My father loved nasturtiums and always grew a small patch right by his front door.  It was a square patch, cut out of the grass by his sidewalk, usually surrounded by 4 mismatched stakes and some string.  I’m not sure why, I never asked, probably to keep his golden retriever from stepping on them.  My father was a talented gardener, but it was all about the plants, not the design.  He stuck things everywhere in his yard.  So the individual flowers were beautiful, but the overall effect was not so great.  Funny, his vegetable garden looked better, he was meticulous about planting in straight lines, so except for the odd things he used to support the plants, that garden looked pretty good.

Anyway, one year, a couple years ago,  he had some really pretty orange/yellow nasturtiums, which I remarked that I liked, so he gave me some seeds from the plant.  I put them in an envelope in the basement with all my other seeds, but didn’t plant them.  I’ve been planting nasturtiums in my windowbox, along with other things, and I’ve been going for the red Empress of India lately, although they really don’t do well in the windowbox, I’ve tried several years in a row.

My father passed away in January, he was 84 and had had a stroke last summer, so it wasn’t a surprise, but it’s been a really tough spring for me.  We always shared our gardening passion – “have you planted your petunia seeds yet?”  or “I picked my first tomato, have you gotten one yet?”.  We both start plants from seed, but he always did the tomatoes.  Long after I improved my skills and was quite capable of starting my own tomatoes, I always let him do my tomatoes, he loved to share his plants.  So this year I had to start my own tomatoes.  I decided it was time to do a better job with the nasturtiums.  I’ve heard they don’t like transplanting, so I always direct seeded them into the window boxes.  This year I decided to try making newspaper pots, and starting them indoors where I could keep a better eye on their moisture needs, and then plant only the ones that are successful into the window box.  All of my seeds were a couple years old, I only got one Empress of India, which still didn’t do very well in the windowbox, but I got 3 from “Dad’s nasturiums” and planted them in my garden near the May night. (Dad loved the orange/purple combination in the garden.  Although I just said he didn’t really plant for design, he was the first person to tell me to plant my poppies next to my blue flag iris).

The 3 I got are in the photo above.  All three have different colored flowers, even though I know we took the seeds from just one of his plants, because I liked that particular color.  I guess that’s the bees cross pollinating, or maybe this variety of nasturium doesn’t come true.  But all 3 colors are very vibrant like I remember the one he grew to be, and I’m very glad I had a little bit of Dad in my garden this summer.

Mid summer can be a slow time in the flower garden.  But with a little planning it doesn’t have to be.  Now is the time that annuals are hitting their stride.  I have zinnias, cosmos, petunias blooming.  But you want something you can basically plant once and forget, you say?  How about some of the flowers in the photo above, taken one week ago – bee balm (mine’s been blooming since the 4th of July), rudbeckia (black eyed susan), coneflower (mine is white, the most popular is the pinkish purple one), there’s still a couple rose campion blooming (magenta on the far right), and a couple Johnson’s perennial geranium (far left, also magenta).  So look around your neighborhood and notice what’s blooming now and remember to plant it next spring.

I’ve had great success getting my moth orchids (Phalaenopsis Amabilis) to rebloom, but I never had luck with much else.  I inherited this dendrobium kingianum from my father this year, and low and behold, look what happened.  I read that it liked cool winters, so I put it in my basement under a grow light and started feeding it with a dilute orchid fertilizer in January.  This photo was taken on April 10.  I really don’t do much for my orchids, except water once a week or so.  Never more than once a week, sometimes I’ll go 10 days.  I put them in my kitchen sink, let the water run through them to wet the bark, then, depending on the time of year, I put them back in their cache pots and pour the diluted fertilizer in.  I let them sit in that for about 30 min, then pour it off, and put them back on the windowsill.  I grow my moths in a south window.  Right now the kingianum is outside in dappled shade.  These orchids are really very easy.

I recently visited Marrakech, Morocco.  What a magical place!  Yves St Laurent thought so, too, and purchased the Majorelle Garden which was originally started by French artist, Jacques Marjorelle.  It had become run down, and St Laurent and his partner restored it.  Today it is open to the public and it’s beautiful.  Lots of bright colors like the photo above and below:

And some mass plantings of bamboo and palms:

I haven’t posted in about a year because my parents had some health issues.  In the past 3 months I lost both of my parents, most recently my father.  My father was a gardener, I learned almost everything I know from him.  For his 75th birthday, about 9 years ago, I took him to London to the Chelsea flower show.   These photos were taken at the show and I thought I’d post them today to remember the nice times we had enjoying our gardening hobby together.

Alliums

rhodohypoxis (red star) and sempervivum (hens and chicks)

various thymes

I recently stayed at La Concha Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico and for a moment I thought I was back in the 70s.  I looked around the pool area and there were 2 of my favorite 70s house plants – the ponytail plant and asparagus fern.  I had both of them in my bedroom when I was a teenager and houseplants were all the rage.  Cool!