Look Who Came to Visit at Work Yesterday

Sasquatch!

  Our hotel is hosting a production crew and actors for a fishing reality show.  Sasquatch is making commercials for Jack's Link's (beef jerky ), the main sponsor for this show.  He has been spotted all around the town doing all sorts of crazy things.  The whole town is enjoying our week of fame.  We cannot wait for the shows to air, beginning in January.

 

Since I had my camera at work, I snapped a shot of one of the four containers I do each year. 

There are a  couple of Tropicana flowers almost ready to bloom.  The creeping jenny has been gobbled up by the Ipomeoa. Jenny is not as aggressive as I had hoped.  I really wanted that shot of chartreuse to hang down in the front. 

 

Here is a close up of the foliage plants -- Persian Shield, Coleus, Ipomeoa and licorice plant instead of Jenny in this one.

 

 

This container is on my porch at home and Jenny behaved beautifully. Of course the container is shorter and has no Ipomeoa.

 

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The licorice plant shows up nicely in the containers flanking my garage.

I will have to remember to use the golden licorice plant instead of Creeping Jenny with Ipomeoa.

 

I always enjoy my containers in late August when the perennial garden is pretty much done!

The dark foliage planter Finally has two Flowers

Tropicana 'Black' is only about 3 ft. tall this year (usually gets over 6 ft) and right now it has one bloom.  I like it short and I like the reddish orange color of the flower:

About two feet higher, Canna 'Wyoming' has its first bloom in a lighter orange:

'Tropicana' still has no buds:

If it ever blooms, it will have a medium orange flower. But even without a flower its striped leaves are stunning.  The purple plant is Persian Shield.

Two weeks ago I bought my first hedge trimmer. 

It's electric with a 100-ft cord.  I'm in love!  I have been trimming all my shrubs with just a small Felco hand pruner for over twenty years.  I had no idea how easy this would be to use and how fast I could trim all the shrubs.  Today I used it to cut down gazillions of daylily foliage.  In less than an hour I cut down more than I used to do in a full day's work.  Love, love, love this tool!! I am sure you all have something like this already. Nobody but me would do all that hand trimming for so many years without one.

I am going to use this cut down all my perennial foliage this fall!

It's been a Pretty Dull Week in the Garden

It's that time of year when I wonder why I do all that garden work.  Everything looks dull, dying or drab. Everything that's interesting has already finished blooming. The daylilies are not very impressive this year. I cut down a few wheelbarrow loads of dead perennials today.

Even my deck containers are blah this year. The Ipomea vine in the center container has not grown at all since it was planted the beginning of June--that is unheard of!

This dark-foliage vignette still has no blooms:

I still like the color combination of the striped Tropicanna,  the silvery purple Persian Shield, greenish-brown canna Wyoming, Tropicanna Black , the Mystery plant (I still have never found out what the dark rubbery thing in the front is) and Sedona coleus. There are two buds on the Trops, so I should  have orange and orangish-red flowers soon.

The only colorful spot right now is the entrance to the deck.  DH gets the credit for this display.

He choose and planted the red and gold combination that flanks the main steps to the deck.  J loves marigolds. I am starting to like them more -- I told him it would look nice if he planted them all the way down that sidewalk border he cleaned out last week. That border leads to the deck entrance.
 

 

He had flowers left over so he planted a number of small containers in the same flower combo and placed on the steps  He insisted on doing all the planting himself.  I think he did a great job!

 

I am really enjoying J's new hobbies--helping with the garden and cooking.  He is even cooking on the weekends.  Last night he grilled this steak and foil-wrapped redskin potatoes with onions:

He also tossed some yellow squash with olive oil, salt and pepper and grilled it.

 

 The meal was delicious.

 

I have always envied women who had husbands who cooked for them. Now I have one-- I am a lucky woman!

 

I also did another project this week that caused this:

This pic was taken after 7 days of healing....No kidding!  If you want to find out what caused this click here.

 

A Few Deck Pictures

First of all, my sympathies to AZ in Phoenix, who had to live through a 117 degree day yesterday! I hope I never experience temperatures anywhere near that!!

This year I did not decorate the deck as I usually do with pillows, quilts, rugs, etc.  If I ever have a leisurely weekend home, I may still get a chance to do it. Here is what the undecorated deck looked like at 8:00p.m. on August 8, 2012:

This is a closer view of the Tropicanna flower that I showed you yesterday.

I always enjoy the pink 'Park Princess' dahlias.

This framed planter has really filled out.

 This is probably about as good as the planted crates will get this year.  I expected the top to have a crown of white calla lilies, but that did not happen.

Only one white calla lily bloomed and it came out at an angle instead of on top.

Everything else in these crates performed as expected and I am very happy with this corner. I will definitely be using the crates again next  year.

I hear the most lovely sound outside --raindrops hitting the windows. It's still dark, so I can't tell how much it's rained, but anything is appreciated.

Have to get ready for work now. I have another full day. The Food & Beverage Director and I will be meeting with the bride of our next wedding. It's the most unusual (and expensive) wedding we have done --all individual food station set ups--and we want to make sure to get it right!  I am sure it will go off beautifully, but it's always a bit stressful until it's over.

Thumbs UP for HD Returns, Buddelia Visitors & Peruvian Daffodil

I am happy to report that we did find the correct Home Depot receipt and I was able to painlessly return the two dead plants (scroll down a few weeks if you don't know what I am talking about).  The lady at the return desk did not hassle me at all. Thumbs up to HD!

My Buddelia bushes have been hosting dozens of attractive visitors.  I just went out and counted 12 butterflies and one hummingbird moth. I snapped pics of just a few visitors.

I have not seen a hummingbird yet, which is disappointing.  Most years I see hummers all the time.
This Peruvian daffodil is also a bit disappointing.  It has only one bloom. As lovely as it is, I was hoping for many more.

We have not gotten any of the rain predicted for the past week or so.  I finally had to go out after work today and spend about an hour watering the plants I recently moved in the main gardens.  I am only trying to keep them alive until it rains.  At this point I am pretty tired of caring for my plants.  Once my grass dies out, I have no desire to waste my energy caring for the gardens.  Without green grass, they do not look good. 

I do keep my deck containers watered. My Tropicanna whiskey barrels are looking good right now with their first blooms.

Up near the Tropicanna flower, you can see a dahlia that I inserted yesterday. I like to grow small containers of plants that I can use in my larger containers.  This dahlia is gold with red stripes. I think they are  perfect with the Tropicanna leaves.

That is about all the garden news in my parched Michigan garden.  I hope your garden is doing better.

Garden Update

Is it just me or does it seem like it's been a long week?  Usually weeks just fly by, so it's kind of nice for one to take its time.

I have not returned the Home Depot plants. I was all set to go after work and when I pulled out the receipt to make sure it was correct, it was from a purchase in May! Good thing I checked that before I got there. 

I have not done any work in any of the gardens all week.  Many of you  think I am always working out there, but I am not.  :)  I often go two weeks without doing any garden work (except watering the deck containers) . Now that the year is ending, I am not that particular about watering the perennials.
I did walk out to get a few pictures of flowers just coming in to bloom.

My butterfly bush is huge this year because I did not have to cut it back to the ground. I noticed the first butterfly yesterday.

One of the grasses in the rockwall garden has had seed heads for weeks now.

That's the butterfly bush in the background.

Echinops (globe thistle)

I am disappointed as there are not many of the lovely blue orbs this year.  The dahlias are in containers that I moved to the garden two weeks ago.  I really like the dark foliage of this dahlia.

Tropicanna is almost ready to burst open.

 

I had to return the Croc shoes from Amazon.  They were way too tight and too narrow, yet they were the same size I always get in regular Crocs.  That company is very inconsistent with their sizing.  I didn't like them anyway. They looked like an exceptional cheap shoe and they were totally flat. I thought they appeared to have a bit of a wedge in the picture.  What a nice surprise to find that Amazon had no charge for the return.

Here's hoping we all have a wonderful weekend!