The Final Odyssey of the Rosemary

Back in 2011, I wrote a post about growing an evergreen herb called rosemary.





Sometimes I really envy zone 7 and zone 8 gardeners.  They can grow so much that we can't here in upstate NY.  Plants such as camellias, one of my favorite flower.  Also, they can grow plants outdoors all year that we have to take in, or plant as annuals.  Plants such as paperwhites.  Dahlias. And 0 yes, rosemary.

To grow rosemary in upstate NY you have to have a strong back, and a good sense of weather timing.  Let me explain....

In the late 1980's (I forget the exact year), we went somewhere and saw rosemary plants for sale.  At that time, it was not that common to find herbs for sale, at least around here.  We bought two plants.

Our local neighborhood groundhog quickly took care of one of the plants.  But the other one thrived.

Problem:  we knew the plant wouldn't survive the fall.  So come fall, dear spouse potted up the plant and brought it inside.  Little did he know of the odyssey he was embarking on.

Rosemary is not that easy to grow indoors (it tends to get too dry) so the first quest was to find out how to keep it moist, but not too moist. And, we had to find a sunny place for it.  At that time, we didn't have any nice sunny windows.  So spouse had to rig up a lighting system.  All for one little plant.  But spouse loves to use rosemary in his cooking.

That winter was a type of hopscotch.  If it warmed up, the plant went out.  If it was cooling off the plant went back in.  Out, in.  Out, in.  A lot more in than out, because our winters tend to be very snowy, cold-and long.  But we noticed that the plant looked better if it could spend even a few hours outside.  We knew, though, that it wouldn't survive much of a frost.

The plant made it, and the next year it went back into the ground once danger of frost was past. (For us, that's usually early to mid May.)

Then in the fall, back into a (larger) pot, and back indoors when our first frost threatened to hit in October.

Sometimes, when we brought the plant in, spouse would accidentally knock off a branch.   One time, (this was before the Internet, so we couldn't just run to our computers and look stuff like this up) spouse got the idea to put the sprig in water and see what happened.  To his delight, it grew roots.  He potted it, and now we had two plants. And then three.

Over the years, the original rosemary plant got larger and larger.  It bloomed, beautiful little purple flowers.  Its trunk was like wood, gnarled, like a large bonsai. There were some close calls with cold weather.  Spouse experimented with various types of overwintering.  For some years, he used the basement (with a grow light).  As our son grew older we had the use of a former bedroom, and the plant did better there.

The plant got larger and larger.  Fortunately spouse is very strong and (unlike me) a strong back.  It was no problem to transport the matriarch rosemary plant in and out.

The years passed.  The babies were adults now, in large pots, too.  And the matriarch kept going.

Finally, a couple of years ago, the unthinkable happened.  We left the plants out and it got down to about 28 degrees.  The younger plants were frostbit, but we were able to nurse them back to health.

It was too late for the matriarch.

Almost the entire plant died.  One little branch survived, but it was obvious the plant wasn't going to make it. Spouse finally clipped off the last little branch and put it in water.

The matriarch lived, we think, about 18 years.  The oldest "child" now was 18 years old, too, in 2011.

Fast forward to 2019. My spouse took a fall in 2017 that makes it difficult for him to lift and transport those pots.  We did have some help, but we couldn't move the plant in and out of the house during mild spells.

A couple of days ago, the last direct descendant of that matriarch plant died. 

RIP.

Beauty in the Ruins #ThursdayTreeLove

I am so excited - I've seen the first bulb in bloom (not on my land, alas) in my area of upstate New York.

Spring is here!  The squill is blooming in Binghamton.

The trees are breaking their dormancy.  We don't have bud break yet, but the sap is definitely running.

What you see here is what I think is a yellow twig dogwood (Cornus stolonifera).  I took this picture Sunday at Untermyer Gardens in Yonkers, New York.  Once called Greystone, this site (now a City of Yonkers park) is a garden that was once one of the most admired gardens in the United States but had fallen into ruins since the death of its last owner in 1940.  It is now slowly being restored.

Isn't it beautiful how this small tree glows in the early spring?

On "U' Day on the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, I will be blogging more about Untermyer Gardens.

The message of this tree?  "Never give up hope" and "never judge a book by its cover". 

We donated some money before we left, so that we could do our little part in the renovation of Untermyer Gardens.   It is an amazing place.

Join Parul and other bloggers who blog about their favorite trees on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at #ThursdayTreeLove.

A Summer Small Urban Garden

It's a bit amazing that, given that my name on Twitter is RamblinGarden, that I don't talk about my front and back yard garden that much.

I do talk about my flowers from time to time.  But what about veggies?

I don't have much room in the sunnier parts of my yard, so my spouse does a little gardening in our front yard and some container gardening, too.

But don't we want to have our front yards reserved for grass, or flowers?  Not necessarily.  Today, I'd like to give you a little peak into my front yard garden in upstate New York.

How about a little basil? Or, to be exact, basil and a bee?

We grow Italian parsley in a pot.

We have other herbs, too many for this post.  One we like to grow, which is not hardy here, is pineapple sage.  We don't use it much - we grow it more for beauty.

We have peppers both in pots....

...and in the ground.

This is an ornamental pepper, which will product a very hot, small purple pepper.

Not everything is successful.  Our cucumber plants (grown in large pots in the front) have succumbed to a blight.  This is about all that is left - one piece of stem, a couple of leaves and a flower.

But our ginger in a pot (something else that can't overwinter here), which failed last year, is growing this year.

Do you have limited space, or no yard, and still garden?  I'd love to hear from you.