The Livin’ is Easy

Jul31

This summer is going by way too fast and I am not liking that. Just a day left in July and then it’s August and once August starts my summer days are numbered, and it seems particularly frantic because I still have tulips and daffodils and snowdrops which I’ve been meaning to dig since June as well as a bunch of potted things which I’ve been whispering apologies to all spring and summer as I keep putting off that job as well. Don’t even ask me how the drip irrigation is going. It’s been raining enough that watering has rarely come up on the to-do list, so of course repairing the drip setup keeps getting knocked off the top of the list, and I mention that one in particular because I had to go around this morning and save wilted things since of course I don’t water until it’s too late. Have I mentioned in the last few breaths how much I hate watering? Probably, but let me say it again. I’d rather risk heatstroke weeding in the sun for a couple hours dripping sweat and covered in dirt rather than drag that stupid hose around.

The front border is lush and overgrown due to this summer’s steady rains. Even I think it might be a little “much” for along the street, but better too much than too little is what I say. This is lilium “Scheherazade” doing well, and also not on the lily beetle menu (yet) so that’s also good.

Risking heatstroke and actual heatstroke aren’t separated by much, and with our third day over 90F (32+C) I’m trying to walk the line and avoid drifting over to the actual part. Despite my love of lawn chairs and pool floats I’ve been far too busy outside feeding the gnats and losing water weight as I toil in the fields. Maybe that’s not the worst training considering our potential future, but for now I do it for the fun of gardening and imagine Martha and Monty just as sweaty and disgusting in the heat of summer when they have their own daylily farms to rebuild.

A daylily farm is rising from the ashes. I’ve regraded and seeded the grass path, and as of today I’m happy to report a green shimmer as the seeds begin to sprout.

My gosh, please skip ahead if you want to avoid the complaining, but it all started when I called the town a few days into staring at the bulldozed remains of my daylilies. ‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked… and then entered into a discussion which became quite vigorous after I realized they thought I wanted to do all the repairs myself. I did say that at the start when a hole at the street meant putting a few rocks back and maybe replanting a ninebark, but when the bulldozer and destruction moved twenty more feet into my yard and left a swath of raw shale and compacted topsoil, I assumed they might be able to spot me a little topsoil and mulch, even if they didn’t replace the farm or do any of the actual work. A meeting was set up. In the meantime I got to work.

First try to save a few things. About half the daylilies were left with crowns so I uncovered them and gave them a little feed. A few other things were uncovered along the street, and there might be hope for them over the next few weeks. All my stones were buried, but one of the backhoe operators set aside a few new ones he found, and I got brave and split a bigger one to end up with two big stepping stones along the street. The basketball hoop went back and then I regraded my little grass path. In all I probably pickaxed and hauled off about 20 wheelbarrows of stony, shaley dirt to lower the grade and then tried to spread whatever topsoil they left into the beds. That was awful, backbreaking work but then because I like a nice edge to a new lawn path, I dug up turf from in back and used it as sod to line the sides of the path. Then the easy part of seed, topped with lawn clippings to keep the seed damp long enough to sprout, and then wait. As of today, about a week later, the daylilies are sending up new growth, the grass seed is sprouting, and I’ve even popped in a few odds and ends like a new daylily or two, and some spare cannas and elephant ears to make it look less depressing.

There’s hope.

Since I took these photos, the town has come through with some mulch and topsoil, so more blood and sweat was shared for that, and we will see about the rest of the deal. Hopefully the next farm report will be overwhelmingly amazing. I have put some mulch down so I know at least that will be nice, and I’m in the process of picking daylilies to move in…. but enough of that… let’s look at where the rest of the garden is during these last days of July.

The agapanthus are blooming, and over the years ‘Blue Yonder’ has become a clump. I love it.

I have nothing bad to say about the agapanthus this year. They get no special attention yet are covered with blooms and have been perfectly hardy here for a number of years, with winter lows down to about zero and no protective mulch or sheltered location. It looks like a few have enjoyed all this year’s rains, but even in dry years they haven’t seemed to complain too much. I guess they’re as easy as daylilies, so I wonder if I can divide ‘Blue Yonder’ (my absolute favorite) and line out a row in the farm…. which would be awesome…

Some agapanthus from seed. These are A. campanulatus forms, the seeds of which were coincidentally saved from the bulldozers during the last sewer incident.

I guess I need to mention that not all agapanthus will be as hardy. If you’re in a northern area, check up on the hardiness rating before you plant it, out in full sun of course and then never do another thing for it other than admire the blooms and bask in the compliments.

A dwarf white form given to me as seedlings from a white Seneca Hills Nursery(Ellen Hornig) selection.

Here’s one more look at ‘Blue Yonder’ 😉

‘Blue Yonder’ has a richer color and flower heads packed with later flower buds, giving it a longer bloom time than some of the others.

I don’t know if I’d consider the agapanthus to be borderline hardy in my zone, I guess only a truly brutal winter would settle that, but I do consider some of the Crinum lilies I have planted to be borderline. Two other forms are less than enthusiastic about life here in NePa but ‘Cecil Houdyshel’ increases in size and puts out a couple flower stalks each year so we shall only talk about that one.

Crinum ‘Cecil Houdyshel’ in front of the dark foliage of ‘Royal Purple’ smokebush, alongside the driveway. Very elegant in my opinion.

As you would suspect, I don’t give this one any winter protection, and after our normal lows last year I was a little worried, but slowly he came back to life. All the rain and humidity and heat must really have him feeling at home this summer, so hopefully there will be several more bloom stalks to come.

Cecil has a decent form, not as sloppy a mess as some crinum like to be but that’s just my opinion based on one plant and almost no other crinum experience.

Seems like we’ve left the daylily farm for a Southern excursion, so here’s another thing from down South. Standing cypress (Ipomopsis rubra) is a native to Southeastern North America, or plain America as we in the US like to say, and it’s a cool thing. The hummingbirds agree, and they’re aways buzzing this part of the garden when it’s blooming. Two things though. Everywhere I see it referred to as a biennial or short lived perennial and that’s fine, these plants are from a new seed source and they grew fuzzy rosettes last year with a five foot stalk erupting this summer, but the ones I grow from another source are strictly annuals and never form rosettes and never live beyond year one. Who knows. It’s above my pay grade to wonder if they are all the same species but these are the curiosities which live in my brain so I’m sorry to put it in yours now.

Ipomopsis rubra, paired with the lovely neon green foliage of pokeweed (Phytolacca americana ‘Sunny Side Up’)

The potager is another curiosity. I wonder if I can still call it a potager when 90% of the plantings are not-vegetables, but can’t quite bring myself to admit it’s become another flower farm. Perhaps there’s an authoritative number listed somewhere in France for potager percentages but do supposedly-edible dahlia roots and figs-which-will-never-produce-figs count as veggies and fruit?

Cannas are blooming quite well in and around the potager. This is ‘Cannanova Rose’, an easy, quick to bloom selection which even comes true from seed.

Whatever. Potager it shall remain. If I can get away with calling a couple rows of daylilies a farm than I can stick with potager for this.

My little tropical hiding spot in the potager. Bananas are totally edible and potager approved even if there’s next to no chance I’ll ever see fruit, but the foliage makes up for any missing banana harvest.

I refuse to share a photo of my pathetically anemic tomatoes or the deer-chewed pepper stubs but I will share a single phlox photo. Only one because the rain-fueled hydrangeas have crowded nearly everything else out, but one should get the point across.

The garden phlox are a little late due to an early season deer pruning but they’re finally making a show.

Can I put in a good word for pears? As of today the tree is overloaded with a heavy crop, and although the gardener should have thinned them out for better quality (and to save the tree from collapse) my hope is that a few escape the deer and squirrels and chipmunks and make it to the dinner table. A bushel of Bartlett pears will really put the potager accounting into the black in a way that 3 raspberries, 7 gooseberries, and a half handful of blueberries will not. Someone really should have netted the berry bushes rather than continuously hope the birds ‘miss a few’.

This year’s Bartlett pear crop, heavier each day and hopefully not too heavy.

Maybe the berries didn’t go far in feeding the household, but they did contribute to a steady stream of fledglings coming out of the garden. I don’t really mind the loss, and actually resist netting the fruits since the dopey youngsters tend to get tangled and I prefer a fruitless pancake over a traumatic bird un-netting.

Yet another robin leaving the nest.

So that’s where we’re at. A lot of rambling so I’m wondering if perhaps the heat got to me more than I care to admit but hopefully there was something of interest in there. In spite of all the work summer is still quite excellent and so is the air conditioning when the heat gets to be too much so I really can’t complain. Enjoy your week!

A Clean Slate

Jul23

Well here’s a first. I had photos and a post started, with the usual apologies about the delay and how the pictures were already outdated, and promises to do better next time, and how this would still be the year things turn around completely and I bringing timely posts and amazing content, and then I deleted it. Not through some silly mistake, but because things changed here so much that none of it mattered anymore, and all that anticipation for the daylily farm season became pointless. I liked my daylily farm. It was fun. You may have already noticed the past tense.

I shouldn’t like all the soft colors and fancy ruffles on this Brookside Beauty seedling but I do.

So let me start the story by saying the farm was amazing a week ago with overcrowded plants blooming at their peak with more buds than ever before. It was a garden filled to capacity and I was almost willing to say it looked perfect… except what gardener ever thinks their garden looks perfect… but it was closer than I usually get so things were quite pleasing. I could almost finish the entire morning coffee in the daylily farm alone, and outside the dog becoming bored stuck in one place so long it was the place to be.

I’m starting to like the browns and smoky colors as well. They’re not as showy but…

I even reached the point were I said I really have to do something here, they’re getting crowded and it’s time for a few to move on. Some pictures were taken. A marketing and sales plan was put together. The daylily farm was about to become a cash cow I’m sure 😉

Another pale, yet simpler bloom, ‘Bus Stop’ calms the morning sun on a day which breaks humid and hot.

‘Lake Lurie’ has a paler eye zone and guess what? I’m really starting to like these as well

Here’s one last picture of the daylily farm. I took it with the intentions of posting a sale for anyone local who was interested in helping me clear the fields. Notice the backhoe near the street.

One last farm picture. Peak bloom. The grim reaper sits at the street, slightly hidden by the golden ninebark.

That photo became the before picture for when I needed to show the township just how much was lost. A sewer issue for the house next door warranted a hole near the street for repairs. They told me what needed to be done and I said no problem. “We’ll fix it back as good or better” was the promise, and there was the possibility they’d go as far as five feet in from the street and I might possibly lose the yellow ninebark which blocks some of the excavator from sight in the before picture.

Destruction. The whole daylily farm is bulldozed as well as the lawn and some of the front border.

I was home at the time and had checked in after they dug down to the sewer line. I saw the ninebark go and was a little sad but that’s fine, I was warned. Of course the air conditioning broke that same day so when the repairman came by and we walked out there to check on the unit I almost went into shock when I saw how far things went. Some of the line was damaged during digging, some of the hole collapsed in from under the street, the holes go down at least ten feet and we needed a bigger hole and that’s a lot of dirt and it had to go somewhere. The destroyed daylilies were one thing but snowdrops were also in the area, and it’s not promising to imagine a tiny bulb an inch or two down in the soil being able to stand its ground against a four ton excavator. The daylilies I can replace but the snowdrops not so much. Of course there were a few real expensive ones planted on the edges of the farm beds and around the weeping spruce.

Welcome to Garret Hill Daylilies, a real daylily farm. Where better to go when you’ve lost nearly 100 large, blooming clumps!?

Fortunately the trials of this garden are all manageable. Things could be much worse and most importantly my mom was able to visit just the week before when everything was much cheerier. I’ve already started the repairs, and no, they’re not doing them I am because I want it just so and their version of landscaped might not match mine. I can’t really fault them. Things happen, they could have let me know when they were coming so far onto my property, but when you’re ten feet down in a hole which could collapse around you I understand that’s a little more important. We’re still working out the details of what will make it right again.

The dust is still settling and I’ve already picked up three new clumps to ease the pain! Money can’t buy happiness but it can buy daylilies at least and that’s a start.

So I visited my local daylily farm, Garret Hill Daylilies in Honesdale Pa and started the unnecessary task of finding replacements. Yes I need replacements and they have so many cool varieties available but who among you thought I wouldn’t have a few backups around my own garden? I do and they need moving and more room but I think the healing process should include daylily farms and even more new daylilies 🙂

This one could be divided and for some reason I really like the wide open flowers even if I can’t remember the name at this moment.

The one downside is I’m repairing the damage and creating nearly the same garden as I had before and that’s totally not how I like to roll. Deja vu should be a mysterious feeling, not the realization that I did this all two years ago when my own sewer line was dug for different reasons. I’m building back better which is good, but I wouldn’t be doing this if I had the choice.

Daylilies in with the tomatoes? A good excuse to not plant as many vegetables, but these guys really deserve more room and their own space.

So that’s where I’m at. I get new plants and just have to ignore bulldozer tracks, crushed plants, deer visits, lanternfly plagues, gnat swarms, too much lawn mowing, too much container plant watering, and all the other surprises which a gardener deals with each year. It’s what we sign up for so please don’t feel bad for me, I’m really not upset about it anymore and the only thing still annoying me is the mud and waiting for mulch to arrive.

Hope your July is far less dramatic and you’re enjoying summer as much as I am! …hmmm, reading that back it sounds mildly sarcastic, but summer really is pretty excellent even when you’re losing shoes in the mud and the sweat is running down your face. There’s always the pool and a drink followed by lightning bugs and a fragrant night blooming daylily and you can’t get that in November. Have a great week 🙂

Love and Hate

Jul25

We went on a little trip a few days ago and were gone for barely two days and the garden fell apart. It was mostly the fault of the weather as temperatures sat in the mid 90’s each day (35C) but it didn’t reflect well on my plantings and I was generally disgusted to see them all go to pieces in such a short time. This post would have had a much more one-sided title had I put it together that next day, but fortunately things move slowly here and I’ve had a few days to reflect and recover before putting things into words (and pictures). Plus it rained. A summer rain storm can change everything, and between that and some directed culling and chopping and fertilizing, there’s a slight air of positive vibes drifting through the yard again.

Pots of succulents can withstand quite some abuse, so are perfect for the roadtripping gardener. Tools scattered about can also make things look busier than they really are… until someone asks when the last time they were used was…

As usual much of the problem is the gardener’s fault. Normally drip lines on a timer nurse nearly all the potted plantings throughout the summer, but “I think I’ll just rip them all out since I should probably re-think the layout” happened when the deck was worked on, and re-thinking doesn’t really get water to plants as well as a drip line does. So once the gardener chose to continue gardening for the year, the first thing on the list was watering containers. It should have been repair the drip lines, but it wasn’t, and it also wasn’t the second thing. The second thing was to either cleanup, repot, or toss any of the succulents which weren’t already out on the summering wall. I’d been holding quite a few back because they weren’t quite display-ready, but after seeing how they were the only things not complaining about summer I decided to reward them with a little attention. It worked, and things look better, and best of all anything which looked sad or filled with complaints was tossed. My theory on the last succulent pots was the same as what normal people apply to their wardrobe. Anything you don’t use or love or haven’t worn yet this season goes on to the ‘goodwill pile’ and gets recycled as compost 🙂

The sloppy little stone wall is again topped with various potted succulents and somehow I’m short on pots again. That could be an easy fix but the gardener is not allowed to visit the terracotta isle any more.

Purging the pots was a relief, and then trimming the box hedge and mowing the lawn were also excellent jobs for improving the gardener’s outlook. The lawn doesn’t really need mowing, but the weeds in it do, and trimmed up they look so much better.

Then I looked at the flower beds and purged them as well. Mid summer should be a lush highlight for the garden, but the heat has taken a toll and in the mood I was in there was no room for tired plants. So now I have empty spots and need mulch, but who doesn’t like spreading mulch in the middle of summer? Fortunately that same day we also opened the envelope containing the bill for the boy’s first year of college, and seeing that ‘realigned’ how much of the budget was going into mulch purchases!

Tulips (and plenty of weeds) finally came out of this bed early in the month and all the leftover cuttings and roots and tubers from the garage went in. There is a new crape myrtle, and it’s so full of buds I don’t even care if it’s hardy or not!

Summary so far: Most of the garden has been composted, but at least it looks neat. A good rain has helped.

A few of the ‘toothy’ daylily seedlings which have been added to the garden. They’re interesting and I think I like them, but I’m more of a craftsman style, and less Louis XVI.

The gardener should stop complaining. Flowers abound, the pool is perfect, the agapanthus are starting, and nearly every evening is filled with fireflies.

A few seeds were collected off the hardy agapanthus a few weeks before they were bulldozed into oblivion and now two years later we again have blooms. I’m quite happy with them.

Maybe now we will finally get to the stupid drip irrigation. It’s not hard at all to set up, but the gardener hates crouching under the deck to run the lines, and he knows he has to do a nice job this time since everything else looks halfway decent and a bunch of lines thrown around would not show well.

Have a great week and I hope your summer garden is doing well. If not I suggest a purge, a little mulch, and maybe a new succulent and things may improve immeasurably 🙂

The Daylily Farm

Jul7

Summer is going swimmingly, and although it’s been hot we’ve been fairly lucky with rain so the plants are holding up well and the gardener is glad he doesn’t have to drag a hose around any more than he has to. Not that he would, since our gardener tends more towards lazy than to ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’, but he does feel guilty every now and then when the same plant cries out for help each time he passes and he has to mumble a “sorry, I know this wasn’t part of the deal when I brought you home”…

The daylily farm

One plant which does seem to take all the neglect in stride is the daylily (Hemerocallis). Like dahlias and cannas, they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but since the gardener is a coffee drinker anyway, it was just a matter of time until problems developed. A visit to a real daylily farm two years ago triggered the problem and of course with no friends willing to step in and squash it, things escalated. Actually friends suggested more visits, friends dropped daylilies off, friends invited the gardener over to ‘dig a few’…

Some goodies in the beds of the daylily farm

A few friends shook their heads and recommended counseling, or more finishing up of home improvement projects, but the gardener enjoyed visiting these daylily farms and with new plants rolling in left and right it seemed only logical to start his own. Sensible people pointed out there’s no room for a farm. The gardener laughed.

A friend gave me ‘Hawkwoman’ and she’s a star. A heavy bloomer with flowers nearly a foot across!

So now I have a daylily farm. A friend implied madness when confronted with several beds of daylilies filled with dozens of varieties in a garden which recently held only three, and I had to somewhat agree although he’s not one to talk with his house full of thrift store finds. Mine is clearly a business venture, so it’s ok. Small businesses are ok and so are entrepreneurs, and although the flow of daylilies is still only a one way stream into the garden I’m sure it will be turning a profit in no time. Think of how many farmers you know buzzing around in expensive sports cars and sipping lattes all summer. That could easily be me.

‘Nona’s Garnet Spider’ in one of the production (not sales) beds.

But until I decide to sell something the ‘sales beds’ are still just an excuse to line out daylilies in big blocks just because it’s cool as well as the other big plus. Having a daylily farm in your very own yard also keeps the gardener in the garden, since apparently it’s frowned upon for him to be off visiting other daylily farms every weekend in July.

‘Cosmic Struggle’ is another reliable, heavy bloomer who reblooms later in the season.

Maybe I will have a sale day this summer. Even after just two years they’re multiplying and maybe I don’t love every one as much as the next or I don’t need a row of ten plants of the same variety. It would be nice to have visitors at least since they do look nice this year and I think other plant nuts would enjoy it. In the meantime here are some more pictures of the madness. Not to single anyone out, but a blogger in Germany who might be named Cathy may have said they would welcome photos of daylilies a bit more than snowdrops and I didn’t know how to take that. How can you compare the diversity of shapes and colors and inherent grace of the snowdrop to that of the daylily? I don’t get it but here are a few more daylily photos with a little less babbling.

From a local breeder, ‘Brookside Mystery Date’ is a good growing, shorter plant with deliciously colored and textured blooms. I begged a friend to stop by the grower on their last open weekend to grab it for me since I was tortured by regret over not buying it earlier in the year.

Also from a local breeder, one of the unnamed Brookside Beauties which the farm offers. They’re seedlings they chose to leave unnamed, but couldn’t bear to toss out onto the compost pile.

For local people, the Brookside hybrids are the work of June and Dick Lambertson of Lambertson’s Daylilies. They were the farm which (unknown to them) started this all, and as they move into full retirement, Joann and Brad Lamberton (a coincidentally similar name but not related to the Lambertsons) of Garrett Hill Daylilies are picking up the legacy. And just to support my main supplier and dealer, I’m glad Garrett Hill has taken this on. They are building a beautiful spot and although I’m sure they question jumping in with both feet like this (on top of their day jobs!), a visit to their farm outside Honesdale Pa is a treat worth the trip.

Unnamed daylily seedlings purchased mailorder from Petal Pusher Daylilies in Fort Wayne Indiana. Some really cool forms came in my mixed box!

Green throated flowers are always interesting. Also an unnamed Petal Pusher seedling.

And “blue”? I’m not sure how I feel about this type since the color varies so much depending on the weather, but on this morning I was a fan!

One last unnamed seedling, possibly my favorite from Petal Pushers.

I could go on but I shall not. Just two final daylily confessions, the first being the Facebook page which was created to pollute the internet with even more daylily photos straight out of the farm here, and the second being the fact I’ve grown a few of my own seedlings here just to see if I could. You’re more than welcome to ‘like’ the Facebook page but the seedlings thing is a shady endeavor. With just a small patch of seedlings in bloom I realize I lack the vision and passion to produce anything which amazes anyone but myself, and of course I’m pleased with them, but they’re nothing special. Good news for the farm I guess, since it lacks the room for rows of seedlings, but on the down side it doesn’t stop me. I have dozens of new seedlings which need planting out this summer and I’m already eyeing pods forming on this year’s stalks 😉

One of the Sorta Suburbia seedlings

Gosh did I go on this morning, and still the house is quiet and breakfast has not been served so here’s the rest of the garden:

The potager is looking inviting and even a little under control. Vegetable plantings are sparse this summer, but you know something is always brewing 😉

The entry arch has clematis ‘Sweet Summer Love’ in full bloom. I was lukewarm the first year, but now that it’s hit its stride I’m a fan

I’ve finally managed to get a few nigella (aka love in a mist) seedling going, I don’t know why it took so long but I’m liking the airy look and the interesting seed pods which follow the bloom. It should be an easy reseeder now.

Blue hydrangeas are in bloom everywhere this year, since the non-winter failed to kill them back and a lack of late frosts spared the flower buds, This is hydrangea ‘Tuff Stuff’ which claims hardiness but has never bloomed like this before. I wouldn’t mind if this happened again some time.

The meadow garden is too shady now that the Aspen suckers have grown, but the rudbeckia is having a good year regardless. This area will be mown in August and kept cut until the fall.

I’ve been dabbling in red hot pokers and finally have a few which bloom reliably and for more than a week or two. Kniphofia ‘High Roller’ is just starting with several later buds still to come for an extended show.

The oxeye daisy season is getting a little messy and floppy, so out they come. The mower will take care of this mess, and hopefully the lawn can overwhelm the seedlings which this mess shall produce.

Still no sounds in this house, so I’ll end with just one more photo. The gardener added a few concrete blocks to the deck supply delivery and now it looks like there will be no new raised beds, rather a set of steps leading up the berm. That of course will involve more blocks, more leveling, more digging, and far more work than the gardener will consider on a day of rest but it’s going to sit in the back of his mind as a new source of guilt over an unfinished project which wasn’t even a project the week before. I’m sure it will be an excellent way to reach the top of the hill for weed control purposes.

That hill isn’t even safe. You almost broke your ankle last time you were strimming it.

So that’s pretty much the update from here. I shall now make some noise so someone feeds me and then spend the rest of the day either immersed in cooling water, hidden in the shade, or comfortable in the embrace of an air conditioning vent. Summer is pretty good and I wish it didn’t race by.

Enjoy your week!

Everything

Oct7

It was the driest of times, it was the wettest of times, it was the age of motivation, it was the age of laziness, it was the epoch of brilliance, it was the epoch of more dumb ideas… it was just about everything and as usual you’ve got to take the good with the worse, so when the light was nice this week I got some photos, and now as rain and gray rule the day I’m posting.

The summer annuals are fading fast. Even a week of non-fall-crisp air didn’t convince them summer had returned.

Something about a tropical weather system escaping the tropics and taking a trip to Canada (which we couldn’t work in this year, so good for the storm) has us pulling in cold northern air with a swirl of tropic downpours, and I’m not thrilled to see cold and wet arrive for a holiday weekend. This comes after an overly-warm week also gave an excuse to stay inside, so as you could guess the pace of work is close to an all-time low.

The succulents are starting to migrate into the winter garden to spend the next few months under lights. It looks so innocent at first but by the time the last pots need to be crammed in here….

Other than the usual excuses I have brand new ones to add to my list, both of which caught me off guard! Last Saturday, overly enthusiastic sandwich chewing left me with a nice bite to the tongue… nice enough that I didn’t eat for two days and was barely able to speak when Monday rolled around… and then an achy knee on Sunday turned into a limp and pain which only ramped up through the week as the mouth began to get better. What a mess. Fortunately I work with a nice group of kids this year, who reassured me it’s not my fault, it’s just that I’m so old and this was bound to happen sooner than later as I pick up speed on the downhill side of life.

In July all the hanging baskets of dichondra ‘Silver Falls’ were going to be overwintered and come back even stronger for 2024. In October… well that’s a lot of baskets to overwinter…

So maybe the rain is a blessing. I can slow the pace, rest up a little, maybe help clean inside??? -hahahaha, just kidding- there are a billion things to clean up in the garage and the winter garden is starting to fill up, and today is an excellent day to sort and put away the dozens of empty pots (which will likely fill again this winter), and make sure there is ample potting soil etc for the upcoming months.

Before being sidelined for injuries, the daylily farm was tended and replanted for 2024. Sometimes it looks big, other times it just looks like a silly example of why I need adult supervision, but in either case it should look nice in bloom.

So some progress is happening as far as preparing for colder months, but I was most pleased to get the daylily farm in order. I still have this delusion people would come if I opened the garden for a weekend or two, and I also have this idea that everyone would be super-nice and just as excited about plants as the farmer is…. until I have my doubts… Then all of a sudden I’m wasting day after day wondering why no one is interested in a daylily or two, and I’m either making pity-sales to friends, or fielding ‘can you do better on the prices’ questions from someone who pulls up in an Escalade. I guess it can’t be any worse than the garage sales we used to have, where a day in the driveway maybe cleared 10 or 12 glasses or purses or whatnot out of the basement.

Whatever happens, at least this side of the house looks somewhat presentable again. New beds have been made, lawn has returned, and if you can ignore all the clutter, it almost looks garden-ish.

Even if the farm never works out, there’s still all that amazingness in the back yard. Overgrown potagers, weedy and unmulched beds, and waste areas where weeds are actively going to seed highlight the garden once you pass beyond the curb appeal of the front yard. I would swear that 90% of garden advice for maintaining a beautiful Eden of your own includes the statement ‘make sure you get your weeds before they go to seed’, and when I look around that’s all I see. “Wildflowers” going to seed, grass going to seed, perennials and annuals going to seed, it’s all a seedy mess and if it weren’t for the constant back and forth of birds and other wildlife coming in and out of the yard I’d have reached for the string trimmer weeks ago. I’ll accept the curse of future weeds in order to enjoy this. One of the few apps on my phone is the ‘Merlin Bird ID’ from Cornell Labs, and what it does is pick up the bird sounds around you and runs a list of what species are calling. Last Saturday morning I cracked open the back window and let it run for about ten minutes and it tallied up 21 different species of birds in the yard. Birds are migrating through this month, and I see them in and out of the weeds, picking up their breakfast and now I have an idea of who is all there. Just in the LBB group alone (Little Brown Birds) I have Song Sparrows, Chipping Sparrows, White-throated Sparrows, Field Sparrows, Lincoln’s Sparrows, and Swamp Sparrows. Trust me that if left to my own, I’d barely recognize one of them, and even then I would have doubts!

Weedy asters (or whatever they have been renamed as) filling in wherever they can.

‘Hopi Red Dye’ amaranth alongside a bunch of other things blooming and seeding around the potager.

‘Happy Flame’ dahlia looking excellent for the shorted days and cooler temperatures. The orange marigolds are still going strong!

The afternoon light on ‘Limelight’ is always a treat, especially this year when ample rain and cooler weather have brought on a pink flush rather than the usual end of summer tan.

Obviously I’m a few weeks too late in doing anything about the weeds, and that was never the plan anyway, but there are still plenty of other things to keep in mind. If my knee and the weather cooperates, there are still a few colchicums in need of moving so that’s always a fun little project. The colchicum have been nice this year, and I’m glad their flowers have brought me through the doldrums of September into the season of fall foliage and chrysanthemums.

A bunch of colchicum, an un-named kind from a friend which I call ‘Frau Becker’ because that’s a much better story than calling them ‘Probably The Giant’.

The colchicums are still holding their own and a few of the fall snowdrops are beginning to peek out. As would be expected, the most promising one, even though it’s a half cm sprout in the middle of a thicket inside a jungle, has been found, singled out and nipped off by a bunny or bird. I would complain, but after years of this I’d be a little self conscious when the same people politely offer the same good advice of covering the sprouts when I first see them… so instead let’s just visit the waste area of the garden again.

The waste area from the side where its weediness shows off best. More ‘Hopi Red Dye’ and a plethora of lambs quarters going to seed. The birds love the lambs quarters but I always see it and think back to my allergy tests and how this weed showed up as a top culprit. Hmmm. Maybe not the wisest thing to leave…

Regardless of what is happening with the hard-core weeds, the verbena bonariensis taking over the lawn is still on the list of too-pretty to say a single bad thing about. I was hoping this would pull in hordes of migrating Monarch butterflies as they pass through on their way to Mexico, but so far it’s only been dribs and drabs. On a few occasions there have been three or four, but sadly never the dozens of years past.

A green nicotina is also a welcome weed. This flower is the favorite of any hummingbirds which happen to pass through on their way South.

I’ll leave off on the October project. Assuming my students are wrong and my injuries aren’t really the beginning of the end, the next thing on my Summer of Labor list will be a return to earth-moving. There’s still a mound of excavated rock and dirt behind the new addition, and surprisingly the plan has always been to tackle this in October/November once the weather cools and the ground is wet and soft again. Also surprising was a special treat which showed up and will hopefully make the job much more enjoyable. Here’s the background to that…

What do you want for Christmas? “a new wheelbarrow but I guess these new work slacks are nice too”

What do you want for your birthday? “a new wheelbarrow but I guess all these socks and a sweater are nice too”

What do you want for Father’s day? “a new wheelbarrow but I guess going out to the restaurant the kids love is nice too”

Random weekend when a hardware store closes? “A new wheelbarrow!!? How did you know!?”

A waste area in the middle of the back yard? I guess it isn’t the most aesthetic development of this spot, but I have enjoyed the progression of weedy flowers which have moved in. Right now frost asters dominate with a forest of white, and I’ll feel slightly guilty ripping them out to level the area again.

Even in my decrepit state I am still a rich man.

Have a great weekend!

Welcome August

Aug7

After a rough start to the year the garden is about where it’s usually at. I’m glad for that since in June it looked like a year of brown lawn and wilted flowers was ahead, but now things are mostly ok. I’d say totally ok, but when things dry out so much it takes a couple days straight of rain to really get into the soil, and in spite of frequent storms there are plenty of sloped and harder-soiled areas where things are back to wilting. Regardless, things look good enough and I’m happy with that.

The front border along the street is reveling in a full-summer show of perovskia and coneflowers, but sunflowers haven’t seeded in like they normally do. I blame the dry spring.

I’m also happy I put off planting annuals this spring. First of all there’s barely any room in the front border where I normally plant them, and second of all even with the rain here and there I’d still be watering them. One less job fits into my schedule perfectly!

I do like a woolly thistle (Cirsium eriophorum) here and there in the garden. Most visitors would accuse me of letting a weed grow, but I’m sure they’d understand when told it was planted here on purpose.

Maybe someone at some point said a dry summer would be the perfect time to ‘thin the flock’, create some space for mulch, spread some iris around, create a generally less cluttered and wild planting… but I think you know where that idea has landed.

Klasea bulgarica suffering along in a less-fertile and less-watered spot in the border than it would like, but it’s still a cool thing, even at five feet rather than seven.

It would be fun to complain endlessly about jobs not done and tasked shelved for the future, but let me first share a somewhat finished photo of the former construction road alongside the house. Something did get done this summer, and even with its lack of mulch (still hoping to get to that this fall), the emerging grass makes for a more inviting path than an uneven landscape of dumped concrete and roadside weeds.

I’m not sure anymore what the arc of stones was supposed to convey but it’s done and will likely stay this way for years, but at least the new grass makes sense, and will lead visitors up past the new daylily border, and allow them to oooh and ahhhh on their way to the daylily farm fields.

Since I think I heard someone ask why I wasn’t posting enough daylily photos, here are a few still in bloom this weekend. Late bloomers and rebloomers is how it is since the bulk of them wrapped up the show a week or two ago.

One of the nicest ones is this gift from my friend Paula. In theory I should divide it for the farm, but ‘Websters Pink Wonder’ might be something I need to hold on to for “evaluation” until I have a huge, huge, huge clump of it!

Also a gift, from another friend, is ‘Apricot Peace’. As other parts of the garden look a little worn out from the summer, this flower is as refreshing and delicious as any sun-riped summer fruit.

Since daylilies aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, here’s a break to look at the tropical garden. This end of the yard suffered through a lot of neglect as the gardener raced past this construction-ravaged part of the estate to go stick his head in the sand elsewhere, but after some time, rain, and lots of weeding, trimming, and rock-picking it’s at least less than a complete disaster. Actually it was Verbena bonariensis which saved the day. Its pollinator-filled haze of lavender-purple flowers covers up many of the sins of this season even if it does obscure the daylily flowers more than I’d like.

The tropical border. You may notice that the huge mound of yellow pokeweed (Phytolacca americana ‘Sunny Side Up’) is way to big for its space and way too much yellow, but I just don’t have the heart to trim it. You may also notice a lack of tropicals…

If I had to summarize for a sure-fire way of saving the late summer (full sun)garden, I’d say Verbena bonariensis, Hydrangea paniculata, and cannas. The three of them just ask for a little water and maybe some fertilizer, and BAM you’re a gardening rock star. Sadly I didn’t take a photo of the hydrangea this week, but how about this color from the cannas?

‘Cannanova Rose’, one of the newer seed strains of cannas, is disease free and flowers all summer and into fall if you just keep snapping off the seed pods. A plus for growing it in the North is the lack of canna roller caterpillars destroying the foliage, since they (and the cannas as well) can’t handle our winter cold.

What? More daylilies? You’ve got it.

‘Chama’ is a later daylily with a long season and big flowers. I’d say seek it out but with all the hundreds of other yellows out there I’m sure you could find something similar which is just as nice.

This Brookside Beauty seedling is not quite as average as a yellow. I picked it up this summer at my new favorite local daylily farm, Garrett Hill Daylilies, and maybe it’s too much of a lot of things but I’m quite happy with it.

It’s not all rippled edges and intense color. Here’s the more simple flower of a species daylily, Hemerocallis altissima (probably). Fragrant, tall, elegant, opens in the evening and then closes for the heat of the day, this daylily has a lot to offer as well.

Ok, let’s keep moving. The potager is beans, tomatoes and… daylilies now… I was fairly good for three years with my vegetables only policy (plus a few tulips), but that ship has left the pier. The beds are now filling with things like witch hazels and marigolds, cannas and phlox, and quite a few daylilies as well. It was a valiant fight but vegetables really are a lot of work, and the farm stand does it much, much better, so…. maybe we don’t need to grow our own cucumbers just in case we feel like eating a cucumber or twenty.

One of the few sunflowers to seed out this year… and a little short and small… but I’ll take it, as will the goldfinches I’m sure.

Right over the boxwood hedge of the potager is the stone wall which I went on and on about last year. It’s still there and it’s still the summer home for a few succulents, except for as hard as I tried there seem to be even more this summer. Someone will point out that I bought a few more .99 cent treasures on a summer plant trip, as well as a tiny box of cuttings and living stones last winter, but these aren’t even out there (they’re just too cool to put so far away), and all of these are just repots and divisions and cuttings. Someone needs to stop this ‘let me just take a few cuttings’ thing, just like the rabbits stopped the living stones thing. Had I known that the rabbits would consider the pots of living stones to be tasty little green jellybeans perfect for nibbling, I would have put them somewhere out of reach, but I didn’t and now they’re gone. Hmmmm, come to think of it my last living stone was the victim of a chipmunk attack. I guess they’re tasty little things and I should have known better.

Some of the old standbys which are apparently less tasty than living stones (Lithops).

So I guess I killed off the living stones through my own mistake. Actually the bunnies pulled a “propeller plant” off the wall and destroyed that, as well as a “lobster claw” which was also apparently too tasy to resist, so they’re not as cute and innocent as I like to think. Maybe I’ll just accept that and reconsider my succulent vetting process to include ‘easy to overwinter’, ‘thrives on neglect’, and ‘is not yummy for bunnies’ and move on. Trust me that any roadblock to the succulent collection growing is probably a good thing, especially when fall turns to winter and all those clay pots need lugging in.

Further down the wall. It doesn’t look too bad until you do a pot count, and it’s pretty much every last terracotta pot I own so another roadblock I set up is ‘no more terracotta pots’… unless it’s a really good sale… or they’re free… or it’s a really amazing pot…

Maybe you noticed the tiger lilies back past the succulent wall? They’re the double kind (Lilium lancifolium ‘Flore Pleno”) and I suppose I do like them in spite of their messiness, but what I don’t like is the arrival of those bright red lily beetles which eat more lily foliage than they should and produce entirely disgusting young who hide underneath a slimy, wet, bubble of poop as they also overeat their share of lily foliage. Because of the lily beetles I’m phasing out some of the clumps and trying to figure out which ones I can’t live without, and so far it’s the Asiatics, Martagon, and a few of the Regal lilies… only because they don’t handle late freezes well and have died back two of the last five years.

Lilium lancifolium ‘Flore Pleno’ spreading quite well in spite of the beetles and a good amount of shade.

Speaking of supporting more wildlife than I’d like, our ‘Liberty’ apple tree has set a decent crop of fruit this year and just about everyone seems to want a taste. When people ask questions like what to plant for wildlife I always think of things like apple trees, which seem to be under attack from every insect, disease, bird, mammal… it’s amazing they can survive from one year to the next. I wanted to try one though, and in an effort towards compromise chose a variety which was supposed to give the gardener “Freedom” from endless fussing and spraying. I guess nothing but bad taste will keep the animals away, but I think my photo does a good job at representing the cost of freedom.

Not spraying or putting in much effort at all does not produce the best foliage or fruit on an apple tree. How do they say it? Freedom does not come free? Definitely true in the case of this tree, but I think I’m fine with a handful of wormy apples to cut up and eaten outside versus bushels of fruit to deal with.

With an image of a diseased, nearly leafless apple tree I guess it’s not a stretch to go back behind the potager into the waste area. The grass which was seeded for new paths is coming up but only the weeds in the grass need mowing since for some reason the microgreens of the lawn are just one more thing which the rabbits cannot resist. They mow down the grass and leave the weeds. This isn’t how it was supposed to work but whatever, most of the weeds are Verbena seedlings and recent studies have shown there’s a 99.9% chance the gardener would rather have impassable paths of flowering verbena than neat grass.

Entering the waste space. Yeah that sunflower also came up where the path is supposed to be…

Change in plan is more the rule than the exception here, so besides grass paths turning into verbena fields you may recall there was a $3 box of canary seed thrown around back here in order to start a millet patch. Apparently what looked like millet wasn’t actually all millet and when some cabbagey stuff started growing I did some investigating and found out canola is also a seed birds will eat… and if anyone actually read the label they’d see canola right there after millet. So now there’s a millet and cannola patch in the waste space. Two fun facts I discovered about canola when I did my after-the-fact investigating were that 1. ‘Canola’ is short for ‘Canada oil, low acid’, a relatively recent Canadian plant creation of low acid rapeseed which became suitable for edible oil uses rather than industrial, and 2. Canola greens are much sought after by deer… which does not help at all as far as making my yard less-deer friendly.

The waste space has filled in quite quickly with weeds, canola, and millet, plus a bunch of barrow fulls of yard waste which were easier to dump here than on the compost pile. I guess it’s all about bringing life to the sterile fill, and sometimes life is messy.

So here I am talking about growing weeds intentionally again when I really should focus on my garden-rebuilding. Someday I’ll get it. Maybe. At least the waste area takes care of itself, which allows me to return to stone moving and construction repairs. Finally the pond area has been cleaned out, the path behind it returned to passable, and all those stones picked out of the earth-moving process are being put to use… for better or worse…

Shoddily stacked garbage stones line the arc of the curve which will take a grass path around the side of the new addition. I think it looks good enough and hopefully the freeze and thaws of winter don’t rip it apart before it has a chance to settle. More larger stones would have made it more weather-stable I think but you get what you get.

My fingertips are aching from all the stone grabbing and wedging and twisting and I’m glad to say the wall is as done as it’s going to get and only about ten stones remained as extras. These walls soak up a lot of rock so hopefully I have enough left for a few more questionably interesting constructions around the yard 😉

The back deck refuge from it all. I try to give the pots a little liquid feed once a week (and I never manage to keep to that schedule) but other than feeding, the drip lines and a timer take care of all the watering and leave me with nothing more to do than a little puttering when everything else seems like so much work.

I feel like I should be further along with everything but now that we’re into August I’m declaring a pause on projects and a rescheduling of fun. A few gardens have been visited, children have enjoyed day-trips, some lazy pool days are scheduled, and tomorrow myself and my plant squad (or more officially the Plant Posse… a possibly eye-rolling name given by a member’s daughter) are off for a day at Longwood. Severe weather alerts blanket our travel zone for the day but thoughts and prayers will guide us, and hopefully between the four of us the more reasonable will herd us out of the way of tornados, find shelter from strong winds, and a safe spot against hail, lightning , and thunder! Any day with the Posse is usually an adventure 😉

Hope you have a great week with an aggressive scheduling of fun!

Cooler

Mar21

We missed most of the snow, but in general it was cool here last week. In a fit of mid-March optimism I drug a few of the hardiest things out of the garage and onto the driveway for a little sun and fresh air and then forgot about them for a few days. Things got cooler over the weekend with a Friday night low around 25F (-4C) and I had my concerns for the rosemary, Fatsia, and potted Dracaena, but in the light of the next morning they didn’t look too bad. Of course I left them out for the next night as well, with similar temperatures, because like a small child I’ll try and get away with it for as often as I can until things backfire. Some people only learn things the hard way.

A spring shower and March sunshine have brought on the big dutch crocus (Crocus vernum ‘Pickwick’). The rabbits only nibbled a few of the blooms, but they’ll be back soon enough to finish them off.

In spite of two cold nights, the calendar and stars both say today is the first day of spring, and I’m happy the heavens have finally caught up to where I’ve already been for quite a few weeks. It’s exciting to know that spring has been given its official recognition for the new year but also sad to think that some of the most exciting highlights of the year have already passed. Next week promises warmer weather and with it the peak of the snowdrop season and then the fading away while other things step up for their moment. Already the witch hazel are dropping their petals and the winter aconite are on their way to setting seed and I’m almost missing those chilly afternoons shuffling around the garden looking for the first sprouts.

In a nook shaded by the fence, the last of the winter aconite is holding on to bloom. Seed pods will come next, ripe seed thereafter, and soon I’ll be scattering a new crop of flowers into the next patch of garden.

I think this gardener is feeling a bit of a crash following the abundance of snowdrops this spring. They’re still amazing and a few late ones are just starting and trust me I spend more time than I should soaking them in, but maybe I’ll need some help coming off the high this year.

‘Melanie Broughton’ is just one of the many late forms which supply perfect flowers once the earlier sorts begin to look tired. Maybe I need a late bed strictly devoted to these kinds so they’re all perfectly perfect together. Surely the garden can handle one more snowdrop bed?

Maybe daffodils can be my methadone. In spite of this weekend’s turn to cold the first daffodils are just a few degrees of sunshine short of opening, and you can trust I have my eye on them.

New waterlily shoots frozen into the night’s ice. I’m continuously amazed that soft things like fresh lilypads and tiny things like fresh duckweed can survive a solid freeze.

Oops. One thing which I didn’t have my eyes on were the four pots of daylily seedlings which were put out into the coldframe last week. Daylilies are hardy enough plants, but for seedlings to come out from a cozy winter under the growlights and face a freezing cold night (or two since what’s done is done), might have been more than they should have to handle.

Kinda mushy and wilted, the frozen daylily seedlings will hopefully survive to enjoy spring. Hopefully.

Generally if things freeze off I’m quite quick to write them off and move on, since there’s never a shortage of new seedlings and divisions and gifts and purchases waiting to find a home, but the frozen daylily seedlings could really be a setback to the future of the farm. I was counting on these to provide the 2025 introductions which would be unveiled when I put out my first daylily catalogue. Golly. This really does throw a wrench into things.

You can’t look at snowdrops all day, so Saturday I decided to regrade the entire construction area. The wife kindly pointed out that working on closets would be a better use of my time, considering a machine could do this in a day, but God forbid I have to join a gym to work off my winter fat.

So moving a couple tons of rocky fill did help ease the stress of the ups and downs which come with building a world quality daylily farm, but the even better part to all the hard labour was filling in a few more square feet of the low spot which haunts me in the back of the yard. I feel like the Dutch must have felt when they reclaimed their land from the sea. Every square foot of flat ground holds the potential of a new planting area, and perhaps in their honor I should plant it all to tulips one year, just in case the daylily farm doesn’t keep me busy enough.

The lowest areas back here were perhaps three feet below where I’d like them to be, so into the dip went all kinds of stone and mortar debris, now to be topped off with a foot or so of rocky dirt/fill.

I’m estimating this job should be finished up somewhere around late 2027, assuming I don’t end up in the hospital first. Hmmm. Actually I’m surprised that didn’t come up in addition to the talk of closets, and honestly don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted by that. In another year I’ll be closer to 60 than 50 so…

In the last few days tulips have started to sprout in the potager beds. There will be no room for cabbages, but three or four heads of cabbage didn’t stand a chance against armloads of tulips.

Well that’s not the direction I had planned for this post. It’s the first day of official spring and as always I’ll be gardening as if I’ll live to be 120. In my opinion it’s the only option since imagine planning for a bucket-kicking at 90 and then sticking around for another 30! That’s a long time to regret the unplanted acorn.

One Last Summer Trip

Sep3

It’s embarrassing to realize this trip and these photos are all already a week old, but no matter. Visiting a garden like Chanticleer, just outside of Philadelphia never gets old, and after a summer of ‘wait, I have to be around for this… and that… and I wish it would rain…’ it was great to get away for what might be one of my last summer trips, and always fun to be out and about with garden stuff from dawn to dusk! Here are a few impressions from the day. Check out their website and other links for better photos and video, it’s such an awesome garden to visit and I tried to rush through in under two hours so…

The entry area is always a tropical planter paradise. Note the leaf stalk of the Titan arum (corpse flower, Amorphophallus titanum) on the far right. Am I the only person who couldn’t care less about the smelly bloom, yet loves the massive single leaf which they produce?

Hmmm. Since it was such a rapid race of a visit maybe this should be a quick post, so here goes. The ‘teacup garden’ is always my first and favorite section to visit. It’s like a tropical conservatory out for the summer for a Pennsylvania country vacation.

Look at all these foliage goodies, and the hanging blooms of the Brugmansia are just summertime awesome!

Wander down to the tennis court next. It’s been entirely re-done and although it’s lost the ‘tennis court’ vibe I like the new Netherlands-France rolling hedge vibe.

There’s a soft spot in my heart for neatly trimmed hedges. Another year to grow in and this one will be perfect, plus a patch of my favorite giant reed grass (Arundo donax) doesn’t hurt either.

The cutting garden also underwent a re-do. More vegetables, more paths meandering through, a little more controlled. Personally I like a garden of chaos in September, but maybe deep down inside realize that this is a better look… hahaha just kidding. I like it but miss the tsunami of towering blooms and grasping vines of years past.

Orange marigolds seemed to be a theme through several of the gardens this year.

I skipped the woods but not before realizing the large magnolia wasn’t really a magnolia. It was an American pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba) with plenty of fruit on its way to ripening. I’ve never had one, but word is they’re delicious with their custardy-goodness.

American pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba) with a cluster of almost-ripe fruit.

I rushed through the meadow filled with full-bloom prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis), a beautiful spot but I just don’t like the “popcorn” scent of this grass, and then cut through the ruin garden to get to the gravel garden. I love the gravel garden. It was a full-sun, 90F (32C) morning and I was still standing around with that dumb look on my face, smiling at the succulent planters and running my hands through the grass like a real weirdo. I’m so glad that finally, after 50 years, I finally grew out of that caring what other people think stage.

Not the best picture, but the gravel garden is an open spot filled with full-sun, drainage-loving Mediterranean-type plants which don’t seem to mind a couple months of hot.

Down around the ponds to visit the koi and admire the lush, water-loving stuff, and then quickly through the Asian woods and serpentine plantings, and finally to the main house. The house is always surrounded by too many pots which are too big and overfilled with too many goodies. Many of the plants are too cool. The only way I didn’t spend another hour in just this section was because I was alone and because of that didn’t need to start pointing out and naming and babbling on about every single thing. I will only share a few photos 😉

The mangave cult is alive and well here. It’s a big plus they’re not as spiny and poky as they look.

Sometimes I had to put both hands in my pockets to fight the urge to take cuttings. Everything seems grown to perfection which is not easy to pull off in such mixed plantings.

The pool area. There are bananas and other tropicals all along the walls. Such an awesome sight although it makes me feel a bit guilty for killing mine… again…

Yeah. Just awesome. Red mandevilla and some yellow leaved jasmine.

Hmmmm. Passionflowers are pretty cool and maybe I should have more than just one…

A visit to Chanticleer is a good choice at any time of year, but I might have to admit to an ulterior motive for my visit. Surprise lilies (Lycoris) have been interesting lately and I knew there were a few plantings here and there in the gardens, so why not make up an excuse to drive two hours to go see them?

I think these were yellow Lycoris chinensis with a few white Lycoris longituba mixed in, but since there was a fence and a few yards between me and them I couldn’t really get as close as I wanted.

I might have been “interested” in some of the hardier Lycoris for a few years now (many of the nicest are tender and only thrive in Southern gardens), but based on their embarrassing performance in my own garden, I really didn’t want to admit it. I guess it’s out now though. My name is Frank and I grow Lycoris poorly.

Lycoris squamigera floating above the grass of the bulb meadow. These will be joined by the early colchicums in just a few more days.

I don’t think I’m the only one who struggles with these bulbs. They’re often referred to as surprise lilies or magic lilies, and although some people claim it’s because of the way they burst out of the soil and into bloom in just a few days, I believe it’s because each year it’s either a surprise or plain magic that they actually lived or even bothered to bloom for you. It doesn’t help when you see them growing best alongside a burnt out building or abandoned farm or hear some old gardener complaining about how they take over their beds and there are just too many in their garden. Based on this apparent finickiness I’m going to say there’s a better than good chance mine are dying out of spite.

Maybe a paler form of Lycoris chinensis up near the ruin gardens? Just like all the others these appear to be settling in happily… unlike my little jerks…

If I wanted to give myself a true dose of reality I’d look up how many years ago it was that I first planted my earliest bulbs. ‘They’ say it takes a few years for them to settle in, but the difference between settling in and dying out is a distinction I’m having trouble with… so in the meantime I will continue admiring them in other peoples gardens. A garden where they are doing much better in is my friend Paula’s. Her garden is not an abandoned farmstead, and she is not an old gardener, but they are still doing well for her even if a few were just a little past prime for my visit.

A trio of excellent hardier varieties of Lycoris. From left to right, ‘L x haywardii’, ‘Hiaro Blue’ (a selection of L. sprengeri and I think the same as ‘Blue Pearl’), and ‘L x incarnata’.

As is typical with many of my garden days, by the time it was wrapping up the sun was pretty much set, so sorry about not having photos of the rest of the lycoris in back, but the best thing I learned on this visit was ‘just move them’ if they’re not thriving. For as obvious as that seems it was kind of a break through for me.

A closeup of Lycoris x haywardii. I would like to grow this one well enough to see this show in my own garden… and that’s an understatement based on the twitching I feel when I look at it!

So with a rushed visit to Chanticleer and a twilight garden tour with Paula, you might be thinking I stopped for a sit down lunch and dinner, or maybe wasted my time with some other nonsense, but the truth is I was digging daylilies.

“I have a few I could share, stop by if you’re in the area” said a friend…

The back of my car was quite full of plants for the ride home. There was even a gifted sprig of tuberose which perfumed the ride through the mountains. I was quite pleased.

So I was kind of joking about the daylily farm, but with a whole side-of-the-house lawn destroyed by construction I figured what the hey, it’s better than replanting grass. I’ve been pickaxing stones and trying to amend a driveway of fill ever since. Have an excellent weekend and maybe this foolishness will help put your own into perspective 😉

Well that Sure Escalated…

Aug2

Sometimes I’m stubborn and set in my ways, determined to make something work and prove I’m right. Other times I can turn on dot, easily distracted and influenced, and just one idea can derail an entire plan. About three weeks ago I went to a daylily farm, and even talked to a daylily breeder. I bought one. I went to another farm. suddenly I found myself going back to the first farm and getting a few more and now suddenly I like daylilies. Hmmmm… did not see that coming…

Some Brookside daylilies which have been added to the garden. It’s nice to have something green in the yard.

My mother might point out that at one point, maybe thirty years ago, someone planted dozens of daylilies alongside the garage and some of those clumps still remain today, but that was a long time ago. I thought we were past that.

The front border still looking a bit fried. Recent rains have greened up some of the lawn weeds, but only the rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) looks completely unbothered by the dry weather.

I guess not. Plenty of good people like daylilies, so what’s the harm in adding a few? With the garden still a depressing shade of sun-faded khaki anything which can shrug off the dry heat can only be a good thing.

Purple gomphrena and angelonia don’t mind the heat, but do need regular watering to keep this fresh and bright. I think it’s worth it.

No one even noticed a few new daylilies, but they did notice the water bill jumping up last month. I admitted that maybe it was the garden causing this, but also pointed out the garden-fresh vegetables were surely worth it. Fifty dollars for a couple zucchini and some lettuce, thankfully there was no cost to benefits analysis done to double check my logic.

Regular watering helped stave off the worst of the baking in this end of the front border, but even without watering I suspect ‘Blue Yonder’ agapanthus would still look unbothered. I’m so glad the bulldozer missed this one, although my seedlings and several other things in this bed were lost.

Triage by watering hose was saving a few things but fortunately I went and scheduled a camping trip for last week, and this brought in a nice storm which actually soaked in a little.

Cestrum is remarkably easy from seed and only grew faster in the heat. At first I was underwhelmed by the small lemony flowers of the first seedling (in my hand), but a couple weeks later, other seedlings began to open up larger orange flowers, similar to their ‘Orange Peel’ mother, and it was all good.

A nice soak, cooler temperatures, and then another surprise shower this past weekend have made all the difference in the garden. No more wilted plants making me feel guilty at every turn and the lawn even has a green haze to it, although it will still be a while before I need to fire up the lawnmower again. I think this just-in-time rain will also help the little tree frog tadpoles immensely. They’re just starting to sprout legs and leave the pond, and I don’t think venturing out into a desert would have been the best thing for my little babies.

There’s a big range to the tadpoles with some already out and about, others well into leg-growing, and a couple still just fat little polliwogs.

I’ve been coming across baby tree frogs in a few spots around the garden. Unlike the gray adults, the babies are a bright green with a dark mask around their eyes.

Baby gray tree frogs (Hyla versicolor) have a leafy green color while the adults take on more of a bark/lichen gray color.

My fingers are crossed that a good number of them make it.

Even the frogs like the new daylilies.

New daylilies, baby frogs, and a decent rain. It’s not perfect but it’s a good position to be in for the first week of August, and as long as no one asks how the construction is going I think it’s still better than a cold day in January.

Have a great week!

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: daylilies