A PETUNIA TO RECOMMEND

Presenting.......AZTEC petunia, a favorite find of Gardening Season 2015.  This drew my attention while wandering through one of MANY nurseries in June.  Even though it sported only a dozen or so blossoms at the time, it had the whole spectrum of lemon, peach, orange, tangerine, mango.   The very name brought to mind my Mexican ancestors. And so, onto my cart it went.  I knew exactly how I wanted to present it to its new flower friends along the patio wall.  It would be contained  in my old........

 MILKING MACHINE  

In the 50's, before assembly line milking became the standard for efficiency, my father had two milking machines that would work their way down the line of Guernsey cows.  This vessel was hung on a harness or strap that girded the cow's middle.  There was a metal cap to cover the opening of the vessel, and on the cap were four suction cups to attach to the udder to do the work.  I re-potted my plant in a 7" pot which fit perfectly into the opening.  While I expected the usual straggle effect that my petunias tend to give me, this one surprised me.  A bit of pinching now and then, some regular doses of fertilizer, and it filled it out quite nicely.  Shades of pink, lavender, purple and white tend to dominate my Spring and Summer gardens.   But as Summer advances, the Autumn colors begin to emerge thanks to daylilies, sienna sunset coreopsis, helenium, nasturtium and marigold.  And so, as this plant gets bigger it begins to feel more at home.

Best of all, when I look at this I am right back in the original barn of Misty Meadow Farm.  On summer nights it was a pretty big deal to stay in the barn past our usual bedtime.  If we made it to the end of milking, we knew it was very late indeed.  We listened to the gentle whoosh-whosh of the milking process.  We watched my dad pour the rich milk from the machine into the milk strainer. We braided the tail of an agreeable cow.  We stayed away from the hayloft which took on a spookiness at night.  We looked for the wild barn cats to scurry out from hiding when my dad put out a saucer of fresh milk.  And finally, our tired selves walked to the farmhouse in a chorus of crickets and katy-dids.

At $2.49 for the small pot, I would say the Aztec petunia has given me the most bangs for the buck of anything in my garden this year.