Okay. Summer is Over

Oct31

Yes, I’m often really slow to pick up on things, especially when I’m really determined to hold on to my optimism or ignorance, but eventually the wrecking balls roll in and the troops hit the streets and you realize there’s a change in the weather and the freedom of summer is dying. I’ll miss it. Most people saw it coming and warned me to be prepared, but a few sunny days can fool you into thinking no big deal, there’s time, it can’t turn on you so fast… until suddenly it does and it’s your turn to face a killing frost.

An autumn crop of lettuce likely won’t amount to anything significant, but it does make things look better than they really are. Someone will get a nice salad. Probably not me, but…

Monday morning we woke up to a frosty morning. It’s just a touch of ice and many of the natives are just fine, but tender stuff like dahlias and cannas from Mexico and points south got burnt, and will now need lifting and winter protection in order to make it through the approaching cold.

Aromatic aster, either ‘Raydon’s Favorite’ or ‘Bluebird’, I forget… is still in full bloom and will go on into November. It’s great doer.

Fortunately we’ve had plenty of rain to cover up all the stresses the garden faced this summer, and the asters and mums are as nice as ever and the fall color here in the lower elevations at least had enough time to color up rather than just give up. As far as autumns go it wasn’t too bad I guess, but summer is still my preferred season and these last few weeks were more of a long hanging-on than any real admission that fall is here.

A chrysanthemum seedling which a friend gave me a few years back. Hardy and reliable and an excellent flower which more than makes up for her floppy form.

So I guess I’m admitting that fall is here. The leaves have changed, the tender plants are under protective custody indoors and it’s moved on to all the little tasks which need doing before the cold and ice lock us all down for a winter.

Sunday foliage and flowers. By Monday the orange thunbergia was a wilted memory.

For a few weeks more it’s still nice though. The colors and light are superb, the lawn has recovered some of its spring lushness, and a shovel sinks into the soil rather than being rejected. Time for replanting, mulching, protecting, maybe some pruning… all those last minute things which are fine as long as the weather holds, but just not fun when a cold front rolls through.

This ‘Arnold’s Promise’ witch hazel always runs through rings of color as the leaves turn. Witch hazels are awesome.

Hmmm. Maybe I better end on a more cheerful note because the rain and Mellissa’s march through the Caribbean seem to have me in a gloomy mood. Here are some promises for a wonderful winter starting with the hardy cyclamen which are popping up here and there throughout the beds. Cyclamen hederifolium is probably the most varied and easiest and I’ll show just one picture with a few last flowers since there will be time all winter to show off the foliage on the rest of them.

A few last flowers wrapping up a month and a half of bloom on cyclamen hederifolium. I’m always tempted to pot a few dozen up so I can admire them one by one… but under my care that’s a likely death sentence so in the garden they stay.

Oh and do you know what else is on the way? Yeah, snowdrops. The earliest fall bloomers are opening and they look great this year.

The first fall bloomer in my garden is ‘Tilebarn Jamie’ and even at a later date this would be a beautiful and reliable snowdrop worth giving a try.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned snowdrops… maybe at least two weeks… but they’re on my mind again after what might have been overload this past spring. Perhaps preparing a sales table for the Gala made it work, and maybe that work made it less fun, but I think this year I can organize a little better and get back to the fun I usually have. Maybe I’m also itching to add a few new ones rather than faking “responsibility” and trying to say ‘no’ more than I’d like to. Maybe this spring I’ll be saying ‘why not?’ Maybe I’ll start this fall. More fall bloomers would be good and I know a guy and why not?

Have a great weekend 🙂

October.

Oct19

To be honest these photos are about a week old, and when I say “about” you could probably add another week on to that if you’re really dotting all your i’s and crossing your t’s but… *edit* Okay so still trying to be honest (which becomes rarer each day that AI creeps further and further into our lives) just editing a few pictures and writing one sentence appears to add another week onto the timeline, so now rather than an update on the autumn garden this is probably closer to a retrospective. Let’s call it a retrospective on fall and hope the next post doesn’t become a retrospective on winter.

The autumn porch decorations. A little more than usual this year with three purchased mums and a couple pumpkins and squash to boost the home-grown display.

As usual no excuses for the delays. The only one I can really put a finger on is the morning when a child asked if anyone was coming with her to a college visit she had set up. Oh really? As the parent who drew the short straw I had fifteen minutes to prepare for a day on campus rather than a day bringing in houseplants and that’s probably sounding worse than it really was since much of my life involves fifteen minutes to prepare for something I either put off too long or forgot about, but it’s an excuse for one of the days at least.

With the return of rainfall the potager is at least green even if it’s not lush and productive. Perhaps it’s time for some potager-love, and next year this area will hopefully get some well deserved attention to weeding, watering, and planting.

Maybe it’s time for a what-you-did last summer retrospective since a true update might need to go back that far. Going all the way back to June the summer was off to a ‘let me just quickly build a shade structure for the deck it will only take a weekend’ start, and news flash *it did not take only a weekend* but it did start off a tropical revival on the deck. Some corner braces for a 4×4 frame with a shade cloth hung between them and voila! an excuse to spend the next two weeks re-painting porch furniture, repotting tropicals for the planters, dragging tables and furniture and a tv out to the covered porch, mosquito netting… way too much, but it was all because I saw the corner braces online and between that and two $15 palms which were too amazing to leave at the store things escalated.

The deck was more foliage than flowers this year and now I’m faced with how to overwinter a pair of palms which were probably cheap enough to leave outside, but I could never do that.

So the deck was an innocent start but then as you may recall there was the bulldozing of the daylily farm which happened as June rolled into July. Things were set into motion. Rather than replant a few daylilies, three unearthed stones became a rock garden and you know about that, but the rock garden needed a coating of sand and of course I got too much because sand is always useful around here. Some of the extra sand was used to level out an area where the kid’s old playhouse, aka ‘spider house’, could be placed. We have no use for a kid’s playhouse currently yet no one to give it to but what if it was repainted and accessorized? Enter a rebranding of spider house to ‘Begonia House’ since perhaps this area provides just the right filtered shade which the begonias seem to enjoy, and “I think pink would be nice for my house” became the color theme. A green roof? We shall try. The results straddle the line between garish, spray-painted plastic garden trash and elite garden whimsy but I like to pretend that it’s whimsy. Several great gardening estates have whimsical garden playhouses for children so there you are. Whimsy in the garden, except my visitors like to over-pronounce the ‘Wh’ as in Cool Whip and I guess referring to it as whhhhhimmmmsy is as classy as we will ever get.

Begonia House’s first year in the Northern corner of the estate. I’m sure the nearby coldframe and leftover lumber pile only add to the ambiance, but the begonias appreciate the new setting. I was able to easily gather multiple large overwintered begonias from around the estate but I’m sure that’s not a problem.

So with some of the sand taken care of it was time to address another bit of daylily farm repercussions. When it happened I lost a lot of plants. I was angry. No I didn’t want the town to replace them but here’s a deal which I could get behind. I have concrete blocks as steps going up the berm which separates us from the industrial park. They’re kind of ugly but they save me from many a twisted ankle and tumble down the bank as I weed wack or do other maintenance. If you can get me stone steps to go up the berm I will stop complaining about the lost daylily farm and even worse, the snowdrops which were destroyed. So there I was for another couple weeks manhandling 300 pound stone treads into the yard and up the slope and then why not add a bunch more stones to the berm and then mulch it all. Extra stones? How about some more square stacks of rocks at the base to put potted succulents on.

I think it looks better. Eventually new plantings should tie the steps into the berm a little better but for now I’m waiting to see all the weeds which return before I go putting too many things in there.

Seems like we’re covering a lot of ground here and I guess we are but remember this is the whole summer we’re looking at so don’t be too impressed. Plenty of time was spent sitting around and doing nothing which is more par for the course, but one more thing before I get back to that. A course of concrete blocks was pulled off the berm steps in order to put in the stone steps so why not make a little sitting area in the ‘waste area’ with the extra blocks. It looks raised but that’s only because the fill here has settled and the area needs just a little more soil to level it up before I’ll be happy with it, so I tried to look ahead a little and prep for that. I’m probably sharing more than you care to hear but the blocks just add on to the leftover soil and mulch from the daylily farm re-do which also ended up in the ‘waste area’. Actually the ‘waste area’ isn’t really much of a thing any more but I’m not ready to post the pictures which prove it so you’ll just have to trust me that daylilies are being rowed out and hopefully it will look nice by next summer…

It doesn’t look like much but the last of the sand was just enough to bring the blocks up to a level which I like. A few more blocks cut in half to square off the patio, some more dirt to level the lawn, dirt to create beds on the sides, mulch, plants…. ok it’s a start at least.

Now it’s autumn though. We had a touch of frost a few days ago and that was just what this gardener needed to remind him that a bunch of stuff needs to come inside and under shelter before the cold becomes more serious. He tried for one night to claim he didn’t care and maybe a serious frost could save him from a bunch of work, but that proved to be false and now we’re at the two hundred pots and counting phase of winter protection. It sounds excessive but most of them are tiny little things which shouldn’t even count but for dramatic effect they were counted and it’s really the one or two or ten bigger things which should come with a warning label. I can’t even speak coherently when I talk about the two most exciting bigger things which I had to go back for since there wasn’t enough room in the car when I first saw them. The might be Kentia palms and they’re too big for my house but I don’t care and have them now anyway.

I love my new palms and they’re totally unreasonable and unnecessary but for $7 each they had to come home with me. I will rearrange my life to make them happy.

As you can see all my projects and decisions are entirely reasonable and well thought out. I hope you’re having the same luck and not wondering how three potted ferns turned into seven even though you gave a couple away in spite of the fear that you might “need” them all after all. I did give a few away and we should highlight these successes as progress and be glad over it rather than worry about some weird fern obsession developing. Actually the speed at which the gardener killed a new maidenhair fern probably did more to nip this possible obsession in the frond than any call for self-control could, but again let me claim it as a success. January is when we splurge on houseplants and I shall wait for that.

Enjoy your autumn! I am days away from the first snowdrop in bloom and any plants not under protection by then might have to fend for themselves since reasonable decisions become even more unlikely once snowdrop season starts. Today I can still search for a windowsill for the new lemon, next week I will probably just lose myself to complaining about needing MORE fall blooming snowdrops 😉

A One Month Update

Sep28

Let me just prepare you ahead of time that there’s not much of an update, even though it’s been one day short of a full month since there’s been a blog post here. That’s a long time I admit, but it’s been dry, I’ve been back to work, and it’s been dry. The dry always gets me. Crunchy grass, dusty raking, and stuff just sits there and slowly debates whether or not it will hold on or go to the light. Watering would do magic, but for some reason I absolutely hate watering. One kinked hose, knocked over pot, or a watering can that needs a refill rather than being enough for the whole porch and I’m cursing up a storm. Plus I hate getting wet from watering. I can stand out in the rain until hypothermia threatens, but gosh if I get a little water on my foot or a spray in my face… I digress. I don’t like watering, it leaves an ugly taste in my mouth and maybe that’s my excuse for blog neglect. But…. the colchicums are blooming, and to see something up and fresh in a brown and wilted garden is maybe not inspiring, but at least it’s hopeful.

A nice bouquet of colchicum blooms braving the heat and drought. Some sort of C. speciosum, it came to me mislabeled.

Hopeful is also the rain which finally found us late last week. I’m remarkably optimistic again so lets hope it’s not another month before this blog is revisited!

‘Pink Star’ I believe, an excellent, long blooming cultivar that last for a few weeks even in the face of no water and glaring September sun.

So colchicums. I think you know the drill. Poisonous so resist eating them, leafy spring foliage which dies back in June, Flowers which appear just as the rest of the garden is starting to give up.

The tail end of the colchicum season in a crispy and dusty colchicum bed.

There are quite a few colchicum in this garden now. Finding different forms takes a bit of searching, and sometimes finding a correctly named different form is a struggle, but it’s worth it. To me at least. I hear there are plenty of people out there who have just a single bunch or two and are very satisfied, and I even have a friend or two who don’t grow any… but I try to keep open minded in my friend group, and hope one day they’ll embrace the diversity.

‘Glory of Heemstede’ trying to rise above a mess of chrysanthemum. Finding a spot where the low blooms of colchicum display well, after everything else has grown up during the summer, is sometimes a struggle.

This year I’m maybe admitting that some colchicum are nicer than others, and by that I mean put on a better show and have a longer bloom season. Keep in mind that shady practices and a questionable gardener and garden soil really influence my favorites, but this year I would say my longest blooming, best shows are from C. cilicium, x byzantinum, ‘Disraeli’, ‘Giant’, C. autumnale ‘album’, ‘alboplenum’, ‘Sparticus’, x agrippinum, and ‘Pink Star’. Maybe I’ll add the floppy ‘Lilac Wonder’. She flops so don’t expect anything else, but is so reliable I can’t leave her out.

‘Sparticus’ has a smaller flower in a light shade of pink. Always neat, and even after a week or two still fresh as ever.

By the way, if you’re in the US and struggling to find a few more unusual ones it might not hurt to contact Kathy Purdy at Cold Climate Gardening, or Facebook or Instagram… she doesn’t reeeaallly sell them, but if you’re really nice and sound desperate and she has spares you never know who might send you a price list next summer 😉

x Agrippinum is a good one for smaller gardens. The spring foliage is small and low and no trouble at all and the low flowers last for a while. I plan to move a few into the new rock garden, I think it’s a perfect spot.

So do I have enough colchicums, or perhaps too many? Hahahaha, of course not! I still need bigger patches, even if there might be one or two who could do better. I should be splitting clumps right now as they flower, it’s easy to find them and if you do it before the flowers fade it’s unlikely the roots have sprouted much yet, and you can see exactly where the good spots for more colchicum are!

Colchicum here and there. C. autumnale ‘album’ is a tiny white flower, but probably one of the longest bloomers, and it does well here. Don’t be fooled by the petite blooms though, the spring foliage is regular sized.

And that’s all I’ve got. The rain brought a tint of green to the lawn so I spent all day Saturday chopping down dead things, mowing up dried things, and going over the “lawn” to take the top off all the weeds. I even edged and blew off the walks. It looks so so so much better and even inspired me to dig up a bed in the potager and plant some lettuce seedling for the fall.

I found a $3 six pack of lettuce seedlings at my local farmstand, split them and it’s probably the best $3 I’ve spent in a while… although the $3 cauliflower I bought was a delicious monster!

Hope your autumn is off to a good start. I’m mildly optimistic even if I have far fewer chrysanthemums than I need and there are still no fall blooming snowdrops up but you have to count the wins, and the rain was a definite win. Maybe it will inspire me to manage a few replies to month-old comments and maybe another blog post some time sooner than later, but my history says otherwise. I think you will have an excellent week regardless!

A Little Push

Nov24

It looks like our tediously warm and dry autumn has finally made a turn towards wet, cold, and winter. Warm and dry isn’t the worst thing, but when the days stretch into weeks and the autumn foliage is more a giving up on life it gets old. The garden I enjoy is full of life and surprises and when it’s day after day of plants giving up I lose interest, and when interest is lost motivation follows. I looked at the racks of tulips waiting to be planted. I looked at the dry, baked-hard, beds where they were to be planted. I turned around and went back inside.

But now things have made a complete turnaround, with a day of steady rain followed by a night of snow which continued into the next day. In all it might be two inches of rain and as the snow melts into the ground I think the garden has finally received the soaking it needed and the gardener might have to get back on board. While the snow is melting the bored gardener has gone into the archives to see if he can find some tulip planting motivation, and even if he’s not exactly bubbling over with enthusiasm to go out and dig, at least he’s been shamed into taking a little better care of the unplanted bulbs.

Tulips in the front border this previous spring. Fortunately these seem happy enough coming back on their own each year with little effort on my part, although it’s well past time a few bunches were dug and divided.

I’ve been digging and dividing the tulips in the back garden for a few years now, trying to get ahead of the tulip fire (a type of fungal botrytis blight) which has infected the soil back there. The digging, replanting, and mulching had helped but then this spring, right as the tulips were coming into growth and blooming, a string of cool, rainy weather hit and the problem went from ok to all over the place with each rain shower. April showers may bring May flowers, but when May is also full of cool and damp weather it just brings botrytis to the tulips and that’s not fun.

The purple of Lunaria annua (honesty or money plant) mixes and contrasts well with the yellows and pinks of the tulips. Unlike AI suggests, this plant is a biennial so don’t be fooled by the scientific name.

Although the botrytis is not fun, the worser part is the smaller bulbs I dug as a result of their infected foliage. Digging big healthy bulbs is one of the June joys of the garden and when you’re just finding medium or stunted bulbs… again, not fun. It also didn’t help that June went from cool and damp to hot and dry all of a sudden, triggering the bulbs into an early dormancy, so add that to the list of reasons the gardener has not been feeling the tulip-love this summer.

Tulips in the potager beds, the worst areas for botrytis and the area where all the tulips are dug each summer.

The tulip love is back though, and after seeing the reminder of what it looked like last spring it makes me wonder how I ever even considered thinking poorly about one of my favorite plants. Surely it’s the lazy side of me searching for excuses to pass on the planting and find alternate homes for the bulbs. It’s like a flashback to the year I found rot in the bulb trays and with great disgust tossed everything onto the compost pile, only to have tulips coming up beautifully all over it the next spring, and have compost laced with bulbs the next summer.

I shall plant… soon I hope. It depends on when the snow melts, and how cold it gets for Thanksgiving. And when I dig the cannas and dahlias and plant the garlic, since that’s also on the to-do list since little in the way of planting or digging has been done while the ground has been so dry. Even the fall-blooming snowdrops have looked depressed and droopy, although not a single bloom was lost to slugs this year…

Galanthus ‘Barnes’. One of the earliest for me with only this one late group still in flower. The rest were less photogenic as they wilted and dried out far too quickly in the sun.

There has been one ultra-positive thing which has turned up this autumn, and that’s the bags of leaves which friends have given me and the row of filled bags which greeted me one evening as I pulled in after work. My nephew came through with a collection from one of his lawn jobs and I’m proud to say they’re already all spread about and settling down to feed the garden underneath the snow.

A driveway filled with bags of nicely mulched leaves. A gardener’s delight!

Forgive me for not sharing any snow pictures. The total for our town was in the 7 inch range and it looked beautiful from the inside looking out, but one day later and the higher elevations are still digging out, repairing powerlines, and removing downed trees, as it was a very heavy snow and their totals were almost twice what we received. For hours the interstate was closed. I’ve sat for hours on a closed interstate on a snowy mountain pass in the middle of nowhere and I can vouch it’s no fun.

Fingers crossed that my next post has a ‘tulips planted’ comment, and it’s not something which involved chipping through ice during the Christmas holidays. We will see, in any case I hope it’s a fun time.

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 😉

Leave the Leaves?

Oct20

Autumn has its moments but without a few rainy days and minus the cooler temperatures I’m at a loss. We could use some rain. The lingering annuals and a bunch of perennials, and even some shrubs, are wilting now and between you and me I’m almost hoping for a strong frost to come along and put things out of their misery rather than spend the next few weeks hoping for some last-minute miracle to come along and renew the decaying garden. I was also warm yesterday when I was out doing something in the sun, and flirted with breaking a sweat… which is totally inappropriate for this season of briskness and cozy jackets.

A form of the native aromatic aster, I think this one is ‘Raydon’s Favorite’, should be in every garden. It outblooms most chrysanthemums and is a late season pollinator magnet. Here a final bloom of the rose ‘Rosarium Uetersen’ adds a nice dash of coral pink.

Fair warning that this gardener rarely has a kind word to share about the autumn season, so don’t worry that my disgust and lack of interest in the yard means I’m struggling with some kind of seasonal trauma that I’m barely surviving, because that’s not the case. I’ve been busy and motivated, just not in the garden. Garage cleanouts, painting, puttering, and life in general are moving along nicely and I don’t really mind that the daily garden tour has turned into a ten minute walk of ‘meh’.

October colors in the front border. Okay, but kinda boring to be honest.

It’s been somewhat warm and the forecast promises warmer for the next few days, but I did notice a few things have been touched by frost. Coleus mostly. Cuttings were saved a few weeks ago and are doing fine, as well as all the other tender goodies which were dragged inside before the cold, and for some reason this year it didn’t seem like nearly as much work as other years. Many things are in the new basement area and apparently having enough space for your plants goes a long, long way in making the indoor migration less painful. As a way of celebrating I stopped by a greenhouse clearance sale last week and bought four new plants and that of course is not a problem at all since I stayed under fifteen dollars and I’m sure many people have purchased just one single orchid and then stopped.

I love euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow’ and hope it can survive the winter in this pot. Normally they are borderline hardy here, but maybe if I drag the pot under the protection of the front porch it will stand a chance.

So upon review it sounds like I’m just waiting for winter to come and wipe the outside garden’s slate clean and that might be a fairly accurate assessment. Year round gardening works for some people but I like a nice winter break, a season and a time to reflect, and maybe a pause in the battle to regroup. Some things look messy now and I like that I can tidy them up once at this time of year and have it stay that way rather than face a new field of weeds the week after I pull them all.

The potager two days before frost singed the awesomeness of the banana. Bringing other things in was a breeze, but digging and lugging this beast in?… remains to be seen.

A clean slate in autumn and ‘leave the leaves’ doesn’t necessarily play well together since my impression of the ‘leave the leaves’ movement is that one should leave all the decay of autumn in place until June or whenever of next year just in case a bee or lightning bug chooses to overwinter in that twig or under that leaf. It’s not a bad reminder that a tornado of leafblowers and a lawn crew which trundles off every last bit of fallen foliage is only leaving a barren wasteland of exposed soil, but it shouldn’t shame you into staring at a drift of leaves against your back door and a depressing flowerbed full of scarecrow twigs all winter. Do what you want. It’s your garden and as a gardener you’ve probably already thought about how your garden fits in with the natural world and how happy you’ve been to find it swarming with birds and insects and wildlife in general. Shame should be reserved for the desolate weed-free lawns of a golf course or the monotonous mono-plantings of some dull homeowner association. If you needed it I give you permission to trim back the dead things which offend you and remove the leaves which have become too much. Your garden will still be a refuge.

The last blooms of clematis ‘venosa violacea’ are as pretty as the first and are probably more numerous since I gave the vine a little trim after its first flush of flowers. A friend said trim it back completely in July, but I wasn’t that brave.

So that’s a lot of tough talk from someone who is likely to never have an immaculate garden to begin with. Other homeowners are complaining about a few leaves blowing into their yard and sullying their pristine turf while I’m usually wishing for a windy day to dump everything here. Most will stay where they fall but at some point a mower bag full of their chopped brothers will be spread on top. It’s a rare day when a twig or stem ends up in the trash and these days there’s not even much going to the compost pile since I tend to tuck pulled weeds and such into the depths of the borders. It may not be ideal from the perspective of the every leaf is sacred crowd, but even after a run through the mower for the sake of neatness and then a toss back onto the beds these processed leftovers still serve plenty of good.

Frost asters galore in the weedier parts of the garden. These have a decent winter structure so will stay even after death…

Mid October. Meh. If the weather were different and I cared more there would be a cleanup in progress but this year I’m not there yet and the mess is fine. You look at your own mess though and feel free to clean up whatever you want and know that I’ll have your back, and in the meantime have a great week!

The Colchicum Report ’24

Sep25

Some people say less is more, and I can see their point in just about everything… except for plants. ‘More is more’ is what I say, and even if it gets to the point of ‘too much’ that’s still ok because at that point you’re doing it for the people who don’t grow too many plants, and I’m sure that’s what they would want you to do. Please don’t try to follow this logic too closely because I’m sure there are quite a few holes in the argument, but long story short: I still don’t have too many colchicums and even if I did that’s still good because I’m more likely to share a few without risking a cold sweat as they leave my greedy little fist.

Colchicum x byzantinum has grown here for years and it always puts on a lengthy, floriferous show.

So in case I’m being too subtle: this post will contain too many colchicums

Colchicum ‘Nancy Lindsay’ looking more violet than normal in the evening light.

Before I go off the deep end let me take a minute to provide some slightly useful colchicum information for those who aren’t familiar with the plants (yet). Generally they’re a bulb -more accurately corm- which puts up lush foliage in the spring, dies down by the summer, and then sends up crocus-like flowers in the fall. Naked ladies or autumn crocus are two common names and they’re a nice fresh surprise of color when the garden is tending towards tired. Decent soil, decent drainage, and some full-sun for the leaves in spring and they’re fairly easy to grow… unless they aren’t… which is sometimes the case, and if it happens to you it’s not you, it’s the plant. Sometimes they’re jerks.

More ‘Nancy Lindsay’. They’re tucked here and there in a blue fescue border and I like the look.

I have a few colchicums which have been jerks, but some like ‘Nancy Lindsay’ have multiplied from single corms to hundreds and that’s an excellent thing. I will just enjoy that they like my garden and not dwell on the ones which have faded away, and I suggest you do the same if it happens.

Maybe Colchicum speciosum bornmuelleri group. I say maybe because a reference book I reference states the “real” thing has brown pollen and these do not, but I’m not quite ready to throw out the name on this one.

Other than the occasional form which insists on dying, the other thing with colchicum is their actual ID. For some reason colchicum are a little muddled in the bulb trade and even from a decent source there’s a good chance some bulbs are going under the wrong name. Not a big deal, because most are nice, but if you’re at the point where you already have a bunch of ‘nice’ ones then the confusion can be a little irritating and the quest to get the “real” this or that can turn into a lengthy pursuit.

More maybe bornmuelleri group. These came from Brent and Becky’s and their description is accurate and the plant is a beauty even if the latest authority describes the form differently.

Only a real nut would take up the mis-labeled challenge and start ordering second and third bulbs from different sources just to see if one looks more “real” than the other, but that’s getting a little too deep so I shall move on without making any guilty confessions.

A nice vigorous (and somewhat floppy) Colchicum speciosum which looks very much like ‘Giant’ but is probably not. Just so you don’t do the same let me point out this clump was about three times the size until the winter when construction runoff kept this spot too wet. Avoid that.

Other more interesting observations on colchicum are that they will flower even if not planted. I showed a bag of stored bulbs coming into bloom in the last post, but a more intentional look would be a bulb or two in a bowl on a windowsill. It might possibly stress the bulb but not that much, so if you have a couple extra give it a try. Or if you want, try a few picked blooms in a vase, and oddly enough maybe even try a few in a vase without water. Fresh flowers will last several days without water, the reason for which I have no idea, but they will and if you’re the type who is a little unsettled by zombie flowers well then put some water in of course.

The box of blooming corms has been planted and seems none the worse for wear. I dug them from this spot in June but couldn’t come up with a better spot so back they went and now I’ll be stuck mowing around them since this became part of the lawn in the meantime.

The final thing about colchicums is where to plant them. They flower at a time of year when just about everything else is floppy and overgrown and it’s hard to spot a low flowering bulb which should be showing off front and center. Some gardeners have nicely mulched beds under shrubs where they show off well, but that’s in short supply here (and might already be dedicated to snowdrops) so into the front edges of the beds they go. Lawns too, although it takes until early June for the foliage to die back and not everyone can turn a blind eye to unmown lawn for that long.

The meadow has become more shaded than I’d like as the aspens continue to grow, but the colchicums are still doing ok even if the bloom is beginning to thin and the individual flowers look like they’re stretching.

It’s a struggle to leave big empty spots in the borders here, so either by design or chance the colchicums are forced to share. To be honest most of it is by chance… I am absolutely the kind of gardener who often wanders around with a small pot in had, wondering where it could possibly fit in, and in July when the colchicum foliage is missing and the spot looks available… in goes a new plant!

Some of the better colchicum companions are creeping sedums and thyme. Colchicum x aggripinum is very accommodating anyway with his low, dwarf foliage, and much easier to work with compared to the leafy mounds of some of his colchicum cousins.

Iv’e had luck planting them amongst creeping thymes and sedums, low fescues, sundrops… anything which isn’t too tall or has overly dense roots… but eventually one reaches a point where one might have more colchicums than groundcovers to cover their feet. That’s when this gardener decided to go all in and just dedicate a whole bed to colchicums. There really was little other choice since clumps needed moving and dividing and one can only walk around for so long with a handful of bulbs before realizing the answer is right there in front of you. The lawn in the side yard is so unnecessary, and wouldn’t a four foot wide grass path be just as effective as a six foot wide path?

The colchicum bed one year on from planting. I’m hoping by next year the newest plantings will fill in some, and also that the gardener will resist the urge to sneak in too many other goodies.

The new colchicum bed is nice, but the soil is not. It’s dry and compacted, and probably doesn’t have all the organic goodness which it should, but a few of the new plantings seem very happy… and a few seem underwhelmed. I’ll give it a year and maybe then I need to consider a second bed? One with better soil would be nice but of course those spots are in high demand.

I think this is ‘Faberge’s Silver’ but without a label I’m second guessing myself, even if last year when it was planted I was absolutely sure I’d know it when it comes up. Maybe the gourd doesn’t fit in this bed, but I’ve never been able to deny a volunteer squash of any kind, they’re always fun to grow.

It’s typical that new ground has barely been planted and the gardener is already talking about more, but that’s about par for the course. This new bed could almost be called a collection. I am still insisting it’s not.

What an oddity, colchicum ‘Harlekijn’ has plenty of “interesting” to deserve a spot in this garden. Normally there’s a bit more pink, but maybe the drought and heat of this spot discourages more color.

Even if it’s not a collection, there are some newer finds which even a non-collector would be compelled to add. ‘Early Rose’ is into year two here and is again a favorite, with beautiful form and color, good vigor, and multiple flowers for a longer bloom season.

Colchicum ‘Early Rose’ first coming up and coloring up. It has a nice upright form.

‘Early Rose’ a week later, still upright and still looking great. There’s even a nice bit of checkering in the bloom, something I always like to see.

And here are some other beauties which are beginning to settle in and clump up.

‘Spartacus’ is a clear pink, dwarf form which is really pretty excellent. He’s got a long season and a color which stands out. I wouldn’t mind if he multiplied more quickly…

‘Glory of Heemstede’ has a nice strong color and puts on a nice show mid season. Also fairly vigorous with a longer season.

I didn’t buy it as such, but I’ve been told this is ‘Pink Star’ and she is putting on a nice show this year.

Not the best picture but the double white flowers of ‘alboplenum’ are another one of my favorites, even when I’m trying to pretend I’m too refined for double flowers. I still wouldn’t mind a bunch more of these even though there are already a few nice patches here and there.

And that’s probably enough colchicums for this year. You were spared photos of every last one thanks to my summer’s-end laziness and apathy and as you can see there were still probably more than enough. I hope for your sake the apathy rolls around again next year as well because my hope is they multiply and spread over the next year and there is even more to go on about next season 🙂

Oh, and I may have added a few new ones as well. PHS Daffodils put out a one time list longer than any I’ve seen in the States and I’d be a fool to pass on them, even if it means looking like I’m some kind of collector -which I’m not. Here is one last photo to prove there are still some other fall blooming things around.

The hardy cyclamen (C. hederifolium) are coming on strong as the summer fades. Soon this whole area will be covered by their foliage.

Enjoy your week and I hope September has brought plenty of nice things to your garden as well.

Somewhat Autumnal

Sep22

Second post. Must get done….

Actually it’s only been about a week and a half since this post was started, so I guess that’s an improvement. As usual I have no excuse, I’m just easily distracted -and a bit on the lazy side- so any structured use of time almost always falls to the wayside. Fortunately it’s not April and I can get away with letting things go a bit, and trust me I have.

This was the new tulip bed along the boxwood hedge, and once they came out it became home for all the excess coleus cuttings and unplanted canna tubers. I think it looks great for September.

The steady rains all August have kept the lawn from dying and made the tropicals very happy. Even though they were all planted kind of late, the gardener was fairly responsible about feeding them here and there and keeping the weeds at bay. One of the biggest successes was the banana which was still small enough to sit next to the light all last winter, and didn’t shrivel up to nearly nothing once the weather got warmer. Instead it came outside at a reasonable time, sank its roots down, and put out leaf after leaf, each bigger than the last. Laugh if you want (since I’ve seen much larger in other Pennsylvania gardens), but until I can overwinter a hardier sort in the ground for more than a winter or two, this is a plant that has made me proud and one which I greet personally on each and every garden walk.

The stem on this beast is at least six feet tall and the leaves rise another four or five. I shall try to dig and store it, but won’t get my hopes up just yet.

The kids keep asking when the bananas will be ripe, but I don’t have the heart to tell them maybe never. I think it’s actually an edible type but yeah, the chances it survives with any decent amount of vigor for the next growing season are pretty slim given my lack of a 15 foot high, heated greenhouse that isn’t already filled. Perhaps some advice from a friend can help. He gifted me a good sized offset this spring which had been overwintered in excellent shape, but under my care from March to April it grew smaller and smaller before it was finally planted outside again and began to recover. On a good note though, it now sports a healthy double stalk and being in a decent sized pot, it should be somewhat easy to drag inside and overwinter.

Another tropical, the bulbs of tuberose are blooming now and fill the evening garden with scent. It’s a real treat, I love it.

It’s too early to mention taking things in for the winter so I’ll only do it once, but if we drift into a cooler spell of weather again I guess it will be time to get more serious. Coleus cuttings will be first as well as any lantana and geranium cuttings. They both seem to root better if taken from plants which haven’t yet experienced too many nippy nights.

The dichondra baskets have been neglected this summer and nearly dried out more times than I’ll admit, but they suffer through it quite well, and they will likely return next year. These will stay out for another month at least, they don’t mind some frost.

Besides the tropical parade, the rest of the late season annuals and lingering perennials are still trying to look fresh in spite of a turn to dry.

The potager is weedy and seedy but at least the rain has kept it green, if not full of flowers and fruit. The geranium pots have been great though, there’s a reason your grandparents grew them.

As any good gardener will be, I’m not happy enough to take the warm and sunny autumn on its own merits but instead I’m already beginning to wonder how the approaching winter will be. Our mildest winter ever was a strong El Nino winter, and going forward that’s over and we will see what a ‘normal’ winter is like these days. August was still the hottest August ever, but September? October? February? Time will tell.

A stray Begonia sutherlandii tubercle found a home here next to the porch foundation and has overwintered twice without any help from me. Returning a third year in a row might have me claiming it’s hardy-ish here.

Tropicals and semi-hardy perennials are a thing of course, but absolutely hardy things are a much less-work kind of thing. Colchicums are hardy things and it’s their season. Here’s the start of it and I think there will be more to come in the next post…. whenever that might be….

Sun? Shade? Dirt? Colchicum don’t care. The corms will begin to grow regardless of if they’re planted yet or not. I almost forgot I had this batch dug and stored in the garage, but fortunately discovered them just in time!

So hopefully this blog will feature a full batch of colchicums in the next post. They are at their absolute peak and in spite of this dry spell which keeps getting longer and longer, and this heat which seems uncomfortably out of season, the colchicum are a bright and fresh smear of color in a garden which is looking slightly tired.

One of the first to ring in the colchicum season, ‘Disraeli’ offers a rich color, large flowers, curious checkering, and a long season of bloom. It is an absolute favorite.

Last summer many of the colchicums were divided and moved to the beds alongside the house and it was a little concerning to see how many my ‘here a bulb there a bulb’ process has resulted in. Someone who likes to throw labels around wouldn’t be all that wrong if they referred to the bed as a collection but I’m going to hold off on that. I bravely stated this fall that I might give away a variety or two which aren’t my favorites, and that’s not the talk of a collector.

The pinkish flush on the freshly opened blooms of x byzantinum ‘Innocence’ fades quickly to pure white. This good doer is another beauty and also a long bloomer as fresh flowers continue to come up as the earliest fade.

Even though it’s not a collection, maybe I did relabel every clump in the last few days. I kept mixing up ‘Ordu’ and ‘Orla’ so with a bright new label that’s no longer a problem, and now there’s one less embarrassing moment as I lead tours through the plantings.

Hope your plantings are also doing well and have a great week.

Ins and Outs

Dec10

Today was a day of steady rain. It’s been in the forecast for several days so that’s no surprise and we’re getting maybe an inch or more before it changes over to snow in the wee hours of the night. Of course the kids are excited, somehow the word got out even though temperatures today and yesterday were downright balmy in the 50s so we will see what the morning brings. Today was all rain though, and definitely an indoors day, so I was a little smug in the fact I have a winter garden that I can retreat to.

This florist cyclamen followed me home back in mid-October and is still going strong two months later. They’re not as addicting as the more graceful hardy types, but I wouldn’t turn my back on another one or two 😉

The winter garden is unusually under control this year, and all I really needed to do was shuffle a few more-dormant things away from the light, and move a few more-active things closer. The succulents have dried out enough to qualify as dormant, but cuttings like geranium and fuchsia are rooting and starting to grow. It looks nice. If it’s a cold January I’m sure more will show up here.

In the outside garden the warm weather has brought on the last of the fall blooming snowdrops. This one, (Galanthus elwesii ssp monostictus ex Montrose…) is doing well although the intended backdrop of variegated sedge has been nibbled back by the bunnies.

The winter garden is nice today, but yesterday outside was great. I cleaned up a few more things, wandered, poked, and generally enjoyed a day in the sun rather than a day of cloudy, chilly gloom. The warmth opened up the fall snowdrops and encouraged winter blooming sorts such as ‘Mrs Macnamara’, ‘Faringdon Double’, and ‘Three Ships’ to start poking out and show their flower buds. I’m still amazed these plants can make a go of blooming in December here in Pa, even just a few years ago they’d be locked up in frozen soil until spring.

So we will see. Even if there is some snow on the ground in the morning there’s still not much in the way of cold for the next few days, so I shall enjoy it while it lasts. I hope December is going great for you as well.

A Boring November

Dec3

Must. make. post….

For a brief moment in time I had fallen under the impression that my autumn-hating self had made a turn for the better, and that the new me could embrace falling temperatures and a dialing back of the gardening year, but the last few weeks have proven that impression to be false. I’m apathetic and bored with the garden, bored with the to-do list, and bored with the plants. Even the onset of the Holiday season hasn’t snapped me out of it, although the annual visit to Longwood Gardens did at least motivate me to pull out the Christmas decorations and get a little into the mood here.

A ‘retro’ themed Longwood Gardens was as festive as ever with holiday song, lights, and decorations galore.

As usual it was a fun trip, and we had a groundbreaking addition this year as the boy wanted to take his girlfriend along for the visit. She was a delight of course, but who are these people I live with these days… people who have jobs and drive and have girlfriends? I wonder where my worm collecting and sandbox playing garden helpers have disappeared to.

Christmas decorations in the Music Room. The girl liked all the retro colors and style and I can see all the old becoming new again just as it often does.

Back at home I did at least manage to finish up the bulk of the garden cleanup and bring in the last of the tender things, just in time for our four cold days which actually managed to put a little frost into the soil and a skim of ice on the mountain lakes. Immediately the conversation turned to the impending winter and all the joys of snow and cold. Rumor around here is we are to expect a “bad” winter with a bunch of cold and snow all courtesy of an El Niño weather pattern, which to me sounds exciting but I wonder if it really stands a chance. Perhaps we do have the conditions for a nice Nor’easter pulling in all kinds of snowy moisture from the coast but I’m not sure I can completely put my trust in what “everyone” is saying. From what I gather 2023 is on track to be the warmest year ever recorded and I’m just not ready to put warmest year and bad winter together as a forecast… so as always we will wait and see what the actual local weather does.

Ready for winter with just a few still-too-nice to be cut down perennials and a few growing evergreens. The ‘Gold Cone’ juniper to the left is getting a bit sloppy as it approaches maturity and I’m debating taking an axe to it. The kids wanted it for Christmas though, so once the lights are off…

We will also have to wait and see what the gardener here does. I’m ready to leave this season of brown behind and move on to white. It can be snow or snowdrops, both will make me equally happy although I don’t know if my knee is ready for a season on the slopes yet… although kneeling is a critical part of snowdrop season as well…

I begged and borrowed my way to enough leaves to blanket the potager beds with a cover of mulch. Tulips have been planted in several and with or without snow it should be a nice April show.

I just checked the 10 day forecast. Only four days below freezing and an inch of rain next Sunday. Those lows are well onto the warm side of average in a month when we should be below freezing each night, and those lows are not exactly the weather we will need for a white Christmas.

Many plants will enjoy another mild winter. Lycoris houdyshellii on the left and L. radiata on the right will suffer foliage damage if it gets too cold for too long. Based on a twenty year average they shouldn’t survive here, but on a five year? …so far so good.

I apologize for a somewhat gloomy post on a gloomy late autumn day, but if you need a flashback to cheerier times give Cathy a visit at Words and Herbs for her week of flowers. It’s what I should be looking at rather than whining about weather and moping about the season. Perhaps I’ll visit now. Enjoy 🙂

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: fall