THE DOG DAYS ARE HERE

As if the almost 40 days and nights of rain we’ve been enduring haven’t been enough. I mean, the roses are mush, the lilies are drowning, the tomatoes are just sitting there wondering what happened to the sun. And now come the Dog Days of Summer. Which means 40 days of sultry cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof weather.

At least that’s what the ancients believed.

It’s all in the stars, you see. The Dog Star to be exact. That’s the moniker the ancients gave to Sirius, the alpha star in the constellation Canis Major that is actually the brightest star in the night sky. It really dominates the heavens in summer when it rises and sets with our own sun, two hydrogen-fusing hotties travelling together through the daytime sky. The blue-tinged white-hot Dog Star can even be seen with the naked eye in daylight – and if conditions are right, it literally twinkles with bursts of color.  

This alignment of the sun and Sirius is known as conjunction, and it is the span of 20 days before and 20 days after the star’s rising that the Romans – who always did have a way with words – called caniculares dies. Ergo, the dog days of summer were born.

Of course the precise dates vary depending on the latitude of the observer and this is complicated even further by an astronomical oddity known as “precession of the equinoxes” – or the drift of the constellations due to the changing tilt of the earth. Which means that sooner or later the dog days of summer – believe it or not –may actually occur in the dead of winter. But that doesn’t seem to frost anyone. The Old Farmer’s Almanac lists the dog days as July 3 to August 11, and besides, what’s the point of trying to teach an old dog new tricks? 

One thing’s for sure – there’s no escape. Unless of course, if you’re my friend Melissa Berman’s dog, Nemo, a mixed breed stray who came home from Tobago with her and spends his days romping in the surf at Montauk. Yes, it is a dog’s life.

(Photo by Melissa Berman)

But for most of us the dog days of summer are more of a bitch than a day at the beach. I guess it’s never easy dealing with climate change. The ancients dreaded the sultry months because they brought disease and discomfort, spoiled food and failed crops. Chaos reigned. “The seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics and phrensies,” according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, published in 1813. It was all due to the Dog Star – so they sacrificed a brown dog to appease the wrath of Sirius. But they better not mess with Nemo.    

Given the fact that Sirius is twice the size of our sun and 20 times as luminous, it’s no wonder that the ancients got it in their heads that the combined heat of the two fiery stars was responsible for the scorching temperatures of summer. Heck, the Greeks dubbed the star that we now know to be 8.6 light years away Sirius, after the word seirios, or “scorching” – and in Latin, the name means “the searing one.” 

You could say Sirius is the original hot dog. The star has multi-cultural connections to the canine world. The Egyptians named it Sothis after a mighty and feared goddess who heralded the flooding of the Nile and was symbolized by hunting dogs. The Greeks turned the diamond in the sky into a rock star when they sketched their mythology in the heavens with connect-the-dot characters called constellations, turning Sirius into the hunter Orion’s dog.

Orion has his own tale, of course. Suffice it to say that Sirius is up there with him chasing rabbits and bulls and other celestial creatures that I can never quite make out. The Romans recognized Sirius as top dog and crowned his constellation Canis Major or Big Dog. There’s also a Little Dog, and I have to wonder, is there a message in the stars – why aren’t there any cat constellations?

No matter what, Sirius definitely rules. Human luminaries – Homer, Dante, Milton, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Voltaire and Dickens, to name a few – have all paid literary tribute to Sirius. Even J.K. Rowling acknowledged the power of the name with a character named Sirius Black, who escaped from Azkaban by transforming himself into what else – a black dog.

So what’s a gardener to do during the dog days? Maybe take a cue from Nemo and hide in the hydrangeas.

(Photo by Melissa Berman)

When I dug up this old English proverb I knew we’d better run for cover:

Dog days bright and clear

Indicate a happy year;

But when accompanied by rain

For better times our hopes are vain

So just remember what Noel Coward said, only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun – and it’s even worse if it’s raining cats and dogs on a dog day afternoon.

 

GROWN ON LONG ISLAND -- A SIGN OF THE TIMES

Once upon a time – before Levittown and the LIE, before strip-malls and McDonald’s and, god help us, McMansions – Long Island and farming were synonymous. It was a time when potatoes covered more than 72,000 acres and cauliflower auctions were common events.

 

Well, we don’t have to give up the ghosts of times past just yet. The truth is that when it comes to farm-fresh produce, our island still has a lot to offer. I realized this more than ever the other day when I attended a press conference organized by the Long Island Farm Bureau to tout the Island’s billion-dollar agricultural industry and rev up the “Grown on Long Island” and “Pride of New York” campaigns.  

Both campaigns promoting the agricultural and horticultural products of our island and our state – everything from apples and eggplants to marigolds and merlot – have been around for quite some time. “Grown on Long Island” started in 1988, which seems like eons ago when you think about how life has changed in the past 21 years. Forget about extra pounds and gray hair, who would have dreamed of iPhones and Twitter and laptops for that matter? Ponder this – in 1988, there were 45 million PCs in use in this country; last year there were more than 264 million. But I digress.

The event was held at Martin Viette Nurseries in East Norwich, where Michael and Russ Ireland – the brothers who own the place – told me that 99 percent of what they sell is indeed grown on Long Island. And the garden center, which marked its 80th anniversary last year, was in full flower for the spring planting season. It was a giant bouquet of marigolds and geraniums and impatiens as well as other blooms guaranteed to dispel any lingering thoughts of our miserable winter. Not to mention enough vegetables seedlings to fill salad bowls across suburbia.

A refurbished pickup truck from bygone days was loaded with corn and a colorful display of the kind of vegetables that abound in our island’s fertile fields and farm stands added to the scene.

The theme of the day was spelled out in banners and placards: 

As you might expect speakers were also in abundance but they were notable in the 80-degree heat for their brevity.

They included New York’s new United States senator, Kirsten Gillibrand -- pictured here with (from left) Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi; Joseph Gergela III of the Long Island Farm Bureau, which represents more than 650 Long Island growers, and New York State Commissioner of Agriculture Patrick Hooker. Michael Ireland (pictured below, left, with Sen. Gillbrand and his brother, Russ) spoke and so did Tom Kullen of King Kullen – the Island’s homegrown supermarket that has the distinction of being America’s first and has been featuring locally grown produce for the past decade. Tom was perhaps the most succinct: “Keep growing it,” he said. “And we’ll keep buying it.”

 

To me, the message was as elemental as compost. We really do grow a lot of wonderful things and we should reach for them in supermarkets and garden centers and at farm stands and farmers’ markets. Especially gardeners, who by our very nature, dig the earth. We know the unadulterated joy of growing what you eat. In my garden, lettuce and arugula and spinach and beets and carrots border beds that are now filled with hundreds of tulips. But when the tulips fade to memory, I’ll take them out and put in tomatoes and eggplants and zucchini and butternut squash and peppers and Swiss chard and beans. But I’ll turn to my local farmers' market in Northport for the things I don’t grow – like broccoli and cabbage and Brussels sprouts.

On the cusp of the 2009 growing season, the time is right to remind us that “Grown on Long Island” should be more than just a marketing slogan. It should be a lifestyle. I’m not saying we should turn Levittown back into a potato field, but we should support our farmers and flower growers and buy what they produce. And buying local is the easiest way to eat healthy, to have a beautiful and bountiful garden, to boost the economy and help out our beleaguered planet by reducing our carbon footprints. “Grown on Long Island” signs and placards will be sprouting up this season to identify the vegetables and flowers that have Long Island roots.

These sentiments spring from the fertile soil of our island and we should nurture them. 

  

 

FLOWERY FLAMINGOS BLOOM AT MACY'S

I'm no ornithologist but I think I spotted a new species of flamingo the other day. 

Not the Caribbean flamingos that raise clouds of pink at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay, where the largest flock of the stiletto-legged birds live.

And not the plastic species that most people either love of hate. To be honest, I'm not sure where I stand on those mothers of all lawn ornaments, especially since I have three of them in a box in my garage. But that's another story.

No, the six flamingos that stirred my fancy in a greenhouse in Stony Brook were a different breed altogether. I can say with absolute accuracy that they were birds of a different feather.                   They were made of flowers. Kalanchoe to be exact. You know, the fleshy-leaved succulent that blooms in bouquets of white, pink, scarlet or yellow tubular flowers. It's a perennial in its native Madagascar, but here in the frigid north we nurture it mostly as an easy-care houseplant.  

And it’s a good thing they can’t fly because they were getting ready to strike poses in the aisles of Macy’s in Manhattan for the store’s annual flower show, which runs through April 19.

The flowery flamingos are the stars of the show, which is aptly titled “Dream in Color” and features more than a million plants in 11 different gardens as well as the department store’s famous window display – all of it the handiwork of Long Island’s own Ireland Gannon, the design division of Martin Viette Nurseries in East Norwich. 

When I saw the big birds – each of them fashioned from 3,000 separate kalanchoe plants – they were not in an altogether flattering position with their backsides up in the air and their long curved necks and hooked beaks barely a foot from the ground. 

Two workers – Raul Estrada and Edgar Garcia – were tucking pretty pink kalanchoes in varying states of bloom into the metal frames that form the skeletons of the faux flamingoes.

It was just a few days from show time. “We’re in high gear now,” said Peter Gustafson, the horticultural grand marshal for Ireland Gannon who was overseeing the installation in the Herald Square store and also directed the forcing of hundreds of trees and shrubs from tree peonies and Exbury azaleas to camellias and Chinese redbuds in the firm’s six greenhouses in Stony Brook. Peter also coordinated the production and delivery of everything from astilbes to orchids from other Long Island growers like Otto Keil in Huntington to nurseries in Florida and Maryland and Canada.

The final phase of the show takes place after hours as more than sixty people work all night for five nights to turn the store into a floral showplace. “The flamingoes are among the last things to go into the city,” Peter said as Edgar and Raul took plants out of 4½-inch plastic pots, stripped the leaves, knocked off most of the soil and plugged each kalanchoe into frames devised by the same Macy's designers and artisans who bring you the emporium’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

 

Four of the local birds will rule along the store’s center aisles and two will reign in a fountain – all of them rising nine feet tall from metal stands. Macy’s calls this a “salute to the plastic lawn flamingo and its impact on American gardens.” A clearly fascinating and controversial subject I’d just as soon leave for another blog.

For the first time, Macy’s is running simultaneous flower shows in other branches throughout the country. And when it came to the bird of praise, all eyes turned to Ireland Gannon, which created instructional videos for crews in Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis.

As I left the greenhouses, workers were loading plants into the trucks. Corinthian peach trees, rhododendrons, fringe trees, flowering apricot trees, and 14-foot Okame cherry trees forced in the greenhouse were balled and burlapped and showing pink.

“They should pop for the show,” Peter said of the Okames. And there’s a second set timed to pop seven days from opening day for the second week.

The flamingoes, which were among the last things to leave Stony Brook, were already pretty in various shades of pink. “The question was,” Peter said, “how authentic do you want the color to be? It was a balancing act between the authentic color of a real flamingo versus the color of flamingoes you’d see on a front lawn in New Jersey.”

I’m hoping to make a trek into the city to see the flamingos in full color. You might be interested to know that there are 20-minute guided tours so you can learn more about the flowers that make up the flower show. Call 212-494-4495 for information. And you should keep in mind that Macy's is closed on Easter Sunday, April 12.  

As for Peter, it’s back to more flower power. About a week after this year’s extravaganza ends, he’ll be planning the show for 2010.

EVERYTHING'S COMING UP ROSES FOR STEPHEN SCANNIELLO

       

        It's only February and 2009 has already been a rosy year for Stephen Scanniello. He’s been named a Great Rosarian of the World – which, unless roses grow on Venus or Neptune, is the highest honor possible in his field – and his newest book blossomed just in time for that annual rose love-in we call Valentine’s Day.

        I caught up with Stephen by phone the other day after a whirlwind of parties celebrating his latest achievements. First came a reception at the Huntington Botanical Garden in San Marino, California, where he and his fellow great rosarian honoree Marilyn Wellan, the past president of the American Rose Society, were feted. He'll have to wait till June for the East Coast celebration sponsored by the Manhattan Rose Society. And then came the bouquets for the book – everything from a spread in Martha Stewart Living to a party at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for Stephen and co-author Douglas Brenner.

        Their book – “A Rose by Any Name,” aptly subtitled “The Little-Known Lore and Deep-Rooted History of Rose Names” – deserves all the attention. I love seeing garden books that venture beyond the pale of how to pot petunias and make you laugh as well as learn.

         

      For instance, a section called “Bloopers” contains such little-known rose names as ‘Happy Butt’ and ‘Flush o’ Dawn.’ I might grow apricot- pink ‘Happy Butt’ just for the joy of pointing it out to garden visitors. Its name is derived from a dopey joke about a little girl called Gladys who couldn’t quite handle the second syllable of her name. And ‘Flush o’ Dawn’ is really rather poetic – the pink-to-white rose is reminiscent of the sky in early morning. But as the authors point out, those among us who might turn up their noses at bathroom humor “prefer the slightly-tweaked variant ‘Blush o’ Dawn.’”

        The empress Josephine – no shrinking violet when it came to naming roses – called a white beauty ‘Cuisse de Nymphe Emue,’ which translates into “thigh of an aroused nymph.” Incidentally, Napoleon also got into the rose act – he allowed rose plants to be shipped across enemy lines for Josphine’s garden at Malmasion.  

        The book includes chapters on historically-significant roses such as the pure white ‘Cherokee Rose’ descended from the wild flowers that marked the infamous 1,000-mile trek called the “Trail of Tears,” when 17,000 Cherokee Indians were rounded up and forced to march from Georgia to Oklahoma. About 4,000 Cherokee died of hunger and disease along the way. According to legend roses sprung up where teardrops fell, and clumps of the wild white roses still mark the trail.

       And there are sidebars on roses named for sports figures like Babe Ruth and Chris Evert, and writers from Agatha Christie and Raymond Carver to Colette and Charles Dickens. There’s even an orange floribunda named ‘Rainer Maria Rilke’ after the German poet, whose fatal illness is thought to have been caused by an infected wound from a rose thorn. And it’s no surprise to learn that Sappho, the ancient Greek poet who declared, “The rose the queen of flowers must be,” has had three roses named after her.

        I knew there was a rose named for Barbra Streisand – a large lavender sweet-scented diva – but I didn’t know about ‘Elvis,’ an orange-pink showstopper, or that ‘Jerry Garcia’ is rumored to be on its way. 

        There are roses named for presidents and first ladies. From ‘President Herbert Hoover’ – a fragrant bloom in shades of orange, pink and yellow that crashed in popularity along with the president when the stock market took a dive – to a rose named for his successor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who brought the country back from the brink. Of course, it worries me that ‘Happy Days,’ an orange-red rose inspired by FDR’s campaign song “Happy Days Are Here Again,” is now extinct.

        I was surprised to learn there’s actually a First Ladies’ Rose Garden on the White House grounds, although none of the roses named for first ladies – like ‘Mrs. Cleveland,’ ‘Pat Nixon’ or ‘Dolly Madison’ – grow there. And the red hybrid tea ‘Ronald Reagan’ is the only rose named for a president that actually grows in the White House Rose Garden. But ‘Mister Lincoln’ – introduced in 1965 to commemorate the centennial of his assassination – stands heads above the rest in any garden. As Stephen and Doug point out, it’s still one of the best red hybrid teas of all time.        

        The book also contains information on related topics from making rosewater to having a rose named for yourself – a vanity that could cost as much as $15,000. The book’s wealth of detail is a tribute to both Stephen and Doug, who met years ago when Doug was the editor of Garden Design and Stephen was the rosarian at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. They divvied up the research and writing, then Doug the editor, put everything into a unified voice. It took three years to complete and includes photographs from Stephen's own collection and wonderful old lithographs and botanical illustrations. 

       Here are two of them, courtesy of Algonquin Books: 'Baltimore Belle,' a pale pink climber thought to be named for the young daughter of an ex-alcoholic hatter who became famous in the 1840s for his "silver-tongued" speeches in praise of temperance.

And 'Fantin-Latour,' a fragrant hybrid Bourbon named for the French floral still life painter who reportedly died during a walk among his beloved rosebushes. 

        I met Stephen years ago when I was a budding garden columnist and he was the hot-shot rosarian who had transformed the BBG’s Cranford Rose Garden into one of the world’s most heralded havens for rose lovers. Our rose-rustling trip to a New Jersey cemetery remains one of my best memories from those days. Stephen drove a handful of fellow rose-geeks in his own van and we even made a stop at his mother’s home. I had a ball sneaking around the cemetery, taking cuttings from the old roses that bloomed along lichen-spotted stones walls and moss-covered statuary. Although I have to admit that the roses I rustled that day and carried home in plastic bags didn’t quite make it in my own garden.

        Even back then, the idea for “A Rose By Any Name” was germinating in the garden of Stephen’s mind. It started when he overheard a boy and his father talking in the Cranford Rose Garden. The boy was reading plant labels. “Look, Daddy, this one says ‘Dolly Parton’!  .  .  . Wow! ‘Babe Ruth’ and ‘Santa Claus’! How come their names are on these signs?” Stephen decided that one day he’d tell the stories behind the names of his favorite flower.

        “You know, when it comes to roses,” he told me over the phone, “it wasn’t the horticulture – which to tell you the truth, I don’t really love – that got me. It was the stories. It’s always been about the stories.” 

        In fact, roses weren’t even his thing when he took over the Cranford Rose Garden back in 1984. He was a gardener with a background in biology who had taught inner city kids and worked in the education department at BBG.  “I knew how to prune plants but I was clueless about how to prune roses. I was a total rose virgin. I hadn’t even touched a rose before then.”

        At least not in a professional sense. But he treasures childhood memories of playing amid the ‘Golden Showers’ in his grandfather’s New Jersey garden and watching his aunt prune a red climber called ‘Blaze’ that was once all the rage. “She covered the cuts with her Love That Red lipstick.”

        “There were only 3,000 plants in the Cranford garden back then,” he said. ‘I made some mistakes, but I learned to prune a rose. And what caught my eye were the names. I wanted to know more. That’s what started me on my way to being a rose geek.”

        By the time Stephen left the garden 15 seasons later, the garden more than 5,000 roses. He was a full-fledged rose geek – and a master pruner. “I love pruning. I love what pruning does – how the bush responds, how you can shape things.”

        Now Stephen creates and tends gardens up and down the East Coast, including his own in Barnegat, N.J. where he lives in an historic house on what he calls “an intensely gardened suburban-size lot.” He’s into growing roses organically instead of drowning them with chemicals. He uses chicken manure and experiments with alfalfa meal and mixes in other flowers so his garden isn’t just a rose garden.

       And it’s no surprise that the man who’s president of The Heritage Rose Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of old roses, nurtures mostly heirlooms like ‘Crenshaw Musk,’ a double white-flowered rose that was rediscovered in a cemetery in Virginia. And a few favorite modern varieties too – like Aloha and the very first 'Knock Out' created by last year’s Great Rosarian of the World, Bill Radler.

        Oh, and he’s already been out there pruning his 250 or so bushes. I’ll start pruning mine any day now. And I’ll check out the stories behind their names in “A Rose by Any Name.”

Irene Virag Celebrates Valentine's Day

I'll be speaking at Martin Viette Nurseries in East Norwich on Feb. 14 at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. It's Valentine's Day -- the time for hearts and flowers. I'll be talking about the plants I love and the romantic myths and stories behind my favorites, about the love lives of flowers and my own romance with the garden. The event is free, but reservations are required. Call the nursery at 516-922-5530.

I hope you can join me.

KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH IRENE

I'm sorry to tell you this but you won't see my column in Newsday after Dec. 28. I want you to know it's not my decision -- Newsday is cancelling my contract. There's a possibility I might return in the spring. I hope so. But that will be somebody else's decision not mine. 

But as far as you and I are concerned, this doesn't have to mean goodbye. I'll be revamping my blog and revving up my online presence. Click here to visit my website and get on my mailing list for updates about Web-special columns, calendars and much more. 

And the Winners Are . . .

I absolutely loved all the photos submitted in my "Unplug Christmas" contest. It wasn't easy picking a winner. So I picked two -- Celeste Saladino for her five-foot-tall paean to pine cones and Barbara Isralewitz for her grapevine menorah. 

Here are their photos again.