Spring is Quite Awesome

May24

Okay. So if this blog post goes up in the next day or two it’s just a three week gap and not four, and I guess that’s better, even if I’m forcing myself to sit here right now and get something done while my heart is saying do nothing, crawl into bed, find a blanket, play mindless phone games….

The violas of spring look great, they love the cool weather and frequent rains, and for once I like the color mix in this pot. Too often I impulsively buy a celebratory mess of spring shades and hope for the best, and then act confused when the colors still look like a mess when planted!

With this week’s chilly and damp weather a blanket is definitely required even though a couple days prior the air conditioning had to go on to fight the heat and humidity. Those temperatures, alongside regular rains and then a little too many rains, has the garden bursting with growth and color and fortunately not with fugus and blight yet, and I hope it stays that way. I grabbed a bunch of pictures last weekend during a gap in the rain, and my favorite subject was the lovely rose ‘Aicha’. I love her soft shade of yellow, the simplicity of her single flowers, and the arching shape to the bush. She has a light fragrance, and right now I can forgive the leaf spot and only a few here-and-there sparse reblooming flowers in late summer.

The yellow of ‘Aicha’ ushers in the yellow/blue/purple phase of the front garden.

I picked up ‘Aicha’ at Der Rosenmeister nursery on a spring trip to Ithaca NY one year, and each summer since it has been a rose dream to make it up to their open garden party (June 13th this year btw) which Leon hosts each year. It’s a party with music and fun, plus hundreds of full-bloom, cold-hardy rambling and climbing roses massed across the grounds of his home. I would make a wish list of course. It took me days of contemplating to fit in just three, so a list would be trouble which I don’t need but where’s the fun in that?

Somewhat fitting into the yellow/blue/purple phase is the variegated Iris pallida ‘Aureo Variegata’ which I love for foliage as much as the lemony scented flowers.

It’s actually still early for roses so lets bask in the show of the bearded iris first. The iris don’t like the rain right now, but last summer’s drought was just what they do like, and this spring they’re showing their appreciation of the previous year’s rot-free dry weather. I probably said I wanted more last summer and then did nothing to accomplish that, so this year I have a plan. I think they would do very well on the berm. I’m at a point where I want to plant something appropriate on the berm, and as long as nobody complains too vigorously about weeds in the iris I think this summer I’ll give it try. Younger me would aim for weeding after planting, but I’m starting to understand my limits as I get a bit more experience, and I can warn everyone right now that the iris on the berm will be weedy and I apologize ahead of time.

‘Sunol’ is an oddly colored iris which would probably do better on a weedy berm rather than the garden since it’s just as crowded, but less sunny here. I believe the “dwarf” blue spruce is squeezing it out faster than I wanted to imagine.

I guess you can’t talk about the May garden without mentioning weeds. One of this year’s goals was to eliminate a few from the garden and mostly from the lawn, and when a friend saw that post they mentioned the idea of a wildflower section in a corner of the lawn as a a safe-zone to balance the weedless-lawn effort. Upon hearing this excellent suggestion I realized that what I wrote was really a bunch of misleading nonsense. Such is often the case for this blog but in this case it gives a totally different picture than intended. I forgot that the lawn purists consider a lawn as a place for grass and only grass, and oh my gosh that’s not what I’m aiming for since in my opinion a grass-only lawn is about as boring as boring can be. My weeds are narrowleaf plantain and creeping charlie. I hate the plantain and have grown tired of the creeping charlie so they are now the two weeds who’s numbers I am trying to reduce. Violets as well but I hesitate to mention that since they’re so beloved, but they seed everywhere and are nearly impossible to get out of flower beds, so enough is enough. My biggest problem in spraying to control these three weeds is that the clover and dandelions are also killed if spray get on them, so I have to be careful and precise to miss them. Hawkweed is also a treasure in my lawn, and to be honest I’ve transplanted plugs to get it into new spots… actually in the older parts of town I’ve seen a lawn or two with a few shades of yellow which I’d love in my own lawn, but I’m not quite ready to knock on doors asking for weed samples. So just to be clear, for me a weed-free lawn is only grass-based, and the green is well spangled with the blooms of a carefully curated blend of colors, just with less plantain mostly because I just don’t like the stuff… unless it’s the wide-leaf form in purple which I guess I do like…

Bearded iris are not weeds in any sense of the term. This is ‘Elsinore’, one of my favorites.

So rest assured this garden is quite safe from a turf obsession. To lose finches picking through dandelion seedheads, bunnies grazing the clover patches, and bees working the birds foot trefoil would be sad. Actually I feel a little concerned when I see a vast expanse of fertilizer-hyped, weed-killer soaked turf and think of the hours wasted keeping it that way and the dollars which could have been spent on better pursuits. Those people obviously never grew a snowdrop nor jealously eyed a patch of English daisies growing in a garden they visited last weekend and then thought of their own pot of English daisies and then spent the next three days staring out at a rainy garden wondering where a good spot would be to plant them in the lawn… Hmmm. You may see why little actual work happens here when the gardener wastes hours thinking about where in the lawn to plant new weeds.

Glaucium corniculatum blackspot or red horned-poppy

The colchicum bed with a few not-colchicums filling in the gaps. The orange poppies are red horned-poppies (Glaucium corniculatum) and love a dry, poor soil which doesn’t speak well of the soil in this bed.

Enough about weeds. May here is about flowers and the enthusiastic growth of plants, and besides the iris here are a few odds and ends of treasures and tasks.

Robin's PlantainErigeron pulchellus 'Lynnhaven Carpet

Matt Bricker will often bring a few non-galanthus goodies to the Galanthus Gala, and one year a pot of Robin’s Plantain (Erigeron pulchellus ‘Lynnhaven Carpet’) came home with me. It’s a nice low groundcover with soft leaves and cheerful daisies in spring and is about as easy to grow as anything.

Not that I’m anything close to a purist but I just noticed the horned poppies and Robin’s Plantain (a daisy not to be confused with the previously mentioned plantain) are North American natives and to keep with a theme for more than a minute here’s one last shrubby, maybe someday small treeish native thing, the red buckeye (Aesculus pavia). In a miserably hot and dry spot on the berm it carries on, growing inch by inch and blooming faithfully each spring. It would like a better spot but carries on well enough with what it has, the show increasingly clashing with the pink and mauve rhododendrons which also suffer on the slope here.

Red buckeye (Aesculus pavia) is listed as a hummingbird magnet but as of yet… it’s just a pretty shrub on the berm. I’m hiding buckeye seeds each year and maybe one day they’ll carpet the industrial park.

That was possibly a full minute of focus on how unfocused I am, but as I’m sure you know there are just so many other things going on it’s hard to stick to a task. A gardener goes out with the ambition of transplanting a sedum but sees a branch to prune and a weed to pull and then gets lost looking for a trowel they remember using two days ago and before you know it the rain started again and you’re wondering why you spent twenty minutes deadheading hellebores instead of mucking leaves out of the pond. There’s a mile long to-do list, which I’m sure is the same for every gardener (and if not and you are that rare exception please keep that an inside thought) and perhaps this weekend the list will get shorter before it gets even longer. I don’t even know what my list says so here’s a guesstimate. Most everything is out for the summer, most vegetables are coming along, a few new plants are here, but the summer bulbs and back porch have not yet been attended to.

The bromeliads are slightly pale but nearly as lush as when they came inside last fall. They’re almost too easy and this gardener is only allowed to buy maybe one or (at most) two new ones this year since that’s ok and not a sign of addiction at all.

On a plus side the garage is still being used for vehicles rather than entering the annual contest to hold as many empty pots, wheelbarrows, boxes, bags of potting soil and tables full of drying bulbs and corms as possible, and to achieve that the driveway has stayed open enough to drive on. It’s basic math since I am out numbered now. Three out of the four drivers here agree that the driveway is better utilized for cars rather than as a makeshift summer nursery/pot ghetto/staging area for excessive plant additions to the garden, and now the gardener is forced to hide his compulsion just around the corner, alongside the garage 😉

golden ninebark seedling Physocarpus opulifolius

My friend Kathy Purdy warns that stray tree and shrub seedlings should be addressed when small and not allowed to sink their roots in and create a removal issue down the line, but… golden ninebark seedlings (Physocarpus opulifolius) are so cute and can’t possibly ever be in the wrong place… right?

That’s it from here. It is now Saturday morning and once the last person asleep here wakes up we shall go to a coffee shop and the two children will make us breakfast… assuming we pay for it and tip them as well, and then after that I’m sure something will get done here even if your guess is as good as mine as to what it will be. The lawn needs cutting, so I’ll probably head outside and start by planting petunias next door and then check the pool filter. Maybe I’ll eventually find that trowel again, who knows, but in the meantime I hope you have a wonderful spring weekend!

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 😉

Independence Day

Jul4

It’s the Fourth of July here in the US, Independence Day, and long story short we have taxation WITH representation now rather than without. That appears to matter to 50-60% of eligible voters in a presidential election year but drops to only about 40% in midterm elections, so maybe it was more of a cool slogan than a real sentiment, but whatever… Happy Fourth!

The front porch is suitably patriotic for the season with a bit of streptocarpella in the hanging baskets this year.

Barbecue and fireworks are the real tradition these days, and here in PA the grilling we do would probably mortally wound any barbecuing Southerner, but we try. There will be plenty of over-eating regardless and the fireworks will be covered as well, although with the dry weather our home will be sticking to floral fireworks instead.

The first of the red hot pokers(Kniphofia) are firing up and they’re a favorite of mine. The newer selected forms have a longer bloom season and rebloom as well so that’s a win-win over the flash in a pan older versions.

Were it not for the entire spring being spent picking rocks and hauling stone, there’s a good chance the gardener would have divided and spread more pokers around the garden… but… there’s always next year 😉

A slightly less-weedy garden border. To be honest much of the plantings are self sown so maybe it would be no loss to pull much of it out and spread more pokers around! I’m sure everything else would return anyway, and in less time than I’d like to admit.

So fireworks and food. This year for the first time ever I’m neck and neck with the robins in the race to get blueberries. I think because it’s been dry the robins have moved to wetter gardens, and the lazy young robins which enjoy sitting in a blueberry bush all day, napping, eating, napping, have moved out with them.

There’s about a pint of blueberries sitting on the counter waiting to transform into a nice pancake or muffin, and it looks like we have enough for a couple more pickings.

Fireworks, food, and fragrance. The last few weeks the back garden has been filled with the fragrance of the little leaf linden (Tilia) and the buzz of the thousands of bees and beetles and bugs which swarm to the tree, but this week it’s all the regal lilies (Lilium regale). A warm, muggy evening spent watering the potager vegetables and enjoying the scent of the lilies is not a bad way to spend a holiday weekend.

Regal lilies are easy from seed. They’re easy in general, just keep an eye on them for the bright red lily beetles which have finally made their way here and become a problem in my garden.

…and don’t forget the ‘Don’t tread on me’ part of Independence day. This spring I noticed that as the garden fills and matures I’m less likely to allow the same weeds which I used to ignore. I realized this while pulling a couple bull thistle(Cirsium vulgare) seedlings which aren’t really a problem here but aren’t really that nice to bump into while “weeding” other things. Maybe my garden is becoming more civilized, and these armed plants which used to be just fine in the wild-West of my garden’s early days just aren’t safe to have as plantings pack in and mature. Today I permit a few fancy thistles armed with open spines in the main beds, and regulate some stinging nettles with their concealed weapons in the back end of the yard, and altogether it’s a much safer world. What a concept.

The woolly thistle (Cirsium eriophorum) even has purple tips on the spines and a fuzzy fluff! You really need a little training and have to know what you’re doing before you play around with this plant, but it’s still worth keeping around.

So there you have it. Food, fireworks, fragrance, and some independence. I hope you have an excellent summer week and if you’re off for the Monday, please enjoy 🙂

A January Thaw

Feb16

Saturday I put on a sweatshirt and the Christmas lights came down. Of course the job is ten times easier when a couple extra hands join in, but surprisingly both children had much more important things to do so only the dog was there for me. He’s not quite as helpful as you might think. The lights all came down and then the porch got a good hosing off, and once that was done I rewarded myself with a little puttering around. The front foundation bed (the warmest spot in the garden) got a little cleaning up and the sprouting snowdrops are all ready to show off to best effect. Too bad we woke to actual snow the next morning.

Snowdrops up to their ankles in the white stuff again. Most are still just fine, although here and there is some singed foliage and freeze dried scapes.

You could barely call our last warmup a January thaw. First of all it’s February and second of all we barely melted the snow from the last storms and there’s still a good amount of ice in every shady bed and covering most of the lawn. I’m an optimistic early cleaner, but even I left plenty since I know the cold still has another week or so in it. Back inside to the winter garden. I’ve been taking cuttings and repotting amaryllis. Primrose are showing buds. It’s everything the outside garden isn’t.

Look at the cool foliage of this variegated pelargonium. No idea on the name, but I’ll be interested to see how much of the pink remains once the temperatures warm up.

The winter garden can use the attention since once things warm up outside I can barely be bothered with watering anything indoors. The amaryllis will be cool and a few are already showing buds, but overall the indoor gardening space is beginning to get tight with all the new pots I’ve been adding. I was joking with a friend that what I need is a spring garage sale to clear out everything from under the garage lights, but then what would I do if I needed a few dozen pots of succulent cuttings in June? Bet they didn’t think of that.

This red salvia is the perfect color for February. Cestrum nocturnum (night-blooming jasmine) is the taller plant and I really hope I get some blooms on it this summer.

Two pots of Cestrum nocturnum is probably one more than I need, but night-blooming jasmine is one of my latest favorite plants. It was one of those things which followed me home from a late autumn garden visit. “Take this, you’ll want this” was what I was told as branches were lopped off and pushed into my hands. Of course I dutifully added them to the haul and didn’t think much else of it until the sun began to set as I motored home again through the mountains. Slowly as the scenery turned to night I began to take notice of a sweet scent filling the car. Night-blooming jasmine is a real thing and I enjoyed a thoroughly perfumed car ride for the tail end of my trip. I’m already imagining a hot summer night where the deck is filled with a jasmine fragrance, but of course I shouldn’t count my chickens before they’ve hatched since any number of things can go wrong between now and then.

I don’t care though. It’s still February and 2022 will be the most perfect and perfumed gardening year this plot of earth has ever imagined or experienced. Weeds will be non-existent and rainfall will arrive perfectly timed and only at night. Mosquitos and gnats will lose their taste for (my) blood and I’ll practically live in the garden. And it won’t be a dirty, sweaty, often bloody life it will be all cold drinks and white shorts. Absolutely.

And if you believe that you’ll probably also believe I’m not going to mention snowdrops one more time. The forecast looks to be warming and plans are afoot for a Philly snowdropping trip late next week and I’m all ears for new gardens to visit. It will be fun I’m sure so until then enjoy your week 🙂

A Bit of Botanizing

Jun10

After twenty years in the state of Pennsylvania I suppose it’s time to recognize that I might be settling in for a longer haul. A job originally brought me here but my wife grew up in the area and now as my kids become older they’re about at that point where they will forever wear that label of being ‘from here’. So I guess it’s time to start learning the lay of the land. The lay of the local land that is, not the hours long journeys, just the trips up the street and into the woods. This morning was beautiful, I had a few hours free, I knew a place where lady slipper orchids grow.

A dirt road puddle with some tadpoles.

It was too late for the lady slipper orchids so I headed up into the mountains looking for mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia). Too early for them. No problem. I took the long way home and stopped to explore a clearcut area. I had planned on going a little further and making this a plant tour, but a few tadpoles stranded in a mudpuddle on the road distracted me. The pond I filled last fall is still disgustingly empty of amphibians, so in a bid to rescue the from their rapidly evaporating home (and bring tadpoles to suburbia) I picked up some roadside trash and began filling it with tadpoles.

Tadpole rescue. About two dozen came home in my cup holder.

On the way out I also managed to find a few plants worth photographing. They’re not lady slippers, but Pixterbloom Azalea (Rhododenron periclymenoides… I think) are nice enough as well. My research to identify them came up with the word “common” but that shouldn’t matter. They’re amazing, and the color and form are perfect, and for all the work I do in the garden these plants just spring up on their own and it’s a little humbling.

Pinxterboom Azalea? (R. periclymenoides) doing well in a damp area. They had a nice sweet fragrance, and the scent carried quite a distance.

The azaleas seemed to be enjoying the full sun of the recently cleared area. I know people love trees and trees do a lot to bail us out of our global warming future, but some sunlight on the ground is good too and these plants seem to appreciate it.

For a minute I thought of coming back for seed and starting a few at home but then laughed at my delusional ambition. Enjoying them in the mountains will be just fine.

There’s another park I haven’t been to in a while that has been doing some burns in order to increase the plant diversity. Maybe I should add that visit to the to-do list.

The beautiful day was almost as nice as the azaleas. It’s good to know these things still go on year after year in spite of us.

So it was an entirely unsuccessful botanizing trip. Maybe I’ll catch the lady slippers next year and the mountain laurel in a few weeks, but in the meantime I have tadpoles to watch. That’s not bad either, and it’s a good distraction from the endless daffodil digging and trudging around the garden with a water hose… rain would be nice just about now.

Have a great week. Mine has started out just fine, but I can’t help but laugh at the fact that no one questioned me about being gone for hours and returning with a dirty cup full of tadpoles.

Three Things

Jul17

Summer is flying by way too fast and fewer and fewer things are getting done. I wonder where the time goes but then remember that afternoon nap which got away from me and then the hour spent just sitting on the porch ‘looking’, and things kind of all come together. Summer is the lazy person’s nirvana.

Still a few things get done here and there. Mulching is one thing which happened, and although it was a half load with more planned for later, it made a world of difference even if most of it is just a foot wide strip edging the beds.

Even with a ruthless hand the purple coneflowers (Echinacea) still seed all over. I’m fine with that of course, although I did yank a few in the way of my mulching and edging.

Mulching would have gone much faster but even a lazy gardener can be a greedy gardener. Beds were expanded, some enough so that the expansion was remarked upon by the housemates. I just explained that the re-edging of the beds was necessary and left it at that. New mulch is always appreciated, so the latest land grab was quickly forgotten.

Grandma’s pool path has been cleaned up, and kniphofia ‘Alcazar’ is still sending up fresh pokers. I’ve shovel-pruned a few varieties which just don’t flower long enough, but ‘Alcazar’ has been a winner.

A second thing of note is lily season. They’re doing great this year and although I’d prefer them towering over the other plants I guess they’re not bad at all considering how thin the soil is that they’re growing in.

‘Silk Road’ gets better every year. Very fragrant, love the color, and she’s no trouble at all.

A few shovel-fulls of compost might be in order for these ladies since they really get no attention otherwise. The only time they caused me any concern was in April when a late freeze damaged a few of the earliest ones. Most of my favorites survived but a few froze back enough to call it a year. Hopefully they’ll be back next spring.

Lily ‘Leslie Woodriff’ is just off to the left. I may have to find a new home for this one since she just doesn’t seem to show off well with her companions. That’s part of it, but truth be told I just wanted to show off the rusty foxgloves and dill 🙂

Just a few more…

Lily ‘Conca d’Or’ is absolutely wow this week. I snapped a potful up on clearance last summer, and this just shows how well the local nursery cares for their stock, even when past prime.

And one more. Lilium lancifolium, the old fashioned tiger lily. I think I read somewhere the garden version is a sterile triploid version and that sounds believable since it never sets seed, but this is the one most likely to be found in old gardens and around abandoned homesteads so it seems to be doing just fine as is. Notice the round little dark bulbils which this lily produces where leaf meets stem. They’re super easy to pluck off and pot up, and in just two or three years you’ll have a brand new tiger lily colony. Be careful though. They have a reputation as a Typhoid Mary of the lily world and are said to carry all kinds of viruses which aphids can spread to their more refined cousins. Of course I rarely listen to good advice and grow them anyway. They always remind me of summers in Maine and my aunt’s old farmhouse garden and I guess I’ll risk the others for that.

Lilium lancifolium the tiger lily.

I also got a hold of the double tiger lily last summer. Beautiful or atrocious is in the eye of the beholder, but it’s just a few days behind the single so you’ll have to wait.

Off to a third thing. The phlox are in bloom and as usual they don’t compare to the very first year I prepped a bed and planted them out, but also as usual I’m willing to forgive many of the flaws in one of my favorite flowers. The fragrance of phlox is another summer farmhouse memory so when they’re in bloom out back even I can be convinced to grab a trowel and pruner and do a little weeding and straightening up just to be around them.

The potager nearly always looks a mess but to me I’m quite happy puttering around looking for surprises… and vegetables… every now and then it produces an onion or something, just enough to retain the ‘potager’ name 🙂

And maybe a fourth thing. The Russian hollyhock (Alcea rugosa) has captured my imagination as easily as their homeland captured the last election. The color is a soft yellow which goes with everything, the plants top out at a decent 6-7 feet, and best of all there’s still no rust to be seen on the leaves. In the front yard the current crop of regular hollyhock seedlings are peppered with orange spots and yellowing leaves, but back here it’s still a clean slate. I hope it stays that way.

Alcea rugosa, the Russian hollyhock. My fingers are crossed for plenty of seeds since I want to plant this thing all over. Please ignore the Japanes beetle nibblings which have ruined some of the show…

So that’s it from here. Hope your summer is rolling along just as nicely as mine (although maybe at a slower pace) and you’re enjoying the sunny bliss of the season. It may all seem carefree wonder but don’t forget to give some consideration to the cooler parts of the year and by that I mean snowdrop season of course. Edgewood Gardens should be putting out a snowdrop list soon and I have no other choice but to wait patiently until it comes to my inbox. There’s already been a species list for the real fanatics (which I won’t answer yes or no to on ordering from) but the named drops list should be in the works as well. When it comes out I like to think of it as Christmas in July, and as it stands right now I’m sure I’ve been very good this year 😉

Happy Fourth!

Jul4

Summer is here and so is that wonderful humidity and heat. Oddly enough we’ve also been getting rain-free days, and when I think back to last week there were actually a number of absolutely beautiful days, which I swear did not exist last year. Suddenly I love gardening again and even though I actually had to water a few things (for the first time in months) things are generally pretty good. I’m thinking today’s Independence day celebrations should be quite excellent, even if we don’t have tanks rumbling along in the local parade or fighter jets buzzing the church picnics.

Welcome to the festivities, and welcome to the bougainvillea hanging basket which was irresistibly priced at a local greenhouse this spring.

Yesterday evening the yard cleanup was as far as it was going to get, and the light was low, so I was able to get a few decent pictures taken before retiring to the porch with a cold drink and ceiling fan.

I think these spikes are the curious spires of the rusty foxglove (Digitalis ferruginea) which have been biding their time for three years before actually blooming. I also think they will pass on after blooming so we’ll see about any reseeding for next year.

There’s a lot of altitude this summer with tall plants reaching for the sky. The rusty foxgloves are topping out at just under six feet which is not bad at all since I do like wandering around with my plants rather than looking down at them.

Digitalis ferruginea? I planted a couple different kinds of foxgloves a few years ago, and to my un-botanical eye many look quite similar.

Usually the fuzzy leaved verbascums (mullein) are my high altitude stars but this year I have a Canada lily (Lilium canadense) which has taken it upon itself to reach for the sky. Before slouching back down to my height, it was measuring in at just over the seven foot mark, and it wouldn’t have been the worst idea to tie in a stake to keep it up there.

Lilium canadense, a native to the Eastern woodlands of N . America, and probably something that would be more common if there were less deer.

Last year this fellow was barely half the height with just two or three blooms, but this is a lily which loves steady moisture, and trust me it had moisture galore last year.

Love the speckled insides, and the flowers are bringing some nice floral fireworks up to deck height.

A sibling of this plant just a few feet away has decided to focus on multiplying, and although the stalks are only about half the height there are quite a few little sprouts coming up here and there around the main plants.

This one has slouched into the arms of a cutleaf sumac. I think these are some pretty elegant flowers, but honestly, can you think of any unattractive lily?

Other robust plants around the garden include some soft yellow hollyhocks which I’m hoping can avoid the rust attacks which did in last year’s planting. I think this is Alcea rugosa, the Russian hollyhock, and although the color is limited to yellow it’s hopefully a start in finding a hollyhock which can grow and bloom in this garden without losing every last leaf to a rusty mess of diseased foliage. Word is there are other rust-resistant forms out there, and I think it’s not the worst idea to give a few more a try 🙂

The Russian hollyhock (Alcea rugosa… I think). A little yellowing on the leaf tips, so it’s not entirely happy, but at least it still has leaves which wasn’t the case last year.

Things are still pretty short in the tropical garden but at least I finally have it planted, edged, and mulched (and mostly weeded). The mulch is all lawn clippings raided from the piles dumped in the woods so today it’s kind of smelly, but hopefully that fades away as it dries out a bit. The cannas and elephant ears love this mulch. Between the heat and the nutrients which wash out of the grass they should really take off now… assuming my neighbors haven’t overdone it with the weed killer which could be hitchiking in with the clippings (although I don’t think they’ve been spreading anything around lately).

Mostly edged and mulched, and this part of my lawn is obviously not heavy on the weedkiller. There’s more than enough clover, and if you could eat the clover little bunny please do so and give my scrubby birch a break from the nibbling (the birch is the clump of well-pruned leaves to the right of the rose, now covered with chicken wire).

I may try and tackle a little more mulching and weeding this morning before it gets too hot and sweaty and the pool lures me away. We’ll see. In the meantime I know for sure I’ll be admiring the Regal lilies which are flowering fantastically this week, and are filling the whole backyard with that slightly overpowering scent of summer.

A good year for lilies. Lilium regale and the first of the garden phlox in the potager.

I like the lilies. They’re remarkably easy and fast from seeds and these are just the ones which survived a late frost earlier in the year. If all would have gone according to plan there would have been about twice as many, but hopefully next year the ones which froze to mush will return. Plans may be overrated anyway. None of the plans included the dark purple ‘Lauren’s Grape’ opium poppy which reseeded from last year’s far more pathetic plantings, and if the plan to dig up tulips worked out I’m sure these would have been lost.

The potager in early July. A little neglected, but holding up regardless with lilies, phlox and poppies.

So if you have plans to enjoy the holiday I hope they work out well, and if they don’t I hope things come together even better, and if today is just Thursday rather than a holiday, well then the weekend is approaching for you as well. In any case here’s to a beautiful day!

Before

Jul19

It appears a little catching up needs to be done. A gardener’s life is always hectic in the spring but for a while I was doing just fine keeping up. Not to brag but this spring was exceptionally well under-control, with weeding and seeding and cutting and moving all happening close to when they should… something that has never happened in years prior here at the sorta ‘burb. I was even halfway close to getting all the new purchases into the ground within days of buying them, rather than nearly killing them two or three times before planting. Let me tell you it’s amazing what a difference that makes! But then the blahs hit. Relentless mowing and trimming and spider mites and weeds and the whole ‘what’s the point’ thought process set in as June turned into July and the temperature and humidity tag teamed each other to new heights. When you reach the end of your ‘around the garden weeding tour’ only to find yourself at the start of the next ‘around the yard weeding tour’ it can get a little discouraging, and to be honest that’s where I left off. Most of the new plants and annuals were in the ground, the automatic drip lines to the container plantings were working, all the insects were well fed… so off to the pool, a weekend at Omi and Opa’s, some porch sitting, and then a week off to Disney to realize how good I had it all along. Miles of trudging through 100F+ heat indices and then waiting on lines for every foreseeable human need can change a person, and I have returned renewed. Here are a few late June/ early July highlights to begin my return to gardening. 😉

Clematis suffer here in poor locations with shoddy supports. I finally moved ‘Ville de Lyons’ to a decent spot and she’s rewarded me with a wonderful show of flowers. Now I just need to move a nice blue to the other side!

This post may seem entirely random because it is. I don’t bother taking pictures when I’m disgusted with the garden so all the last few weeks can offer are a few furtive scurries outside when I felt like I had to get a few pictures onto the camera even though I knew there wasn’t much worth documenting.

Common milkweed right next to the front door. Of course it’s the absolute wrong place for a weed so I trimmed it down to two feet the day after it was flattened by a storm… only to see my first Monarch butterfly 24 hours later.

Speaking of documenting, I do have to tally up another $33 for two amazingly grown, full of buds, Japanese iris which I bought for myself as a Father’s Day gift. I know I shouldn’t count them since they were a gift, but being that I was surprised with an actual gift certificate the next day I guess I shouldn’t push my luck so onto the 2018 tally they go.

Iris ensata ‘Lion King’ is a lot of everything. Maybe this is my own personal point of ‘too much’ because I prefer the simpler purple one I bought the same day, but I guess we’ll see next year… assuming I can keep it alive 🙂

Add on a random tornado that touched down about seven miles down the interstate. That’s the second one in about two years, kind of bizarre considering no one remembers ever having tornados here before.

Fortunately the tornado hit a purely commercial area, later in the evening after things had closed down. Timing was everything.

Then the heat and humidity descended. Heat for us means upper nineties so if the Southerners can excuse a little whining I just want to say it felt really hot. Not hot enough to scorch the lawn yet (and spare me from all the mind numbing mowing) but it was hot enough to wake up every bug and blight and get them energized and inspired enough to take on the plant world.

Apparently thick haze wasn’t enough to mellow out the harsh light of mid-day, but here’s the front border just waking up from it’s June lull. Some color, but still mostly green.

The big grasses are one of the plants which seem to thrive on heat and dry spells.

Along the street the variegated giant reed grass is looking awesome again and the pink fountain grass (Pennisetum ‘Karley Rose’) is flowering up a storm. Last year all the rain had the fountain grass too lush and green and completely floppy.

One plant which did not appreciate the humidity were the hollyhocks (Alcea rosea). As the flowers began to open up from the bottom of the seven foot stalks, the orange spots of rust followed behind, creeping from leaf to leaf. Just for the record I don’t remember rust on hollyhocks being such a plague years ago when my mother grew these. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that this is some new strain which came into the country somewhere along the line, and has ended any hopes of fungicide-free hollyhock growing on the East Coast.

The orange spots of hollyhock rust working their way up from the base of the plant. This will not end well.

A garden which actually enjoys some heat and humidity is the tropical bed. The cannas have yet to take off but given a little water and fertilizer I know they will (and I’m even more confident about that since this photo dates back to the end of June).

The red of ‘Black Forest’ rose continues to heat up the tropical border, but a few other things are filling in. Verbena bonariensis and the first dahlias are just a few weeks away.

I would guess there are plenty of hot and dry spots in South Africa, so it doesn’t surprise me that the prickly daisy flowers of Berkheya purpurea look fresh and happy opening up in the heat. I haven’t quite figured out yet why I like thistly plants, but this prickly, perennial mess is one of my favorites!

Berkheya purpurea looing as good as it gets in the rock garden.

Another mess which absolutely thrills me is the meadow garden. In early July the grass is just beginning to dry off, and the golden rudbeckia and orange butterfly weed fill it up with color -even if golden rudbeckia are one of my least favorite colors.

The meadow garden with a smattering of aspen saplings which have been allowed to sprout up. Of course they’ll end up casting too much shade, but right now I love the rocky mountain meadow look.

I leave you with one last bit of randomness. I’ve been nursing a ‘Chuck Hayes’ gardenia along since picking it up at the nursery late last summer. I tried the same thing the year before but of course killed it just as it was about to bloom, but second time must be the charm. With the new plant I carefully did nothing other than take it into the garage to escape the worst of the winter, and then water just enough to keep it alive. No silly fertilizing, or repotting, or anything else that would mess with the healthy plant that I had, all I did was wait patiently as it set buds and then finally decided to open up a few which had been forming all spring. On the first day of the most brutal, heavy, enveloping humidity ‘Chuck Hayes’ opened a bloom and filled the air with his Southern perfume, and it was just like I hoped it would be.

Gardenia ‘Chuck Hayes’ in bloom. Another catch it while it’s still alive moment in the garden.

And then the blahs hit. It’s really not as bad as it sounds since I’ve already seen the other side, but to make a long story short, the garden survives.

$33 worth of gifts to myself

$738 total so far for the 2018 gardening year.

I’m So Funny

May12

And I am unanimous in that opinion.

My mother in law lives next door and has the wonderful fortune of being able to look out upon the Sorta Suburbia gardens whenever and for however long she wants. She rarely comments, but did make a point of mentioning how “terrible” the lawn looks with all the dandelions. I had to agree. There’s too much brash yellow, and I reassured her that it will look much better once the creeping Charlie spreads some more and adds a cooling wash of pale lavender to all the green. She was not amused.

All the colors of spring

For as well as I grow the common dandelions, the other sorts have been remarkably troublesome. I managed to kill the ones with a delicious purple tint to the foliage, and the pink ones never really took off. Fortunately my seedlings of the white dandelion (Taraxacum albidum) are finally settling in. This Japanese cousin of the golden dandelion appears to be much tastier than its common neighbors, and eventually I had to resort to caging it in order to keep the bunnies away long enough for it to establish.

taraxacum albidum

While I consider how best to establish a patch of white dandelions in the lawn I’ll leave you with another weed. When we first moved here I brought along a small wisteria which originally came as a cutting off my parent’s vine in NY. After a few years in the veggie bed it moved again into the meadow garden and made a habit out of looking out of place for four years. After losing its buds to late freezes for the third year in a row I took a saw to it. Fortunately the roots suckered in the vegetable garden and being that I’m far to lazy to search them all out, I left one. Its fragrance filled the yard yesterday evening, even stronger than the struggling (intentionally planted) lilacs.

A wisteria twig… perhaps someday a tree… or maybe I should build a pergola here 🙂

So for all my efforts the best things in the garden right now are weeds. Come visit and I can finally be the person who gets to say “Oh that old thing? I should really just rip it up, it grows like a weed for me”.

Around Back

Jul3

It’s been a wonderful spring with reliable rain, even temperatures, and no extreme weather. This is enough to spoil a gardener and make him forget the usual drought and plague which usual hit about this time of year. Delphinium would be my poster child for weather gone wrong, and in a normal year would lay in a storm beaten heap well before the end of June.

The delphinium this year have been exceptional. Even though this photo is a few days old they’re still gracing this corner of the porch with two foot long trusses of (still upright) bloom.

So I couldn’t help but gloat a little over the delphinium, but the real point to this post is to show a little of the backyard and hopefully impress someone with how busy I’ve been. There’s a whole other garden back there and sometimes my limited attention span never makes it past the Tuesday view of the front street border 😉

First stop is the tropical garden alongside the South side of the house. Our neighbor has stopped commenting about the “black, dead eyes’ which she sees every time she looks out the kitchen window. I’m guessing she’s either finally lost her soul to the Queen of the Prairie statue or she’s too distracted by the overwhelming awesomeness of the ‘Black Forest’ rose.

Once into the back yard the most prominent feature is the kid’s play set. It may look romantically functional in photos, but in reality it’s become too weak and shaky, and not quite what 9 and 11 year olds look for in outdoor entertainment.

Nine years of noble service but at this point I’m worried a kid will come crashing down through a weak floorboard.

An executive decision was made to retire the play set.

The end of an era. I remember opening the carton on the day we bought it and thinking, mmmm all cedar… some day this is going to make a cozy bonfire… I guess that day has finally come.

Between ripping down the old set and figuring out what to do with the site, several weeks passed. Another executive decision determined that the budding gymnast needed a bar to do acrobatics off of, so off to the internet. In the meantime summer came.

The stewartia tree is fantastic this year and surprisingly enough the native bumblebees are as thrilled with this Japanese (or Korean, or Chinese… not really sure) tree’s flowers as I am. You can see a bumblebee butt sticking out of the middle flower.

While working out the swing project (which as expected became much more complicated than it should have been) I also tried to triage the vegetable garden and back flower beds. For as wet and cool as the spring was, the phlox came up terrible this year. Spider mites, stunted plants, missing clumps… I blame miserable soil prep and last summer’s drought, but who knows. I did finally fertilize, and things appear to be turning, but as I realize once again how great they should be, I kind of regret not taking better care of them.

Phlox ‘blue spot’ is one which did get a little extra care. I couldn’t ignore this one, I just moved it onto the list of favorite phlox… which isn’t as impressive as you’d think since it includes almost all the phlox I have!

Even though the phlox patch (aka vegetable garden, aka potager) is really just an overdone example of gardening gone wrong, it only takes one amazing flower to make it all right. Some Regal lily (Lilium regale) seedlings from a few years back are big enough to flower and I love them. The flowers are nice enough in themselves but in addition to color, they perfume the entire potager with a heavy scent of summer which reminds me of gardenias and the tropics. Too much for an enclosed place, but in the late afternoon, out in the garden, perfect.

Regal Lily in full bloom. I would qualify them as ‘easy’ from seed, just as easy as all the other “volunteers” which fill the bed. A less generous eye would say lily in a weed-patch but as long as the weeds flower…

While the garden slowly comes together, the new swing set also rises. An idea comes to mind, no real reason why it shouldn’t work, new parts, wrong parts, returned parts, and a whole lot of sweaty digging while the price tag goes up and up.

An industrial swing which can even handle the occasional daring adults. Once it all came together it wasn’t that bad, the real work was removing the gravel, filling with dirt and sod dug from elsewhere, and of course digging a new planting bed 🙂

As the old swing went down, the annual ‘cut that damn grass it looks horrible and it’s full of ticks and don’t you care about the children’ discussion took place. In an attempt to distract naysayers and define the area I nearly killed myself moving a few mini boulders over to define the edge of the meadow. I like it and of course think it looks even better, but as for other opinions… I’ll let you know as soon as we’re back on speaking terms.

End of June meadow. Daisies ending, rudbeckia and butterfly weed coming on strong, but I’m not sure if the aspen saplings will stay or go.

To be honest bugs do abound in the meadow. There are fireflies, butterflies, crickets and bees galore, as well as visitors of the cottontail type.

Eastern cottontail rabbit. They do damage, but over the season it’s still much less than a single deer or woodchuck could do in one night. I have a soft spot for the bunnies, and have been known to carry on conversations with them, so I guess their company is worth the beheaded broccoli and mowed down lettuce.

While I was trying to figure out how the old swing set could so quickly collapse and be outgrown, it’s beginning to sink in that it’s the actual years which are ticking away. It’s already been nine years since we moved to this house.

A backyard view. Nine years ago only lawn spread across the yard and up to the house.

But you really can’t do anything other than enjoy the ride. We now have a cute little swing set for relaxing afternoon entertainment and it will hopefully provide many years of fun.

It took them all of ten minutes to figure out how much more fun jumping is compared to more sedate back and forth swinging. As of tonight no bones have been broken so let’s hope that luck holds.

The pond is next. It’s been a ball-trapping, mud-slopping, weed-filled pit for more years than I care to admit, and is absolutely overdue for a detox. Every year I say the same, but I hope that once the potager is weeded, and the new swingset bed planted, and a truckload of bark mulch spread, and daffodils dug, and out-of-control compost pile reclaimed… I think then I’ll start on the pond. Maybe.

Have a great week!

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: fragrant plants