Tuesday View: The Front Border 5.16.17

May18

The spring bulbs are over. It was up to 92F (33C) today and suddenly the feel of summer is in the air and there’s a new rush on planting and trimming and all the projects which were on the to-do list. I wasn’t going to post this week, but with iris season fast approaching it’s probably better to at least look a little level-headed for another week or so before going completely off the deep end again with the next big flower flood. Right now I think of this as the green phase, and with the lawn freshly cut and the beds not yet overrun with weedlings I think it looks springtime calm.

Not much color. Tulips have faded and been deadheaded but other than that it’s been a no-work week.

I continue to border on sainthood as more and more days go by without any major plant purchases, but make no promises about the next week or two. I do have to confess one moment of weakness though which happened a few weeks ago. It was during pansy season so I don’t think it counts but I am concerned that I would have tried to hide it had I not been busted by a visiting blogger last week. This plant really is an example of giving in to temptation.

Lupine ‘Red Rum’. Perfectly grown, budded, and the tag promised a color which easily breaks through my steeliest resolve. I resisted also buying a purple, but this one was too tempting and even if it does die in another year or less I’m still sure having it here now makes me a better person.

Otherwise nothing else is putting on a show, even though a patch of ‘Gladiator’ alliums looks decent enough.

Allium ‘Gladiator’ and a solitary bee. People are worried about bee populations dropping but I feel like all bugs (other than gnats and mosquitos) are becoming scarcer.

I shouldn’t go on too much in a post about nothing. In an attempt to leave you with a bit of substance, here’s a flashback of last year’s Tuesday view, the tropical border. The bed seems to have picked up a number of perennials and hopefully that’s not a problem now that it’s warm enough for the tropicals to go in again.

With a fresh border of mulch the tropical garden is beginning to get its summer residents. Oranges and yellow zinnias are the first to go in and I guess that means it will be another bright planting 😉

The tropical bed didn’t take nearly as many zinnias as I thought so it looks like we’ll also have a nice orange theme when the extras go into the front street border. I’m not sure how that will work out but as usual I’m not too concerned.

Thanks again to Kathy at Words and Herbs for hosting this weekly view, and please consider giving her blog a visit to see what others are talking about this week. I hear she’s also dealing with the first warm spells of the year and it’s exciting to think summer is just around the corner…

Tuesday View: The Front Border 5.9.17

May11

As usual the Tuesday view has become a Wednesday view and although I’m sure there are a bunch of excuses I could work in, I don’t think anyone is really bothered enough to complain. So lets get right in to it! The view has gone green now that the daffodils have faded but there are still the new tulips showing off towards the middle.

Lush grass and growing perennials. It’s been a decent spring now that the thunderstorms, snow, hail and tornadoes of April have eased off. We didn’t even get a late frost…. yet.

This is the time of year when most of the garden takes a little spring breather, though it’s really more a winding up as the stems and shoots of summer’s flowers expand and grow and get ready to put out the next wave of color. I already overdid the tulips last post so let’s look at a few foliage highlights a’la Christina’s monthly focus on foliage… because you know I’m sure to miss it later in the month when GB Foliage Day comes up!

My second favorite iris, the yellow variegated Iris pallida ‘aureo-variegata’. To do well here this one needs dividing and replanting every three or four years. This one is far past four years and nearly swamped by fennel seedlings and a weedy sedum.

Yellows are my favorite foliage effect and sometimes it takes a lot for me to hold back. In the back of my mind I realize a garden can only hold so many yellow “accents” before it looks like some ’80’s neon flashback but they’re sooooo tempting. This spring I’ve only added two new yellows, a variegated comfrey and a yellow spiderwort, and the restraint this took has me almost at the breaking point. The struggle is real.

Bright yellow with orange tips on the healthier shoots. I think it’s time to spread more of sedum ‘Angelina’ around the edges of the bed, and fortunately it’s as easy as pulling a handful, throwing it into a shallow hole and scraping a little dirt on top.

Here’s a more permanent bit of foliage as well. After two years of growth my newest little conifers from Conifer Kingdom are finally beginning to look like something. They’re destined to be trees but to look at them you’d never guess it. There are still a few more springs before I have to worry about the poorly chosen spots I put them in, but it will come. My kids were never supposed to grow up either and here they are staying after school, taking tests, having drama, and acting all smart when I just wish they’d still need to hold my hand crossing the parking lot.

Picea glauca ‘Pendula’. Still needs a little staking before it commits to growing up and not flopping.

My little blue spruce is a thing which an overly protective parent will be able to hover over for years. Optimistically I’d say it’s nearly tripled in size in the last two years… to be honest it still hasn’t broken the 6 inch barrier so it has a way yet to go. I put it right at the edge for now since an overly lush pansy would probably swamp it at this point.

Picea pungens ‘Walnut Glen’. A blue spruce which stays on the dwarf side and develops (you guessed it) a yellow tint on top of the blue needles.

So I have the twenty year plan down but nothing for this summer. Typical lazy planning, but this spring the annuals from seed and overwintered coleus cutting compulsion just hasn’t kicked in and I’ve got nothing else in the works. Figures this would also be the year there’s a whole new strip of bed to fill and this unfilled bed would be the focus of Cathy’s weekly Tuesday view. Things could get ugly but I have faith. Like manna from heaven I spotted tiny patches of rudbeckia seedlings in one spot and a shimmer of Verbena bonariensis seedlings in another. Purple and yellow are a start and of course I do like my yellows 🙂

Tuesday View: The Street Border 3.28.17

Mar29

It’s been two weeks since our big (and I hope final) snow dump and I’m happy to announce most of it has melted away.

The front street border on the verge of spring.

Fortunately other than a few snowdrops and winter aconites, most of the plants were still safely underground when the snow fell. Now if I can just get a nice mulch of chopped leaves down this bed shouldn’t need much attention until May… I hope. One thing which worries me are the large deer tracks and munched tulip sprouts I found Sunday morning. Deer are a new thing here and don’t suspect they’ll move on. Needless to say I’m not excited.

Always a week or two ahead, the bed along the front porch got some attention Sunday afternoon as I removed the last of the snow so I could trim the hellebores of winter damaged leaves and freeze damaged flowers.

It’s that anxious time of year when the gardener is trapped between not being able to do anything and worrying about doing too much too early. I usually opt for doing too much… although it never seems enough 🙂

And so the season begins. This year I’ll try to keep up with this front street view each (or nearly each) Tuesday and join up with Cathy of Words and Herbs as she tracks her own Tuesday views throughout the year. Think about joining in, it’s still a few weeks until the view gets interesting but it’ll be on us before we know it!

Tuesday View: The Tropics 11.22.16

Nov22

Following the first hard frost, the tropical view has continued to spiral downwards into the reality of its temperate latitude. Our first significant snowfall came on Saturday night and although snow at this time of year is not unheard of, the long warm autumn and the fact Saturday topped out at 65F (18C) left me in a bit of a shock when I woke up to the white.

I guess it might finally be time to dig the dahlias and cannas.

The frosted annuals and browned cannas are still standing just where they were three weeks ago, and although the mess may look like complete apathy has set in the reality is I’ve been quite busy. There’s been a good amount of earth moving and bed building on top of the required leaf cleanup and bulb planting and I feel pretty good about spring, I just want warmth to return for a few more weeks so I can finish digging and planting.

But if the weather doesn’t change I’ll get over it. No one’s life has ever crumbled over a few unraked leaves or frozen dahlias and as long as there are plenty of snowdrops in April I’ll be fine. There’s always next year 🙂

Tuesday View: The Tropics 11.1.16

Nov2

As you can see from this Tuesday’s view, the weather forecast was correct and Tuesday night we received our first strong frost. One night and the tropical summer was over… but for this part of PA the last week of October is a late frost date, so there are no complaints from this end. It was a great year!

No denying fall is here now. The cannas are browned, the dahlias are blackened, yet even at the end of the season there’s still some color left.

You wouldn’t guess it but I did spend a few minutes cleaning up. The mildewed Verbena bonariensis had been bothering me so those were cut down, and a few large blackened salvias and coleus were taken out as well. For the most part though the rest will come out this weekend (I hope) as I dig canna and dahlia roots and pack them away for the winter, but I have to say even with less color it’s still kind of interesting. I’m discovering things here and there which have been overshadowed by the annuals for the past three months.

A bit tousled by this weekend’s thunderstorm, chrysanthemum ‘Carousel’ is still holding up to the cooler nights. The green nicotina is also doing well, but the surprise was the fat clump of Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima… recently renamed though) which was hiding under the verbena I pulled.

Today I did go ahead and plant a few leftover snowdrops in the tropical bed. The idea of early spring snowdrops sounds nice enough, but I’m pretty sure it will prove to be a bad idea come July when I want to replant all the summer visitors in the same spot. “Oh well” I say. Summer is a long time off and spring flowers are more fun to think of.

So as the season winds down here I’d again like to thank Cathy at Words and Herbs for hosting the Tuesday view each week. It’s been a nice run but I believe winter has most of us calling it quits for the season and our thoughts are turning inside and towards the holidays. Not a bad idea at all, but I might still have another week or two in me, if only to prove that I really did dig up and store all those fantastic roots and bulbs for next year!

Tuesday View: The Tropics 10.25.16

Oct26

It’s a cold and breezy Tuesday this week, with a wind that makes you feel like change is a’comin to this end of Pennsylvania. The forecast tonight is a dip below freezing and there’s a good chance this will be the last week a colorful and lush view shows up in Cathy’s weekly meme. There are still a few weeks left to the season, but after frost hits the view will be decidedly less colorful.

A gloomy, gray Tuesday afternoon. The last of the autumn color has worked its way down the mountains and into the garden and things are entirely autumnal. The wheelbarrow is covering the flowering thistle, I’m hoping to get a few ripe seeds before it freezes.

Whether or not this turns out to be our killing frost remains to be seen, but with the cold wind blowing I’m completely indifferent. Sunday was spent clearing the rest of the garden of everything I wanted to save, so now it’s just a matter of letting nature run its course. Snow is predicted for Thursday so I guess I’m officially giving up 🙂

One last view. The tropics have been good to me this year.

So next week will likely show some serious changes. Once frost hits I like to get things out of the way and cleaned up fast so that I can put down some mulch before winter hits. Any unmulched areas will likely sprout a carpet of winter weeds such as hairy bittercress and I’d rather not start next season with that kind of a mess on my hands. Wish me luck.

After you wish me luck please consider giving Cathy at Words and Herbs a visit to see how autumn is progressing through other gardens in other parts of the world. It’s always a great visit and a fun way to keep up over the season. Have a great week!

A Different Tuesday View: The Tropics 09.20.16

Sep20

The weeks have been flying by too quickly and once again I find it’s time to join up with Cathy for the Tuesday view. If you remember last week there were tarps and shingles flying, and since the roofer also happens to be a friend of mine, guilt had me up there over the weekend lugging bundles around and throwing in a hand to help out (even if it was only for an hour or two). The view is nice up there, and what better vantage point for this week’s view?

The Tuesday view from above. I think we can safely say the bed has filled in and keep in mind all the canna clumps tower at least 8 feet.

A view from the top reminds me of a similar post over at The Rusty Duck last year. Jessica was up the scaffolding getting a new outlook on the garden, and although she made it slightly higher than the roofline of my neighbor’s one story ranch, I think the effect is the same. Something about seeing the same old view from a different perspective always makes it seem new and exciting again… even though my wife was less than excited to find out I also took my daughter up there.

The back end of the tropical garden. I love the purple napier grass (pennisetum) but the banana is my favorite by far 🙂

A new look or not there’s really nothing special worth mentioning this week. Don’t get me wrong, I spend far too much time each week just soaking in the color and lushness of this bed, but I’m going to try and be considerate and spare you yet another stripped canna leaf close-up or castor bean portrait. I’m sure a few will show up this winter when the cold and snow get to be too much.

Have a great week and consider giving Cathy a visit at Words and Herbs to see what other Tuesday views are looking like. I hear there’s talk of autumn in the air…

Tuesday View: The Tropics 09.13.16

Sep14

Cathy at Words and Herbs has been following a weekly view of her garden throughout the season, and each Tuesday I’ve been trying to join in and keep track of my own weekly view in order to catalog the changes. This week the roofers are next door and this afternoon they’ve made their way to the side where the tropical garden grows.

This afternoon’s view of the tropical garden.

Other than a few stray roof shingles and tar paper strips the garden has escaped damage, and that’s great because now is the time of year when every day is a celebration of summer and every night is a reminder that colder weather is on the horizon. As nighttime temperatures cool off I’m beginning to notice a tint of red in some of the clumps of annual burning bush (Kochia scoparia). Me thinks in a few weeks the ‘will it burn or will it snuff out’ question will finally be answered.

The clumps of burning bush (Kochia) are actually several seedlings all planted into the same hole. Most of the season they’ve appeared to be one big bush, but now a few here and there are going their own way and beginning to show color.

I can’t imagine these plantings will be as successfully bright as some of the photos I’ve seen online but if they’re halfway interesting I will be happy enough. As it is their fluffy green mass has been a welcome green rest in an otherwise overloaded bed of color.

One of the less-than-bright kochia seedlings. More of a tan in my opinion, but things are all under a little stress here in the shadow of the canna clump…. with the exception of the tall purple salvia splendens seedling, it’s still doing just fine!

The rest of this post is gratuitous canna color. I posted canna ‘Cannova Rose’ last week, but it’s still outstanding, and deserves another mention.

Cannas and dahlias with an orange zinnia and purple petunias. The petunias were planted as petunia intergrifolia but I bet there’s something else in there as well, and that’s just fine since I like the bold mini-flowered purple groundcover it’s become.

Canna ‘Tropicana’ is always over the top. I think you either love it or turn away in disgust, but either way it’s a bright tropical show.

Canna ‘Tropicanna’ in a bed of verbena and backed by one of those dark leaved, huge, grow-it-as-an-annual, Napier grasses (Pennisetum purpureum). Hard to see in the picture, but the grass is just over five feet, so probably much bigger than you’d guess.

I know I’ve called Canna ‘Bengal Tiger’ my absolute favorite canna, but there’s a new kid on the block this year. Canna x ehemanii is an old hybrid which tops nearly every other canna in the gracefulness category. I did not suspect my small plant would bloom this year but here it is opening its first flower. A little short for this variety, but much easier to admire when it’s down here amongst us mortals 🙂

I saw Canna x ehemanii growing in a corner of Chanticleer a few years back and have been looking for my own plant for years. Once open its flowers will arch and hang with an amazing tropical grace that you’ll have to trust me on right now, but I’m sure more pictures will follow as it develops.

We are into the one month countdown. First frost typically hits around mid-October in these parts, and for as much heat and drought and storm this garden can take, it can’t take a hard freeze. That’s a Tuesday view I’m not looking forward to.

In the meantime please give Cathy a visit and find out what she and other bloggers are seeing this Tuesday. It’s a great way to keep up with the changes and really see just how much goes on in your garden!

Tuesday View: The Tropics 09.06.16

Sep7

One of the benefits of regularly joining Cathy for the Tuesday view has been that little push each week to actually follow up on the observations made the week before. The fear of confessing laziness and sloth publicly has been great for keeping on top of the weeding, deadheading, staking, and planting and it’s also a great regime for someone who goes through bouts of couldn’t-care-less and stretches of I’m-bored-with-this-garden-thing. Now might be one of those bouts, and as the days grow shorter and our latest dry stretch begins to stress plants out again, I look at the water hose and then look at the recliner and typically chose the recliner. So I apologize ahead of time if my mood comes through, I’m sure colchicum season will come along soon enough and snap me back out of it.

A quick picture taken this evening. I find the low sun angles to be absolutely disgusting and far prefer June.

The cannas keep going from strength to strength and I’m glad to see this bit of ‘Cannova Rose’ finally showing off. It went through a rough spot which I suspect were the aftereffects of stray weed killer, but the latest bloom stalks look mostly normal… unless you’re really neurotic and notice that one stalk still has thinner petals and is quicker to fade…

Canna ‘Cannova Rose’, a newer seed strain which grows without complaint (even in cooler weather) but has been pointed out to have somewhat boring foliage. It looks nice with the first flowers of dahlia ‘Mathew Alen’… throw in a few orange zinnias and some purple petunia and you’ve got a nice patch of color.

The dahlias are slowly starting up. They seem late, but that would be because I planted them late, and there’s no sense in complaining about that now. An earlier show would have been nicer is all I’m saying and of course next year none of this will be a problem since as of now next year is still perfect 😉

Had they been staked properly this patch of ‘Sylvia’ and ‘Red Cap’ dahlias would have risen just perfectly amongst the cannas and verbena. Who knows, maybe the red will still rise up a bit, but if it doesn’t serves me right for slacking.

I’m kind of at a loss as to why I’m down to just three or four dahlia varieties. I’m sure in June I had a brilliant plan as to where they were placed and who their neighbors were, but now it seems to all be ‘Mathew Alen’. Vaguely I remember thinking I was bored with a few and felt all empowered when I tossed them onto the compost pile, but naturally I just assumed things would come together later and there would still be a good bit of variety. So much for that. I guess it doesn’t help that several were swamped by other plants… but oh well, another serves me right moment.

Something for the future. If this Colocasia esculenta ‘Tropical Storm’ can get through a serious spider mite infestation I’m sure it will be worth the $2 I spent. My icecream cone was actually more expensive than this soon to be amazing plant 🙂

There’s only about another month and a half left in the tropical garden and it’s absolutely not the time of year to get into a ho-hum mood about things. I really need to treasure every shortened day and to that end will keep reminding myself as I self medicate on fried foods, baked goods and chocolate. Give me another week and I’m sure I’ll have come to terms with the waning season and maybe just maybe I can look forward to autumn. Many people claim to enjoy that season and I guess it’s only fair I give it a try as well.

Have a great week!

Tuesday View: The Tropics 8.23.16

Aug24

It’s another Tuesday and although I missed last week due to a quick summer jaunt up to the mountains of New Hampshire, this week I’m back to joining in with Cathy at Words and Herbs in order to look at the weekly progress of the tropical border. Heat, humidity, regular rain showers, and strong summer sunshine in between have brought on an explosion of late summer growth and the purple leaved cannas now dominate the bed.

Purple leaved canna indica, maybe ‘purpurea’ or ‘red stripe’ or ‘Russian red’… I don’t really know since they were given to me years ago as just plain old canna… have now topped off at around 8-9 feet.

You’ll probably notice the small red blooms the cannas have put out. They’re nice enough as a little decoration up top but hardly enough reason to grow these plants. It’s all about the foliage and it’s looking particularly good on this deliciously cool and clear, breezy summer day.

Canna indica ‘purpurea?’ blooms against the bright blue of a clear summer sky. A very popular flower with the hummingbirds.

Have I referenced “summer” enough yet? I’m hoping that if I keep saying the word it will hang on forever, and we’ll never have to deal with the cold little deaths called autumn and winter. Surely it’s a part of life here in Pennsylvania, but I don’t mind if it holds off for another two months at least.

I need to add more coleus to the bed next year. As things grow so does the shade, and this coleus (maybe ‘Alabama Sunset’) fills in nicely rather than fading away like some of the zinnias.

There’s a whole back half to the bed which has been blocked off by the main clump of canna. It’s a little messy but hopefully in the next few weeks a dahlia or two can break through and add a little color as other things begin to fade out.

Is ‘Tropical Weed Patch’ a look? If I can only think of a better name maybe it will catch on but in the meantime you may notice the salvia ‘Caradonna’ which constantly annoys me is still exactly where its always been. Sometimes things don’t move too fast around here 🙂

With such a mess of randomness there’s bound to be a surprise here and there, and sometimes that surprise even turns out to be a nice one. This week it was the salvia which has just come into bloom. My favorite version of the stout, too-red, gas-station salvias (Salvia splendens) are the ones which don’t look like they’d end up in a gas station planting at all. They’re the tall and lanky ones which are sometimes referred to as Salvia splendens ‘Van Houttii’ and up until now I’ve only succeeded with a peach colored one. But last year I did have a short purple bedding type nearby, and apparently things happened at night and lo and behold this year one of their children is a tall, lanky purple.

At about three feet tall this purple salvia bloom has all the grace and style which its shorter cousins lack. Even better was that I found this as a self-sown seedling and was lucky enough to nurse it on to blooming size. This makes me wonder as to what the other seedlings will look like.

I’ve shown it before but have to show one more photo of the castor bean. The bright seed pods look perfect amongst the purple foliage.

The spiky red (and remember poisonous as well) seed heads of castor bean ‘carmencita’

This afternoon the sun hit the back corner of the bed perfectly. You don’t even notice the weeds when the light is like this.

Verbena bonariensis is the workhorse of this bed and although it threatens to swamp everything else here it’s still worth any bit of trouble it causes.

At this time of year it’s easy to ignore any maintainence and just enjoy the plants as they slide on into autumn, but dahlias are yet to come and dahlias need staking. Two weeks ago would have been the best time to do this but things happen and when things happen the dahlias fall over. It will require twice as much time to carefully put them back up and some might just stay where they lie. It will be more of a groundcover look, but with the way they are stretching away from the canna’s shadow nearly all the plants have verticality issues which might not be worth fighting.

There are dahlias in them thar purple verbena, but for now lets just focus on the panicum ‘Northwind’ which is turning into a tight fountain of frothy seed-heads.

Dahlias will hopefully be staked tomorrow… or Thursday. Weekend at the latest. It’s so nice right now with green grass, butterflies, and flowers who wants to stake stuff? Plus I needed to tackle a hedge of crabgrass which sprouted overnight in one of the other beds, it’s an embarrassing mess, but at least it’s green and green is so much nicer than the dead brown which surrounded me last month.

Mess or not I hope you enjoyed the view and if you’d like give Cathy a visit and see what this week has brought to her garden and others. It’s a nice way to keep tabs on things over the season and it’s also a great way to get things staked and weeded. Shame is a great motivator and even if it means I have to stake with one hand and take pictures with the other, the job will get done long before I even consider publically admitting that the twine has defeated me 🙂

sorta like suburbia

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