A Week of Flowers-Day 5

Dec4

I’m taking it easy on day five of Cathy’s Week of Flowers celebration. I guess I don’t party like I used to. Today with a single photo I’m celebrating the heat of late July and the entire month of August, and the hot red flowers of Lobelia cardinalis. This moisture loving North American native plant finally settled in just off the back porch in a somewhat shaded and often damp corner of the house. While the cardinal flowers are in bloom, hummingbirds run a near constant turf war with guards and hit and runs and and the constant chatter of chases and aerial combat. A gardener who sits nearby to enjoy the shelter and shade is guaranteed a face-to-face barrage of insults from some tiny hovering pint-sized fighter pilot. Hummingbirds seem so tiny and cute, but in reality they’re little flying honey badgers.

Cardinal flower filling the end of the shade garden.

Hope you are enjoying your weekend, it’s a beautifully sunny morning here and although it’s also on the cold side, the rest of the week looks tolerable… and by tolerable I mean good shipping weather for a little box of succulents…

Merry Christmas to me!

Still Going…

Aug17

That last rain really tricked me. It tricked the lawn as well, a green shimmer appeared and of course I thought it would be extremely generous to run the mower over to pick up some of the dead leaves and trash and then spray some liquid feed. Silly me. The rains stopped and things are back to wilting, and I’m back to watering, but at least it’s been cool the last few days as a respite to our usual baking.

Slowly the Japanese morning glories are coming into bloom. Ipomoea nils ‘Fuji no Murasaki’ is amazing and hasn’t been as invasive a seeder as other morning glories tend to be… unless you’re someone I gave seeds to and recently cursed me for giving you such a weed… so your results may vary.

Despite the return to dry, it’s still not as bad as it was, and still not as brutal as it could be. I think I just like complaining, plus on top of that it’s just boring. Super boring since just about everything is just sitting there waiting for water. There are three things though, which could count as somewhat interesting. First are the container plantings, which thanks to the drip irrigation are doing fairly well… in spite of a haphazard fertilization schedule, and the second is the patch of cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) which looks great, but causes nonstop hummingbird conflict as one sneaks in for a sip just as another one or two come down in a screeching dive bomb to fight them off. People love hummingbirds but all I see are little featherpuffs of rage, and when one comes up and gives me the hovering stare-down of death for sitting too close to their lunch, I stare right back… but don’t dare say a word lest it triggers a torrent of anger from the little monster.

The Lobelia cardinalis does really well here in the shade of the house, far enough away from the life-sucking red maple roots. I did water a bit but not as much as you’d think.

So that’s two things, and for the third I’ll nominate the paniculata hydrangeas. They get a drink of water once things get bad enough to wilt, but other than that they just look awesome and make me seem like a gardening genius. Never mind the zinnias which are struggling and the surprise lilies which only surprise me by not dying, these hydrangeas are full of fat, fresh, flower-packed trusses of bloom.

The worst of the dried up rudbeckia triloba has been cropped out, leaving only the joy of budding hydrangea blooms. ‘Limelight’ is in the background, this is just a seedling which somehow managed to evade my super vigilant weeding long enough to look like something.

I’m considering adding a variety which fades to pink. ‘Vanilla Strawberry’ was in here but had to be moved for the construction, and for some reason I didn’t like the way it looked around ‘Limelight’ anyway. The pure white of V. Strawberry seemed just too white for all the yellows and chartreuse and then it was in a bad spot anyway, where the heat and dry would brown the blooms, rather than let them go pink. It’s been replanted next door and to be honest I want it back even if it doesn’t fit in. Maybe I’ll take some cuttings today, my mother in law loves it so there’s no way I’m getting the original plant back.

Limelight in the back yard around the potager. Obviously the phlox which was supposed to be moved years ago is still there and still doesn’t look nice alongside the hydrangea, but at least the boxwood is on its way to recovery after last winter’s run in with the bulldozer.

So three things are ignoring the dry and marching right through August in beautiful shape. There are more bits and pieces looking good but as I said they’re mostly waiting for rain and I also just like to complain. Now for example I shall complain that the dentist’s office still hasn’t called back to schedule my root canal and the gray skies have not produced anything more than a sneeze of useless mist. Oh well.

Have a great week regardless. These will be the sweet memories that come up in February when the only thing growing are the icicles off the gutter.

Well that Sure Escalated…

Aug2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even the frogs like the new daylilies.

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

Have a great week!

Garbage Day

Jul18

So it’s been hot and hasn’t rained more than half an inch here in the last three weeks. My “garden” has always been a little more interesting than it is beautiful, and now with things wilting and dying left and right, on top of the construction debris and damage, my yard has officially entered the trash stage. Visiting several beautiful gardens last weekend, filled with lush goodies, all artfully combined and arranged was a nice exercise, but did not help my opinion at all so earlier last week I decided to rip half of it out, mulch most of it, and try to save a few bits through the daily triage of going plant to plant with a water hose.

Lawn is not drought tolerant but rudbeckia and a few other things are. At least not everything is brown.

Maybe we’ll get lucky tonight and the storms rolling through will drop some moisture, but it’s going to take a couple days straight to get anything into the hard-baked soil and that’s not going to happen. Also the next week’s forecast is full of 90’s (32+C) so any rain tonight is more a teaser than relief.

With half the plants now ripped out, and a couple days of standing around with a water hose under my belt, the front border no longer shouts ‘save me!’ and instead just looks hot.

So plenty of people have it worse, and some people always have it worse, so please don’t feel the need to be nice and sympathetic when this kind of summer really isn’t that out of the ordinary for us. There’s still plenty of recyclables in this trash pile, and always a few treasures to pick out, such as the orien-pet lily ‘Conca d’Or which dominates the front border this week. I love everything about it this year, it’s huge, fragrant, creamy lemony, and as solid as a tree.

‘Conca d’Or’, perovskia, and some ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass doing just fine under the triage of ‘just in time’ watering.

Now faced with a garden of mostly trash, more garden visits sounds like a good idea, right? I think so, but little did I know how dangerous they can be. Some friends and I traveled up into the far reaches of Northeastern Pennsylvania this weekend to visit a daylily farm and it was a bad thing…

A perfect, Idyllic, country view of the daylily sales-field at Lambertson’s Daylilies. Mark it with a flag, pay, they’ll dig it and it’s yours… what a deadly temptation!

I’m not above taking one for the team, so when a visit to Lambertson’s Daylilys came up in conversation, I of course politely agreed. “You hate daylilies” was mentioned, and that’s kind of extreme, but I can be nice and keep my thoughts to myself when opinions vary… and try not to relentlessly steamroll people with my beliefs and opinions just like all adults should… but I’m digressing… we met for breakfast and all of us headed out for a day at the farm.

Some of the display beds coming into bloom around the house. No trash here!

I bought one. It’s planted and gets checked way too much each morning. Today I cross-pollinated a few flowers and I’m already thinking about going back to see about picking another one… or possibly two… dammit…

The mother in law’s garden bed and it also looks very non-trash. I guess I’ll have to swipe a bit of this one and add it to my new daylily adventure.

When I returned home (filled with delicious ice cream because of course we had enough sense to stop at a dairy while in farm country) I put a critical eye towards the depressingly stunted tropical garden. A daylily would look good in there.

Even with watering there’s little hope for this year’s tropical garden. I’m far too lazy and cheap to water properly and the cannas are knee-high rather than chest height.

Seriously. It’s the perfect spot for a daylily patch… bed… border… growing field 😉 The peak bloom will match pool season, and that’s when this sidewalk gets nearly all its traffic.

My selection out of the farm’s seedling patch. At Lambertson’s the seedlings grow for a number of years, the under performers are culled out and most of the good ones are just sold as un-named seedlings.

Tree lilies, daylilies… I’m sensing a theme for easing the pain of a better-for-the-pool-than-the-garden summer. Waterlilies fit right into that.

The pond is thick with debris and whatever else washes in off the construction site, but the pink water lily has never grown as lush before. The tadpoles are also doing well, and I guess a dirty pond is still better than no pond.

So it’s not all bad, unless you judge me for finally falling into the daylily trap. I was doing so good… in 20 years I think I never went over a total of five daylily plants, and no one needs to know about the other 30 years of my life and the rows of daylilies that still grow at my parent’s house. I had put that behind me.

Not daylilies, just a couple hundred bricks which I chipped the mortar off and neatly stacked so that they can sit here for decades until I finally get around to doing something with them. In the meantime I’ve camouflaged them with potted plants which I couldn’t be bothered to bring up onto the deck.

It’s just one daylily. Maybe it’s just the dry weather and heat that are getting to me. Luckily plants other than lilies are still chugging along and even enjoying the weather. All those geranium (pelargonium) cuttings from the winter garden are loving the dry, sunny days, and were a nice, cheap way to fill a bunch of planters.

Maybe a few too many geraniums on the deck.

Another potted plant which has surprised me are the rhodohypoxis bulbs. They’ve been blooming for over a month and I didn’t expect that at all. In fact they’ve grown so well I might need to divide them soon, and don’t know if now or next spring would be the better time.

Some of the rhodohypoxis pots still doing well. The large-flowered, pale pink ‘Pintado’ is by far my favorite.

Maybe I mentioned one other bulb which wasn’t doing as well as the rhodohypoxis (actually both are classified as corms, and not really bulbs). Last winter I lost about half of the caladiums I was so excited about last year summer, but that doesn’t mean the ones which made it are pitiful. A couple are awesome again, and since many are of the same sort I’ll be referring to them as some of the idiot-proof cultivars and think twice about trying new ones this year. -which is something I decided last night after closing an online order which was soooo tempting until I thought about the daylilies again-

A few caladiums coming back to life now that temperatures have warmed. I think a cold, wet spell last fall did a few of the others in, as well as not hot enough weather in June.

So that’s what’s been going on here for the last couple weeks. It’s not bad at all but the garden really is trash, and only close editing and avoiding the majority of the yard has saved this post from becoming a complete downer. There’s a new daylily though, and the pool is always refreshing, but don’t bother asking how the construction is going, and just for reference it’s midnight and the possibility for a good rain is dwindling with each hour.

All the best for those in really hot and dry weather patterns, and I hope you still all have a great week. There’s always ice cream.

A Morning Stroll

Aug11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catching Up On July

Jul31

Guess who fell off the wagon last month?

This guy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And my first agapanthus seedling has flowered 🙂

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

And I have a flower on my new Crinum!

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

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

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

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

A Good Soak

Jun7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope your other stuff is good this week 🙂

Start Your Engines!

May26

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope you have a fun week 🙂

A May Lull

May18

A cool and rainy week with a busy schedule have kept me out of the garden for a few days. By that I mean there were enough weather and work excuses to avoid any real work, since even a rainy day does not cancel the daily garden tour. In other gardens the lilacs overhang azaleas, with dogwoods and redbuds shading the lawn, and banks of rhododendrons exploding in color… but I’ve only a few dogwoods and little of the others, so here the spring crescendo of tulips is followed by a slight lull of green.

The blue camassia are a flash in the pan here and only seem to flower for a week or so. It’s a nice show, but the blue columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) is just as nice and lasts longer so I may (again) try and dig all the camassia to get rid of them. This time I’ll try and get all the bulbs…

Right now there may be a lull in the flowering, but after several months of white and brown, green is still an excellent color, and with its various shades and shapes, and the surprise of variegation and chartreuse or purple tints, even a green lull makes for a nice show and it should really be enough.

Blue columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) was originally found in the woods behind the house, and rescued when the bulldozers came. It’s not native and fancier colors and forms exist, but I like it well enough.

Most people can stick with well enough, but I admit to a short attention span and fickleness so of course I want other things to follow up as the tulips fade and the bearded iris are yet to come. The columbine is good, and usually moneyplant (Lunaria annua) fills in with a nice purple, but I think I need more alliums.

Tulips and daffs have all been deadheaded and are disappearing under the next wave of growth but just the columbine and a few moneyplants (it’s a down year for this biennial) are in bloom. The blue is nice, but note the bold little ‘Candy Corn’ spirea in front. I can’t believe I planted it, usually spirea disgust me, but this one is so offensively bright there was no resisting.

Back in the day the budget was much tighter, and a few flowering onions always seemed to be just too much when a big bag of tulips could be had for the same price. Today it’s a different story. A couple new alliums are just pennies once you’ve paid off the monthly gymnastics bill and bought a couple pricey snowdrops.

Allium ‘Gladiator’ was my first big allium. I was hoping for bigger, but tall is good too! Over the last 15 years one bulb has become many.

So I will see what happens. The problem is settling on just two or three rather than a dozen, and I of course will be looking for suggestions from my friends. I already have a few leads 😉

‘Gladiator’ is also doing well in the potager. Phlox and other perennials are coming up just in time to (mostly)cover the allium’s yellowing leaves.

Yeah, the yellowing leaves. Just as the flowers open and draw a little attention, the foliage starts dying back to compete with the show. Trimming them back or hiding them in a border are two options for better gardeners.

The green centers are cool.

The yellowing allium foliage can be a deal breaker for some, but here it barely registers. I run a messy garden and fortunately some delusion of diamond in the rough or some bizarrely inflated ego syndrome allows me to still share photos online. I should be embarrassed most of the time, but luckily it’s a rare day that I see some perfect garden photo and suddenly question my entire gardening hobby (as well as the public settings on this blog).

The mountain of snowball bush (Viburnum opulus ‘Roseum’) is probably the only perfect thing about the potager right now. It should be weeded. And planted. And tended. One of these days…

Ah, whatever. Let’s finish with a disclaimer on the potager. The raised beds are excellent, the sand paths are perfect, the whole idea of the potager is much better than the usual mess, but it’s still just a mess. “It’s not you, it’s me” I tell the garden and I suspect the garden understands. My weaknesses is a love of interesting, and it’s just too interesting to see if the resprouting cabbage stumps from last year will form heads or if the missed potatoes from last year will amount to anything. Good thing no one expects this garden to feed a family.

A few parsley seedlings went into this bed, but I’m still working myself up to weeding out all the rest. Besides obvious weeds there’s a nice clump of lettuce, many tomato seedlings… random hellebores…

So what did I do today? Clear a bed and plant beans? No, of course not. I was working in the front border dividing tulip clumps. Just for the record, it’s too early to divide tulips. The foliage should be yellowing and it’s not but whatever. Dig up a clump, shake and pick out the smaller bulbs, and replant. No careful soil improvement, no watering in and I guess we will see what comes of it. Smarter gardeners would have pulled them all and tossed them after flowering, it’s just a few dollars to replace them, but I don’t think it will surprise anyone if I admit my gardening is more of an ADD drifting through ideas rather than a focused plan with a to-do list. Reinventing the wheel has always been a passion of mine.

Have a great week, and I hope it includes plenty of plant-time 🙂

A Case of the Lazies

Sep27

You would think that with all the hand sanitizer, distancing, staying at home, and hand washing, that there would have a sterile cloud surrounding me, but somehow I’ve still managed to catch a case of the lazies. What a surprise, right? I’ve never really shown much immunity, so all it really takes is a cloud across the sun, a temperature slightly too cool, or a day with a nice breeze to trigger a relapse. I guess that happened. My wife will tell me I should have worn a coat. My son will ask if I want another donut. It’s easy to see the struggle.

The front border as we roll into October. Heterotheca villosa ‘Ruth Baumgardner’ is the yellow daisy in front.

A coffee and a donut make for a nice morning stroll around the garden. Fancy people do scones and jam, but scones are crumbly, and I’d hate to waste a trail of jammy crumbles behind me as I take in the dewy garden. As I walk, the dew and change to fall colors make it really obvious summer is over and I’m surprisingly ok with that. The garden right now is a mix of summer lingerers and autumn bloomers, and although I spent last weekend leveling my mother inlaw’s garden and putting nails in the coffin of her 2020 season, here it’s a different story. Cool things like the Heterotheca villosa are only now just coming into full flower. This plant was shared with me a few years back by Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening fame, and it’s a native daisy which I cut back by half each June to keep bushy. From what I’ve heard, ‘Ruth Baumgardner’ is named after a past president of the Perennial Plant Association, and was selected as a shorter form of the species, but that’s still relatively tall, hence the early summer chop.

Lingering rebloom on the red hot poker. The bright color looks as good now as it did in July

If I weren’t so under the weather with my laziness I would be taking advantage of the more relaxed pace of pre-October and building that coldframe I’ve been mulling over for the last three weekends. Unlike the last four years that I’ve been thinking about it, this is the year it has to happen. I’ve already lined up a few plants to go in (all my projects are usually the result of me painting myself into a corner plantwise), pulled out materials, piled them into the garage (where the car can’t go until this in done…), and now I just have to commit to a design. ***spoiler alert** it’s based on an old shower door and leftover 2x4s so don’t set your hopes too high…

Admiring colchicums is an excellent lazy day activity. Here’s ‘Lilac Wonder’ flopping its way through the blue of leadwort.

Even just talking about a future coldframe has me exhausted, so let’s take one more look around the garden. The mums are coming, the colchicum are here, and in spite of a slight touch of disgustingly early frost, the garden still looks nice.

The former rock garden turned colchicum bed has been overrun with chrysanthemum seedlings. Not for the worse though. Colchicum ‘Innocence’ still found enough of an opening to show off.

A few early chrysanthemums. I’ve killed off many (honestly it’s closer to most) of the larger flowered ones, but they’re my favorites. Someday I dream of fussing and nurturing them enough to have those big show-worthy blooms, but this year just getting them staked them was a big first step.

I believe this is ‘Cheerleader’. Even under less than perfect conditions he tops out at 3+feet and requires some kind of support.

With the chrysanthemums starting in the potager I was happy to see that even with all the new beds and strict paths, there was still a nice crescendo of late summer chaos. Verbena bonariensis and ‘Hopi Red Dye’ amaranthus still found their loopholes and there’s more than just dried tomato vines and over the hill zucchini filling the beds.

An overgrown mess is what I expect in October. Fall veggies would be nice too, but there’s always the farmstand for that.

One veggie which I do want to show off is the sword bean (Canavalia gladiata) which has managed to grow up the pergola and put out a few pods in spite of the shortening days. I admit to checking it every day as the foot long pods get fatter and fatter, and if anyone gets even remotely close to the potager I insist on showing them off. At the suggestion of a friend I usually do it with a little “argh, these be my sword beans, argh”, but the magic of my humor is often met with an uncomfortably blank stare.

The sword bean. It’s grown as a vegetable through India and SE Asia but I’m not sure if it’s edible here in Umrika.

Now colchicums. I looked and saw only three pictures were posted on this blog last year, so you’re welcome, but even after I killed half the ones I transplanted during the potager construction (leaving them out to dry in 97F full sun was not really as good an idea as I thought), there are still a few nice ones to show.

Colchicum ‘The Giant’. I think this is the real thing, and it’s worth it to find.

The cooler, dry weather has made for an excellent season.

Colchicum ‘Sparticus’ was too pale for me at first, but as the single bulb has turned into a bunching of blooms I’ve become a fan

Colchicum ‘Harlekijn’. Love it or hate it you have to admit it’s unusual.

Colchicum ‘Zephyr’. The nerd in me enjoys this gathering of Cotinus, Colchicum, and Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus). That’s a lot of Cs.

Colchicum cilicium. Maybe Colchicum cilicium ‘Purpureum’ according to the most recent buzz, but regardless I really like this little guy.

Colchicum giganteum… another one which might be getting a more correct naming of Colchicum speciosum giganteum group.

‘Lilac Wonder’ in the lawn between the swingset and trampoline. I wonder if the kids will ever question why there were so many poisonous plants so close to their play areas…. although I like to think of the whole garden as their play area.

Colchicum speciosum (I don’t think it’s ‘The Giant’) in need of dividing. A whole border filled with these might not be a terrible idea… hmmmm…

I’m surprised by how many colchicums this garden has acquired. I blame thoughtful friends and the evils of social networking, but seriously if a yard full of colchicum is the worst viral pictures bring on then I’m all for it. Unfortunately that’s not always the case. In the meantime I’m looking for more, and I’m also obsessing about a new book. Colchicum: The Complete Guide has recently come out as the definitive guide on species and many cultivars and I keep thinking what’s a full on obsession without a guidebook to follow? It’s item number one on the Christmas list 😉

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: perennials