The scented terrace

The Abyssinian gladiolus (Acidanthera murielae) do not survive winter reliably in this climate. They did one year. The next, they did not. So now I plant new corms every late spring. 

They have a faintly detectable scent during the day, but at night it becomes powerful.

Plant for pleasure in your own particular darkness.

The English roses like Brooklyn

The temperatures over the last two weeks, more reminiscent of September than of August, have been kind to the English roses.

The two new roses, gifts from Michael Marriott, the rosarian at David Austin, have begun to show off. Lady Emma Hamilton - above -  in her second flush since we returned from South Africa in early July, is no longer flat orange and pinched, but nuanced and supple. The colour of the younger flower is rich, tending paler pink as the bloom ages. They are beautiful, and have lasted well. The stems are long.

Windermere has long stems and perfect ivory cabbage-shaped flowers. The blooms are small, but exquisite, and as you see each stem has multiple buds. They hate the heat and wilt fast. The scent is delicious, but not as strong as Abraham Darby's. I've been feeding them Espoma's Rose Tone and they seem to like it.

More will open today.

On a summer evening

...we gathered for a rooftop picnic, and spread ourselves out on the giant kikoi.

        Basil from the terrace, tomatoes from Jersey, and burrata from Vermont.

                                          And the sun going down, in bubbles.

Clematis Ramona

The name Ramona makes me think of an actress in a 50's movie, in a poofy skirt and serious lipstick, setting down a plate of spaghetti in front of a man with slicked back hair, his tie loosened at the neck, and a fan blowing in the window of a walk up. 

In fact, just like home, minus the slicked back hair and poofy skirt.

Thanks to reader Kathy Lilleskov for steering me to the forgotten name of this clematis, which I bought this spring. It was grown by Jim Glover out on the North Fork.

It is one of the Group 2 clematis - the three groups refer to their blooming and pruning schedules. Group 2's are cut back hard in late winter, and then again after their first flush of flower in spring.

Bee's Jubilee has also opened, on the other side of the terrace. Pictures to follow. She's the really gaudy one. Louder than Ramona.

More like Lucy.

Let them eat lotus

At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

But if you are in the mood for the aquatic flowers' interesting, edible rhizomes (or for pork buns, for that matter), you need to visit Chinatown. The seeds are edible too - I've seen recipes for their use ranging from soup [the link, Kitchen Tigress is worth a visit] to snacks, where they are puffed, like rice. They sound about as easy to handle as hominy (some of you may recall the epic, multi-day pozole I made, once, with heirloom, artist-grown Indian hominy): much soaking and cleaning.

The seed heads. Good design for shower heads.

A way to start

Good morning.

Gardening for cats

...my next book.

Not really. I think it should be a novel about the last days of the United States post office.

But I do garden for the cat. He has his little green carpet, with the creeping Jenny, where he likes to hang out during the day, under the shade of the Heuchera leaves, and he has his space between the pots on the side of the terrace, so that he can jump from the stone table to prowl on the roof. Or sit and stare down at us while we eat dinner.

The other night we heard the familiar and rare click of a katydid. Green cicadas, the cat calls them, and he says they taste like cat candy. His ears pricked up and he shot to the roof and began swiping at the climbing rose. We liked the katydid and did not want it to be eaten. The Frenchman shot off after him,  and performed a dramatic aerial rescue of the katydid, to the disgusted amazement of the cat. It was his birthday and we had just removed his present from the universe.

The katydid was equally unimpressed, rejecting its new housing in the middle tiers of the rose, and flying into an oak tree across the road, where we hear its chirruping clicks every night, while we eat dinner.