They're Off And Running
The Saturday of Memorial Day weekend trips an alarm in the brain of the part-time gardener, the same way the Friday after Thanksgiving does with Christmas shoppers. Break from the gate, urges some inner signal, it's time to plant - and whammo, they're off and running toward the petunias.
The nurseries are never better stocked than on that morning; the only problem is finding a place to park and a little red wagon to bear away the spoils.
Plant sales abound, too. The East Hampton Library had to cancel its Memorial Day book sale this year because of construction, but nothing could stop the annual plant sale on the library's back lawn.
Exotic Treasures
Because this is no ordinary town, that is no ordinary event. In among the hanging begonia baskets and the flats of Early Girl tomatoes generously donated by local nurseries can be found some treasures that you would not normally see except in a botanic garden or a private greenhouse.
Several members of the Garden Club of East Hampton, which runs the plant sale for the benefit of the library, do indeed rejoice in their own greenhouses. One such is Sue Bullock, the mother of former Town Supervisor Tony, who during the winter months grows hard-to-find vegetables and flowers for her own use and that of a few lucky plant-sale early birds.
A potted pelargonium purchased at her booth three or four years ago has more than repaid its $4 or $5 cost in interest - the cliff-hanging kind. It is a toss-up every winter whether this little geranium, called Vancouver Centennial, will make it through to spring. By March it is denuded of all but two or three leaves, yet by August, after a summer on the screen porch, it has triumphed over adversity once again.
(Night)Shades Of Umbria
The flowers are sparse and don't look like much. It's the rarity of the thing and the challenge of its precarious survival that matters. And, of course, its local roots.
Last year Mrs. Bullock had some exotic tomato seedlings, greenhouse-grown old-fashioned varieties and foreign ones, that were too intriguing to resist. Imagine picking your own Italian plum tomatoes just once removed from an Umbrian hillside.
Unfortunately, the results were not what could have been hoped for. The French tomatoes, not pumped full of preservatives or whatever it is their American cousins have, succumbed to root rot and the Italian ones to blossom-end blight. The cool summer didn't help any.
Improved Impatiens
One item that sold out early on Saturday was New Guinea impatiens, a large, lush variety that seems to be replacing the old-fashioned kind in the affections of suburban America. They were snatched up by the flatful, like so many Beanie Babies.
Whoever hit on the idea of hybridizing New Guineas for the commercial market really did build a better mousetrap. They're bigger and bushier than grandma's Busy Lizzies, they come in more colors from delicate to flamboyant, and, best of all, they groom themselves.
In that way, they resemble cats. The everyday garden variety, on the other hand, are doglike, shedding bits and pieces all over the place.
I like dogs more than cats and heirloom plants better than modern introductions, but I have to admit I prefer New Guinea impatiens to the commonplace kind. For one thing, seen from far away in a planter or basket, they are so much more eye-catching.
It's like the "Anything You Can Do . . ." song from "Annie Get Your Gun": They can fill it better.