Picture this:  It’s 4 o’clock on a Friday in late summer.  You’re standing in a garden full of over one hundred vibrant Dahlias in full bloom.  Fast forward an hour and (gasp) all the blossoms are gone.  Happily, by the next Monday afternoon, more than one hundred new blooms will replace them. 

This Dahlia garden is the masterpiece of an incredible Dahlia Whisperer named Emily Cleaveland—known affectionately as The Dahlia Lady.  Emily knows EVERYTHING about Dahlias. She even developed her own gorgeous variety from a “Honey Do” that she named “Can’t Elope.” This whole Dahlia thing started for Emily, as many good things do, with a kind gesture. Twenty years ago, when she worked at Dartmouth, Emily brought some ordinary flowers she had grown to a co-worker (coincidentally named Terri). Terri suggested she try her hand at Dahlias because they are such incredible flowers and are perfect for funerals. 
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I think they are more perfect for weddings.  Hundreds of beaming brides have clutched Emily’s Dahlias as they walk down the aisle. As a photographer, I love the idea of all those pictures of short-lived Dahlia blooms preserved in cherished wedding albums for lifetimes.

Emily told me a funny story about the Dahlia named Café Au Lait.  She grew it one season but was underwhelmed by its beige color so didn’t replant it.  Oddly, Martha Stewart lauded the drab Café Au Lait as the perfect Dahlia for a bride’s bouquet to show off the whiteness of the bridal gown. Now Café Au Lait tubers run $30 to $50 each.  Reluctantly Emily bought some tubers and grows “The Beast” among her beautiful flowers. Another instance of the power of marketing is Emily’s 2020 Toilet Paper Shortage Dahlia which is actually a white Dahlia that has some imperfections and isn’t usually marketed.  People loved the name and bought them anyway. 

When I heard Emily’s presentation at one of our Grantham Garden Club gatherings last year, she showed us how to grow Dahlias. These aren’t your average bulbs that you plant once and enjoy for years. These ladies are high maintenance perennials.  Because our Upper Valley climate is too harsh for them to survive the winter, Emily digs up all 250 plants after the first killer frost. Then the tubers are washed, dried, rinsed in anti-fungal solution, marked with their names, and stored in her basement in peat moss in black plastic bags with holes punched in them.  Emily stores between 3,000 to 5,000 tubers each year. The whole process takes about three weeks with help. 
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In the Spring, before planting tubers in her own garden, Emily sells many of her over-wintered tubers at the farmers market.  Lots of people buy them for their own gardens and treat them as annuals, skipping the labor-intensive parts. If you can’t wait to get your hands on some of these delightful flowers though, stop by the Norwich Farmers Market on Saturday morning for the next few weeks.  But hurry, the Dahlias go fast. 
  
If you’d like to volunteer to help Emily dig up her plants, go to her website bydesigndahlias.com/ and you’ll find her contact information.  Bear in mind that Emily won’t need help until late October/early November depending on when the killing frost arrives I am looking forward to helping out. I enjoy supporting good people and doing something I’ve never done before.  To me, that’s what life is all about.  

A perfect picture of a violet has been stored away in my blog file since May waiting patiently for his opportunity to shine. This poem from Mary O’Neill’s book Hailstones and Halibut Bones ends with a delightful line about violets. But sharing the poem requires asters. The wait is over. Asters are everywhere--on roadsides, in the middle of the woods, in gardens, and in bridal bouquets.  So here is the poem and the pretty, purple flowers that bookend our Summers.    

Asters from Elise Kendall's garden.  Violet from Jane Verdrager's garden.  

Gardeners often have a plan in mind when deciding which flowers to plant and where to plant them.  They take many things into consideration such as when they will bloom, how much sunshine they need, and how they will look beside their flower neighbors.  Most of these planted flowers behave very well.

I want to write today about those plants who don’t conform to expectations.  They are the  escapees.  They are the plants that manage to free themselves from their assigned spot in the garden and end up in the middle of pathways.  They seem to pop up out of nowhere.  Do they escape in the dark of night?  Is the wind complicit?
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There’s a cockiness about these pioneers who leave the safety and security of the pack that I admire. They risk their lives in the hope that either rain or a kind gardener will keep them watered. They also run the very real risk of being stepped on by people who don’t notice them in such odd places.  Despite these dangers, some manage to grow and thrive in their outside-the-garden patch of dirt or pavement crack. I admire their spunk.  They are not unlike the poets and explorers who march to a different drummer and enrich our lives. So my hat is off to the stalwart escapees.  May you continue to escape and prosper and show up as unexpected delights in our lives.     

​​Sweet Williams’ Farewell to Black-Eyed Susan
 
By John Gay
 
All in the Downs the fleet was moor’d,
The streamers waving in the wind,
When black-eyed Susan came aboard;
‘O! where shall I my true-love find?
Tell me, ye jovial sailors, tell me true
If my sweet William sails among the crew.’
 
William, who high upon the yard
Rock’d with the billow to and fro,
Soon as her well-known voice her heard
He sigh’d, and cast his eye below:
The cord slides swiftly through his glowing hands,
And quick as lightning on the deck he stands.
 
How swift the lark, high poised in air,
Shuts close his pinions to his breast.
By chance his mate's shrill call he hears,
Then he drops at once into her nest.
The noblest captain in the British fleet
Might envy William's lips those kisses sweet.
 
Oh Susan, Susan, lovely dear,
My vows shall ever true remain;
Let me kiss off that falling tear;
We only part to meet again.
Change, as ye list, ye winds; my heart shall be
The faithful compass that still point to thee.
 
Believe not what the landsmen say,
Who temp with doubts thy constant mind;
They’ll tell thee, sailors when away
In every port a mistress find.
Yes, yes, believe them when they tell thee so,
For thou art present wheresoe’er I go.
 
If to far India’s coast we sail,
Thy eyes are seen in diamonds bright;
Thy breath in Afric’s spicy gale,
The skin is ivory so white.
Thus every beauteous object that I view,
Wakes in my soul some charm of lovely Sue.
 
Though battle call me from thy arms,
Let not my pretty Susan mourn;
Through cannons roar, yet safe from harms,
William shall to his dear return.
Love turns aside the balls that round me fly.
Lest precious tears should drop from Susan’s eye.
 
The boatswain gave the dreadful word;
The sails their swelling bosom spread;
No longer must she stay aboard;
They kissed, she sighed, he hung his head;
Her lessening boat unwilling rows to land:
'Adieu!' She cries; and waved her lily hand.

The Black-eyed Susan is from Anne Langsdorf's garden.  The Sweet William is from Jane Verdragers' garden.