Herding chickens

My grandmother (the Master Gardener and giver of many free garden starts!) invited me to join her today as her garden club toured a hellebore garden in southwest Portland. Having a very shady yard, which includes a couple of hellebores blooming right now, I jumped at the chance.

Jim the grower was full of information about hellebores, both technical and practical. (Did you know that the "flower petals" aren't really flower petals at all?) I told Jim that I had a hellebore (like the one pictured) that did well for several years and then just died. He said it's a foetidus and not a true perennial. They live a while and then die. BUT there's hope. He said they are prolific seeders, and if I don't stay on top of my weeding, I could have some new ones coming up! We'll see. The foetidus is also called the stinking hellebore. I never noticed that mine smelled funny, but I took a sniff of his and there was sort of a burnt-coffee odor.

After learning all about his hellebores, the garden clubbers all debated which ones they should take home - there were so many beautiful plants to choose! Because she said it made her happy, I let Ma get me this new foetidus. I promised Jim I wouldn't weed around it until May :)
Jim was a really cool guy with a great sense of humor. He attends Multnomah Monthly Meeting and had a bunch of anti-war signs in the windows and bumper stickers on his older Volvo (we talked briefly, and he recommended "The Three Trillion Dollar War"). The garden looked great, even during this transition time of year. The enthusiastic gardeners were learning about hellebores but also running around the garden, investigating his plant selections and techniques. Their attention was a bit unfocused, and at one point while giving his talk and trying to answer their (sometimes unrelated) questions, Jim said it was like "herding chickens." He was right :)

-Liz