casa coniglio

Summertime, and not much is blooming. That's what happens here, when the weather is hot and dry for a few months. I'd have more flowers if I irrigated more, but that's not something I want to do. I'll appreciate the variation that occurs from year to year. This year, the colors are more in the tan/olive range. I happen to like that, too.

Quercus turbinella and Stipa neomexicana

The agastache should be blooming now, but they seem hestitant to put out more than a few blossoms. It is as if they are testing the waters. Or lack of water. But monsoon weather is here, and I've finally gotten more than a drop or two of water for the last two days (and realized that my house has a leak). Maybe the agastache will wake up.

What is blooming now is not in the garden. It is the orchids that are blooming indoors, and so are a couple of plants in pots. One of these was the surprise of an Amaryllis (Hippestrum) that decided to bloom, and the color matches the few blossoms on the Agastache 'Firebird' and the Zauschneria garrettii 'Mountain Flame' that are in the garden. I'm not sure why there is so much of this color in the garden. It's not a color that I particularly admire. But in the desert landscape, I can appreciate it. Since the 'Mountain Flame' is looking so pathetic, I may just take it out and replace it with some Agastache cana.



The other plant in a pot that is blooming right now is Agapanthus 'Storm Cloud'. I bought this on my January trip to San Francisco. It was semi-dormant in a 1-gallon can, and I lugged this half-dead looking thing on the plane with me. People looked at it with eyebrow raised. Knowing that Agapanthus need a period of cold but not freezing weather in order to trigger a summer bloom, I took the responsibility of bringing it outside during the day when it was above freezing, and putting it in the garage at night. It must have thought it was still in California, because the leaves grew. This was unfortunate since this made it much more susceptible to freezing. I knew that one night of forgetfulness and the thing was a goner, since although winter days in Albuquerque get into the 40's or 50's, night time temperatures can be in the single digits. Now, although the plant isn't as happy as it would be in California, I'm happy to see flowers. It's funny that when I lived in California, Agapanthus was so commonplace as to be boring. Now I long to be able to grow it, even to the point of being a plant slave. We'll see what happens this winter.


Agapanthus 'Storm Cloud'

Brassavola Little Stars (B. nodosa x cordata) continues to amaze me. As I wrote about in February, B. Little Stars has been one of my favorite orchids (if not my most favorite – and I’ve grown a lot of orchids) ever since I first saw and smelled the flowers. The pristine broad white lip and pale green spidery petals are elegant, and the fragrance transports me to heaven. This year, one of my plants is blooming in the summer. It’s very odd, since I’m used to them blooming in the late fall, just in time for Thanksgiving, like clockwork for the last 10 years or so. I started out with a grex from Odom’s called ‘Louise’ (For those uninitiated to orchid nomenclature, a interspecific cross such as this, maintains the genus since the genus is the same in both – Brassavola in this case, and the cross can be named, in this example, Little Stars. Thus, any seedlings resulting from any Brassavola nodosa crossed with Brassavola cordata are called Brassavola Little Stars. If a specific plant of those seedlings is chosen, named and propagated asexually e.g. genetically identical, each plant is a "grex", and is given a name in single quotes - in this case ‘Louise’).

This great plant, to my eye, has slightly smaller flowers than the other B. Little Stars that I’ve seen, with slightly denser flowers and a longer stem. It also has a slightly different fragrance. This is the plant that grew into a huge plant, which I gave to my parents. It had filled a 10-inch pot and had hundreds of flowers. My parents returned it to me several months later with the roots rotted out and mostly dead. I’ve saved one little piece but it hasn’t yet resumed its original vigor some 8 years later.

But it is the one that is blooming right now. In the heat of summer, the fragrance seems richer, denser, carrying much farther throughout the house. It doesn’t wait until dark to start the olfactory show as it does in the winter, but as soon as the brightness of the day starts to fade the fragrance spreads in tantalizing wisps, and like those cartoon smells of pie drawing someone in, this fragrance irresistibly pulls me.

Smelling the fragrance has always brought emotions to the surface, suggesting things only half remembered. I could drown happily in this fragrance. For years, I’ve wondered why this effect occurs and -it is only this summer that I’ve been able to figure out why. I’m noticing that the fragrance varies slightly from day to day, and from hour to hour. It is perhaps this kaleidoscope of fragrances that confuses my limbic system. The other day, I was certain that the fragrance was identical to that of gardenia. But the next day I wondered why I ever thought that. Other times, I smell ginger, cardamom and cloves. Some days it smells identical to Casa Blanca lilies. Lately, it smells almost exactly like Star Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides), another of my favorite floral fragrances, and one that I sadly cannot grow here in the cold winter climate of Albuquerque. On other occasions it could be any combination of those smells. Each of them have emotional connections. All of them together is almost overwhelming.

Last week I took a trip out to San Franciso for a conference. I went a few days early to relax a bit and spend time with the family. My mother has been whining that none of her children have been visiting her lately, especially me, since I'm the only one who lives out of the area. She wanted to know what I wanted to do while I was there. Having no idea what would be appropriate for my elderly parents, and my bored-of-plants BF, the first thing that came to mind was Filoli. It would satisfy my plant craving, and would be beautiful even for those not supremely plant-oriented, without a huge amount of walking. If you don't know about Filoli, check out their website Filoli.org It's basically a very large home formerly owned by a couple of very wealthy families in an area south of San Francisco (read: VERY expensive real estate). The house was built for $500,000 but of course now it would be worth quite a few million and the land at least in the double digit millions. Of course it is priceless for the beautiful gardens.

The problem with travel, especially to places like this, is that I want to grow everything I see. It's a good education to see how differently people design, but I usually come home with a few little pots of things that won't necessarily do well in my climate. This time I didn't. Sigh.

As for the rest of the trip, I'm sure you don't want to hear about my endless hours in the bowels of the Nikko Hotel, listening to speakers and suffering simultaneously from the flu.

Front of House, with my parents and Will


Back of House


Knot Garden


Mini Knot Garden (don't you want to make one?)


The Yew Walk (Irish Yews - yes, each was imported from Ireland)