Gardening with Bette

Sillydoggarden is about as far removed from urban gardening as you can get. But we believe wholeheartedly in greening city spaces so we wanted to pass along this charity fundraising auction for the New York Restoration Project, a nonprofit founded by Bette Midler. (Thanks, Tracy and Alex, for your work with the project.)

If I only had a few extra thousand dollars lying around I might be inclined to bid on lunch with Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner or meeting Melissa Etheridge. Browse the site and dream about what you would bid on -- and let me know.

Season opener ... and closer

It may look like they're confused, but these crocus are blooming right on schedule in November.

It was just six months ago that I was trumpeting the arrival of spring's first crocus. Now, in November, I'm all agog over its fall-blooming cousins. Symmetry in the garden, whether through time or space, is a pleasing concept and the little crocus supplies it in a big way. How many other plants can herald the start of gardening season and announce its end as well?

To my eye, crocus are among the most graceful of flowers. They show up in spring when most of the rest of the world is still brown. And they show up in autumn, when much of the world is turning brown again. It's a perfect fit on either end of the seasonal spectrum. Most of us are so conditioned to crocus as a spring flower that seeing its familiar form in the fall is enough to turn heads. The first time I saw fall-blooming crocus was in Washington state. I was driving down a street in a tiny town near Fort Lewis when I saw a line of purple shooting up through fallen autumn leaves that were piling up against an iron fence. I had to stop the car and look -- such is the power of surprise in garden design.

I planted a few fall-blooming crocus some years back in a thicket of lingonberry and in a patch of low-growing, creeping veronica ('Waterperry blue'). They're beautiful, but really, I should have planted at least 20 times as many. Like many small bulbs, they show best when planted in large numbers.

This fall, I planted about 75 fall-blooming crocus -- some by the stairs to the deck in a bed of pussytoes and some by the reflecting pool. (I've nicknamed those by the pool as "doe crocus.") I thought I was planting purple Crocus speciosus, but now, after examining the blooms for several days, I'm wondering if the supplier mixed up the order and sent 'albus' instead. I'm not seeing any purple, and what I am seeing seems to fit the catalog description: "A pure white form of C. speciosus with pointed segments and a yellow throat." It's not a major issue -- they're still lovely and I'll simply order more of the purple fall-bloomers next year.

I planted some in the pussytoes by the deck stairs where they'll get plenty of sun and a chance to dry out in the summer.

A purple crocus pokes its head out of a patch of lingonberry. (The bronze-red plant is a hardy geranium seedling.)

A delicate close to the season.

Happy Halloween snack

Brined pumpkin seeds -- delicious!

We don't normally get many (if any) trick-or-treaters out here in the boonies, but I always carve at least one pumpkin. Have to. Have to have the seeds. Have to have the seeds to roast them. Must have roasted pumpkin seeds. Some years I carve pumpkins that we've grown; this year we didn't grow pumpkins so I carved a couple brought home from the grocery store.

This year, for the first time, I tried brining the pumpkin seeds. I found the tip at apartment therapy. First, clean the seeds and place them in a saucepan. Then, for each cup of seeds, add two cups of water and 2 tablespoons of salt. Add a touch of olive oil. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 10 minutes.

After simmering, drain and toss with more olive oil and some spices if you like. I added a little sea salt and a generous sprinkling of curry powder. Mix and spread the seeds on a cookie sheet. Bake at 400 F. for about 25 minutes, checking and stirring the seeds periodically.

I also did a standard seed roasting to compare. (Mix cleaned seeds with olive oil, sea salt and hot curry powder. Roast at 300 F. for about 40 minutes.) The difference was subtle, but I think the brined seeds had a little more depth. And they weren't any harder to prepare.

These guys gave up their seeds for me.

Short respite from the gloom

It felt good to soak up some blue sky for a little while this afternoon.

We had a sliver of blue sky this afternoon, a rarity this soggy October. So there was opportunity for a little playtime outside with the silly dog. But playtime makes him thirsty and with all of the water garden tubs emptied for the winter, he made do with the weedy ditch on the north side of the front yard. It's actually one of his favorite places to get a drink; he likes to lie down in it and lap up the water.

Find the dog in the tall grass.

Later in the day, there was another burst of rain and one of the best rainbows I've seen in years -- the photo doesn't do it justice. It happened so fast -- within a minute the sun was behind a cloud again.

The rainbow was gone almost as quickly as it appeared.

Watch 'Botany'

What would you do for a plant you love? In the fall, the Rose Garden in Duluth becomes a series of trenches as the roses are tipped and buried for the winter. Sort of looks like gravediggers gone crazy, doesn't it?

Program note for plant geeks: "The Botany of Desire" airs at 7 tonight on PBS. Based on the book by Michael Pollan, the public broadcasters describe it this way: "The human-plant relationship is explored via the stories of the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato. Included: how the apple came to be sweet; "tulip mania" in the Netherlands circa the 1630s, when tulips were traded for large sums of money; the history and physiology of marijuana; the genetically modified (and no longer available) New Leaf potato, which featured a microorganism that repelled potato beetles. Michael Pollan ("The Botany of Desire") hosts. Frances McDormand narrates.'' Find a preview here.

The relationships between people and plants are always fascinating. Take, for example, the Rose Garden in Duluth. Every fall, volunteers dig trenches (Minnesota Tip Method) for protecting the roses too delicate to take northern winters. And every spring, volunteers uncover them and set them out for another season. When you love something that much, the work involved is worth it. But does this mean the roses really are the ones in control? Hmmm.

Bye-bye 'African Moon'

It's not yet Halloween, but next year's seed catalogs already are arriving.

'African Moon' boasts a cheery flower. But is it an Osteospermum or Dimorphotheca?

The first of the seed catalogs for 2010 arrived in the mail this week. I'm still trying to tie up all the loose ends from 2009. Blame some of it on our wet, dreary October, but I still have containers to empty, dahlias to dig for overwintering and seed trays to wash. 2010 seems like a long way off. But on a gloomy afternoon, I'll take the bait and flip through the pages of the Thompson & Morgan catalog. After all, that red cosmos ('Rubenza') on the cover is plenty attractive.

On the sale pages for discontinued seed is one of my favorite annuals from this past summer: Osteospermum 'African Moon.' Say it ain't so! The plant isn't perfect, but it's just as garden-worthy as many other annuals. The foliage can be a little floppy, but the flower is a nice white with yellow-apricot edges. It bloomed its head off, and I think if I had been diligent about deadheading I could have gotten even more out of it.

The poor plant has suffered from some ambiguous marketing. T&M sells the seed as Osteospermum pluvialis and in the catalog refers to Dimorphotheca as a synonym for Osteospermum. But www.osteospermum.com says that Dimorphotheca and Osteospermum are not the same. Stokes Seeds lists them as separate genera. This sort of disconnect makes it hard for home gardeners to know exactly what they're getting. What we thought was Osteospermum seems to more accurately be Dimorphotheca.

Naming issues aside, we may have to order some seeds earlier than planned or seek out other sources to keep our 'African Moon' shining.

One cool thing about 'African Moon' is that its flowers close in the evening or on overcast days. The undersides of the petals are pretty in their own right.

That's 'African Moon' at top left and Osteospermum 'Asti White' on the right. There seems to be no confusion about 'Asti White's' Osteospermum roots.

A low-growing phlox borders a bright patch of 'African Moon.' 'African Moon's' foliage appeared disappointingly limp in 2008 so this year I planted them closer together and they seemed to appreciate the tighter quarters.

Easy fruit-fly trap

A little wine for the flies.

Fruit flies seem to follow when the garden harvest gets moved indoors. Here's a tip we learned from a friend who is a former restaurateur: Pour a little wine in a jar or glass, cover it with plastic wrap and poke a tiny hole or two in the plastic. The fruit flies are attracted to the wine, fly in and can't escape. Whatever produce you have on the kitchen counter is safe.