A Morning Stroll

Aug11

We had a decent morning last weekend and I was sore enough from digging a new bed and moving sand (don’t ask, I know I have plenty of beds) that I didn’t feel like doing anything more strenuous than taking a few pictures. Actually I did attempt to figure out a few camera settings, but it was a complete disaster so back to ‘automatic’ it went, and gosh what a relief to again embrace the idiot settings.

Agastache ‘Tutti Frutti’ is probably what this lilac-purple agastache is, but I never expect them to live long enough to really be concerned about the name. I love that it has a nice height to it.

So other than an ego-crushing moment with the camera and a secret garden project that I’m still a little embarrassed to talk about, there’s really not much for me to ramble on about. Better to just ramble through the garden on a beautiful morning and share only the nicer parts 😉

Because of someone’s yellow foliage addiction, there’s way too much limey-yellow in the front border. Rather than stress over the addiction I’m just going to wait until rock-bottom hits and then see where the shovel is.

Of course a year without showing agapanthus ‘Blue Yonder’ is a lot to ask, so here it is. Next year I will have to learn about transplanting agapanthus since the encroaching spruce is much less mobile. Maybe I’ll even learn about dividing an agapanthus…

For some reason I had little interest in planting up the tropical garden this spring, so grass, yellow pokeweed, and self-sown sunflowers have been allowed to erupt into an eight foot mountain of lushness. I’m fine with that. I think the whole bed will be going to perennials over the next few years, but you never know.

A perennial sunflower? Yes, I think it’s Helianthus decapetalus ‘Capenoch Star’ which has been moping along here for the past ten years. Why it decided to look great this year is unknown, but it’s really taken its time!

Biscuit the yorkie accompanies me on all morning walks. The rabbits don’t seem 100% panicked, but they do run off at a somewhat concerned pace when this little beast comes barreling across the yard.

Biscuit has absolutely no interest in our pond frog but the frog seems even less concerned than the rabbits.

From the lawn you can see the deck plantings have filled in. I notice quite some yellow foliage again, but the pink mandevilla vine is what really stands out.

Towards the back of the yard the potager is looking neat, and from a distance the chaos inside isn’t as obvious.

One major disappointment in the potager this year are the ‘Bishop’s Children’ dahlias which were started from seed this March. I would demand a paternity test, because unless there’s a dumpy housemaid involved, these dahlias should be taller, single, darker foliaged and hotter colors than they are. I’ve been wanting to grow these for years… I finally ordered the seed…

Some of the potager is respectably planted with vegetables. There are beans weakly climbing their poles, borer infested squash, bolting parsley, and undernourished tomatoes, all providing a good cover for a gardener trying to appear serious about tending the earth for the nourishment of his family.

One success has been the cabbage harvest. The harvested stumps of last year’s plants re-sprouted this spring and out of curiosity I let them grow. The sprouts were thinned to a single plant and to my surprise all of them are making perfect cabbages. Here the center cabbage has already been harvested and the new plan is to thin the latest sprouts and hope for a third harvest.

Castor beans are quite toxic and not good potager plants, but here’s ‘Carmencita’ flowering and looking awesome anyway.

Behind the potager is quite possibly my favorite spot in the yard, the meadow garden. This year Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota) is defying my no QAL policy and making a nice forest of white lace above the golden rudbeckia and birds foot trefoil. I think I will pull them soon. That’s a lot of seed.

I don’t know why I’m bothering you with a view of the berm other than it’s weed whacked… except for some weedy asters which I like… and now sports an odd ledge which I felt the need to carve into the berm. fyi it’s just the right width for a boy and his dog as they walk the perimeter of the estate.

The first magic lilies (Lycoris squamigera) are opening. They are a funny group of plants and I’m really getting a good chuckle over how I thought they would grow well here and now they’re not. Hahaha, good one. I could fill another whole blog post with all the pictures of the other ones which aren’t flowering this year, including the new ones which I had faint hopes for flowers, but nah…

Maybe the Lycoris were talking to the cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis) and realized they’d have quite some trouble competing with this show. They’re awesome this year 🙂 **hint** just put in a new path and they’ll sprout throughout the joints, rather than bother growing in the amended soil where they’re planted…

And that brings us around to the far side of the house, leading to the front again. For those remotely interested, this side of the house is where the new bed is located, and the new bed has something to do with not having enough room for caladiums, even though that side of the house is really too sunny for caladiums. Don’t bother trying to make sense out of it, it just doesn’t, but I’m quite happy and don’t even care if I’ve gone too far again.

Hope you’re having a great week and staying safe from whatever plagues your neighborhood this week. Covid variants… smoke… wildfire… heat… upcoming hurricane seasons… it’s all so 2020 and I for one have just about had enough of it!

Back in Business

Aug5

It’s been almost two weeks since we came back from vacation and you’re about to hear something you don’t often hear on this blog. I was busy. Seriously. For about five days straight I put in a good four or five hours of work in, either here or in my Mother in Law’s yard. Back in the good old days work could have gone on from dawn to dusk, but today it’s a different story and that’s about as long as I want to work. Still it makes a huge difference.

The front border has loved all the rain. It would have been the ideal year to pull all the fennel and plant a mass of zinnias and cannas (as the plan was) but… there’s always something else.

Before you’re too impressed by this flurry of motivation I think it’s important to come clean on one of my fairly well-guarded secrets. Not really a secret I guess, but there’s a reason I can spend a bunch of hours in the garden, day after day, and still manage to get up and get going the next morning. I’m a high school science teacher, and with a summer vacation from the middle of June until late August I can still be fairly lazy even with a couple hours of breaking a sweat in the garden 😉

From the other end of the front border… at just the right angle… things look amazing. The main flush of summer color is beginning!

So now I hope the confession of my profession has not darkened your opinion of this blog or this gardener. It’s always a mix of reactions ranging from ‘you’ve got the life’ to ‘God bless you’ so I never know where people’s opinions lie until the truth is out. All I’m really sure of is that most of my powering away in the garden is probably a response to the hours I spend each morning working on a horrible class which I need to finish this summer. It’s really not that bad but in addition to being naturally lazy, I am also a terrible student with a passionate hatred towards online learning, and after nearly a year and a half of online learning I think my cup runneth over.

Gratuitous photo of a cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) flower. I love them, they’re stiff and spiny and of course stupid me needs to touch them nearly every day to get a painful reminder.

Enough whining, here’s an update on a slightly more in control potager, although slightly more in control is completely false. It’s weeded. There are a few vegetables, but most of the left side is a thicket of eight to nine foot tall persicaria and sunflowers. I have to duck and crawl to get through the paths but secretly I think it’s kind of awesome. The only down side is that the majority of the sunflowers are pollen free and as a result there has not been a good seed set. As I sit hidden in my potager thicket I can hear the goldfinches chattering their complaints as they pick and pick looking for some seed that has actually plumped up and been pollinated. Fortunately in the past few days I’ve noticed a few plants with pollen have opened their first blooms and that should be enough for the bees to spread around and get things going.

As usual the potager has become overrun with flowers, and the vegetables have become scarce. If anyone asks I just tell them the endless rain rotted things and if I’m lucky they accept that and pick up a few beans from the farmstand 🙂

A big part of the potager purge was removing old bloomed-out larkspur and poppy stalks, and all the other volunteers which were nice enough until they weren’t. Fortunately there’s always something else, and although the new phlox bed has become a complete failure, the old phlox bed is filled with the usual stars.

Phlox paniculata, Hydrangea ‘Limelight’ and some silly chrysanthemums who think August is an ok month to flower. Here the plan was remove phlox, plant hydrangeas… but as you can see I never got around to moving the phlox. Oh well.

I’m never sure just how much of my babbling is memorable, but just in case you missed me repeating myself the first twenty times, tall garden phlox (Phlox paniculata) are a favorite of mine.

A nice bright phlox seedling which I’ve already set aside because I like the color. Honestly, I don’t think I could rule out the possibility that some time in the future a whole section of the yard gets dug up just to plant phlox.

Although I do love phlox they don’t always feel the same way towards me. Last week I mentioned that the entire bed which I cleared out and devoted to a few favorites is today just a swirling vat of mildew and spider mites and whatever else likes to kill phlox. Some of the plants are literally about to die and it’s kind of embarrassing that a native Northeastern American wildflower can’t be bothered to grow here. Figures, since just yesterday I saw a beautiful clump of pale pink phlox growing inches away from a busy road and in the yard of a house which could have passed as abandoned but probably wasn’t. Maybe my phlox patch needs some road salt and the occasional roadkill thrown on… that’s an idea I guess.

Another phlox seedling similar to ‘Laura’ but another foot or two taller, and that’s ‘Blushing Shortwood’ behind and to the left. Blushing Shortwood is an excellent phlox btw 🙂

This week’s cooler temperatures has really brought out the color on the phlox, if you only consider the ones which haven’t decided to die yet. There’s a nice pink flush on some of the whites, the white center stars are bright and not faded away, and the stronger colors aren’t washed out by the heat. There’s also a good spicy fragrance to many of them.

One of my favorite phlox seedlings. I need a big patch of this one.

Now I’m really thinking about turning more lawn under to make room for a big phlox patch. I think I’d like that. A lot. Hmmmm. Unless they all decide they should die on me, but in that case I’d just plant daffodils between them. Rumor has it I already ordered more daffodils than I should have, so I’ll need the room anyway since my daffodil purchases were based on an assumption I would dig up and give away some of the too-many I already have. My bad.

Caladium update. I finished potting them up. I’m still obsessed.

I need to check myself. There are two new raspberry plants sitting out on the driveway, fresh off the clearance rack and waiting to start a raspberry patch goodness know where, but apparently in my garden even though I have no idea. All I know is I love raspberries just like I love phlox and caladiums and daffodils and hydrangeas and all the other stuff which always comes before there’s a plan. Maybe plans are overrated, and that’s just what I’m telling myself… mostly as an excuse since I also have a vague suspicion there are new snowdrops waiting to be planted. It’s been months since snowdrops have been mentioned here but sadly that obsession is still burning bright and you only have another two or three months before someone starts bringing that up again on a weekly basis.

All in good time. Hope your week is going well 🙂

Catching Up On July

Jul31

Guess who fell off the wagon last month?

This guy.

This was the year I had planned to inundate the worldwide web with post after post of questionable garden content peppered with somewhat bland comments and marginal quality photos, a complete year of quantity over quality. It was a mass-media dream that had the potential to gain me at least five new subscribers and boost my stats by as much as a couple hundred views over 2020… and… anyway I’m not on track, and surprisingly it hasn’t made much of a difference in my life. Surprising. But I do want a record of this year’s gardening adventures (for better or worse), so let me get back on the ball and start with a flashback to last Wednesday’s (nearly a week and a half ago) return from seven days away at the beach.

It was steamy hot and wet while we were away, and the garden jumped ahead to a new level of lushness… even if it is a little wooly and lacks color.

A garden abandoned for a week isn’t a big deal, but there were also two smaller trips before that, and quite a bit of other crap earlier in the month (it was honestly not a good time), so things weren’t set up very well to begin with, but it happens, and now looking back I have to say I’ve been shockingly busy for a change and I’m looking forward to showing nicer photos in the next post… but we’re not there yet 😉

‘Silk Road’ was frozen back and missed 2020, but lo and behold she is filling this end of the garden with beauty and fragrance as if last year never happened. I think we would all like to do the same.

Since I suspect someone might be looking for ‘leaving the garden for a week or so in the summer’ advice, and wants a few tips for their own vacation away, now might be a good time to make this post useful with a list of what one should do before leaving.

The cardoon is flowering alongside some more fragrant lilies(‘Leslie Woodriff’ in this case). Just so you know, this picture does not do credit to the way the cardoon flowers glow. I hope I can get a better photo this week.

Here’s my guidance for prepping the garden before you go away:

Do everything you were supposed to do in April, May, and June but you just never got to.
Pick every last flower bud off the zucchini a few hours before you leave.

I noticed a bit of algae before leaving, but it exploded while we were gone and is now even pushing the duckweed out and away. It sure did clear up the water though! Regardless I’m raking it out even if it is kind of interesting. It’s some kind of filamentous algae although less fancy people will call it pond scum.

I’ll admit I only did #2 on that list, but still there were a few other highlights besides returning to pond scum.

The phlox which were moved to one of the shadier raised beds are not happy. Mildew, floppiness, and I had really hoped for better in the “improved” site. Fortunately the ones left in the old beds look healthier.

The mildew, weeds, and neglected plants didn’t happen in just a week (although it’s nice to have a vacation to blame), fortunately these are the before pictures and I’ve been busy since. Much has been attended to… although all I did was ignore the mildew and hope for some miraculous rebirth of healthy foliage. Sometimes it’s a good idea to just look forward to next year.

The phlox are actually doing nicely in here, I just need to uncover them. Seriously. It’s really not as bad as it looks.

Phlox and a few other things did not like the heat and endless thunderstorms, but a few things loved it. The tropical plants are soaking it up and exploding into leafy lushness!

This ‘Carmencita’ castor bean plant was just a little thing before we left, now it looms over just about everything.

And my first agapanthus seedling has flowered 🙂

I was shocked to see this three year old agapanthus seedling put up a flower but here it is! Now hopefully it clumps up and blooms freely every summer. It spent last winter in the front bed unprotected, and fingers crossed it will continue to be completely hardy.

And I have a flower on my new Crinum!

Crinum x herbertii, the ‘Milk and Wine’ lily could be this year’s most expensive annual (almost as much as a new snowdrop!)… or possibly an exciting new perennial that only needs a little winter protection? We will find out.

Since this post has been all over anyway, I’d just like to finish with the latest caladium photo so everyone knows they’re still all alive and well.

One by one I’m getting to see all the surprises my 5 pounds of mixed caladium tubers contains. This isn’t my first year growing caladiums, but for some reason I’m obsessed with them this year.

And that’s the after and before post all in one. I’ll say it again, I’ve been busy and how often do you ever hear that from me, so hopefully I can get a few decent pictures this weekend and share the results. Have a great weekend!

Some Like it Hot

Jul13

I have to confess, I find white to be a little boring. Much of that has to do with all the white vinyl fences and railing and trim which abounds in my part of town, and the competition it provides to any white flower which tries to do its own thing in my yard, but it’s also probably too tasteful for me. Anyway, my garden is also mostly full sun, and unless it’s the moon shining down, white can become a glare, and any other colors cooled by white into pastels are also lost to the sun. Hot colors on the other hand, can put up a fight. Bright reds and golds, yellows and hot pinks, intense purples… these are the colors I love to see when I look out upon a yard baking in the afternoon sun, preferably from the other side of a window… comfortably cooled by air conditioning.

‘Lucifer’ crocosmia is red. Very red. A you-can’t-ignore red. I think I need a few other crocosmias…

Today it was mostly hot, but it was absolutely humid and sometimes that’s worse. I cut the grass, was drenched in sweat, but not much else happened and I was fine with leaving it at that.

I finally like the front foundation beds. The ‘Tiger Eyes’ sumac is probably too chartreuse and too weedy for a respectable foundation planting but blue spruce and blue fescue are definitely suburbia approved.

Even with the heat and humidity I did try and get the last of the weeding done. That sounds good but of course I’ve already got to re-visit the weeds in the beds where I first started, and the rains aren’t slowing anything down other than the gardener.

One of the few daylilies I have, a yellow spider daylily who’s name I can’t think of right now. I think spiders and the more simple singles are my favorites, the ruffly explosions of color with ridges and teeth are more a curiosity to me than anything I need to grow.

A slow gardener shouldn’t surprise anyone, and this one’s about ready to stop completely, call it a year and just sit back to watch things rather than try and exert any more control. We’ll see.

I’m always happy to see a few Gloriosa daisies (Rudbeckia hirta) pop up. The surprise ones always do much better than any I try to plant on purpose, and they always put themselves amongst good companions, Verbena bonariensis and Lychnis coronaria in this case.

Actually with vacation season approaching the sitting back part will be even easier, and that’s usually when all control is lost.

Pulled weeds on the lawn, not as effective as I’d like sheets on the blueberries, and Rudbeckia maxima three days away from flopping. For all my talk about weeding and control, this is the reality.

The local wildlife seems to enjoy the messiness and I’m happy to see that, even if it means more and more baby bunnies eating the coreopsis while I watch. Actually I was also enjoying watching all the bird activity until I realized it was the blueberries and gooseberries which were entertaining them. I guess my netting problems are still not even close to being foolproof but no matter, who wants to pick all those delicious berries anyway?

On the down side the birds seem to really enjoy retiring to the bath apres dinner, so the pond is always a mess of splashing and berry vomit and whatever else comes out the other end so it’s not nearly as nice as some of the other amazing garden ponds I’ve seen. Maybe someday a (clean) mountain creek plus koi pond will grace this garden but right now I’m absolutely thrilled with the dirty little sump which I call the pond, because in spite of the duckweed and murk I have something far better than koi. I have tadpoles. Finally. Since building it I’ve been hoping “The Pond” would bring in a couple frogs or toads and this year in spite of a healthy population of mosquito devouring aquatic water beetles, eggs have survived and now tadpoles are sprouting legs. I love it and in moments like this I realize what a nerd I am.

The pond. Probably the first part of the garden I check each day.

So I’m way off the ‘hot’ theme but whatever. Let’s just wander out front again to see some of the amazing cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) which are just days from flowering. These are much cooler than they are hot and each day I have to touch them just to verify again how solid and spiny they are. I like them and I bet when they go to seed the goldfinches will also like them… even if these artichoke relatives are a little bigger than their usual thistle meals.

Cardoons just about to flower, with a conveniently placed ‘Royal Purple’ smokebush (Cotinus) backdrop.

If the goldfinches like thistle seed then the cyclamen must be making the ants happy. Cyclamen purpurascens are showing up all around the base of our ant-infested cherry tree and I suspect the ants take the seeds in, nibble off the sugary coating, and then discard the seeds down the sides of the tree. Works for me, I would have never considered planting them in such a dark, rooty location.

Cyclamen purpurascens ringing the base of the weeping cherry. They’re just starting their summer bloom season and soon a few new leaves should be up as well.

Back to the hot theme. I’m not sure if I mentioned, but 2021 is the year of the caladium, and a five pound box of tubers from Caladiumbulbs4less (quite the subtle company name) have been potted up and are just loving the semi-tropical weather. I love them almost as much as the tadpoles, and when the tadpoles sprout their legs and hop off to new frontiers at least I’ll have my caladiums.

The driveway nursery is full of excitement as the mixed bulbs come up and show their colors. I spend way too much time examining every new leaf, but someone’s got to.

In case you’re wondering, five pounds of mixed caladiums is much more than this garden needs, but just about right for what this garden wants. 87 corms would be a pretty good guess of how many caladiums were planted, but I’m sure to actually repeatedly count them would be a little obsessive. Obsessive would also be ordering mixed bulbs but then potting them all up individually so that later on you can plant all the similar forms together… and then running individual drip lines to all of them. Amazing how obsessive can easily co-exist with lazy as long as you buy enough drip emitters, but it has to be done since cool weather and drying-out are the biggest dangers to an excellent 2021 caladiumfest.

Another heat and humidity lover, Alocasia ‘Dark Star’ is starting to put weight on again after a really lean winter.

I’m sure you’ll hear way too much about the year of the caladium so I’ll end it here, but I do enjoy seeing them revel in the warmer weather and nearly daily thunderstorms so I could really go on and on if I had to. In any case it sure beats a drought.

Have a great week, hot or not.

White is a Cooling Color

Jun30

A friend of mine seems able to pick a color of the day any day and then post a collage of blooms right out of the garden to celebrate. Me on the other hand, I’m far from there but on a day like today when the garden bakes under a hot sun, anything which might lower the temperature is fair game. They say adding white flowers to a garden can cool a hot palette but as I trudged around the garden in 97F(36C) afternoon sun I’m not sure it mattered. We’ll give it a try though since the only truly cool white would have been snow, and it will take months of heat before I wish that on anyone 😉

**full disclosure I took this photo a week ago and the blooms on the Stewartia are no longer this fresh looking, but to look at it now? Ahhhhhhh 🙂

Heat and cicadas, that would have been a nicely mid-Atlantic June day, but as of yet I haven’t seen more than a few wings and munched torsos. Maybe a road trip is due? The younger child (now nearly a full month into her teens) says yes, and the first flowers of the Regal lily “smell like Longwood”.

These Regal lilies (Lilium regale) were mush from a late frost last year, and sat dormant from April on… but guess who returned from the dead this year!

I’d be happy with just a break from lawn mowing, and this heat should do the trick. My neighbors are looking at mostly brown already since they’re more gung-ho about their grass knowing its place and it’s height, but here I give it a little more freedom as the temperatures rise and the sun beats down. Longer grass withstands both the heat and drought better and recovers faster when the weather breaks, and I’m sure when that break comes and temperature drop with a rain shower or two there will be plenty of time for me to catch up on my love of lawn maintenance.

A flurry of white across the lawn, thanks to the liberal growth of white clover. A good bee plant most will say, but honestly there’s plenty of other stuff around which they also seem quite thrilled over.

I think cooling white counts even if it’s on the gray side.

I believe this is Mammillaria plumosa. Each year it stretches a little further and now another pot will be required. Any bigger and it won’t fit on the porch steps anymore.

I was lukewarm to the dusty miller(Jacobaea maritima) which went in as an annual last summer but I quite like the bushier perennial version which returned this spring. If the summer stays dry and the border doesn’t get too lush and crowded I think it will do well all season.

Unimpressive flowers on the dusty miller.

Gray foliage but on a much less soft and felty side would be the Scotch thistle. This will probably be the last photo of this weed which I subject you to, but fair warning: the Cardoon has yet to bloom, and that’s another weedy thistle which I think is just wonderful and I can’t hide my excitement over 🙂

Scotch thistle against a cloudless sky. I had to point up since this plant is well over my head by now.

Gray foliage doesn’t have much in the way of scent, but the Phlox paniculata is starting and that has an excellent summer fragrance. I will avoid complaining about how ungrateful they seem this year, as they’re growing poorly enough that you wouldn’t suspect I transplanted and fertilized, but sometimes you have to give a favorite plant some leeway… unless of course it gets demoted to a former-favorite plant… that would be something which such an ungrateful plant might deserve but then who knows what July will bring.

‘Midsummer White’ garden phlox (Phlox paniculata) is the garden’s first tall phlox to flower.

Weeds and wildflowers are never ungrateful. Overly enthusiastic maybe but you never have to beg them to grow.

A favorite weed, daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus) can usually be counted on to sprout up when needed.

Sometimes you don’t even have to water them. Actually watering weeds is a crazy idea… unless it’s fleabane or larkspur. Both might be worth a little spray to get them over a hump.

It looks white, but here the larkspurs all tend to be an icy white with a drop of blue or gray in it. Kind of a skim milk shade of white rather than titanium white.

Here I go talking about weeds again. One more though. Common yarrow has shown up in a few spots in the meadow and I wonder how these seeds find their way.

Common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) laughs at heat and drought. I think everything around it will shrivel up and die before you see anything more than a few leaves wilt.

White flowers in a dry meadow won’t cool anyone, but maybe the patch of variegated giant reed grass out front can help. For months I’ve been saying someone ought to chop out some of the clump, since it really is too big, but it appears the message fell on deaf ears and it’s just as big (actually bigger) than last year. Probably too big. Alas.

I’m not saying I judge my neighbors for not asking if I can spare a division, but the giant reed grass (Arundo donax ‘variegata’) is pretty awesome and only gets better as it climbs to 10 feet and more by the end of the season.

It’s way too hot to be out there in the blazing sun hacking inch thick, strong as steel grass rhizomes so that’s one more year for the grass to root in deeper and spread further. Maybe next year, right? Shade is a much better option. White hydrangeas in a dappled shade both looks and sounds cool.

‘Annabelle’ Hydrangea arborescens is the hydrangea to grow if you want a foolproof every-year-its-a-show kind of hydrangea. Newer hybrids? Other species? Help yourself, I’m just fine with this.

Hostas also make the shade even cooler and many people know this. Some go to extremes. I only dabble.

Hosta montana aureomarginata, an oldie but goodie in my opinion.

There’s another kind of foliage plant which I plan on going overboard with this year. Caladiums. I forget how much I’ve already revealed about ‘2021 the year of the caladium’ but it’s going to be big. Not the empty kind of ‘big’ or ‘huge’ or ‘better than you can imagine’ that politicians have promised in the past, but a big five pound box of mixed tubers which was potted up weeks ago and is now soaking up the heat and starting to grow. As you know, it’s not often I get excited about a new plant, but waiting for each leaf to unfurl is like waiting for a new plant to unfurl a new leaf and I just can’t think of anything more exciting than that.

White… with a hint of pink… not that I’m counting but there are 79 caladiums potted up separately and sitting on the driveway waiting to take off into growth. Summer garage access is overrated if you ask me and I’m sure it will be entirely worth it.

So there you have it, the cooling effect of white. I’m all excited about caladiums now but maybe the white helped calm someone else and take the edge off the heat for a minute and that’s a good thing. That and air conditioning. Or ice cream. Or a tub of cool water… whatever it takes to get through this because as you may remember, something called July and August are still on the way and I don’t think you’re going to hear much of ‘boy it’s looking cool next month’ or ‘golly did that temperature drop’ as much as you’re going to hear ‘relentless’ and ‘not a break in sight’.

Or I’m just being pessimistic. Order some caladium bulbs. There’s still plenty of time and at least they love the heat even if you don’t. And even if you’re anti-caladium I hope you have a great week 🙂

Taming the Potager

Jun23

Reading broadens the mind, and I’ve read too many gardening books to remain satisfied with a plain old vegetable garden. I of course have a potager, which (from what I’ve heard) is a vegetable garden but fancier, with vegetables but designed and mixed with flowers and supposedly a nicer place to sit around in than the dirt paths and rows of beans of your common vegetable garden. Plus it’s a French word, and here in America anything with a french name is fancier. Case in point: baguette vs ‘long loaf of bread’… fancier… and now I rest my case with just one argument, since neither my argument nor the fanciness of my potager will likely stand up to any in depth scrutiny 🙂

A stray hollyhock seedling in front of ‘Royal Purple’ smokebush (Cotinus). Normally the bush is cut back but this year was left unpruned in order to smoke (bloom).

Just a few thoughts on Hollyhocks(Alcea) before we go to the potager. I was hoping a few rust-resistant plants might show up as I try to mix in a few “rust-resistant” species, but so far no luck. Rust is not a good look and of course I’m far too lazy to spray.

I thought this might be a yellow Alcea rugosa, and possibly less rusty, but the pink tint in the flowers and all the spotting and rusty lesions says otherwise. I should rip it out now, but…

So I’m 99% sure that starting off with me sharing my disease problems is not the path to fancy, but I’m going to try and save this. The best thing in the potager this week are the larkspur and oxeye daisies.

Larkspur and daisies. Not really fancy, but maybe ‘shabby chic’, and chic is right out of Paris.

Some people might point out that Larkspur and daisies are more abandoned farm field than they are high style, but right now I love them, and I’m not even going to mention they’re actually the result of not weeding rather than any planned style initiative.

I meant to dig the alliums and tulips, but never quite got around to it. Fortunately the largest prickly lettuce and mugwort were weeded out a few weeks ago 🙂

The actual efforts at design are much less impressive. Roses and clematis to climb the ‘structure’ are still two or three years from breathtaking.

I suppose this will be a patriotic design, with the bright red ‘Chevy Chase'(a 1939 rambler rose) joining the misslabeled blue clematis and white daisies. I’m expecting ten feet or more from Chevy, he should be a strong grower but sadly lacks any fragrance.

Any real potager needs a few vegetables, and so far lettuce and cole crops are the only things looking productive since the tomatoes and squash have only just gone in.

I love cabbages and all their kin. Earlier in the year the cabbage worms attacked, but after a little picking off, the worms have stayed away or found other hosts. Un-nibbled leaves really look much better than the usual worm-riddled foliage.

So as usual I have an excuse for being late. Rabbits made their nest in the middle of the tulip patch. Somehow six cottontails had to grow up before I could dig the tulips. I couldn’t transplant the chrysanthemums until the tulips were out, and then dahlias had to go into the bed where the chrysanthemums were. I think following chrysanthemums with a dahlia planting is called crop rotation, and all the fanciest gardeners practice crop rotation.

Nine ‘Bishop’s Children’ dahlia seedlings are all I got out of a packet of thirty seeds. That’s a good thing, what would I do with thirty dahlia seedlings?

Some of the other tulip plantings were followed by tomatoes, and I’ll show them as well but they need a few weeks before they and the rest of the new potager plantings begin to look nice. In the meantime I need pear advice. Last year a late freeze killed off nearly every flower save three, this year every flower made it. I have dozens and dozens of little pears and I need to know if I should drag out the ladder and thin them, or if they will naturally thin themselves. To me the answer is already pretty obvious, but of course I’d love for someone with more experience to tell me I don’t have to thin them.

Little pears. I already thinned the lower branches to just a few fruits.

It doesn’t look like a few French words will fool anyone, and those are pretty much all the highlights of the potager in mid June. With the bubble burst, I might as well take you around the rest of the even less fancy parts of the back garden.

Weeds along the berm. Year 1 was smartweed, year 2 was some mustard, year 3 is birds foot trefoil, daisies, and grass. I think it looks best this year and I think some rose campion seed needs to be sprinkled in as well 🙂

Weeds along the back of the property and now an overgrown snowdrop bed. Finally after years of tinkering this bed is becoming more stable and I think (a little)less weedy.

Snowdrop bed, aka rain garden. The roof runoff washes down the sand path and keeps this bed a little wetter than it used to be. The plants seem to love it.

There’s so little design and zero fancy to this side of the yard. As the years pass it’s becoming more of a snowdrop garden and the other plantings have to take second billing, even if they do occupy the ground for about 11 months compared to the 1 month of white. Of course I cannot explain myself on this addiction.

This year the blueberries will be protected. I have netting, but all the fledgling birds who flock to the bushes are just too clumsy to avoid getting trapped, and I can’t untangle another body. I’ll try some floating row cover material and hope that out of sight will save enough for pancakes at least.

Hopefully this end of the garden gets some attention this weekend. It’s always the last job, and for as ‘finishing’ as that sounds it really only means I go right back to the start and begin it all again, this time with more weeding and less planting…

Even in a thicket of weeds this Japanese iris looks fancy.

Maybe on the next go around things will change. All the weeds will go out, some thoughtful design will go in, some rough edges cleaned up? I think not. It’s firefly season and they love all the rough edges and I love having them light up the evening garden, and for as much as I’m tempted to weed-whack the berm or mow the meadow it’s not happening this month. I’m sure I’ll get over it and it also wouldn’t hurt if I found something better to do 😉

Bonjour, and I hope you have a fancy week!

Enter Summer

Jun17

Well well well. The lull is over and with official summer starting in four more days I’m completely ready for days to last forever and I’m completely ok to never put on a real pair of pants again. Sorry, please forget that visual. I’m thinking shorts and bathing suits and whatever else kind of clothing you would wear to the park, not the gray polyester blend pants you’d wear to meet your lawyer. Lawyers should only be dealt with in the winter in my opinion.

The front border is full of early summer color and a remarkably well-tended assortment of plants.

Following a bump in the road it looks like garden work is back on track around here. Planting weather continues and I almost feel guilty about putting it to good use when so much of the country sits under stifling heat and relentless drought. But trust me, if not doing work would mean relief for the hot and dry, you know I would do my part.

I kind of missed the flowery peak of the roses, but there’s still plenty of color. Also nice is how much those little spruce and juniper twigs have grown. It seems just yesterday I had a four inch pot in hand looking at the spot where today a six foot white spruce (Picea glauca ‘Pendula’) stands.

Roses are still obsession du jour, and the greatest tragedy this summer will surely be that I was not able to get up to Ithaca’s ‘Der Rosenmeister‘ to see hundreds of roses in full bloom, filling beds and covering arbors and wafting their various fragrances across the garden as I secretly inventory all the ones I’d like to cram into my own little yard. I guess there’s next year, but in a strange turn of events I’ve turned into a very not-patient person, and I want it all now. I can still be understanding and wait for things like small children, tree seedlings, and dogs, but the cup of you-go-firstedness has run dry and my filter is breaking down as I age. I guess you can start calling me Karen.

Here’s ‘Westerland’ again. Today it’s my favorite rose.

I’m Karen with a spade, and many of the less inspiring plants in my life are paying the ultimate price. “oh it’s a good doer’ might save it in your garden but here it’s good night and good bye unless I love it or unless it saves me from even more work. I’m thinking groundcovers with that last one, ajuga may not be inspiring but it does fill in between the giant reed grass’s stalks and saves me from crawling through there looking for prickly poppy seedlings.

The giant reed grass (Arundo donax variegata) is on the love list, but the clump looks deceptively small in this photo. I may trade in the spade for an axe on this one, the inch thick roots are not something I’m looking forward to, but the clump needs reducing.

Weeds and plantings I’ve tired of might sound bad, but overall I love the garden right now. A thick wall of weeds won’t win a magazine cover, but honestly I’ve been looking at them (every day of course) and all it takes is one plant doing well in there for me to think ‘wow, that’s #@&^ing awesome’.

A weed I love, common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), looking and smelling great this week. Three tips: be prepared for it to spread, chop it down to two feet after bloom, and just yank up all the suckers without worrying about the roots below (you don’t even want to know).

So as usual I’m babbling about nonsense when I should be finishing this up and ferrying kids to a dental appointment. More pictures, less blah.

More strawberry foxglove (Digitalis x mertonensis) appearing out of the mess. These don’t mind the droughts and spider mite attacks which do in the common foxgloves.

More of the foundation plantings. As you can see the blue fescue border has not been divided and replanted, and still has way too much thatch built up, but…

The former rock garden, now the colchicum bed. I’ve resorted to roundup once or twice a year to keep the stone border clean and it’s actually working out very well.

Did I mention I needed more roses? I do, and it might be time for more clematis as well. Finally I have a few spots for them to climb up and show off rather than making them crawl around in the dirt… which is not the kind of treatment they deserve.

Clematis ‘Ruutel’ doesn’t get much taller than this, which normally wouldn’t thrill me, but the dark red color is still a win.

A friend of mine grows more clematis than she should and that’s probably why she’s such a good friend, so I’m sure if I mentioned cuttings… hmmmm. That would sure help cool off the credit card from plant purchases.

Clematis ‘Ville de Lyon’ does get taller, and I always like flowers at eye level or above.

So the rest is just a mix of unconnected things which are interesting this week. We could call it a four on Wednesday but of course that’s got zero ring to it 🙂

Even in an overexposed photo Calycanthus ‘Aphrodite’ looks pretty good. I never expected it to become so showy.

Aralia ‘Sun King’ is still doing well in a cramped, too dry, unfertile, location. Nine out of ten garden designers despise how I left the rose campion nearby.

Further into the shade the martagon lilies are blooming. ‘Sunny Morning’ had a string of bad years with late frosts and swampy soil but then for some reason decided to send up three flower stalks and look amazing. I don’t get it. She’s been dormant by July for at least the last two years so I suspect this is a swan’s song kind of show.

The meadow is developing behind the neighbor’s house. Oddly it’s one of my favorite spots and has gone from pure turf to a mass of bird’s foot trefoil, other clovers, and a few daisies.

So I have to stay focused. I want to go on and on about the butterfly weed and rose campion that needs to be seeded into the meadow, and the merits of adding native penstemons but in a purple foliaged form… but the spring stuff still needs to get planted, beans need to go into the ground, and daffodils dug and a million other things and there will be time to babble on about uncut meadows in August.

Hope you’re enjoying all the too-much as much as I am. Have a great week!

A Good Soak

Jun7

A strange thing happened about two weeks ago. Without any warning or cause, the gardener here snapped out of his lazy spell. I think it started out of necessity, with plants that were purchase for next door… and weren’t all that cheap and had to be planted before the heat and forgotten waterings took their toll… but then it took on a life of its own. Weeds were pulled, lawns edged, trees pruned, plants planted. You’re probably thinking to yourself ‘well of course, I’ve been doing that since March’, but here that hasn’t been the case. Here neglect was creeping in. Here they’re hoping this new gardener stays on and the place is brought back to halfway decent shape.

The potager doesn’t look too impressive with its beds of yellowing tulip foliage, but the most rank weeds have finally been pulled and a few legitimate plantings have taken place. There’s even a nice supply of lettuce coming in as a first harvest.

I’ve noticed that the gardener’s ambition rises and falls with the weather. Last weekend was cold, and for as much as everyone else was full of complaints and misery, the gardener here was reinvigorated. “How long have you been out there? Your cheeks are freezing” was the question, and “all day” was the response. Even when the rain was pouring down the gardener was dragging out (way too many) stored bulbs, potting up (way too many) purchased caladiums, and starting (way too many) unnecessary seeds. I think the gardener knows that there are few if any empty spots to plant, but he doesn’t seem to care.

The nicer end of the potager where the gardener would often sit rather than work. ‘Purple Splash’ is finally settling in and will hopefully scale the arbor, but as of this week the gardener still doesn’t like it. He claims it’s very nice, but it’s not “beautiful”, and all roses should be beautiful or at least movingly fragrant.

Even if the gardener is getting some work done, he’s still just as easily distracted as ever.

Calycanthus x ‘Aphrodite’ is more beautiful in a sculptural way than many roses, but like ‘Purple Splash’ also lacks a decent scent. It looks like it should be wafting a fragrant cloud across the pepper and tomato plantings, but sadly the gardener smells nothing.

Roses have been a distraction, and even the lazy version of our gardener was spending a good amount of time planting the new ones and fussing over the older bushes. He misses the scents of iris season, but now when the fruity fragrance of rose drifts by it’s not as bad.

‘Westerland’ is beautiful. I love the color and am thrilled it see it settling in.

The gardener is hoping that 2021 will be his first exciting rose year since the small cuttings and bareroot plantings of the past two years are finally beginning to amount to something. I’ve told the gardener that some regular fertilizing and water would do the roses wonders and probably have them topping arbors within a year, but the gardener is stubborn on top of lazy, and the roses are raised “tough”… which you probably know isn’t a thing, it’s just an excuse for them not growing as well as they could.

The first strawberry foxglove (Digitalis mertonensis) is the one that planted itself right on top of a snowdrop clump. Foxgloves were one of my first plant fascinations btw.

Not to get distracted yet again but the foxgloves are coming, and although they don’t do well for me, even a poorly grown plant looks exceptional.

The first common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) to survive to blooming in years has me excited, so of course I was crushed to see the wall of foxgloves a friend was enjoying this year… but if seeing nicer gardens is really discouraging I would have quit this years ago!

Of course one lone foxglove in bloom had me imagining all the amazing things the gardener could do with foxgloves so that brings me to the reason I’m enjoying rain while the rest of the country bakes under a bubble of heat. I was distracted. I was fantasizing about the latest offerings from the little Rhode Island Nursery known as Issima. They had a common D. purpurea but with cool grayish foliage and a light fuzz to it, and I hemmed and hawed over D. purpurea ssp. heywoodii long enough that it sold out (which happens rather quickly to this ’boutique’ nursery) so of course I bought other stuff instead.

So I blame indecision for the reason this post has been in progress for four days now. That and a party at our house for a dozen teen and pre-teen girls and of course other stuff. There’s always other stuff and it’s usually good, but not always.

Hope your other stuff is good this week 🙂

A Day of Rock Gardening

May30

Last weekend my friend Kathy of Cold Climate Gardening talked me into a plant sale. No offense to her salesmanship, but it wasn’t the toughest sell considering I’ve been itching to get back to town ever since my first ‘Ithaca Spring Garden Fair and Plant Sale’ two years ago. Covid you know… so I’ve been saying pass, but then Kathy told me about the spring plant sale of the Adirondack Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society. It’s a members only thing, just a few people donating, buying and selling, but it sounded perfect. Big deal that I wasn’t a member(yet) and it’s an over two hour drive, plus it’s a whole Saturday away from a garden which I should be weeding… and I already had plenty of unplanted things… but you know as well as I do that once the gardening gauntlet is thrown down it must be accepted, so of course I said yes.

It was a beautiful morning and the drive was a perfect trip up the Susquehanna river valley and then across the rolling dairy hills East of Cayuga lake to the plant sale. The sale was fun. Members (which now included me) were given numbers and each person had a chance to visit the sale tables and pick up a favorite. After a couple rounds of this the tables were opened to everyone, and one by one they emptied. There was more of course. While this was going on plant talk was every where, an auction was lined up, a free table was filled and cleaned out… members introduced their favorite plants which they thought ought to be selling better, and at one point someone just stood on a bench and invited everyone over to visit their garden afterwards 🙂 I like these people, and this also brings me to one of the big selling points for me doing the drive and joining the chapter. Garden visits. I had heard that a local rock gardener had offered to open their garden after the sale, for members to visit. It’s a garden I had read about and seen pictures of, and I knew it was a must-see garden. Wow, was that the truth!

A hillside was being excavated to expose the bedrock

Some of the epic rock gardens of Europe are heaps of stone built up to create mini-Matterhorns out of flat cow pasture. This garden is not that. Here a pair of inspired gardeners found a plot of land where they knew they could carve the earth down to bedrock, and then build a rock garden up that follows the natural cut of the ravine. It’s actually quite a crazy idea, but awesome to see.

One of the newest additions, a bridge now spans the gap between rocky outcroppings.

Of course these pictures don’t do the scale of the garden justice. Massive boulders were being moved and placed in a way which looked as if the glaciers did all the heavy lifting thousands of years back. Unearthing the bedrock sounds easier with the help of heavy machinery, but then consider the care which has to be taken to not gouge the naturally weathered walls and boulders as they’re being uncovered. All the fine uncovering had to be done with hand… and then moved by hand…

The earthworks from even further back. All of this was uncovered, and much of it moved into a more effective place or position, even the larger slabs of stone. Behind where this photo was taken there’s even more excavation.

One of the chapter members mentioned that the owners were back and forth about opening the garden. ‘It’s not a garden, it’s a construction site’ is more or less what I got as the reasoning, but only half of that is true. It’s an awesome construction site, but it’s also an amazing garden, and I think it’s even more amazing when you can see what went in to all the plantings.

Plantings tumble down the slope, this one built up with tufa stone, a porous rock light and airy enough to allow plant roots to penetrate.

This is the first real rock garden I’ve ever visited so I can’t say much about the plants other than they looked perfectly happy.

Rocks overhanging a small pool. Tufa stone allows for plants to be ‘set’ directly into drilled holes. Eventually the plants spread out on their own as the roots find their own paths into the rock.

Oh, and just a big crevice garden for all those things which love a deep root run between stones. Yellow delosperma and a yellow leaved teucrium (which I just happened to pick up at the plant sale!)

Some of the plantings were really amazing

Even a hosta! -but I really love the yellow leaved saxifrage (maybe saxifraga ‘Cloth of Gold’?)

As I worked my way down the paths through the rock gardens, and headed closer to the house, I reached the patio area. Here the garden hosts had set up a dining area with snacks and beverages and plenty of wine. From what I hear this generosity was all part of a master plan to “loosen lips” and get the honest impressions of their visitors with an eye towards improvements and new ideas. Sadly, I believe the wine was just wasted on me 🙂

Bonsai and trough gardens.

The trough gardens were particularly interesting, and not just because of the mini landscapes planted in them. In the past these gardeners have hosted trough making workshops in the garden as well as publishing articles on the process, and I was excited to see that the troughs look excellent in person. Excellent enough that I think I’ll give one a go this summer and see how it turns out!

Some of the troughs were quite complex.

Wine and snacks have a way of gathering people, so at the patio I stopped and took in a few of the conversations. Someone asked me how I liked the top part of the gardens and I said ‘Top? There’s also a bottom?’ …and yes, there’s a whole other part to the garden.

Below the rock garden a natural seep provides flowing water for the bottom part of the gardens.

As you come around a few more boulders you find yourself at the bottom of the ravine, where a mass of Primula japonica fill the low spots. They were just starting their peak bloom, it was excellent.

A path runs back and forth along the stream.

Masses of Primula japonica

The stream heads out to the lake. You would never guess a downpour had this garden nearly flooded a few days prior to the opening.

There were more woodland plants, azaleas, rhododendrons, and tree peonies but of course I can’t show everything, so I’ll leave off with one last overview of the upper garden as viewed from the house. As you can see ‘dwarf’ conifers are also an interest.

A view from the other side. You can see some of the deer fencing, obviously the hooved beasts have no respect for such a special place.

So this garden was amazing, but who would I be if I turned down another garden tour invite? I headed a few miles further to the impromptu open garden which had been announced at the sale, and here I was able to enjoy huge beds filled with lush perennials all grown to perfection. I’m afraid I derailed plenty of my host’s Saturday afternoon gardening plans since it was already kind of late, but she still gave me the full tour!

Tree peonies were at their moment of perfection.

There were cool plants everywhere, and they were all so well grown that I tried to avoid all honesty about my own garden when asked. My big regret though is that I didn’t take more pictures. It’s almost criminal that there are no photos of the red horse chestnut (Aesculus x carnea ‘Ft. McNair’) which was in full flower over one of the back beds.

Alliums, Aquilegia, and peony were at their peak but I could see that the show had started months ago with spring bulbs, and will continue for months more with all the other later perennials.

Wow.

So I’m also not even mentioning the shade gardens, the small arboretum of special trees, the field of dahlia tubers I was preventing her from planting… It was another fascinating garden and I have to say that the best thing about this day was meeting person after person who were so crazy about plants that it made me feel entirely sane. What a group!

I rushed out of this stop with a new friend (and even more plants in my hands) and headed for my last stop. It was already about dinnertime when I rolled into my friend Leon’s driveway but he didn’t seem too annoyed with me. He knew I’d be late and still led me around the grounds of Der Rosenmeister Nursery and tolerated question after question. I didn’t have time for a single picture. I bought three roses. I’m going back in a few weeks to see the hundreds of roses in full bloom, and it is guaranteed to be another great trip and I’m sure you’ll hear all about it 🙂

Hope you enjoyed this adventure !

Start Your Engines!

May26

Something odd got into me last week. After what has probably been months of the usual laziness I started a few tasks. Then I went on to new ones. Before I knew it I was being productive, and although I feel more sore than accomplished, I do feel like I finally made a little headway.

I took a break on Sunday from porch cleaning to get a few photos. Here’s the front border with the pale yellow, single blooms of the rose ‘Aicha’ mixed in with the blue of colombine (aquilegia)

This weekend I spent Friday digging trade plants and opening the pool, Saturday traveled on a gardening adventure, and then Sunday tried to make the yard more summer-friendly since it was awfully hot and that seemed the right thing to do. Monday it was lawn mowing, trimming, watering… and I even started to pickaxe a few holes into the berm for more arborvitae plantings. Finally today I finished the planting (just four bushes) but it felt like a major accomplishment since the hard-packed, rocky “soil” fought me all the way.

‘Aicha’ is a beauty. I hope she gets just a little taller so I can thread a small clematis through her for the ‘off’ season.

Tomorrow I’m home for a “Dr’s appointment”. I’d also like to spend some time outside and see if I can get the vegetable garden moving, but we will see if new ambition beats the forecast heat. In theory I could spend the day by the pool with just a few breaks to admire the iris, but for now I’m hoping ambition wins, since wouldn’t that be just terrible to waste a day off swimming and doing next to nothing?

The historic iris ‘Sunol’ (1933) growing in the foundation beds. Usually it has a bronze flush to the falls, but perhaps that faded this year in the heat.

Speaking of the lure of sloth, last summer I had hoped to reclaim some of the front border for more iris plantings but once things filled in it was a struggle to find open spots and as usual I resorted to edge planting. Edge planting lets me shoehorn in a couple more plants along the outer fringes even if the outer fringe looks better empty. If never looks that great having plants hanging off the edge of the bed like that, but when the place is filled that’s as good as it gets.

Historic iris ‘Romeo’ (1912) has a cool look to the falls which is different from the others I grow.

So (again) the plan is to clear a few swathes where iris can go. It’s been dry, which is good for bearded iris, but if the summer turns wet this gardener might be tempted to fill in with all kinds of annuals and various other showier things which are great in the fall… but are not iris.

‘Elsinore’ (1932) is another somewhat unique historic iris which I like very much 🙂

Regardless, I have faith that a few iris will again fill a sizeable chunk of the border. I may have to resort to a few of the hardier ones which don’t mind some summer shade, but it needs to be done since a May without an overload of beaded iris is completely unacceptable.

‘Indian Chief’ (1929) is not my favorite color, but the plants handle competition and some shade quite well, so of course it gets an invite.

So iris are on the to-do list… somewhere… and in the meantime I need to focus on planting and watering…. and weeding of course, but I think you know how I feel about a strong commitment to weed-free beds vs saving a few of the more interesting ones 🙂

A big Scotch thistle(Onopordum acanthium) has come up in a spot reserved for phlox and snowdrops. It’s as prickly as it looks and of course I love this (listed as noxious in several western states) weed.

Even if the weeding doesn’t happen, hopefully I can at least show off a respectable vegetable-filled potager in another week or two.

From a distance of greater than 20 feet, much of the garden doesn’t look bad. I just wish it passed the five foot rule!

Wish me luck. I’m already thinking that the best plan is to head to the nursery in the AM and start the day with new vegetable transplants… and likely a few more flowers… Obviously deep down inside I know buying more plants doesn’t help the four new rose bushes, various overwintered tropicals, trays of sprouted seedlings, and the haul from last weekend’s rock garden society sale that are sitting on the driveway, but it’s more fun and I’m always up for that.

Hope you have a fun week 🙂

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

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