Where is Summer Going!?

Aug15

It’s entirely possible that everyone shares this same gripe, but I feel summer has been flying by this year. Even more so than usual. The days go faster, the schedule seems busier, and all I want to do is slow the calendar down. I don’t even want to talk about autumn, but those back to school sales are in full swing, and I saw plenty of plasticky orange and yellow fall decorations lining the shelves of the local mart, just waiting for the summer haters to open their wallets.

In the meantime here’s a quick, picture heavy run-through of the garden in high summer. It’s my favorite time of the year out there.

Annual standing cypress has seeded in nicely anywhere the mulch used to be and brings some bright red to the border.

These photos were taken over the weekend, and it was just the beginning of our latest round of gully ripping downpours that hail from the tropics. Monday I think we topped another three inches and unfortunately that does not bode well for the lower lying areas.

Monarch on Rudbeckia triloba.

The plants seem fine though. Everything is lush and vibrant and other than a little floppiness and extra height it sure beats dealing with another year of soil-cracking drought.

A pale sunflower out along the street. I always love them against the feather reed grass.

Even with the dampness and humidity it’s much more pleasant to dig in freshly-watered soil than it is to pickax your way through a dry and dusty crust. With some time on my hands and a little too much ‘exuberance’ in the front border I did some editing. You barely notice the vacancies.

Nothing like a big dig project on a 90F degree day.

Of course the weeds have been a nonstop battle. I finally broke down and bought a few bags of mulch in hopes of clearing out a spot in back… which is definitely out of control. Needless to say it is still out of control, but I used the mulch to neaten up a couple edges in front and that made me even happier. Maybe I’ll crack open the wallet again for a few more bags. It’s slightly addicting.

My “other” popcorn plant, actually a candlestick plant (Senna alata aka cassia) showing off some of its cool leaves.

In the meantime I just love all the color and the busyness of bees, and bugs, and hummingbirds and goldfinches zipping around from sunup to sundown.

‘Cannova Rose’ highlighting the front border.

Mulching is rewarding, but for the most part for me this part of the year is more a matter of counting your losses, writing them off, and enjoying the successes. I was hoping last year would be my last caladium year, but apparently the obsession continues. They are one plant which has been thoroughly enjoying the rain and humidity and who am I to turn my back on such happy plants?

The caladiums are just happy doing their own thing in a patch of shade.

Something I don’t want to talk about too much are the two new daylilies which have shown up. Apparently people like these things, so who am I to not give them another chance?

Finally, a neat foundation planting and a new daylily. Brighter is better in my opinion 🙂

As I was working through the foundation beds (finally), it occurred to me that many of my weed problems might have something to do with me. Every week or two I rip out a couple more milkweed shoots as they try and take over the entire front yard. Maybe the ‘weed’ part of their name could have been a tip-off but hey, they showed up on their own and the butterflies like them so I figured what’s the harm in leaving a few. I frequently see eggs being laid but as of yet no caterpillars, and I wonder if that’s the down side to having all those bees and other pollinators flying around. I think they might be adding a little protein to their nectar diets.

Milkweed in popping up around the garden. The record so far is 15 feet out into the middle of the lawn!

Around back there is definitely a need for some mulching attention. Your best bet is to ignore that, and just look at how nicely the jungle is spreading.

Looking over the tropics into the backyard. The cannas are starting to really take off is spite of the crowded planting conditions.

As usual there are too many sunflowers, but eventually the cannas and other stuff force their way through and it’s all good.

Canna ‘Australia’ has never looked better. I love the shiny darkness of the leaves and it’s lush growth this summer.

I can only imagine what shenanigans are going on in the interior of the bed.

The cannas in back have barely made it to six feet. I blame the sunflowers of course!

Once you reach the backyard it’s practically a wild kingdom. The potager is now on its own and the selfsowing annuals will take over as I make a weak attempt to save a few vegetables. Eight foot sunflowers and persicaria (kiss me over the garden gate) leave little room for a bean plant.

The potager is on its own now. I just try and get the mower through and call it a success if I do.

There are a few things though. Peppers and eggplants are coming along, but the tomatoes look as if the rain has done them in.

It’s been a good year for peppers!

I forgot the zucchini. There’s some of that in the way back.

The lilies (Lilium formosanum) are starting out back. They’re always a sign that summer is edging past its peak.

Beyond that is just weeds. The meadow needs mowing, and the shade beds are just sitting there (and I’m all for just sitting there) but eventually I hope to whack it back before it all goes to seed. Cool weather can be an inspiration, so we will see if that can snap me out of enjoyment mode and knock me back into taming it for next year mode 🙂

Garden visitors are all offered as many succulents as they want. Apparently I haven’t been getting enough visitors!

In the meantime enjoy August. I suspect it will go even faster than July!

Back to Work

Aug1

The rain last week did wonders for the garden and it’s become as lush as last year. Lush is sometimes code for overgrown, so I spent some productive time trimming and weeding this weekend and I’m happy to say it appears to have paid off. With pictures taken at precisely the right moment, from just the right angle, within hours after the lawn was mowed and edged, the yard finally looks nice. I guess it’s about time considering we’re about four months into the growing season.

The lawn cut and edged. It looks almost parklike, just ignore the yellow spots… the kids were playing with a metal detector and searching for treasure in the turf…

I’ll try not to dwell on all the flaws I see. The front border has much less color from annuals this year because of beetle attacks and a dry spell, but there’s enough which has come along regardless. From the street side it’s really filled in, the usual perennials and random sunflower make a nice barrier between us and the road.

The border does its own thing along the street with just an occasional whacking back when things get out of hand.

From the lawn side there’s also a good amount of perennial color, but not as much as I’d like. I do prefer my plantings on the brighter side 🙂

This picture is 100% showing off the lawn. It’s a rare day when a well watered, green, freshly cut, neatly edged, lawn shows up on this blog.

Speaking of too much color, it’s not an official policy but in general I don’t have many daylilies in the garden. I don’t like the way the leaves on so many of them look all beat up by the end of the year and for that reason got rid of most of them. That may be a-changin’ though. I spotted this one next door and there’s a good chance I may rationalize an emergency dividing, so I can sneak a few pieces over onto my side of the property line.

Orange and pink. This might be just what my border needs… or it might be one more piece of evidence in the case against any good taste in my garden.

I’ll have to be sure I don’t give in to the temptation of bringing a few bright daylilies into the tropical border. It’s supposed to be all big leaves and bright colors thanks to explosive, non-hardy southern plants, not steady reliable things like daylilies.

A late start means the dahlias are only just now starting to flower, plus an unusually lazy May meant three or four were all that ever got planted. Maybe less will be more this year…

The top part of the tropical border is again nearly overwhelmed by 8 foot tall sunflowers among other things. This year I thought for sure I’d have the upper hand after pulling nearly all of them up but of course with more space the remaining plants grew even bigger. I guess I could have worse problems.

At least the elephant ears look tropical.

The lawn isn’t the only thing enjoying some maintenance love. I pulled out the hedge clippers and started doing a little trimming and was able to re-meatball all the lumps of yew along the house. I don’t completely mind trimming hedges, but rounding off the same yews every year just to have the same yews rounded off every year seems incredibly pointless, so by the time I got to the big one at the end I was more than a little bored. We’ll have to see where this ends up.

Maybe I can call my yew balls ‘topiary’ now. Of course I have yet to clean up the trimmings or get a ladder to reach the top…

Out back the potager is particularly lush. I’ve been relentlessly pulling sunflower, verbena, persicaria, and amaranth seedlings but plenty remain. Through July I still pretend to be the one in charge, but by August I lose the urge. From here on things will be getting messier and messier, with all kinds of halfway attractive flowers sprouting up and taking over as the phlox fade or the vegetables are picked.

It’s phlox season, and each day far too much time is spent checking them out.

I do like my phlox, but experience has shown they don’t like me. The list of named varieties which have perished in this garden is pretty embarrassing, so of course we won’t talk much about that, and hopefully more observant readers won’t notice that I again spent a decent amount of money on new ones earlier this spring. They’re not dead yet which is a good sign I think.

A mix of seedling and named varieties of tall garden phlox (Phlox paniculata). To my eye gold and pink do not mix well… in fact I hate the mix… but I need marigolds and I need phlox, so there you go.

From further away the phlox look colorful at least. Close up the foliage looks abused and there are plenty of other issues, but the flowers keep coming, and it makes me wonder if they think this is their last hurrah before they kick the bucket. I hope not, but I’m not going to fool myself into thinking they like it here.

I feel like it’s a requirement to grow marigolds in your vegetable garden, even if it’s so fancy that you call it a potager. Sorry about the white buckets littering the view, but this photo is to prove that there really are vegetables in here.

One last phlox photo. I wonder if they’d like me more if I dug up a whole new bed and devoted it to even more phlox and more new phlox? A few more reds would be nice and how much room do a few tomatoes need anyway?

I definitely need more phlox, and I also won’t rule out bigger clumps of the good ones like this white seedling. They’re native plants by the way, so maybe this is helping make America great again.

I’m sure by September I’ll be wishing for fewer phlox and more colchicums. Maybe. Hopefully it’s not chrysanthemums though since I’m this close to yanking most of them out in spite of the fact I needed bunches of them just a few years ago. I hope not everyone is as fickle as I am.

Happy August and have a great week!

Are you ready Noah?

Jul25

Since Sunday we’ve been stuck in tropical weather pattern that’s been sending shower after shower of rain our way and the inches keep adding up. I would guess we’re probably around four inches officially but it sure feels like a lot more, and although the sun has been in and out I can’t remember any dry stretches that have lasted longer than two or three hours over the last four days. Right now the forecast says two more days and perhaps as many inches and to be honest I don’t mind it yet.

Sunday morning before the rain hit I ran out and finally picked a few gooseberries. The daughter and I spent the first rainy afternoon cooking up a gooseberry tart, and I have to say it was delicious!

Noah never really mentions much about heat and humidity, but we sure have the humidity part. I guess endless rain will do that, and until the molds and rots kick in most of the plants are taking it in stride. The caladiums in particular seem very happy. Two months ago while looking at their tiny, shriveled tubers I was sure my overwintering had done them in, but to my surprise they’ve risen from the dead and are actually growing well. *accounting note. I couldn’t resist buying two more at $3 a piece… I have a weak spot for clearance sales, even though I don’t need any more*

Lovely caladiums potted up in some very unattractive nursery pots. This year I’ll focus on taking better care of them… even in September… Next year I’ll think about improving the pot situation.

The worst thing we have to deal with is floppiness. That’s not a bad tradeoff considering those closer to the river will be looking at flooding as all this water works its way to the sea. Lets hope we can dodge that bullet and it’s less than expected.

Gray plants and lots of rain don’t usually go well together. It looks nice enough anyway, but all I can see is how well the thistly sea holly is doing, and how unsuccessful I was at removing all of it last summer. Apparently even the smallest bit of root will resprout…

In the meantime the garden appreciates too much water much more than too much drought. It makes for squishy and sloppy garden tours but the plants just keep getting lusher and lusher.

The orienpet lily ‘Caravan’ is around six feet tall this year, but still risks being overtaken by the weedy little sunflowers which are being much more aggressive than I thought they’d be.

The orienpet lilies don’t seem to mind the weather. Most of these oriental-trumpet hybrids are sturdy crosses that grow like weeds and don’t need staking. They’re the ones often marketed by shady retailers as ‘tree lilies’ and some of the taller ones can easily push eight feet.

Lily ‘Leslie Woodriff’ doing well in the mess which lines the street. I had trouble planting her since the soil is so thin in this spot (about five or six inches), but she doesn’t seem to mind at all.

I’m looking forward to see how the late summer garden develops with all this rain. The cannas are kicking in, the annuals are bulking up, and even the vegetable garden looks promising. Of course none of this matters more than my newest favorite plant, a candlestick bush seedling (Senna…or Cassia alata) which I started last winter. I love its leaves 🙂

Senna alata aka Cassia alata, the candlestick bush. It’s not hardy, gets too big, and can be invasive in the tropicals. It probably won’t even flower before the frosts hit but I don’t care. It’s a favorite anyway.

I don’t think a photo of the whole plant really shows off how big and cool the leaves are.

Here’s my hand for reference. I couldn’t quite manage getting a foot in there, but this leaf is probably about two of them long.

Let me end by apologizing to those who are spending this summer suffering through heat and drought. If I could send some of this rain your way I would, but of course it never works out that way and I hope your turn comes soon. All the best.

$6 for two irresistibly priced clearance caladiums

$744 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”.

The Springpocolypse

May4

The weather has suddenly caught up to the calendar and we’ve been suddenly and brutally been thrown into our first hot (90F, 32C) days of the year. I was battling cold and the chance of flurries Sunday and by Tuesday we’re turning the air conditioning on. Go figure. Better get some pictures and a post up before the tomatoes start ripening.

The last of the corydalis. These are in a shaded spot and later than the rest, and of course I’m already looking for new ones since I love the darker tips on short little ‘Domino’ 🙂

I was enjoying the long, cool, spring, but with two days of hot winds and beating sun everything has jumped ahead again. I always fall behind on posting at this time of year, but this post has really got to go up quick since by tomorrow morning I suspect most of these flowers will have been done in by the weather….

Plain old Corydalis solida. I was a little ‘meh’ for the first few years, but now that they’ve settled in I must say I like them.

The hellebores will hopefully still have another week or so in them. Without any late freezes it’s been a great year, and I’m suddenly itching to grow a few more!

Seedlings out in the street border. The heavily speckled ones are some of my favorites, but then so are the dark ones, and double ones, and yellow, and….

I grow a few from seed every year, and would have started many more but lately it seems I’ve been running out of room. The words ‘thinning the herd’ have come up, and now I’m looking at a few plants with a critical eye and an eager shovel. I need room for more seedlings, my favorites deserve a chance to spread their seed ;).

These are purchased doubles from the O’Byrnes out in Oregon. It’s ‘Golden Lotus’ in front and possibly ‘Peppermint Ice’ behind. These would qualify as ‘favorites’.

I’m probably being delusional. It would be a struggle for me to get rid of any of the hellebores, even the ones which might deserve the ‘less pretty’ title, and in case it’s not already obvious, I really lack the focus and conviction to ever draw a line with plants. Who knows though, one afternoon anger management might fail me and out they will come.

The queen bumble bees are out, and hopefully they’re getting plenty of the nectar and pollen they need to start this season’s family… and doing a little pollination on the side of course.

This spring even the messiest, most unevenly colored hellebore ends up being a favorite. Green flowers in particular win me over immediately.

The first year flowers on a new hellebore seedling are always the most exciting.

Green flowers and other ‘curious’ blooms are always welcome here and this year I’m seeing a little success in that always curious plant group, the fritillarias. Fritillaria uva vulpis, aka fox’s grapes, is back for a second year and even though it took the convincing of a friend to sway me towards keeping them, I’m glad now that I did. They at least look a little ‘interesting’ rather than the straight ‘blah’ I saw last year, and perhaps they’ll continue to improve next year as well.

Fritillaria uva vulpis. It might not hold up to a bank of golden daffodils but surely it still makes the garden a better place.

The snake’s head fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) are showing off as well. I love them, and and it makes me happy to see seedlings and clumps forming as they settle in to the soggiest parts of the garden.

This clump really lives up to the name snake’s head fritillaria. I can even see eyes!

The white ones add a little contrast, but the checkered patterns and colors of the darker ones really wow me as they unfurl each spring. Fyi I’ll need to spread the seeds of these around as well!

Fritillarias have some of the coolest flower patterns.

By the end of last week the front border was at a peak with all the leftover hyacinths, corydalis, and the start of the midseason daffodils. From the right angle the bed looks packed with color and I was thrilled, and a few days later it still looks nice but half of what was in flower has been melted by the heat. Now the first tulips are coming on, and hopefully in a few day you’ll tolerate a few photos of that as well!

The front street border. Spring is here 🙂

Here are a few highlights along the curb.

Maybe ‘Red Rascal’ and and definitely ‘Pistachio’. The pale yellow ‘Pistachio’ has been a favorite for years.

The first flowers on one of the moneyplants (Lunaria annua ‘Rosemary Verey’). This is the first year I’m seeing the purple stained foliage and stems for which this strain is know.

A magnolia cutting swiped from a layered branch on the neighbor’s tree. It’s nothing special I’m sure, but having grown it from a cutting makes it absolutely special. Of course I need more.

Behind the house the back garden is showing off as well. In three days all the green has turned to flowers!

Vegetable beds are much more successful when not filled with daffodils. My bad.

Flowers aren’t the only color out there. This spring I’m finally seeing the awesome foliage which inspired me to hunt down my very own plant of Iris x robusta ‘Gerald Darby’. Thanks to Nan Ondra and her blog at Hayefield, I’ve been coveting this plant for years. Now I’m seeing that the wait was worth it.

‘Gerald Darby’ also has pale blue flowers which follow the purple foliage. As the shoots expand, the color will fade to green.

I’ll spare you most of the other foliage photos, and the overabundance of daffodil photos to just leave you with a few more scenes from around the garden. The primroses enjoyed last summer’s rain and look promising for once in their (short) lives… such a refreshing change from their usual near-death appearance.

Some of the first plants to come in to bloom. This peachy sunset flower doesn’t show up well in the garden, but close up it’s delicious 😉

Under the weeping cherry the three day cherry bloom is over, and the spent petals are now decorating the ground. It’s a perfect complement to the last of the hardy cyclamen, which (not to rub it in) have been blooming since March, through storm and ice and heat, -unlike the short lived cherry.

The last flowers on the Cyclamen coum.

While the earliest bloomers are still up and growing and building energy for next year, it’s a great time to do a little moving around and dividing. I created what I hope will soon become my very own trailer park snowdrop bed. It’s filled with the most messy and common double flowers, the ones all the classier growers look down on such as ‘Flore pleno’ and her variously marked variations such as ‘Pussey Greentips’ and ‘Lady Elphinstone’. I’m sure someday they will grow to wow even the most rarefied galanthophile.

Snowdrops are classy but only if you avoid decorating the surroundings with plastic children’s toys, plastic buckets, and stray leaf bags. I’d also be more impressed with this new planting if the big rock at the front was already moved out of the new pathway. Obviously it would be easier to put the path elsewhere.

Two days ago the tulips were mostly closed and the bleeding hearts still a deep, rich carmine. Today they all opened and the hearts are faded. Still nice though!

While I’m moving snowdrops and boulders hopefully I’ll still have the time to enjoy a few daffodils and tulips. They’re opening as we speak and hopefully the winds and downpour which are barreling through this afternoon will spare a few. I managed to take one last photo out the back door before the storm hit and as you can see it was full on spring today.

The potager on the verge of tulip season. For the record there are onions and lettuce in there as well.

My fingers are crossed for the weekend. If things work out as planned there will be plenty of time and energy for all the things which need doing… if history repeats itself there will be plenty of sitting around and little work. We’ll see who wins.

For the record I’ve spent $15 on pansies and then $14 on lettuce and more pansies. The rabbits have already eaten about $8 worth of the lettuce. It happens. Have a great weekend!

$15 for an exceptionally restrained first visit to my favorite garden center
$14 lettuce, onions, and more pansies, also essential

$576 total so far for the 2018 gardening year.

A Little Cabin Fever

Mar14

For a couple days it was warm and I quickly started a little cleanup and poked around feverishly to find every single sprouting snowdrop, but that was short-lived, and now it’s back to winter again and I’m just chomping at the bit. The indoor winter garden has helped somewhat, and it’s probably a good idea to start off there with a few more hopeful signs of life such as my precious little primrose (Primula obconica), who is still going strong after nearly three months in flower. Rather than this primrose becoming a one hit wonder, it’s produced two more flower stalks and the first one is still opening up new blooms. It’s a beauty, but I may have forgotten to mention one of its common names…. poison primrose. The name stems from the rash which sensitive skins may develop after contact with its foliage. I find the scent of the foliage a bit yucky, but as far as rashes go it seems I’ve escaped any sensitivity issues. That wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination though, since a quick poll around here would probably place me on the ‘insensitive’ end of the scale anyway.

Primula obconica from American Primrose Society seed, indoors under the workshop growlights.

I won’t bore you with every flower in bloom under the shoplights, but the geraniums must be sensing the slightly warmer temperatures and as a result are putting on more growth and sending up more flowers. I’ll bore you with one photo, the lovely Pelargonium ‘Crystal Palace Salmon’, a healthy variegated geranium which doesn’t exactly look too salmony in the photo.

Pelargonium ‘Crystal Palace Salmon’, a flower which would make any geranium loving grandmother proud.

Obviously I’m getting into trouble with all this forced indoor time. I’ve started several flats of seeds, started more and more succulent cuttings, and maybe feel that start-even-more-seeds compulsion creeping into the back of my head. For budgeting purposes I’ll admit I ordered 40 packets of unnecessary seeds from the NARGS surplus seed round. That set me back $14 so I’m quite all right confessing to that charge.

More seeds from the NARGS seed exchange. Observant readers will add this to the 25 I had already ordered.

I’m trying all kinds of seeds again from generic annuals to obscure cacti to full sized forest trees. There’s no question I don’t have a place in mind for nearly all of them but when has that ever been a concern? I’m planting lotus seeds and am quite aware I have no pond to grow them in, but we’ll see what happens. They have a long way to go before I need to worry about any space issues.

I wasn’t sure if I had sanded through the seed coat of these lotus seeds, so decided to crack one open for a look. Who would have thought there would be a whole tiny lotus plant folded up inside! -and who would have thought the friggin seed coat (dark outer layer) would be so thick…

Nearly all the seed pots get a thin layer of chicken grit over the top and then go outside on the sidewalk to experience a little winter chill. When things get warm enough they’ll sprout right up… and then need to deal with finding homes for everything.

The latest spell of warm weather has encouraged a few of the hardiest seeds to sprout. Here are a few six packs of Opium poppies coming along. they should be just fine as long as things don’t freeze up too solid. The sheet of Reemay fabric protects them from the worst of the weather.

Back in February I thought we’d have plenty of time to post cheerful photos of spring beauty as it gently sprung into action and each flower followed the next, but then it snowed… and snowed… again…. and again….

Flashback to February with snowdrops and winter aconite opening up for the first of the warmer weather.

It’s still snowing. Next week looks promising, but things have all got to thaw out again, and the earliest risers have to work out all their crushed stems and snow flattened flowers. Hopefully by the time that happens there’s still enough energy left in them to put on a show.

More snowdrops, the green tipped ‘Viridapice’ and short ‘Sophie North’.

In the meantime I’ll stay inside and try to avoid driving everyone nuts with the amount of time I spend staring out windows and brushing aside snow looking for survivors.

I just assumed I had killed the cracked open lotus seed, but four days later it’s actually starting to grow!

At least the bird feeder is entertaining. I was ready to call it a year and send the birds on their way, but then snow returned, covered everything up, and I got that guilty feeling. Once I topped the feeders off the regular crew was quite happy, but they had to make a little room for the returning grackles, starlings, and red-winged blackbirds. They’re a noisy bunch but fortunately filming through the glass spares you from most of their metallic squawks.

Hopefully the farmers out there aren’t too upset with me encouraging these blackbird pests, but I’ve always considered them just as much a sign of spring as robins and the first crocus. Well actually the return of turkey vultures is also something I consider ‘springy’, but most people are far less entertained by the return of huge carrion-feeding birds which follow the thawing roadkill north…

May your week be enjoyable and carrion-free, and hopefully warmer and less-snowy than here 🙂

$14 for 40 packets of surplus NARGS seed exchange seed

$332 total so far for the 2018 gardening year.

That Wasn’t Smart 8.0

Dec8

In hindsight this is the time of year when winter interest should take center stage, and the addition of conifers to the winter garden is probably the best way to keep the yard attractive during the bleakest of winter months. I’ve heard that and have seen it in print as well, and even the most reluctant gardener will throw a few evergreens around the house as the first step in crafting an attractive landscape. The message is out, and the majority of houses around here have a sensible foundation planting filled with neatly trimmed yews and junipers and whatever else can snuggle up to the house for year round appeal.

Our own slightly less neat foundation plantings, with respectable holly, juniper, and chamaecyparis plantings lined up along the foundation.

Why this gardener would chose December to remove a large juniper from a prominent front-of-the-house location is foolish enough, but to replace it with a small ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Amber Jubilee) is over into the not so smart category. Reliable evergreen replaced with small clump of deciduous twigs… maybe you can understand that ‘uh-oh’ feeling I had as I stood there holding the saw and staring at a pile of juniper branches.

If you look closely you might be able to see the newest addition to this foundation planting. It’s right there at the center of the gaping hole which was created when the juniper was removed.

In all honesty I never liked the juniper. It made me itch and bored me and even though there were a thousand better things which I could be doing I suddenly needed to plant that ninebark at that minute even though I was right in the middle of putting up the Christmas lights. As long as we’re opening up here, the Christmas lights were turning into a whole other project in themselves.

A Longwood inspired twig archway with lights. Lots of lights.

The reason I had the saw out in the first place was because I needed to take a walk in the woods and cut down and drag back enough birch trees to make a decent arch leading onto the porch. I’m pretty sure a twig archway was what our holiday decorations have been lacking.

Speaking of things lacking, this blog has been lacking a snowdrop photo for months and since so many of you have been asking how the snowdrops are doing I guess it’s time to jump back into that world. Here’s a batch of fall bloomers which my friend Paula shared with me a couple years ago. They’re out on the driveway for this photo but have since moved into the garage in anticipation for the approaching cold… lows for next week show numbers around 10F (-12C) and that’s just not appropriate for such an innocent little flower… or for the box of tulip bulbs which just showed up on the doorstep this afternoon.

Fall blooming giant snowdrops (Galanthus elwesii) with a nice green pattern to the inners.

If pushed I’d have to admit that no one has actually asked about the snowdrops, but I’m sure they were wondering and I didn’t want to rudely ignore that.

Now I’m off to check out something I can’t even ignore for a minute. Pamela at Pam’s English Garden has put up the post detailing her own recent visit to Longwood Gardens. I knew she was there within a few days of my own visit and I’ve been looking forward to seeing her own impressions of the decorations. I hope she doesn’t point out a bunch of cool things which I missed!

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

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