Bugleweed and Glaze Idiocy

Saying about a plant that at least it stays green all summer may be damning with faint praise, but I'm not sure that Bugleweed, Ajuga reptans in its many guises, deserves even that amount of good press.

Why ever did I plant it in the Herb Garden? Wait, I didn't. It came in on some other plant and I wasn't vigilant enough to spot and uproot it at once. Now I have just spent two hours digging it out from underneath the rue and the wormwood and the Rosa Mundi, that Rose of the World, which has about the largest and fiercest prickles of any rose in the garden. Actually its the understock, I think the Rose of the World has long since moved on to a better World, but it still blooms with amazing deep carmine flowers that look just like those kleenex flowers we used to make to decorate wedding cars with back in our wasted youths. So I leave it there. Besides, it somewhat hides the telephone pole in the corner of the Herb Garden, and that's worth something.

Ajuga, as I prefer to call it, comes in a number of forms and colour phases. You can get it with gnarly twisty leaves, very ugly, with reddish leaves, somewhat less ugly, with variegated green and white leaves, even with plain green leaves. I like the plain green one best because its flowers are the bluest. All the others have flowers which lean heavily towards the mauve/purple part of the spectrum. The plain one is Cambridge Blue. The leaves are shiny and mid-green. There is a white form, but it isn't nearly as vigorous. I have some, but every spring I forget that I like that one and weed it out and then wonder where my white one went. Luckily I usually miss a few and so still have some. 

Ajuga spreads from seeds (and it produces them by the zillions) and by stolons. One plant of Ajuga sends out a dozen or more stolons, radiating around the plant like a starburst, and each one forms a new little plant, which promptly sends out a dozen or so stolons.... by the end of the summer you have a solid mat and Ajugas growing on top of Ajugas. Their roots are strong and pulling them up isn't the easiest thing in the world.

For some strange reason, I did buy two slightly different ones, though. Last summer I got one with tiny leaves. The leaves are shaped like tongue depressors, not like the usual spoons, and are only about 2" long. They are quite an interesting purple/dark green colour mix, too. I stuck it in an impossible spot on top of a small rock ledge and it has made itself completely at home there. No doubt it will soon rampage up or down from its perch and take over real estate meant for more exciting plants, but until then I admire it. It's flowers are alright, not brilliant, but alright. The pink granite sets them off well.

The other one has been around for a couple of years and I am about ready to admit it might not be as much of a thug as the regular Ajuga. It was labelled 'The Giant', and the reason is obvious. Its leaves, instead of the usual 3 to 4 inches long, reach as much as 8 inches, and the flower stalks stand up a good 14 or so. The flowers are dark blue. The leaves are coloured much like the little one and rather nice. So far it has only overpowered a few admittedly unassertive things like some mauve columbines somebody gave me. I note with amusement that it has grown carefully all around a seedling of Cirsium muticum, the Swamp Thistle.


Maybe this business with the Ajugas has affected my brain. One of my two main glazes in the pottery studio has been giving me trouble lately. Over the past three or four months it has gotten darker and shinier. So I tried mixing a completely new batch (I use laundry tubs for my production glazes and mix large batches at a time and keep adding them to the existing glaze in the tub) and tested it. It was too matte and too pale. So I added a measured amount of the old stuff and tested the mixture. That came out of the kiln looking pretty good, so I mixed the old and new glaze batches in the sink. Now suddenly it hard-panned, that is, the glaze particles all sang out 'Dive, dive!' and headed for the bottom. Even while I was stirring it, it settled. The layer on the bottom of the tub the next morning was absolutely solid - no amount of scraping or digging had much effect. I appealed to ClayArt, that wonderful list, for help. Several potters suggested Epsom salts. So I disolved some in water and, in a moment of total idiocy, added a small amount to the glaze batch directly. I should have tested it by drops in a small cup, but instead I just put some right into the tub of glaze. To my horror it turned into cottage cheese. Dark reddish brown cottage cheese.

 Back to ClayArt for more help. What an idiot I felt. John Britt came to the rescue and suggested I add sodium silicate. He also reminded me to try it first in a small amount, and then to add it drop by drop so as not to over-shoot, which I deserved. Just for fun I did try adding too much to my small amount and the result was impressive. The glaze turned into quite solid pudding. But I was more sensible this time with the large batch and only added the amount suggested by the test, and to my relief, the glaze became reasonably liquid again. I dipped a number of pots and they are in the kiln now. Fingers crossed!


If it doesn't work I'll throw the whole mess out (how does one throw out glaze?) and start over and go out in the garden and eat worms, I mean, plant Ajugas.

Real Trilliums

It must be about time for the deer to come by and eat my trilliums. They are in full bloom, although perhaps a bit short. The Spring was so early and so fast this year that the plants hardly had time to get out of the ground before the flowers opened. Usually around this time a deer or two will wander by, munching on a flower here, stepping on a plant there..... I gnash my teeth and have earnest conversations with my supposed-to-be-guard-dog but to no effect. Kip won't chase them, he knows perfectly well that they are much faster than he is. In fact, they know it too because last year when he did try to chase one it stood its ground.

Several of the plants in the Sampler Garden (a shady woodsy area in front of the house where I am trying to have samples of all the interesting native plants on the property) are pale pink. They are pink in the bud, open pale pink, and stay pale pink. They don't get quite as dark as the others when they start to fade. T. grandiflorum flowers typically fade to pink. That sounds pretty but actually isn't. They look a bit tired by then so the pink makes it worse, not better.

The rockery has its share of T. grands, too.

The, absolutely, totally, most beautiful flower in the Spring rock garden has got to be Crocus Seiberi, the three-colour crocus.

The very centre of the flower is a brilliant deep yellow, then there is a wide band of pure white, then the petals shade into a sumptuous violet-purple. The large stigma in the centre is a deep orange. At any other time of the year we would think it garish, but in the Spring, with everything around still wet and draggled from Winter, nothing could be more beautiful. It cheers, it revives, the weary Gardener.

The second most beautiful flower in the Spring rock garden has got to be.... but no, there are so many second most beautiful flowers we won't even try that.

Excitement in the Night

I woke up about one o'clock last night with the clear thought in my head that a mouse had walked up my arm.

As I became a little more awake, I thought 'that's silly, I must have been dreaming....' Then I felt, unmistakably, tiny feet walking down my arm. Cold tiny feet! Whatever it was then stopped on the back of my hand and I felt the lightest lightest brush of something soft on my fingers. At this point instinct kicked in and I jerked my hand to get it off.

I went into the living room where my husband was still awake reading and told him 'A mouse just ran up my arm!'

He looked at me over his glasses. 'Don't be silly, you must have been dreaming,' he said.

I went back to the bedroom and turned on the light. There, sitting on my pillow, was a sleek and elegant brown, well, mousy-brown, mouse.

I called to Robert to 'come, quick!'

We watched the mouse, he or she, sitting on my pillow. It sat just like our cat does, with it's two neat front feet together and it's tail wrapped around them. It was mostly mousy brown-grey, with a lighter tummy and white feet. It had large ears, but they weren't round like in the cartoons, they were more like rounded-off squares in shape. It's eyes were like cartoon mouse eyes, though, black, shiny, and round. It looked all around, then went over to investigate the other pillow, sniffing at the corners and standing up against the headboard to see if it could see over....

Robert's big idea was to go and get the cat.

He put Pepper down on the floor near where the mouse had jumped (a three-inch mouse jumped over two feet), and she walked right over to it. I expected violence, but no, she sniffed the mouse, who showed no signs of fear, and turned and left the room! Kip, our Border Collie watched with interest, but he also made it clear he wasn't getting involved.

So I ran to the Studio and got a clear plastic bin I had just bought. When I got back with it the mouse was sitting in the middle of the floor looking around and I just put the bin down over it. Then I found a large piece of stiff paper which I slid under the bin to trap Mouse inside. We admired him (her?) for a while, then took him outside.

Meanwhile, of course, I will go right on complaining about the mice in the garage getting into my papers.... and yes, I changed the sheets before going back to bed!

Good Advice

"Do not put your rock garden under deciduous trees' is good advice, and I should know. I have just spent a long day carefully removing last summer's maple and oak leaves from my rock garden, and I'm not finished.

But sometimes good advice just can't be followed. When I started making my garden here, not only was the spot under these trees the only place where I could put a rock garden, but also a rock garden was the only thing that could go there. It is to the South and East of the house, and is basically a large granite outcropping. On the top there are a number of maples, probably all Red Maple, and one very old but still healthy Red Oak. The area slants down to the driveway and the Sampler Garden. The rock is mostly pink granite, but part-way up there is a long ledge of what I think must be limestone. It very much looks like it was once the edge of a lake or something. Some of the granite has fractured and the pieces have tumbled down, so the rock garden is basically on a large pile of broken rock.

Over the years, the leaves and needles from the trees have built up a bit of soil on top, and a few interesting plants have established themselves. There is a lot of Rock Polypody, Polypodium virginianum. It gets a bit dried out in August, but the rest of the year it is a crisp light green ruffle along the North-facing ledges. One good rain in the fall and it revives completely. What it lives on is hard to understand - there seems no soil at all under the plants. The easiest, in fact almost only, way to move this fern to a new spot is to move an entire rock with it already on it. I've tried transplanting it, and had no luck - I think pulling it off the rock damages so many roots it can't recover. It does grow on the ground in the woods in a few places, though.

Partridge Berry, Mitchella repens, also grows happily on the granite. In one spot quite a large patch drapes over a rounded boulder, its little dark green leaves a sparkling contrast to the pinkish rock. In the spring it is covered with its tiny white flowers. They aren't large, nor are there a great many, but they have real presence. Then of course the berries which appear in late summer are a spectacular red against the green. It's not hard to grow in a shady spot, wanting only good drainage and not too many smothering leaves lying on it over the winter.

The other thing that has really set itself up for happiness on the rock ledges is some species of raspberry, but since I can't say anything good about it, we'll not talk about them.

You Can't Get There From Here Day

Ever have one of those 'you can't get there from here' days? I got up early, and went out to the Studio even before the coffee was ready, I was so keen to see what the glaze tests in the kiln were like. Big bleah. Dull and boring blue, no life, too dark.... sigh.

Then I uncovered the bonsai pots I have been trying to make. I had covered them to dry them very slowly as I have been having trouble with the corners not holding. Sure enough, two out of three were cracking again. Guess I'll try them in a different clay, one with some grog in it. The porcelain I am used to for most of my work just does not assemble well as slabs.

In the afternoon two ladies came looking for a mug with yellow tulips on it. After dithering around for over half an hour one of them chose a pansy mug and a sunflower mug. She felt that a sunflower was sufficiently Spring-like! Her friend wanted to see the Studio so I took them in for the 10-cent tour, and Friend looked at my ferns and brightly told me that I was starting my tomatoes early...

Didn't have quite enough Frit 3124 to mix the glaze I needed.... went out to buy groceries and forgot the very thing I went for.... decided to get started on the window cleaning and banged my finger on the corner of the frame.....

Should have stayed in bed!

Trillium Platters

I'm relieved to say that china paints have once again saved my butt. I had promised a platter with a Trillium design to a local Wildlife Festival and had painted a half dozen of them. When they came out of the kiln, however, they were disappointing. The leaves were alright, the platters were fine, but the flowers just hadn't any 'poomf'. I looked at them for a day or two, trying to convince myself they would do, but it wasn't working. So yesterday I got out the china paints, mixed up a tiny bit of black, and added thin black outlines to the flowers. After re-firing to cone 010, they were much improved!


I bought these china paints many years ago. I only have the basic colours, but they are endlessly mixable and keep forever. I just mix a wee bit of the powder with a drop of mineral oil, and they are ready to go. I'm not skilled enough to paint whole pieces in china paints, and anyway that is a very different medium from pottery, but I can fix the odd piece. I once had to paint back in all the soft rose colour that had burned out in a batch of mugs with pink hearts on them - a lot less work than re-making them, and much quicker.

So now I can bring the Wildlife Festival their platters for their Silent Auction this weekend. Not sure why I am doing this, an ego thing, I guess. I also made a very fine bookmark with info about my pottery and garden and had 1000 of them printed so I'll bring some of them as well. Never hurts to advertise!