My drive home was accompanied by a host of roadside wildflowers including stunning white fleabane, cheerful yellow tickseed, new-to-me 'old plantation,' pretty pink evening primrose, umbelicious Queen Anne's lace, and an amazingly dark-pink prairie phlox.
Well who in their right mind would pay attention to speed limits with that botanical fracas in process? Not this 74 mph in a 55 mph zone kind of gal! Talk about blue as well as red! (Note that the speed limit in rural Texas is often 75 or 80 mph, so I'm not really a speed demon given my clocked speed of 74 mph) Looking into the eyes of a $298 moving traffic violation is enough to make anyone blue, and you can imagine that dampened the spirit of the rest of my journey home.
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| If the cuttings of this Phlox root, I'm calling it 'Speed Trap' |
Luckily, I had plenty of things waiting to cheer me up at home. My 9 year-old son is learning to mow the grass, and had mowed both the front and back yards. My husband cleaned up the fence line by our driveway and had managed not to destroy my Byzantine gladiolus that perfectly complement the also still intact Pam's Pink honeysuckle. And despite the blue state of my mood, blue is my favorite color and we had a good many blue clematis blooming in our landscape waiting to turn my bad mood around.
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| What a great kid! Now if he'll just do the dishes too! |
I am completely baffled by clematis, but have managed to grow three varieties quite successfully with ignorance and neglect. The prettiest right now is a variety called 'Cezanne.' I meant to train it on the mailbox post, but neglected to do so when early spring got so busy. It has since made a beautiful mound at the base of our mailbox, and is blooming it's head off! I did not originally have it's name, so I texted my friend Felicia who works at the nursery where I acquired it. Felicia kindly responded to my text in detail at 5:30 a.m. this morning! :-0
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| Clematis 'Cezanne' |
The next treasure I found was the very first blossom on the Sapphire Indigo clematis from Conard-Pyle. This one is actually meant to be a ground cover, but I haven't had it long enough to evaluate it for that purpose. I can say that the color is a phenomenal shade of iridescent indigo, and I can't wait for the rest of the buds to open!
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| Clematis 'Sapphire Indigo' |
And backtracking a bit, I fondly recall the delicate fragrance of 'Sugar-Sweet Blue' that I received from a Facebook friend that I met in one of the professional horticulture groups. This group had a gathering at a conference, and Dan Long of Brushwood Nursery in Athens, Georgia gave us all a clematis to take home. This is the second spring for my 'Sugar-Sweet Blue' and I was knocked off my feet with the abundance of wonderfully sweet, fragrant blooms at the first of April. The only negative I can relate about this healthy vine is that the petals go straight up your nose when you bend in too close to experience the sweet scent.
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| Clematis 'Sugar-Sweet Blue' |
Suddenly, blue doesn't seem such a forlorn color to feel. It's soft, and cool, and pleasant smelling. It greets you quietly, and calmly, and perfectly after a $298 moment of angst. And so far, I haven't managed to kill the three clematis in my garden - I'd call that a victory any day.
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