“Not exactly, Princess,” I reply. “I know you’re embarrassed, but hey. This is to sate the curiosity of tree folks everywhere.”

What’s with my Paulownia tomentosa, you wonder? She liked the last blog, with a photo of her bumptious leaves, but today I’m writing about what’s underneath, and there isn’t much to admire. The photo shows her coppiced base. Three green stems at the back remain after I changed her form from a shrub to a multi-stem tree. You can see green stubs from shoots I removed this season in the foreground and upper right. The brown woody stubs are shoots cut back in previous years. Daylilies and climbing hydrangea grow around and over the stump.

“Are you done yet, you awful human? Haven’t you seen enough?” sighs the Princess.

“Oh I’m done, my pretty,” I say, respecting her need for privacy. We both know that her robust shoots and leaves will wither soon, and the stump that she decries will be her public face until next May.

“Whaddya mean?” she answered with attitude.

“You’re wrinkled, you’re sticky, you’re big and hairy.What’s to like?” I replied.

“You love me,” she said simply. And she was right.

In my summer garden, I can’t resist a leaf that’s 33 inches long and 31 inches wide, even if ugly is one way to describe it. For me it’s a big deal. I live in New Hampshire, where tropical-looking plants are rare. In fact, they’re conversation pieces, and I’ve met many neighbors and passers-by when they gape at the princess tree by the road.

Why princess tree and why me? I like trees, and I like pruning.

To get my tree to look the way it does, I used a pruning technique known as coppicing. I whack it back to the ground each September when the foliage dies at the first or second frost. Each spring, new shoots arise. I let them grow, then pick a few straight ones and cut out the rest. The remaining shoots grow fast–the plant is usually 15 or more feet by summer’s end. But because I out the shoots every year, my princess tree never has a chance to flower or reproduce. Thus all its energy goes into shoot growth and into the foliage, which looks like munchies from the Age of the Dinosaurs.

Now you may have heard of Paulownia, and what you heard probably wasn’t good. This Asian tree produces lightweight valuable wood. If left on its own, it grows about 45 feet high and wide in Zones 5B-9, producing grand clusters of purple flowers and jumbo seeds, which are messy when they drop.

Yet it’s a weedy invasive from Massachusetts to Texas when it goes to seed, and I wouldn’t grow it in those states. My tree, however, never has a chance to set seed and reproduce. For me it’s a folly and a conversation piece, and it gives me a chance to explain ornamental coppicing to strangers.

“Hey, why aren’t you paying attention to me?” said my persistent princess, interrupting my train of thought.

She’s right. I should pay attention. In three or four weeks, she’ll be gone–just a jumbo mirage from the spectacular summer of 2010.

Anyway, weeding in a squat agrees with me, as does weeding on my knees, but when it comes to standing, bending, and pulling weeds, forget it. Yet, what else can I do in an entry bed invaded by soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), also known by the charming moniker bouncingbet. As you can see in the photo, this European native grows all through my daylilies (Hemerocallis) and sea holly (Eryngium), and covers the arid space in front of the stone wall over the culvert. Do I care that squooshed leaves lather up, making a gentle soap for delicates, or that the 1-inch flowers are a pretty pale pink right now? No. I just want this 30-inch-high monster out of my garden. Man oh man, that plant is at the top of my frustrating invasives list. No matter how much you pull out, more will grow from tiny leftover chunks of its creeping rootstock. It also self-sows with abandon.

So I weeded and weeded. Bouncingbet is still growing furiously, and I’m in physical therapy for an achy back. But it was worth it for one glorious week, when my garden looked as perfect as it ever has. I revel in the memory and keep frolicking with eyes wide shut, now that the weeds are back.

By the way, if you’re near Raleigh, NC tomorrow, I’ll be speaking at Quail Ridge Books in the Ridgewood Shopping Center, 3522 Wade Avenue, at 7:30 PM. Drop by–I’d love to see you!

But good trees come in small sizes too, and his weeping Skylands Oriental spruce is a charmer about 30 inches high. He grows it in a woodland area of his garden, where it’s protected from late spring frosts and harsh winter winds. This tree is a slow-growing, droopy version of the gold-tipped upright Picea orientalis ‘Skylands’. Weeping Skylands is a rare conifer. Some of Ron’s other distinctive plants include a ginkgo with yellow variegation (G. biloba) and an Eastern hemlock cultivar with congested foliage (Tsuga canadensis). Nowadays, you can find plants like Japanese umbrella pine, Silberlocke Korean fir, and Cripps Hinoki cypress in nurseries with an affluent clientele, so they’re not as unusual in northern New England home gardens as they were when Ron planted his trees. But Ron’s trees have the allure of maturity. He’s had them for years; he even dug them up and trucked them to a new house a few years ago. I can see how my trees will look years from now, and I like it.

A day or so after her passing, I asked her family if I could take one last walk around her cherished garden, and they kindly agreed. I ambled along the wood-chip paths made from downed trees on the property. Lynne and I had designed these paths to follow winding deer trails that already existed, and Jason Funk installed them. (Jason, now in the Peace Corps, has a profound empathy for nature and a powerful work ethic.)  We loved working together, the three of us, and each step I took reminded me of these happy garden days.

In the next moment, I saw it–the last lady-slipper of the season, perhaps slightly faded but still in flower. It grew by the path with Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense) and lowbush blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) on a dry acidic slope. Surrounding trees, including hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), white pine (Pinus strobus), red oak (Quercus rubra), and sweet birch (Betula lenta), created dappled shade–the right amount of light for a lady-slipper to thrive. My sense of loss at Lynne’s death had been sharp when I started walking on that little path, but when that lady-slipper nodded at me, I knew Lynne was here, and I felt better.

Step one was coming up with a workable, affordable design. Challenges include the subtly sloping grade, an adjacent border expansion deep enough to accommodate the installation of a generator, plus planting beds to soften the bluestone’s hard edge. I changed my mind at the last minute and moved the patio closer to the back door just in time for step two, lifting the sod. Is that coffee I smell brewing?