard to believe that these shrubs will be smothered in flowers in just a few weeks.


Rhododendrons with deer fencing

My father planted two rhododendrons over 40 years ago, and liked them so much he went on to plant several more over the years.  The rhododendrons have grown enormous and they are his pride and joy.  Because of an exploding deer population, he puts up fencing every fall to protect them; otherwise the deer will completely defoliate them over the winter.  And what an awful winter this has been for all of us; no matter how bad we've had it in DC, my parents have had it a whole lot worse in Buffalo.  They normally spend their winters in Florida but that wasn't possible after my father's stroke last fall.  And of all the winters for them to be stuck in Buffalo, this was the worst one in 20 years.  I can only hope my father can make it home to see his rhododendrons blooming this year.

Home from the Holidays

I just returned from spending Thanksgiving with my family in Buffalo.  My mom and dad still live there and I recently wrote about growing up there.  Here is a photo of the house where I grew up, in a suburb several miles south of Buffalo.  Yes, I had to shovel the driveway before Thanksgiving!  Unfortunately my father recently had a massive stroke; he's recovering (and far better than anybody expected) but I'm not sure they will be able to keep this house much longer.



There are so many memories tied up in this house; my father was always a gardener and I learned so much from him while I was growing up here.  Here is a view out of my old bedroom window on the back of the house; hard to tell from this photo but the rhododendrons are about 10 feet tall and are smothered with gorgeous flowers in the spring.  My father is justifiably proud of them.  It's going to be hard for all of us to give up this house, where my parents have lived since 1968.



Western New York is sparsely populated and has some beautiful farmland and countryside.  Spending time there while my father was in the hospital made me uncharacteristically homesick.  I even miss the snow... for a few days!  Otherwise winters are one of the things I don't miss.  I spent a few days staying with my sister and this is the view out of her back door, overlooking farmland in a valley of the Boston Hills:

The Roots of a Gardener

"Dad had a stroke."  It's been a week since my sister said those words over the phone and my life and my world got turned upside down.  I flew to Buffalo the next morning and my family and I have spent the last 7 days in and out of the stroke unit at Mercy Hospital of Buffalo, where he is receiving wonderful care.  After a very grim first couple of days, things are actually starting to look up a bit for my father, although it's going to be a very long and slow recovery.

While I'm staying with my mom I'm sleeping in the same room I had as a kid, which happens to have the exact same furniture as when I left for college 33 years ago.  The view out the bedroom window into the woods behind the house is exactly the same as it was all those years ago and every square inch of this house is saturated with memories from my childhood.  My father still has a garden out back, flowers now (well, at least in warmer weather) but when I was a kid it was a vegetable garden.  It was my job to keep it weeded--something I hated--but I have many happy memories of working alongside my father, digging and planting, and especially harvesting the vegetables, literally the fruits of my labor.  I enjoyed giving the vegetables to my mother, who was (and is) an excellent cook and transformed the eggplants, the green beans, the tomatoes, the cucumbers, the bell peppers, and the zucchini into the dishes that are still my comfort foods.  My father has always taken such pride in his gardens, mowed the lawn himself right up until the age of 82 (although I doubt he'll be able to do that any longer), and has grown the most enormous and beautiful rhododendrons I've ever seen, putting up fencing around them every fall as my parents prepared to head to Florida for the winter so the deer wouldn't eat them.  The rhododendrons welcome my parents with their flowers every spring, just as they are returning.

My mom asked me a few days ago where botany came from: how on earth did I ever get interested in that field?  Because as a child I was obsessed with dinosaurs and fossils and wanted to be a paleontologist, and as a teenager I collected insects and went into entomology at Cornell.  So why plants?  The answer is my father.  Although I don't remember it, he tells me that I loved "working" in the garden with him even when I was 4 or 5 years old, back when we still lived in Syracuse, and one of my earliest memories is picking a daisy and "planting" it in a paper cup full of mud, and plopping it on the table when my mother had some women over for bridge.  My father always gardened and was in charge of the outdoor plants, but my mother always had houseplants indoors.  How could I not have ended up loving plants?  And when we moved from Syracuse to a nearly-rural suburb of Buffalo, I found myself surrounded by forests full of strange and mysterious wildflowers like trilliums and jack-in-the-pulpits.  The latter were among my favorites, but I wanted to know the names of all of them.  My father helped me look them up in the encyclopedia and gave me a little patch of the garden, where I could plant anything I wanted, and I started bringing home the plants that I found, trying to grow them (although not always successfully).  Many other people along the way helped cultivate my interest in plants, but my father planted the seeds, and for that I will be forever indebted to him.