How is it the last week in August. Seriously? I still have a spring to-do list and now I’m realizing the fall to-do list should have already been started and well you know how it goes. At least the garden looks good and should look good until frost… assuming I continue to mow the lawn every other day because it seems neverending.
It’s a sunflower year in the front border. The birds left a few seeds and the summer rains have brought them along and now the goldfinches are as pleased as I am.
We have been very lucky as far as rain goes, even if some would note it hasn’t been a good summer for sitting around outside due to heat and humidity and smoke and haze and clouds, and in hindsight that sounds like a terrible summer but there have been moments.
Annuals in general are having a decent year. I wouldn’t mind if the snow-in-summer (Euphorbia marginata) would seed around more, but it doesn’t always get an open patch in April to sprout up into.
I guess I have no complaints other than the pace at which summer flew by. From one thing to another and it’s been an experience but it does make the days fly. To see the late summer flowers, buds on the colchicums, and morning fogs off the river is a little discouraging, but I can convince myself it’s late summer rather than anything more ominous. The summer looks so nice and although unfinished projects abound, on a nice breezy afternoon I would sit for hours rather than do anything… especially if facing the reality of autumn is what’s on the next to-do list!
The last lily of the season, Lilium formosanum, is one you should grow if you can. It’s not your typical lily, it doesn’t clump up but it does seed around nicely, usually blooming in the second year from seed.
The fact is I’m a grasshopper, not an ant. Ants are busy gathering seed, pulling weeds, and getting ready for mums, and I’m staring at a hibiscus. I like hibiscus and find mums to be boring so let me stare away until reality hits and my garden is a mess. Already the weeds are spreading and vines are creeping, and the tropicals are much bigger than they need to be, but in my opinion that’s excellent. I like a summer garden that surrounds you and towers over you and even has a few vines grabbing at you. There will be plenty of time for contemplation and starkness when cold, and hopefully some effort on the part of the gardener, clears things out.
Dried weeds and prickly cucumber vines are exanding by the day, in this case over the blooms of ‘Ruffled Satin’ rose of sharon, one of the few rose of sharons which isn’t an overwhelming weed of a reseeder.
The tropicals will take me through to mid October and then I might just skip autumn and head right into winter. Most of the tropicals are programmed that way, genetically they don’t even know what winter is so they just keep going and going and couldn’t care less about pumpkin spice and chrysanthemums and the grim reaper of a hard frost.
The waste area has become even more colorful as cannas join the zinnias in bloom. I had to trim back most of the forest of Jimsonweed since it was overwhelming even the cannas and I do like my cannas 🙂
All the color in the garden is mostly rain, but also the graduation-party effect as I tried to weed and fertilize and plant more annual color than usual. The graduate is now off to South Carolina but the plants remain, and I’m sad but enjoying the aftereffects of all the springtime gardening effort.
This one bed outside the potager has terrible soil because I’ve done little to it since unearthing it after our construction project. One day I rounded up all the sad overwintered geraniums (pelargoniums) and as many containers as I could muster and this became the geranium bed.
There is one tropical visitor who has me exceptionally excited this summer, and that’s the bananna. The banana (‘Icecream’ I think) has been bravely overwintering as a decapitated and nearly rootless trunk for the last three winters in our mildly heated garage, and although she made me a little grumpy most of June and July, eventually I realized her anemic growth was due to a flower bud pushing up and not some other fault in my banana husbandry. Although I expect tiny banana blooms within the next week or two, there’s zero chance they will have enough time to grow and ripen before winter descends upon this frosty Zone 6a Pennsylvania garden. That is a tragic fact, but not one I can except, and I know there will be many bad decisions made in an attempt to get this plant through to a warm enough space where it can finish fruiting and ripen and give me a January home-grown banana for a waffle Plantness-week celebration.
I shall not count my bananas before they hatch, but my fingers are crossed something cool happens. Even just getting a bloom is more than I expected for a tropical eating banana in NE PEnnsylvania.
So while I’m considering another addition to the house to provide the sun and heat and headroom for a ten foot banana plant I guess I should mention the growing unease I feel when wandering the rest of the garden. Weeds and decay don’t bother me, but there’s a suspicion that I’ve added some plants which need overwintering, and there’s also a perception that some of the houseplants have grown in size. Grown in size sounds somewhat heart-warming, but when I say grown in size I mean five foot macho ferns, six foot begonias, and seven foot shefflera. Also it’s plant cruelty to not divide and propagate things which are doing well, so one Boston fern becomes six before you know it… and for the record I didn’t start the season with just one Boston fern…
I will blame Begonia House. Sure it sounds whimsical to paint the kids’ old playhouse garish colors and try a green roof and then surround it with summering plants from inside the winter garden, but when you take care of it and fertilize, the plants respond and if it keeps going until frost we might have to rename it Jungle House… hmm that sounds fun too, next year I could drag the house over to the potager and surround it with banannas and cannas and brugmansia and let annual vines run amock and… well first things first.
‘Begonia House’ in the shaded side of the back garden surrounded by overwintering “houseplants”, which would never fit in a normal house, even one where the part-owner, subordinate decision-maker thinks a basement full of grow-lights is normal.
Hahahaha, you made me smile if you thought I was even close to considering what to do with things and where to put them this winter. I’m a grasshopper! Nothing to worry about here until it’s too late and it’s still another month at least before the inkling of danger becomes an actual thought. I’m still planting coleus cuttings like it’s May 🙂
Have a great week, nothing to see here it’s all fine.
sorta like suburbia 
The Banana! I hope the flower opens before it gets cold. How cool is that. I like how you’ve done up the playhouse. And it doubles as a greenhouse in the winter.
Thanks! I have to get another post up with some banana flowers and mini-fruits, it’s so cool to me that they are forming here in Pennsylvania!
I am scaling back. I’m getting rid of all houseplants that don’t flower. I am wintering over my aroid collection, however.
Hmmm, just out of curiosity what houseplants might you be getting rid of?
Just kidding… sort of… I really need to consider downsizing as well but whenever I try it’s only one or two plants and realistically I need to target them by the dozens.
Not to signal a new problem, but I really like my Amorphopallus konjac and that’s an arum right? and I have four which might be more than I need, so probably not helping if I offer you one…
The only houseplant left is Tradescantia ‘Tenderness’. And I already have too many Amorphophallus konjac and would have been delighted to give you one or many. They make offsets like crazy. I was annoyed that you acquired yours through another party. I only brought three to the ACNARGS sale and had to take 3 home. I got my original from a previous ACNARGS sale and it was probably donated by the same person who gave you yours.
Haha yes, I bet they are from the same person, and based on the potful of corms that we left behind there were still plenty left to share! -maybe I can pawn them off on unsuspecting people down here!
Oh my. ‘Tenderness’ is on my want list. I have a little colleciton of tradescantia and that’s one which has been evading me. It’s so easy to propagate I can’t convince myself to buy one, but I have to remind myself of that every time I see it.
All the tradescantia go out in the summer but only a few cuttings come back in for the winter and it all starts over.
Kudos on the banana bloom, Frank. I always think of your tropicals putting on a show this time of year. The repurposing of the playhouse is a success, but yeah, one has to draw the line in this climate as to the houseplants. Divisions tend to creep up on you, like my snake plants which I find hard to put in the compost pile when I ask the question, “Do you know how much they charge for these in the store?!” Impossible thrift, alas. I try to limit my overwintering, esp. dahlias and cannas, but here I went and ordered six more for next year. Sigh, there is no hope for plantaholics, esp. grasshopper ones. 😉
Hope school starts smoothly for you, enjoy these last few days of summer.
First day of school is in the books! I think it’s going to be a good year and I’m hopeful 🙂
Oh no, you mentioned cannas and dahlias and I seriously don’t know how I ended up with so many again. Last fall I swear I left a bunch out to freeze, but this fall I have more than ever. I hate digging them on some cold and wet afternoon just before a snowstorm or something hits, but… they’re so awesome right now! I need to set a limit now on how many I “need” to dig, and ignore that thing in my head saying ‘save more, I’m sure I can give the extras away next spring’ and then just give away two potfuls or something equally ineffective. At least I didn’t start dozens of cannas and dahlias from seed this spring…
Ugh, impossible thrift!
Your banana is impressive! Can you bring it into the living room in the cold weather, at least until it fruits? I mean, living in a jungle could be fun! And if other house members object, well that’s a pretty good justification for a greenhouse 🙂
My current color craze is white, so I’m ogling your euphorbia marginata. Might be just what the white bed needs, and there’s still room in that bed.
Waste area? Now that’s a catchy name, haha, it looks way too nice for that moniker. Your hot bed (see I’ve renamed it) is sizzling with all those copper colored canna and zinnia.
Nobody here would blink an eye if I insisted on potting up a 9 foot banana and asked for help lugging it into the house. ‘Don’t get dirt on the floor’ would be the only comment -as long as it goes in the basement and not the living room!
The euphorbia is a cool thing. It’s actually a native to the midwest states but I think people consider it a weed so that’s probably why it fits into my garden so well 🙂
Yeah the waste area has gone through changes over the years lol
Ooh, I hope you will share a photo of your banana flower Frank! Your annual displays are fantastic, and I am wondering what you use as feed when you say your begonias have got so big… a secret mix most likely. 😉 You must be really pleased with the garden this year – plenty of rain and sunshine too. And if you are lucky you could still be enjoying those cannas at Halloween. 😁 In the meantime enjoy the rest of the summer, dreaming of a heated greenhouse while sitting among your tropicals! Oh, and good luck to the graduate flying the nest!
I can’t wait to put up more photos of the bananas, they actually look like something now! Although I think it’s still months before they can be considered ripe.
The begonias are just big things to begin with, and this year there was enough miracle grow and water to get them full and lush looking. For a while I was begging cuttings of any big cane begonia I came across, and now I’m paying the price! Someday maybe I’ll have to rehome one or two, but not this winter 😉
Yes I’m definately hoping for a late frost this year. It would be a shame to waste all this rain-fueled greenery, but then again that might be just my luck. Or would it? The plus of an early frost is that everything comes in all at once and there’s no second guessing or “extra” cuttings or well I might as well.