Fully Autumnal

Oct28

Fall is in full force here in Northeastern Pa. In the mountains it’s already past prime but as the cooler nights have spread into the valleys there’s no escaping the season for too long. The cool weather is a relief. This weekend was fantastic fall gardening weather, with plenty of sun to bask in when the mood hit, and plenty of cool breezes to keep the gardener from breaking a sweat when the motivation to work hit. I did some cleanup and finished a few non-gardening projects and may have even gotten a touch of sunburn due to the nice weather and perhaps a bit too much pastiness from sitting inside more than I’d like.

A spot on top of the berm has become a favorite resting spot… even when the rest isn’t earned… and if you look away to the side away from the industrial park the autumn view is wonderful.

There’s fall color everywhere, somewhat dull for the drought and heat, but also somewhat bright due to the recent stretch of cooler nights, so I guess that evens out to average? The maples are brilliant as usual and there’s also a few other interesting things around to make this slow decent into death and dormancy a little more bearable.

For a couple days the bigleaf magnolia (M. macrophylla) goes all buttery yellow before full brown, and even then the curious gray underside makes for an interesting (and still huge) leaf.

The fall and winter interest here seems to make a decent amount of progress each year and the focus lately has been on evergreens, berries, and the latest (or earliest?) bloomers possible.

Maybe not an autumn berry, but the blueberry bushes are always an October show.

After years of talk, a winterberry (Ilex verticillata) has finally been purchased, and I hope it won’t mind a real late planting since throughout those years the gardener didn’t bother to settle on a location for it. They’re fairly common around here in the boggier parts of the woods, so I expect it will do just fine, and I’m already imagining a mound of bright red color next year on this native deciduous holly.

Not the native version, but the asian beautyberry (Callicarpa ‘Pearl Glam’) has similar purple berries which are interesting but maybe not as showy or long lasting as I’d like. Perhaps it’s the location, it’s terrible soil, and probably much drier than the beautybush would prefer.

The new winterberry will have to rely on the local population of male hollies for pollination, and I hope there are some within range during its bloom since I’d rather not devote more space to a non-berrying version if I don’t have to. As with almost any gardener, my ambition is always larger than the space I have.

I am feeling chrysanthemum deprived this autumn. The mildest winters ever were somehow the cause of death for a few of my favorites and I miss them, so maybe I can get a few seeds from this one growing for next year.

Besides berries it’s just chrysanthemums and asters rounding out the bloom category. I’d like to add some more chrysanthemums but it’s so hard to convince yourself in May that $10 for what’s likely a rooted cutting is a good deal for something which sells in perfect bloom for $5.99 all over the place in October. Most people know the answer to that and just pick up the $5.99, but some silly gardeners think that the $10 mum cutting might be so so so much cooler. Bluestone perennials has some extremely tempting options. Maybe it’s time I bite the bullet and bring a few favorites back to this garden, because honestly the little round dollops of mum do little for me while the lanky, too big blooms, too tall stems version with crazy flower forms are a much better way to enjoy October.

Lingering roses can be awesome. This one was developed with scent in mind and I love the fragrance of roses wafting in the October breeze, pulling you in for a closer sniff. Brindabella ‘Purple Prince’ has also been a good grower with healthy foliage, and who could complain about that?

Did someone ask about the pumpkin patch? Not that I heard, but here’s the summary anyway. The early July plantings ripened just in time although there was still a touch of green on a few of the larger ones. More September rains would have helped I’m sure, but considering how little effort I put into their care, and how entertaining they were to watch grow, I suspect there will be a pumpkin patch again next year as well as a hopefully more diverse gourd planting 🙂

The pumpkin patch harvest accidentally spilled and people raved about the display. The pumpkins were moved to decorate the porch and the review was lukewarm… -sorry, but I needed the wheelbarrow for other things!

So that’s an autumn update. Fall color and it’s dry, and the best thing about that is no slugs to decimate the first of this winter’s snowdrops! Yes, the fall-blooming snowdrops are waking up and of course I’m excited.

The first to appear this fall is ‘Tilebarn Jamie’, a Galanthus reginae-olgae hybrid which still looks a little awkward and unsure but at least not slug-nibbled. Please ignore the greasy look of the soil and the blackened birch and nearby blackened foliage. The lanternflies are still out peeing on everything and fertilizing the black mold, even if it lands on such a treasure as the first snowdrop.

Have a great week. The cool weather has me thinking about tulips and daffodils, and as of now I’m unmotivated to replant, so perhaps I’ll talk tulips next to get in the mood… and give the snowdrops a little time to sprout 😉

Feeding the Soil

Oct15

So yeah, another day lost to endless rain… I actually cleaned the kitchen and cooked some food for the fam instead of escaping to the garden. Nothing healthy was cooked, I’m a maestro with the deep fryer, but for a gloomy and gray, chilly day it seemed appropriate. Now it’s 9pm and after several apathetic attempts at a blog post throughout the day, I suppose a firmer tone should be set and anything should be posted. Photos were taken yesterday for just this purpose, so maybe something good can come of a day with no garden time.

Allium thunbergii ‘Ozawa’ has finally opened. Although I’m the only one to notice so far, I’ve been checking him each day waiting for just this moment and that’s exciting.

The biggest news is that after years of no Allium thunbergii, I’m suddenly basking in the joy of four separate plantings. One of them really doesn’t count. It’s the miserable patch of seedlings which I’ve been nursing along for at least seven years, and has only bloomed once in all that time. I don’t want to talk about it. I do want to gush on about the two I picked up at a NARGS plant sale, and then the one which showed up a few weeks later when a friend was nice enough to send me a division as well. From a thunbergii desert to a garden flooded with October blooming alliums was more than I could hope for, and now in their second year here I’m quite pleased. My friend sent the cultivar ‘Ozawa’ and the other two are maybe a straight species form, and the white ‘Album’, and all three are putting on a great show.

The small white Allium thunbergii album with another A. thunbergii which was just labeled ‘pink’. These two are showing off just inches away from another patch which rarely flowers… It’s hard admitting that one of your babies is a little ‘lacking’.

Now before I start mulling over the idea that an early fall-blooming snowdrop would complement these alliums wonderfully, lets check off the last of the colchicums. In this garden the long-blooming, double white C. autumnale ‘Alboplenum’ finishes off the season, and this late favorite now comes up in a couple spots around the yard. It should be a couple more, but the colchicum transplanting steam has cooled off, and it looks like these are going to have to wait until next summer to get a little more space and maybe a little more sun elsewhere.

Colchicum autumnale alboplenum looking slightly sparse and tired, but still giving a decent show under a dwarf white pine. I always like how the falling needles blanket the ground for the colchicum, but the dry shade doesn’t always please the colchicum.

The steam on a few projects has cooled down, and maybe that’s where the rain is coming from, but the focus is now turned to embracing the new wheelbarrow and moving dirt again. Pickaxe a few square feet, shovel them out, wheel them back, repeat… and then go sit down for a couple minutes. No sense in wearing yourself out, and absolutely no reason that a gardener should be working so hard as to sweat in mid October.

One of the rest seats faces the end of the front border. Things are beginning to wind down, but as long as frost holds off there’s still plenty of color.

As I’ve probably mentioned way too many times, this garden isn’t built on the deep, fertile soils of a lush river valley, it’s just a few inches of topsoil skimming the top of construction fill, which sits just above rocks and bedrock… and then if you keep going coal mines will be the only other excitement down there. Roots do not go deep, and I’m always trying to improve on that, even if it’s in ways which often do more than they should to avoid anything which seems like real work, or even worse, sound like they could be costly.

At least the newly seeded lawn has been enjoying all the rain. This area was completely dug up and bulldozed and I’m counting on mulches like lawn clippings to bring life back and re-create some topsoil.

Sifting out rocks, double digging beds, working in amendments and soil conditioners, and buying in ‘topsoil’ are all great ideas, and I love seeing other gardeners do it and then watch as their spades slice through a delicious chocolate cake soil to plant things, but there’s about a zero chance that will ever happen here. Here my main method of attack is (1)dump organic matter on top and (2)wait for the worms and other creatures to work it into the soil, and (3)grow lots of things. Growing things have roots, and the roots work through the soil, and when they die they leave a path and organic matter… so let me alter that and say (3)grow lots of things and then kill them but leave the roots there. You can probably guess I’m not one to worry about removing stumps, and pulling things up and getting all the roots? Also not a priority.

Of course some roots have to come out, but wherever I can I try to smother weeds with a layer of mulch first. Lately lawn clippings have been my mulch of choice, and from snowdrops to daylilies to boxwoods, they’re all getting a nice inch or two.

The lawn alone doesn’t give enough clippings, so this is when the meadow gets a scalping as well. All the rain has it pretty lush so hopefully it’s more clippings than weed seeds, but even a few weeds are worth it.

A cleaned out bed is easier to mulch, so chopping back has started and where better to throw the spent stalks and fading foliage than on the lawn? It all gets mowed up and thrown back onto a bed elsewhere and all that organic matter stays around the plants which produced it. Things doesn’t look 100% fancy, but is so much easier than hauling it to the compost. It’s only the hellebores which don’t get their own shredded foliage returned to the same bed, and phlox stems also go elsewhere. These are the only plants which give me any kind of build-up of disease concerns. Everything stays in the garden, it just moves to a different part with other plant species.

Isodon effusus, formerly rabdosia, formerly plectranthus, is flopping all over the snowdrop bed and in full bloom. It’s impossible to photograph, and the name is impossible to remember, but it does bring in some excellent color, even better when the red maples begin dropping their leaves alongside the blue.

Golly does the rain have me chatty. I’m moving dirt, building soil, and the only other thing I still want to mention is power washing. The spotted lanternfly is into its third year here and is about as bad as last. They’re mostly annoying with their clumsy hopping and bumbling flight, but their honeydew pee is beyond annoying and enters irritating. The sweet pee is gross, but the black mold it grows is disgusting. The black mold is the reason you haven’t had to endure endless succulent wall photos, since most of my succulents are blackened by the drizzle they get under the aspens. Pretty much anything around the bases of trees is sticky and black, and of course the white birches don’t show well either when they’re dripping with pee and mold.

Hopefully a November once-over with the power washer will clean this gunk off.

According to most Lanternfly information I should be stomping and spraying and controlling the beasts as best I can, but I’m not. When the mold started getting bad I briefly considered pulling out the shop vac and making a brush attachment to sweep the trees clean, but you can guess where that ended up. Cracking open a beverage, pulling up a lawn chair, and vacuuming up a wasp nest is fun, but running the vacuum up and down trees for the lanternflies seem like work, so no thanks. I’ll take this first hit in stride and hope it balances itself out similar to the Asian ladybugs, Japanese beetles, stinkbugs… hmmmm there’s quite a menu of invasive pests which have come this way over the years…

Spotted lanternflies beginning to lay eggs at the base of the tree, alongside the blackened foliage of a peony.

Let’s leave off on a good note… as the patter of rain on the roof has picked up yet again…

Each fall I keep wanting to transplant a few of these hardy garden chrysanthemum seedlings to more spots around the garden and each spring my attention is elsewhere. Today this double orange is my favorite. I should collect seeds when they’re done and play that game again 😉

So that’s a post, for better or worse. I hope if anything it entertained, and I also hope that your Sunday is sunny and enjoyable!

In With the Old

Oct26

I’ve been ignoring the colder temperatures long enough. A sudden freeze would have made the great autumn migration much, much easier but I’d surely miss a few things next year. The weather Saturday was beautiful and it’s the first weekend in a month where I didn’t spend most of my time emptying closets or running to the Salvation Army or painting or moving furniture… So spending an afternoon moving a few plants was (almost) a treat 😉

Putting everything on the driveway as a staging area seemed like a good idea… until even the driveway was filled.

Earlier in the month I’d already taken cuttings of coleus and other favorite annuals, hauled in the caladium pots and lugged the amaryllis in, and really thought I was on a good path… but then the plants started to accumulate. Hmmmm. Shame on those plants for growing so much.

By the end of the day things looked downright tame. A few things to shove into some dark corner of the garage when it really gets cold, and my precious tree fern which will stay out as long as possible.

So right now there’s no room in the winter garden for a January coffee, but I have a few months to straighten that out. I’m sure it will all work out just like I’m sure over the next few days I absolutely won’t find a thing or two more to bring in or a handful of ‘just in case’ cuttings.

Decent temperatures and beautiful autumn light made spending all day outside a treat. It’s amazing how things have recovered since the rains returned.

I wasn’t lugging all day. It was just nice to be outside and I’m quite talented at just wandering around ‘thinking’ or sitting around and ‘contemplating’. I guess we all have our superpowers even if we don’t all get to wear the fancy tights.

The late asters are nice enough but of course I’m still far too impressed with the purple stems of the ‘Sunnyside Up’ pokeweed.

One low point to this autumn is that nearly every last chrysanthemum in the potager’s chrysanthemum bed died out this past winter. In the spring I was almost happy about all the open space, but now I miss them, especially the big football forms with their huge, shaggy blooms. Who knows. The winter wasn’t all that bad and many of them had been with me for years, but these things happen. Fortunately I have backup plants, sadly not the same forms, but seeds are easy and if I want I can just collect a few seedheads this fall and within months I’ll have more than I lost… (as if I hadn’t already filled all that open space)

A mix of seedling chrysanthemums in the neglected former rock garden. Even after a summer of no-care and searing heat and drought they’ve come through with a nice show!

Who knows why chrysanthemums just die. Many of those big bushelbaskets of color sold in the fall aren’t actually hardy, and many more dry out too much to establish after the show is over, and some are just planted too late, but other times? I know all the autumn rains last year had mine extra soggy going into winter but I was still surprised every last one died. Wait, that’s not true. One plant which was decimated by some foliage disease and went into bloom nearly leafless last fall had two tiny sprigs survive. So the weakest plant survived… go figure.

The lone survivor in the the potager. The color on this chrysanthemum reminds me of the dahlia ‘Cafe au Lait’ and I’m beginning to like it, plus strong stems make it great for cutting.

Drifting aimlessly around the yard reminded me that for as productive as I was hauling other things in for the winter, the succulents that accumulated on the new stone wall this summer are still all out there. They’re all in heavy clay pots on top of that. Ugh.

Time to pay the piper. Free pots and extra cuttings sounded so harmless when I put together another 20 containers. Now they all need winter homes.

Wisdom has not followed age. I bought three more (big) terracotta pots last month when I just happened to ‘stumble upon’ a 30% off clearance sale, and I have every intention of filling them next spring. Sunday all of these came into the winter garden, even the ones I was going to leave out because I really don’t need them. Someone gave me another succulent which he knew I was eyeing. I know my mom has one which I’d like a bit of and my nephew as well. I give it two more years before this whole fiasco collapses. It’s going to be a great two years 🙂

The first snowdrops. A new season begins before the old has passed.

And then there are snowdrops. I was lukewarm for a week or two in August but now I’m just obsessing again. Snowdrops and cyclamen because they’re sprouting as well, and for a winter garden they’re also essential. And witch hazels. I see buds on those, wow it’s going to be an exciting winter. I hope it doesn’t fly by too quickly 😉

Hope you have a great week!

A Taste of Autumn

Oct17

Yesterday was forecast to be a gloomy day of rain, with strong winds and a good chance of thundershowers, but the morning surprised me with scattered sun and a breeze almost strong enough to blow away the swarms of blackflies and keep the mosquitos grounded. It was nice. It was warm. I took some pictures and actually did a few things rather than sit inside, and then when the rain and wind did finally come through it happily matched afternoon break time, so win-win!

Thinking the weekend would be lost to rain and cold, the lawn was mowed and even edged Friday afternoon. What a guilt-free way to greet Saturday morning.

Now I’m not going to promise I did anything important or essential, but I did do a few things which have been haunting me like moving Lycoris bulbs and repotting some plants for winter. Now if that gets you thinking this is a good time for moving Lycoris bulbs, think twice. It’s probably not, and summer dormancy is probably better, but they’re moved now and that’s something which didn’t happen in August.

I still love the pumpkins and finally found a use for the peppers which have been sitting on the side of the house all summer. The coleus also look perfect, but that will change quickly as nighttime temperatures begin to drop.

Beyond that I just spent the morning enjoying the autumn garden.

Some lingering annuals and autumn colors on the hydrangea.

The breeze from the approaching cold front must have been carrying a few Monarch stragglers, since every now and then I would disturb a bunch hidden amongst the flowers. They were all hungry and focused on feeding, not like the lazy floating through the air which the earlier crew was doing a few weeks ago.

I’m glad I deadheaded the buddleia a few weeks ago since it’s brought on one last flush of flowers for these late Monarchs.

I think there were enough flowers for a little rest-stop but with the clock ticking all the Monarchs were gone by early afternoon, riding the winds in front of the approaching rain. Safe travels!

It’s chrysanthemum time, and I love all of them except maybe this buff “peach?” colored one. Is it the brown grass behind or the hot pink in front, I don’t know, but something is off with these colors.

On another note, a few years ago a box or two of Minnesota-hardy mums came to this garden and did exceptionally well in spite of neglect and poor planting locations. During dry summers their seedlings would spread freely and this gardener was quite pleased with some of the results. Only about four of the original plants survive but only about two of the lost ones are missed, so in spite of the money spent this gardener feels like he made out better than he usually does.

Maybe not the nicest color, but I do like the more unusual flower forms of many of the seedlings.

I guess this is where I say mums make nice porch pots and I’ve bought my share of tight pots of perfectly budded plants, and then enjoyed them completely until they dried out one time too many. If they’re hardy enough they will also do well in the garden, making a nice lump of color for a few weeks anywhere between August and October depending on the cultivar.

This orange and gold seedling is nice enough to keep for another year… maybe the pink as well, but I already have a few others which are similar.

My confession is I find them kind of boring. They’re very neat and uniform, but I like flowers that sway in the wind. I like to see the bees working through them and plants which keep putting up more buds with larger flowers and unusual petal types. Once again the dream of a perfect garden with ribbons and pools of fall color falls to the wayside in favor of ‘interesting’. Oh well 🙂

‘Cheerleader’ is the last of the hardy football mums. I might have to try one more time to get some more which will tolerate my on again off again plant care program because this one is friggin awesome!

Let me just add that ‘interesting’ isn’t always as beautiful as the perfect pots from the nursery.

One of my favorite colors are the white with a pale yellow centered ones. Awesome color, but don’t look too closely at the foliage.

I transplanted all of these in June and chopped them back to sticks and worried a little that they would recover. They did, but then the endless rains of August brought on overly lush growth which ended up nurturing disease and killing off much of the foliage and blooms. A note for the better gardener is that chrysanthemums appreciate good air circulation and full sun, and dislike a crowded bed with overhanging sunflowers and milkweed.

By now some of the plants are completely leafless. Some are fine. A real ‘breeder’ would probably yank all the defective ones…

Of course there’s little chance I’ll address the disease problems. I’m more of a thoughts and prayers kind of gardener, not one who acts on these things, so maybe next year will be better. On the other hand I will rip out a few of the ones which don’t thrill me, since new seedlings are much more fun than seeing all the same ones returning next year 😉

In another bed this ‘cafe au lait’ color is something I like. Hopefully this one proves hardy.

Here’s just one more which I like.

Pink with interesting petals, but possibly weak stems? I’ll see today how it fared through yesterday’s rain and wind.

Hopefully no one is overly impressed with my seed-growing adventures. To put it in perspective there are often seedlings which just show up on their own, and are often much nicer than anything I nurture.

Just like that a seedling appears. Of course I’ll keep it, but maybe move it to a spot which isn’t soaking wet all winter…

…and don’t think I’m too good for buying and saving a few potted mums and seeing if they survive to bloom another year…

Hmmm. Has the leftover sand been sitting in the driveway since August? Someone better move it before that same someone accidentally tries to run a snowblower through it in December.

Speaking of surviving for another year, the pots are starting to migrate closer to the garage and their winter housing. The new bed on the side of the garage has been perfect for keeping things off the driveway… sort of… as I realize there are half a dozen fairly large pots sitting alongside the sand pile…

I suspect this cold front will push all the caladiums into dormancy. They’ll probably go into the garage first so they can stay out of the rain as they die down.

So that’s the mid October update. Chrysanthemums and the wait for the first frost pretty much sum it up and given the ten day forecast both will be around until at least the end of the month. I’m fine with that and I won’t even mention those other things which are starting to preoccupy my every other plant thought. The first ones are starting to sprout and of course new bulbs have been planted.

Have a great week 🙂

A Festival of Mums

Nov14

Well I do feel guilty overposting when I don’t even take the time to respond to comments or visit other blogs, but there was a second part to my recent garden-day-out which just doesn’t fit into that post, and it’s just too good to not share (as opposed to some of the things I put on about my own garden!). Our beautiful morning in the private garden of Charles Cresson was followed by an equally beautiful afternoon at the very public Longwood Gardens. Of course we were late, so there were a few seconds of nervousness when we saw the crowded parking lot and the well-past admission time on our timed tickets, but all was well. We cruised through a perfectly distanced and contact-free admission process and were exploring the grounds just minutes later.

Longwood’s bell tower with fall color and some late afternoon sunshine.

The weather was still perfect, the grounds were perfect, the fall colors were perfect, the water was clear, fresh sod was laid, the paths were raked. Longwood is an excellent autumn strolling garden, but to be honest I sometimes get a tiny bit bored. I wasn’t in the mood to hike the meadow, I had seen miles and miles of autumn color on the drive down, and all the summer plantings were already out and replaced with uber-neat animal netting to protect the recent tulip plantings, or super tidy raked soil. It all made me feel somewhat guilty for the unplanted bulbs and general mess at home, so our stroll was actually kinda short.

Hamamelis virginiana ‘Harvest Moon’ looking exceptional amongst late bloomers and autumn grasses. It’s in full sun by the way, and I’ve noticed that even the wild ones which line my path to work bloom much heavier when in full sun.

My friend Paula was with me, and we both agreed that next year Longwood should call us and let us pick through their trash pile of discarded annuals and tropicals and help them get rid of some of that mess. I’m sure my better half would have no problem with me coming home with a trunk full of things to pot up and keep inside all winter 🙂

In the gardens behind the bell tower I saw a few big clumps of ricepaper plant (Tetrapanax papyrifer) which looked as if they had overwintered in the spot. I love the leaf on this thing and have been trying to get one for years, even if it is a terrible spreader and some people are allergic to the fine hairs…

A very well-planned combination of yellow Amsonia hubrichtii foliage backed by a ripening crop of yellow berried American holly (Ilex opaca)

Of course you can’t judge me for thinking I have either the room or time to take in dozens of high maintenance and tender plants which are totally unreasonable for my garden. It’s a much cheaper addiction than fancy shoes that don’t fit comfortably or a flat screen tv which is just too big for a room which sits you six feet away. But I’m digressing. We actually came to see the mums, and as we approached the conservatory things started to look promising.

Wow 🙂 Hardy chrysanthemums grown as a basket on top (I think) raised high over a planter of the same.

Last year I visited the NY Botanical Garden to see their display and I loved it, but for all their variety and diverse forms and traditional training techniques, Longwood had less but more and went straight for the Wow.

My favorite part, the explosion of yellow lining the path across the orangery. Giant yellow chrysanthemums and a wall of yellow Salvia madrensis.

If you’re still with me you may be wondering just how exactly you can “have less but more”, so let me try and explain myself. There were fewer total varieties and forms, but hundreds of each. I don’t know how you plan or find the room to grow and train hundreds (or even thousands!?) of mums to football size perfection, but apparently Longwood does.

There was so much yellow here I wanted to roll in it.

The rest of the conservatories were just more wow. I think the less I write the better, so here it is.

The exhibition hall, flooded with a film of reflective water and shaded by tree ferns. The topiary are begonias and I don’t think I’ve ever liked begonias more.

The ‘thousand bloom’ chrysanthemums. A single plant grown and trained for a meticulously perfect show. The one in back is absolutely huge.

Maybe these were all the leftovers? A merciful Longwood employee opened the one-way barrier and let me through when she saw me standing there mumbling ‘I need to go there, I need to go there’. I loved it. Maybe this was my favorite…

If the yellow was too much there were plenty of yellow-free zones.

Yeah there were a lot. ‘Chrysanthemum Festival’ is a worthy title.

And every single, last one was perfectly grown. I suspect there’s still half a greenhouse worth of backups somewhere!

I enjoyed it. If you’ve never been I recommend giving it a try, just know that the display comes down this weekend and the conservatories close until after Thanksgiving as they prep for Christmas, so that someday visit might have to wait until next year.

Keep your fingers crossed and faces masked in the meantime. The kids are annoyed I didn’t take them along, and are anxious to see this year’s Christmas decorations, but with record COVID cases and rising deaths across the country and with rising numbers in Pennsylvania I don’t know how that will work out. I’d say we can hope and pray for the best but seriously… just wear the stupid mask and avoid the party at the bar and that will probably get us much further than some false hopes and empty prayers.

But I’m probably preaching to the choir here. Stay healthy and have an excellent weekend and wish me luck as I finally consider my own messy garden and unplanted bulbs 🙂

More Fall

Oct24

Who would have thought but this autumn continues to be a somewhat pleasant experience (pandemics notwithstanding), and we are enjoying a fairly warm October. Warmth in October is nice. People like warm fall days. I on the other hand wouldn’t mind a little more cold.

A hanging baskets was emptied to provide a spot for some of the gourd harvest.

Dried leaves and dead stalks, with pollen and fluff and dust blowing all over are not doing my sinuses any favors so my latest excuse for sleepy laziness is my allergies. Even with a congested head and squinty eyes though, out in the garden is where I’d like to be and in spite of it all I did manage to get a few things done. First of all I power washed. When I told my mom how I’d power washed the birch trees, at first she couldn’t make sense of what I was saying, so I explained how they were looking a little dingy and algae-coated and in need of a wash but that didn’t help. ” I think I could have thought of better things to do” was her response, so I told her I washed the car afterwards and left out how I first cleaned the stone sides of the new coldframe and then we moved on to other topics.

I apologize to every weekend warrior who will now feel the need to power wash their birch clumps, but they do look much nicer.

That took a lot out of me so I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around enjoying the glow of the fall foliage.

From the right angle I can enjoy the fall color without seeing the dozens of potted plants which still need to come in…

The next few days didn’t see much more in the way of questionable productivity. I’ve been obsessing about chrysanthemums after all, and how can you think of overwintering potted porch plants when there are mums in full autumnal splendor!?

The chrysanthemum bed is now officially in full bloom. Two beds would be nicer, but even one looks quite extravagant.

I don’t care about mums in May, but fortunately this year I still managed to plant these out and even added in a few seedlings which survived my springtime neglect.

This pink seedling will be nice if it proves hardy. Unfortunately the rest of this year’s crop is kinda boring.

The seedlings are fun, but the staking and fussing that went into caring for my last surviving football mum has really paid off. All I do is stare at it and wish I had more.

The amazing orange blooms of ‘Cheerleader’ tower over the others.

‘Cheerleader’ is about 3 or four feet tall even after an early spring pinching. She requires strong wooden stakes and I even went as far as to disbud a few stems to see if the main flower would turn out nicer. I think they did. Hopefully next year I can repeat this.

I did manage to cut a few for the house, but most are being enjoyed in situ.

While I contemplate a new career in raising fancy show chrysanthemums, and consider a roadtrip down to the Longwood chrysanthemum show (which goes until Nov 22), I do want to point out a small project I did manage to finish up this week. It’s a new raised bed, one made out of cement blocks and hopefully one which outlasts the wooden ones.

Concrete blocks on end, the whole thing held together with metal strapping.

Honestly I should have just stuck with the wooden theme, but I had an idea and that idea might be worth a try if it meant not having to replace every last bed in a dozen years. In the meantime I just hope no one looks too closely at my credit card receipts and questions just how much was spent on a 1/2″ steel strapping kit. Let’s run a quick distraction with some nice photos of wonderful fall bulbs.

A surprise flower on the non hardy Bessera elegans. It’s just one more potful which has to still come in for the winter.

Just the fact the Bessera is alive is amazing and that it’s still sending up a bloom or two after flowering earlier in the summer is also a shock since I had given them up for dead months ago. Actually it wasn’t so much giving up than it was throwing them into the furnace room back in the fall of 2018 and then just being too lazy to pull them out the next spring. So they sat. Bone dry. For six months. Then ten…. then twelve… then sixteen… Finally a year and a half later I went back there looking for emergency potting soil and found the pot. I was shocked (and a little annoyed, since I really needed more potting soil) to find a pot full of perfectly healthy corms, no worse than the day I put them back there. Out onto the sidewalk they went, and one April shower later they were all sprouting.

A very elegant autumn blooming snowdrop (Galanthus bursanus). You can probably guess just how often I check on this newest pet.

The bessera is a summer bulb, but autumn snowdrops represent a new season, and by that I mean winter. I love seeing them coming up and from now until next March it’s snowdrop season. Sure it slows down a bit in January, but for the last few years that slowdown is only a few days and not the usual months long lockdown of cold and ice that we used to endure. I guess a global climate disaster can have a bright side if you look hard enough.

Galanthus peshmenii? I believe not, if only because the “are you sure?” backup peshmenii I bought is living up to its reputation and slowly fading away while this one gets better each year.

Did I mention how much I paid for the latest snowdrops? Of course not, and I won’t. By now I know better than to put things like snowdrops on anything which produces a receipt. Explaining away a 1/2″ steel strapping kit produces a bored look but when I try to justify the excitement over an expensive little bulb, all I get is that judgemental eye roll.

Have a great weekend, and for those who are curious I followed some tips for finding a backdoor to the old WordPress editor, and it’s made my blogging life tolerable once again.

Keep it Classy

Aug24

You may think that a couple raised beds and an obsession for snowdrops would practically guarantee refined taste and a Martha Stewart garden visit, but as of this evening both have yet to happen. Sometimes I think neither will happen and then I start wondering if maybe it’s just a problem with the gardener, and his complete lack of class and good taste. So be it. I like orange, I like cannas and dahlias, I like marigolds, and above all I love too much when a little less would have been much more respectable.

French marigolds reseeded from last year. I hear they’re less ‘out’ than they used to be but ‘classy’? Maybe not yet.

I don’t have the patience or writing skills to really go into why one flower is classy while another is crass, but over the years I’ve picked up on the judgements of my betters and at this highpoint of summer realize that my garden definitely veers towards the trailer park style rather than waterfront estate.

Chrysanthemums can be fancy I suppose, just look at the formal displays in the far East style, but as flowers go I think of them as a modern carnation, the flower bouquet you buy when roses and lilies are too expensive. btw I hate this color, but a friend loves it, so I trust her taste and keep it!

I suppose if you decorate your estate with gobs of full flower chrysanthemums in themed color displays they’re fancy, or if you stick with the truly perennial types which put out sprays of color in late fall you’re good, but my chrysanthemums are mostly the feral offspring of whomever managed to survive the winter. To me they’re an interesting bunch though, even if the colors aren’t anything extraordinary. The earliest ones are starting to bloom now, which is far too early and reeks of autumn, but I hope they’re just enthusiastic and can keep this going at least through September.

A larger flowered chrysanthemum which showed up under a rosebush one summer. I’m looking forward to seeing what its seedlings look like in bloom in another two or three weeks.

Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) is a weed of waste places and abandoned gardens. Obviously it does well here and obviously it’s not high class, so I always leave a few to grow and flower. Birds are supposed to like the seeds (although I’ve never seen a bird on it) and I like the way the flowers pop open each day, so this native biennial is ok in my book. Now if only I could motivate myself to seed out the fancier versions I found last winter. Oenothera versicolor ‘Sunset Boulevard’ offers dark stems with tangerine flowers overlaid in rose, while the large yellow blooms of Oenothera glazioviana pop open in under a minute as the sun goes down… it’s worth a party, or so I’ve been told.

Oenothera biennis, the common primrose, with a few other classy weeds such as Persicaria orientalis and the golden, too-loud, Rudbeckia fulgens.

Phlox come with an excellent pedigree and are grown in some of the best gardens. And then they get here. A few years back I decided to treat my self to a few selections from the ‘Sweet Summer’ series, and a few years forward they’re all dead except for two. Actually make that one. ‘Sweet Summer Festival’ would never fully open her blooms and was yanked a few weeks ago and sent to the compost pile. She came with excellent references, and I thought she would grow out of it but maybe it was some weird tissue culture issue… or she just hated it here and couldn’t be bothered with hiding her disgust.

Phlox ‘Sweet Summer Fantasy’ looking slightly less fabulous than the pictures had lead me to believe. “Large flowers, strong upright habit with clean foliage and good branching”…

I was looking at the trash I call a phlox bed today and really gave some consideration to offering up my garden as an extreme test location for new phlox varieties. I think a new plant would really have to jump through some hoops to do well here, and if anyone out there wants to send me a bunch of free plants for evaluation I’m completely on board… and just to throw it out there even if the plant doesn’t do completely well it doesn’t mean I can’t write a glowing review… I mean integrity is kind of a vague concept these days, and free plants really do hold a lot of sway in this garden.

Aristolochia fimbriata (the white veined Dutchman’s pipe) is actually a very classy little treasure, and look at the little pipe it’s putting out! downside though, perhaps I should have looked at its mature height and spread before planting it at the base of a six foot trellis.

I always thought of Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) as a trashy plant. We had it round the garden growing up and my mother would always complain over its leafless stems in May when everything else had already sprung to life, and then I would always complain about the carpet of seedlings which would fill the weed bucket under every bush. Should I even mention the slimy faded flowers which would litter the ground for two months in late summer? They were always guaranteed to squish up between your toes, and even better if a slug had come out to take a bite before your foot landed on it all.

‘White Chiffon’ rose of sharon hasn’t reseeded too badly, and when all else fails white flowers always add distinction.

I have to say I like the new rose of sharons. ‘White Chiffon’ is a smaller version of ‘Diana’ with a little extra fluff in the center of each flower (I still prefer the single ‘Diana’), and if for once I can refrain from accidentally cutting down the bush during spring cleanup I think she’ll be an excellent addition to the garden… unlike the amazingly colored but prolifically seeding ‘Bluebird’ who was shovel pruned.

Rose of sharon ‘Ruffled Satin’. I have not seen a single seedling under this one, and to my eye you might even get away with saying this plant looks refined?

I guess the mallow family is often pointed at for weediness and gaudiness, and I’m not sure where the latest court ruling stands at for classiness, but if you move away from shrubby hibiscus to the perennial version it’s really got to be a gray area. Some of the newest forms are just amazing, but they have all the oversized flowers and inappropriately bright colors of something less refined. I would grow all of them, but just can’t deal with the ravages of the hibiscus sawfly which eat their foliage to shreds each summer so there’s only one left, and some years he does ok, and other years I just turn away.

An ok year for hibiscus ‘Turn of the Century’. I love it, but it’s a far cry from the five foot shrub covered with blooms which this plant is capable of.

Ok, enough with all this concern over tackiness. If you look at the last hibiscus photo you might notice a classier plant in the backgound, the chartreuse leaved, 2020 Perennial Plant Association’s plant of the year, Aralia cordata ‘Sun King’. This cool thing doesn’t seem to mind a crushing late freeze, mid summer drought, and rooty shade, and although its two foot height in my garden does not compare well to the 4-6 feet it is typically quoted as, it’s still a wonderful presence. The plant is a great introduction by plantsman/hunter/explorer Barry Yinger who spotted it atop a Japanese department store in the garden center. So much easier than bushwacking up a Chinese river valley and climbing cliffsides looking for new plants, but I’m sure that was on the list as well.

Of course when I saw the name I knew I had to try the seeds for Hosta yingerii, and here they are several years later.

Plant nuts will remember Barry Yinger’s Asiatica Nursery which was an outlet for introducing hundreds of exotic and obscure plants into the American horticultural world, and even if you don’t know it, your garden is probably richer for it. Even my little plot has a few (hopefully) hardy camellias which are just a few degrees of separation from Mr Yinger collecting seeds under armed escort within sight of the North Korean mainland. A cool connection me thinks.

Not to swing this around and make it all about me, but I did meet Barry Yinger once. Not to brag but it was at one of the first Galanthus Galas, and he was off in a side room breaking for lunch when I decided to take my chance. “Is this where the restrooms are?” was my icebreaker, “No, they’re the next doorway” was his response, and I was on my way. I don’t think he remembers.

Obviously my classiness is only eclipsed by my social skills, so let me abruptly end this post and wish you all a great week!

A Chrysanthemum Show

Nov8

For several years it’s been on the list to visit a chrysanthemum show. Not just any farmstand with fat bushelbaskets of mum color, but an official show with carefully trained displays complete with a bunch of different styles… foremost among them the single bloom monsters which I love above all others. I don’t know much about mums, but I do know I needed to see a show. Enter friend with suggestion to go to NYC 🙂

Kiku: Spotlight on Tradition. If the show has a name, it’s got to be official, right? Cascading forms and bonsai trained Kiku (Japanese for chrysanthemum) greeted us as we entered the greenhouse display.

We settled on a visit to the New York Botanical Garden. Strangely enough, for someone with a mild plant obsession and who grew up less than 50 miles away, this would be my first visit to the NY Botanical, but better late than never, right? Actually the truth is that the Bronx Zoo was always the winner when we were making our way to this part of the city. Actually it still tends to win out, but at least now I can blame the kids. I digress though. We made it to the Gardens at a decent time and were pleased to find ourselves visiting on one of those blue-sky, crisp air mornings that are perfect for brisk walks through extensive botanical gardens. I bet you didn’t even know that was a weather category, but for further reference it’s just a tad warmer than leaf-raking weather.

Carefully trained and nurtured for months, the kiku display covers a range of styles and forms.

The actual display was a little smaller than I was expecting, probably due to greenhouse renovations and all the plant moving that goes with that, but the flowers were fascinating. I like the big, full flowers best, but there were plenty others to catch the eye. Actually enough caught my eye to get me thinking that maybe I need to dig a big part of the garden up and just plant it to all chrysanthemums.

Class 11 brush and thistle chrysanthemum ‘Saga Nishiki’. I believe there are 13 classes in all.

Photographers were out in droves capturing flowers and fall foliage, and one person I spoke with was enthralled with the light… ‘the light is amazing’ she said, but for a point and shoot kind of photo-taker like myself the pictures on my camera leave much to be desired. Hopefully the give a decent feel for the display.

I was quite impressed by the garlands of chrysanthemum trained from side to side, but the towers of flowers on the right, and the various classes lined out on the left, kept me in this part of the greenhouse for quite a while.

In case you’re wondering I did get to see plenty of the huge single blooms as well. My tastes run to the gaudy end of the spectrum, so these big, fluffy things were just perfect.

I believe these are of the regular incurve class of chrysanthemums. I may have given a bloom or two a light squeeze, they’re so irresistibly full (my grandmother would have been appalled).

Wait, how could I forget the spider form. I love these as well… although I always wonder why the ring supports underneath are bright white and not a less obvious black or dark green…

Spider perfection at the NY Botanical Garden

With the serious business out of the way it was time to wander the grounds and enjoy the beautiful fall weather. Foliage was at its peak and beginning to wind down.

Japanese maples never disappoint.

Early November is probably not the showiest month for flowers, but we did enjoy all the trails and vistas and well tended plantings, and it’s amazing to think our quiet afternoon happened within the city limits of a metropolis which millions call home.

The light, the light… Inside the rock garden.

Although we weren’t able to find a single autumn flowering snowdrop we did catch the last of the Halloween displays and some of the other events going on in the park.

Giant squash and warty gourds almost made up for the lack of snowdrops. They’re so nice in fact that I’m actually considering planting my entire garden to squash and Indian corn next year.

And then we arrived at the main greenhouses and I forgot all about squash and snowdrops. The salvia were in bloom.

Yellow Salvia madrensis, fuzzy purple Salvia leucantha, and probably the carmine bloom of salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’ flowering in the Ladies Border.

Most of the fall blooming salvias arrive a little too late to show off in my PA garden, but here in the big city they flourish.

Yellow pineapple sage (Salvia elegans ‘Golden Delicious’) in the herb garden. Mine is usually just opening its first flowers when frost crashes the party.

So now I’m thinking I’ll plant the whole garden with salvias. I could do worse.

More Salvia madrensis alongside purple barberry and perennial sunflowers. It was a beautiful day 🙂

And then our visit came to its end. I didn’t want to admit it but my legs were kind of worn out from all the walking and when we sat down for a bite to eat neither of us were in a rush to get going again. Perhaps we should have taken advantage of the trams circling the garden, but I’m sure there will be plenty of time to rest up when the winter season rolls in… which judging by the 10 day forecast will be sooner rather than later.

Have a great weekend!

Still Not the Worst

Oct13

Ok, so I think I have to admit I’m halfway liking fall this year. Those who know me are shocked. I’m shocked, but to be honest the weather has been decent, there’s been free time to work in the garden, and just enough rain has come down to make planting and projects a pleasure, so it’s kind of an ideal autumn. Gnats though, that’s one thing I can complain about. They’re all over, but as long as I keep my head covered and don’t sit around too much it’s still tolerable… usually… until they get so thick I inhale a few, and then I’m done and back in the house.

‘Pink Cadillac’ chrysanthemum just starting in the front border alongside some floppy little bluestem and perovskia.

Once the clouds of bugs thin a little, I sneak out a different door and try for a few more minutes in the garden. October is chrysanthemums, and surprisingly enough a few have survived all the summertime neglect to now look bright and fresh in an otherwise tired looking garden. One of these years I will really give them the springtime attention they deserve, but they don’t seem to be pining away waiting for me to come through for them, and look good anyway. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

A nice orange chrysanthemum which was discovered after the Rosa glauca was cut back mid summer. It’s been blooming for at least a month and the flowers get to be almost four inches across, so I’m good with that!

Although I’ve been enjoying the finale of the garden more than usual this year, I’ve also managed to squeeze in some actual work and projects. One such project has been building up some of the flower beds which drowned last year in the endless rain we had. A load of topsoil was ordered and delivered, and slowly found its way around the house and into the backyard, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, and will hopefully help in keeping plants up and out of the swamp… just in case we ever end up in another repeating loop of rainstorm after rainstorm after flood.

Drowned hydrangeas and rhododendrons are gone, and this bed’s been raised about two or three inches. Also a nice walk out of salvaged stones makes this bed look promising again.

Although I am entirely against hard labor, at least the delivered topsoil is root and rock-free and easy to dig… as long as it’s only slightly wet, and hasn’t crusted yet or turned into rock solid dirt clods. Hopefully it makes for easy planting and good growing next year with a minimum of weeds, but experience suggests otherwise and I should probably get a plan together as far as mulching and groundcovers.

The bog garden is looking quite nice now that the pitchers have grown a little and some spagnum moss has been moved in. Now if I only knew what to do with it for the winter.

I had planned on ordering a load of shredded bark mulch to follow up on the topsoil, but yesterday discovered my source is closed for the season. Easy come easy go I guess, and I’ve taken that as a sign to not bother, save the money, and instead find something else (preferably free) to cover up the newly bare and exposed real estate for the winter. My friend Paula mentioned her frequent trips for free township compost and that sounded like an excellent plan. A little research on my part and I discovered there may be free compost available from my town as well, and maybe just maybe I can squeeze a few loads into the back of my less than three month old suv without making a muddy mess. We’ll see. It’s about time I broke it in anyway.

The topsoil ran out and so did the gardener, so this is how I left things. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have the energy to redo the stone path and set the last of my stones… but I still need more soil to raise the bed and all of that is gone…

Oh and by the way in between dirt moving and stone setting, I weed wacked the entire industrial park berm. Ok so it took three days and it was before the dirt was delivered, but I’m glad it’s done and I have to admit it does look nicer… even if I almost broke a leg a couple times as I lost my footing or tried to reach just a little too far down the slope…

The berm stretching back from my mother in law’s to the end of my yard. The spruce are at least ten feet tall, so it’s a big area and a lot of work to clear. Imagine my two word response when someone said “I wish you would have done that all summer”.

The boring neatness of a cut berm is far less interesting than the front yard, so it’s out there that I go to enjoy some color. We had a bit of frost last Saturday, but overall it’s still fairly colorful with a few late bloomers and a bunch of lingerers.

After ten years a few of my conifers have finally grown big enough to become noticeable. Oh my gosh this might qualify as winter interest!

The lingerers are mostly annuals and dahlias holding on until frost, and the late bloomers are mostly mums and asters, but there is one star which always makes me happy to see. ‘Sunnyside Up’ pokeberry (Phytolacca americana) has been lighting up the street side of the border all summer and as I found out this past week has been stirring up the neighborhood as well. While cleaning the last of the dirt from the driveway a neighbor stopped by to tell me about the ‘invasive’ he saw growing out there. “Those weeds are all over my backyard” he started with, and then continued to go on about how they spread and how fast they grew, but not much further before I cut him off with the offer of another beer. Problem solved.

At this time of year I love the red stems and purple berries alongside the yellow foliage of “Sunnyside Up” pokeweed. I get a little thrill every time the mockingbird swoops down to snatch another berry or two and spread the joy of this lovely native far and wide. As long as you’re going to have pokeweed might as well have a lovely yellow leaved strain.

Once the subject changed I didn’t even mention the masses of mugwort and the forest of bradford pear seedlings which lined the road behind him. Or the bittersweet which went from just a sprig to a tree-strangling mass in five years… or the Japanese knotweed, stiltgrass, honeysuckle, garlic mustard in the woods… or the purple loosestrife growing in his foundation beds. Hmmmmm. Plenty for another post. We should enjoy just a few more autumn flowers instead 🙂

One of the last of the colchicums, C. autumnale album plenum. Just as a note I’ve tried to refrain from posting too many colchicum photos this year, so fair warning that 2020 will be a rebound year.

I’m thinking the reason I’m finally enjoying autumn is the new ‘I don’t care’ attitude which has developed out of my previous ‘because I can’ attitude. At first it was actually a little hard to leave the lawn uncut and let weeds grow, but unless it was really necessary I let a bunch of the tedious labor slide this year in favor of stuff I’d still be enjoying years from now. New shrubs. New beds. New paths. Lower maintenance plantings. Simplification. Last year to keep the garden perfect meant continuous mowing, trimming, and weeding that went around the yard and then started all over as soon as it was done. Thats no fun, and it’s also only appreciated by myself. So I let it go.

The hardy cyclamen (C. hederifolium) alongside the driveway are flowering well this fall. About half rotted out from the rain last year, but the survivors seem to have recovered and are seeding about.

Or… maybe I’ve just reached critical mass for fall flowers and this is the first year in three that every day doesn’t start with gloomy, rainy grayness, but I think it’s the flowers. Better get to the nursery this afternoon to make sure I haven’t missed any fall blooming plants that can still go in 🙂

My bougainvillea has greeted cooler weather with a second flush of flowers. The colors scream summer, but the blooms are welcome regardless even if they do look a little out of place in October.

Or maybe I’m overthinking all of this. The truth is I have new snowdrops, and some are already sprouting and in bloom and that makes me think of spring. I love spring. Maybe all this talk of autumn is really just a very very early spring.

Have a great week 🙂

Let it Grow, Let it Grow, Let it Grow

Jun12

I really can’t complain about too much for the 2019 gardening season. Actually I really don’t have much to say at all about the 2019 season other than I still seem to be in my gardening funk. Last year all the gloom and rain did me in, but so far this year I haven’t been able to shake it (in spite of marginally less downpours and fewer rained out weekends). Don’t get me wrong, I’m still out in the garden any chance I get to check on what’s new and what’s grown, but overall it just seems like a lot of work to me. Maybe I’ll just end up taking a sabbatical this summer and see what fall brings.

What doesn’t help at all is that my work schedule has been really interfering with my garden time. May is a busy time to get planting and staking and I was stuck in Michigan for a week. June is a time to weed and watch things fill in and I’m stuck in Missouri for two weeks. Fortunately things should clear up by next week and garden projects can get going… or things can not get going. We’ll see.

At least I got back from Michigan in time to see the last of the iris in bloom and pull out some of the biggest weeds. Bigger weeds are much easier to find and pull when they get to the two foot stage, so I guess that’s a plus.

The front street border is well on its way to becoming the usual thicket with shrubs starting to crowd out the perennials. One of my favorites is the yellow ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Aurea’) in the back.

In the weekend before I left again I tried to triage my way through the garden, chopping what I could, pulling what I should, and planting anything that wouldn’t survive two weeks of neglect (the family is completely unreliable when it comes to watering and such). To be honest I was more than a little sore as I stepped out of the car at the airport Sunday night. I lived though, and hopefully when I return this weekend it doesn’t look too much worse than when these last pictures were taken.

Let’s continue the farewell garden tour along the front foundation bed. Here the plantings are mostly lower maintenance and that’s a great thing this year.

The blue fescue border has come back enough to look acceptable (but a better gardener would probably still dig and divide the clumps to freshen them up). As the plantings settle in here, I’ve finally reached the point were I don’t not like the colors in this bed.

I am a little excited about one of the things in the front. The sweet william seedlings I’ve been nursing along for three years have finally bloomed, and although they’re much too dark to be showy I think they’re absolutely cool.

Dianthus barbatus ‘Sooty’, a dark red selection of the old fashioned biennial sweet william.

We’ll skip the just-planted-the-day-before-I-left-again tropical garden and go right over to the back of the yard. Here the weeds and grass seedlings have covered up the mud and muck of all the construction and we can finally just stare at our row of wind tossed Norway spruce. There will be plenty of time later to complain about how dull and lifeless the new barrier is, but for now I’ll just stick to complaining about how much more grass there is to mow back there. At least the chainlink fence is gone and the area looks neat… maybe too neat… how boring…

You’re looking at all the fill I was planning on using to level my own backyard. It’s all been covered nicely and seeded to lawn and I don’t think my mother in law would appreciate me bulldozering a few yards of it over into my low spots now, so guess who is out of luck…

With the completion of the berm we have far less dust and noise and lights streaming into our yard. Those are all pluses which I need to remind myself of as I contemplate a fast-growing barrier of evergreens sapping the light and view from our back yard. But it does look neat and tidy I guess…

More ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diablo’) in bloom. I love the foliage and shape of these shrubs, and if the garden was bigger I’d add a few more. Hmmmm, maybe the berm could use a couple 🙂

Iris are about the only other thing worth noting in the back. Last year’s swampy soil killed off nearly all the modern hybrids, but the older cultivars just kept doing what they do, and have me considering devoting more real estate to iris again.

The historic iris (these are mostly from the 40’s and 50’s) held on while their modern neighbors turned to mush. Obviously a better spot with improved drainage would be another option, but I like the less is more approach 😉

I guess it’s only been a few years since the last time I decided to devote more property to iris. Things go like that around here, but unfortunately in between planting passions other amazing ideas come up and things get crammed in all over.

This was a decent iris spot a few years ago but plant a shrub or two, some colchicums, some climbers, build a support for the climbers, and before you know it the iris are struggling along in the shade.

Replanting a few iris this summer should be do-able even if it means time away from the pool and a little kick in the butt motivation. Deep down inside I know it will be worth it next June when they crowd the borders with brilliant color.

Now if I can only first manage to get the deck planters planted.

The last bits from under the growlights. There was an abyssmal lack of seeds sown this winter, but for some reason I needed the orange Ornithogalum dubium bulbs, a dozen canna seedlings, and one cool little pink and white alstroemeria seedling that looks dissapointingly similar to her parent.

Who am I kidding. Instead of planting the deck containers I took another round through the garden to make sure nothing new happened without me. The sweetshrub is giving me its first year of decent bloom and I think the flowers are particularly cool.

A hybrid sweetshrub (Calycanthus ‘Aphrodite’). A scent would be nice, but for now the flowers are just fine.

If worse comes to worse I’ll just spend this summer wandering the garden, smelling flowers, and contemplating the life cycle of weeds. New plants are still going to be added, that’s a given, but maybe there’s just going to be a lot more mulch this year. I like mulch so. Mulching can be very zen 🙂

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: chrysanthemums