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.

 

.

 

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!

Sunday Morning on the Deck

What a beautiful Sunday we are enjoying today.  It was very cool (40's) at 6:00 a.m. and 80 degrees by 2pm.  Perfect weather!

I was outside early taking pics of the deck before the sun got high enough to cast shadows.

Last year I bought this container of switch grass 'Rotstrahlbush'. I overwintered it in it's original pot. I thought it had died until a few weeks ago when it finally came up! Really...it was late July before anything began to grow.  It is still not very tall. I decided to put it in a deck vignette where I would get much more enjoyment then I get looking at it alone in this ugly plastic pot.

 

I love its soft feathery panicles against the rough 'Tropicana' leaves.

 The panicles should get taller and turn a reddish color as fall approaches.

I love August on my deck.  This is the time when my tropicals began to flower and I can move the containers around to make different combinations. 

 

This Rembrandt dahlia began blooming this week:

The petals look paint splashed ....I love it!

 

Here is another Rembrandt in golden yellow and red:

 

The coleus planters I bought the first week of July have really exploded in size.

 DH and I are both enjoying them.  It is wonderful having containers with no blooms to fade and fall onto the deck floor.  J gets all the credit for the deck plants this year. He has been super diligent in his daily watering/fertilizing. 

 

 

 Look at the size of this coleus sitting on the floor:

 

They look so good I am wondering if he is singing to them each afternoon....LOL. 

 

I hope you are all having a great Sunday, too!

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!

3 New Clocks

One day last week  I was surfing around in the wee morning hours and I found a blog that mentioned a site I had never heard of.....Joss and Main..................strange name... but I liked some of the items that were purchased at that site, so I wandered on over for a look.

I did not purchase anything that day, but I did register my email.  So, of course, they sent me advertising emails daily.  I think I went there at least five times before the temptation was just too much and I ordered.......................................clocks............................If you had told me I would be ordering clocks, I would have laughed and asked what you had been drinking...I had no idea I wanted clocks! :)

Somewhere in the inner recesses of my brain, I wanted clocks because I ordered three of them.  They arrived this week.  I opened the box and wondered where I would put these three clocks.  My original thought was to use them on my dining room table as a centerpiece...unfortunately the backs are not finished so that did not work. 

I ended up using them in these spaces:

 On top of the dining room curio cabinet:

 

On top of the dining room china cabinet:

 

 

Over the television cabinet:

I think they will be great decoration for a New Year's Eve party dessert table!  I have never had a NYE party, but maybe someday I will.....If I do, I will be prepared!

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.

 

Star of Bethlehem Finally Gone

See the small white flowers near the ground? That is Star of Bethlehem.  It is a pretty little flower in the spring, but it's very invasive.  This area has thousands of tiny little bulbs underground.  The only way to get rid of it, is to dig it all out.

Abracadabra! It's gone!

OK, it was not really that easy.  My sweet husband  spent a good hour removing all of the top soil--at least six inches deep.

He hauled it all away and will cover with plastic and rocks in hopes of killing the gazillion bulbs.  I don't even want them to grow in the woods because I know they will find their way back to my gardens. 

He looked up from the spot he was dumping them in and saw this:

At first he thought mosquitoes were buzzing around over his head. Good thing he looked up before he begin swatting!

He ran to Home Depot to get bags of top soil and refilled the area (I think it took 11 bags).

Once the sidewalk gets power washed, it will be ready for planting.  I have no plans to do any planting until next year.

J (DH) is becoming quite the grill master.  He made these potatoes for dinner:

He seems to really enjoy cooking and so far I enjoy not cooking. It's a good retirement hobby for him.

A Few Deck Containers are Beginning to Bloom & Sedumn Autumn Joy is Looking Good

I have a lot less containers on the deck this year. I like having less.  My plan is to gradually work my way down to just six half whiskey barrels that stay out all winter.  I am no where near that minimalistic goal. It will take years.

I separated  two barrels of liatris last fall.  Some of them are just beginning to bloom.  These are perennial and stay in their half-whiskey-barrel containers out on the deck all year long.  It doesn't get much easier than that!

I never had much luck growing Liatris in the ground.  I was thrilled when I discovered they liked living in the whiskey barrels.

Many of my yellow calla lilies have huge blooms this year. It seems like they are  blooming later  (which, if true, is understandable due to the very cold spring & I brought them out two weeks later than usual).

In the front yard, I filled the border near the front porch with Sedum Autumn Joy last year and am thrilled that it is just about completely filled in so that you do not see individual plants--just a mass of Sedum.  That was my plan from the beginning . Once planted, Sedum Autumn Joy demands little attention--no watering, no fertilizer...nada....nada...nada!
I may have to divide it every three years, but that's  about it. It should look good all year long with no effort from me. I love the light green color with the darker green shrubs. 

This area will be completely pink in about three weeks.

 

I am not thrilled with the canna/calla combo under the window.

 

I like the foliage color combo, which I used to coordinate with the Ninebark 'Diablo' shrub, but the callas flopped over in the recent rain.  The Tropicana foliage should be much larger than it is.  If I do this next year, I will have to buy some green stakes for each calla. I suspect I will have to stake the Tropicanna lilies also --should they decide to bloom this year. At the moment it does not look like they will.  I hate staking because it is so ugly and it defeats my goal of less garden maintenance. I will probably be changing this planting next year.

 

The garage urns are still all foliage and I am really liking this one (the larger of the two identically-planted urns)

I will now start cutting back any further growth from the licorice plant and the ipomea. I don't want the whole urn to be covered.

 

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

 

Garden Remake #2 and Misc. Garden Shots

We almost finished the second garden bed yesterday.  I will go out after work today to cut back some of the floppy foliage and add a section of Sedum Autumn Joy to the front.

DH and I worked together for only about an hour.  It's amazing how fast things happen when two people are sharing the work! The one we finished on Saturday is just to the right of this picture.

Here are a few random shots of the other parts of the garden:

Speedwell beginning to bloom:

Purple Phlox:

We just moved that Alberta Spruce there on Saturday.  I don't think it's staying as the shape is wonky. I may attempt to trim it up a bit to see if I like it better.  If not it will get moved to the back rockwall garden.



Coleus through the wagon wheel:

Same coleus:

 

 

I had three Manhattan lilies left, so I cut them down and DH made a nice bright bouquet for the front porch.

 

Here is the hosta garden that I planted last fall. 

I am very happy with the hosta garden.  This was one of those areas where nothing would grow. The hostas seem to like it here.  The only problem is the deer and rabbits have been using this area as the local diner. I had to use some Hinder to spray the plants.  It seems to have stopped the feast for a while. 

Shasta daisies are almost finished for another year:

I feel pretty good about the amount of work we got done in the garden this weekend. Of course, there is still tons of work to do--it never ends.

Spontaneous Garden Remake

I went outside at 7:30 a.m. to do "about an hour" of tidying up.  I thought I was just about done when I filled this wheelbarrow

I thought I would dump it, put my tools away and go inside.

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, will not be surprised when I say that did not happen.

I took a quick stroll through the paths admiring this lavender and beebalm combo as well as

some red daylilies that had just begun to bloom. 

I have a lot of these red daylilies.

I  decided to remove a couple of huge plants, divide them and replant them in a small garden out near the road. Luckily DH was up to provide some muscle power.  It is amazing how heavy one big plant is!

 I have spent the past two years getting rid of just about everything in these two roadside gardens. 


I am making a last ditch effort to find something (in addition to the Alberta Spruce and one nice clump of daisies) that wants to call this area home.  If the daylilies don't like it here, then the area is going back to grass.

After a short break for lunch, I finished the area.

It looks pretty decent right now--much better than the before picture.There are a few yellow daylilies in here, too. They have already finished blooming.  We shall see if everything comes back and blooms next year. 

I plan to do the other garden with the same combination of flowers.  I may start that one tomorrow.

Some new readers may be aghast that I moved these just as they started to bloom.  I know it's not the proper time, but I never pay attention to the rules.  I move daylilies anytime I feel like it and they usually survive. 

I am off now to a parade of Harley Davidson motorcycles -- about 1,000 of them.  Our town is the host for the Michigan State HOG (Harley Owners Group) Rally. I am even wearing my official HOG Rally t-shirt. :)