Now You See It

The unsightly withering foliage of colchicum (sometimes inaccurately called autumn crocus).










Now you don't

The "naked ladies" are now entering their dormant stage. I could not stand the mess any longer, so last night I cut them all off. They looked sufficiently dead to me.

In a couple of months they will rise out of the bare ground and be reborn into beautiful purplish-pink crocus-like flowers.

The term "naked ladies" refers to the fact that they bloom sans foliage. I had thought that term was reserved for Amaryllis (Amaryllis belladonna), but like so many common names in the confusing world of gardening, it also refers to cochicum autumnale.

How Sweet it is

Sweet William, that is.

Pink Sweet William growing through a smokebush


Sweet William growing against the rockwall


All of the Sweet William (dianthus)I have has reseeded from two packages of seeds I planted about 14 years ago.

Sweet William is not a perennial which surprises many people. It is actually a biennial, which means you plant the seed and you get only foliage the first year. The second year, you will get flowers. After flowering the plant dies. But not before it has dropped hundreds of seeds.

If it is happy, Sweet William will just keep reseeding and you will have it every year.

Remember the overgrown feverfew area I posted a few days ago?

Here it is after I pulled the feverfew out of the front area.

Lady Bug on Astilbe

Put on the sunglasses

before you look at the new outdoor dinnerware I just bought

Red and orange --
Wow, those will put a tingle in your retina!

I couldn't resist the home dec fabric. I think it will be perfect for the tablecloth.

I envision a floral centerpiece using lots of clustered bellflower and just a few orange lillies-- ah yes, that will be just the finishing touch.

I am going to have loads of fun with this tablescape!

Sempervivum

I find hens and chicks difficult to place in a garden.
They tend to get lost among the other plants.
When I brought this piece of driftwood in to the garden last year, I decided to throw a clump of sempervivum in the top crevice.
Every time I walk by I now appreciate the plant because it is at a level high enough to be seen.

It survived the winter with no problem.

Blooming Sage

It's still a little dark on the deck, so please excuse the poor quality of the picture.

Remember this herb pot that I planted last year and left out all winter? I didn't even realize the sage was perennial. This year it came back and surprised me with these lovely blooms. Now even if I never use it to make chickn saltimbocca (the reason I planted it in the first place) it has been worthwhile.

Heliotrope Wall Planter

It's such a pleasure when I plant something that does exactly what I expected it to do.


So far the parrot's beak (Lotus berthelotii)in this wall planter has spilled out in the exact feathery fashion I wanted. The contrast of this light foliage with the dark heavy heliotrope is just perfect.

There is no sign of bloom yet, but even without the flowers, this plant is a winner.

Campanula First Blooms

The Clustered Bellflower (Campanula glomerata)

A very hearty reliable flower. Nice color, gives about three weeks of good bloom.

It's about 2 feet high and makes a great cut flower.

I like this one a lot.











CAMPANULA medium
(Canterbury Bells) Interesting shape, but the plant on a whole doesn't thrill me. This is the only one I have. Maybe with age, it will fill out and I will like it better.

Do not confuse these nice campanulas with the obnoxious weed, creeping bellflower. I wrote about it on June 16, 2005 if you want to go into the archives.

This yellow swallowtail was very cooperative staying within 12 inches of my lens for quite some time. She must have been drunk on the Sweet William nectar.

More Allium Varieties

I did not intentially plant this white allium. It may have come with a plant someone gave me. I like it, though, and wish I had more.



These will bloom in another week or so. They are drumstick allium (A. sphaerocephalum )and will be a deep burgundy-pink color. I think they look pretty cool just like this.

Dining Al fresco

I am all alone tonight.
It is a beautiful warm (but not HOT) evening.
I decided to enjoy the moment and dine outside.








I threw one of my vintage tablecloths on this small table.
Since I just finished a bottle of the Relax wine, I used the pretty cobalt blue bottle to hold my last peonies.
With my collection of dishes, it was easy to find a perfect match.
I made a nice salad with grapes and poppyseed dressing and sat here and enjoyed every bite.

I do not usually enjoy eating outside because I don't like to fight the bugs for each bite.

Tonight I ate the entire salad without being bothered once by a bug.

I must do this more often.

Feverfew Takes Over

Feverfew (the stuff with the white flowers)is taking over my rockwall garden. The area you see here is supposed to be a path.


In this spot it is hiding a hosta.


Feverfew is very easy to pull out.
I pulled out all of in both areas in about 10 minutes.

It reseeds so easily that I would consider it a nuisance if it wasn't so easy to pull out.

There are many areas were this herb is a positive addition to my gardens. I just don't want it everywhere!

Beginning of the Rockwall Garden

The rockwall garden is my oldest at 14 years. It took 3 years to dig it all, with me doing most for the first two years. Once DH really got into helping in the third year, he finished it.

Almost all of the big boulders you see in this area, were pulled from below the soil. A few like this giant boulder were already on top.

It was very hard work, but also very exciting to keep unearthing those big rocks.
I believe this area must have been the dumping ground from the excavation of the basement.

Once the digging was done, the area needed a backdrop. A neighbor was digging a drainfield and DH and my son hauled many pickup loads of rock from his yard to ours to make the wall.



The large pine trees in front have all been removed during the past three years. There were five of them. So this once nearly all shaded area, has been opened to the sun, which forced me to make a lot of changes in plant material.

I like it much better without the trees. I campaigned for over 10 years before DH agreed to have them cut down!

In the Beginning

In a comment to a previous post, Dianne asked me what size my main gardens were and how old they were.
I've been trying to figure it out ever since.
I think this is the ninth year for the two biggest beds.

I am only guessing at the size...maybe 65 feet long and from 10 to 20 feet wide for the two main beds.

This is when I started digging in 1997. I dug the majority of both sides by myself. After spending three years digging out the rockwall area, DH adapted the motto, "she who has the idea, does the work". He was pretty sick of digging and thought I had more gardens than I needed already.

So I just grabbed a shovel and started digging. I dug for about three months --every spare hour I had. Every now and then I hit a solid rockbed area and had to call upon him to help me. In some areas of these beds there is only about 12 inches of soil and then it's solid rock.



I didn't really have a plan. I just eyeballed it and kept digging until I felt like it was time to stop. When I was satisfied I had two very long deep beds. You really can't tell how deep they are from these pictures because I can't get it all in one picture.




The following year, I dug out smaller areas on each side of the long borders. This area is what you see from the road.

I tried to put in the pictures of the woodland side, but blogger won't let me. I must have too many pictures in one post.

All I can say for sure, is that I have a LOT of garden area (I have quite a few others in addition to this area that I call the main gardens)

Dianne also asked how often I add new plants.

The area is pretty well filled, but when I see something I just must have, I always make room for it by removing something I have too much of or that I don't like as much as the new addition.

I am always moving things around just because I like to. Isn't that the essence of gardening? I have to be digging and moving all the time; otherwise I get bored.

Money is the Root of all Evil

Thank goodness I didn't win any. :)










Here are a couple of butterflies on the Valerian

"The House Always Wins"

But maybe, just maybe, not tonight.


After work today we are off to indulge in some unwholesome, shady activities. DH and I are off on a little gambling trip.



When I return I hope to be "In the Money"!

Or at least have some money left.

I am hoping that it rains like crazy while I'm gone.

See ya'll on Sunday. (I'm watching way too much Paula Deen)

Goutweed,

bishop's weed,snow-on-the-mountain, ground elder -- whatever you call it Aegopodium podagraria can be bad news if it's running rampant in your yard.
Goutweed is incredibly aggressive, spreading by long white underground rhizomes as well as by seed. It is a nightmare to many homeowners who simply can't seem to get rid of it.
(the cute little white star flowers are not part of the goutweed. Those are Star of Bethlehem, a tiny spring-flowering bulb that some also consider invasive)


This groundcover has flattopped clustered 5-petal flowers in late spring. They ride high above the foliage and resemble Queen Anne's Lace.




I have this often-cursed groundcover in a few areas in my yard. I think the varigiated foliage is quite attractive.

In this shady area in the back of my deck it actually works quite well. It's been here about 10 years and as long as I diligently deadhead those flowers before they produce seed and dig out any creeping under the rocks each spring, I have been able to keep it under control.

I had it in another area on the side of my garage as a groundcover for a yew hedge. That area receives more sun and I found it too difficult to maintain.

The only way I could get rid of it was by using RoundUp. It took two summers of applying the RoundUp about every two weeks to every tiny little piece I spotted popping up. It is finally gone in that area.

This is probably a plant that the average suburban homeowner would not want.

Don't plant it unless you have a difficult area where nothing else will grow, you have room for it to spread and you don't mind giving it the attention it requires to keep it in line.

Don't You Just Love

perky Gerbera daisies?
They are such fun playful flowers.

This is one flower that is almost always pronounced incorrectly.
It's not a Gerber daisy as so many people think.
There is an "a" on the end.
Grrrrrr bear ah
Not that it's that big a deal, but I would appreciate finding a little tip like this, so I hope some of my readers do too.

Chenille Plant

This is the first year I have tried to grow the Chenille Plant. I am hoping it spreads fast and furious now that the warm weather is here. This is in a wall planter so there is plenty of room for it to flow down in beautiful red fuzzy tails.

Since we have had no rain for two weeks everything is looking dull and parched. The only thing I could find to take a picture of was my shadow.

Little did I know that DH was in the bathroom window watching me with my arms above my head dancing about with my camera held in the air.

He said he was about to call mental health because there was a crazy woman in his backyard. LOL.

Ya gotta have a little fun now and then.

Pictures Fool the Eye

Doesn't this dame's rocket make a perfect border for this picture?

I think it looks very nice.

In the picture, that is.........

In real life, it was way too tall and stood out like a sore thumb.

I pulled it right after taking this photo.

It's so much fun to play with a digital camera. I am learning more every day about how those garden magazines make those borders look so nice! There are so many tricks to fool the eye.

Moral of the story: Only believe half of what you see here. LOL

Stash Buster Quilt

Remember this quilt I finished piecing in spring '05?

I am finally getting around to quilting it.

I used a 100% cotton batting for the first time and I don't like it at all. The backing sticks to the batting and forms wrinkles and creases. With the poly I usually use, it's very easy to run your hand over, pull and get rid of the wrinkles--the backing fabric slides easily.

It's a Mountain Mist batting that I bought years ago and never used. Maybe it's defective or something.


I've decided not to waste much time on this one and am doing a combination of quilting and tying. Only the plain blocks are getting quilted with interlocking circles. I think there are 16 of these blocks. The remainder will be tied.

I've found the dining room table works great for tying.

Today Is Flag Day

It has led every battle fought by America.

It waves proudly on the moon.

Many have lost their lives defending it.

Fly it proudly.

Off to Work

Every morning I take a giant whiff of the peonies before heading out the door.

(Ever try to take your own pic with your nose stuffed in a peony?....not an easy task)

Have a great day everyone!

Allium Molly

This allium is very different from the big round purple balls I had blooming a few weeks ago.

Molly is short (12" max) with small yellow flowers. She's not fully in bloom here. The little star flowers will form more of a small ball as soon as the lower ones emerge.

Molly's not too picky, freely putting out her blooms whether full sun or mild shade.

She's a great front-of-the-border plant if you want a splash of sunny color.

One of the More Beautiful

Weeds

It's called Hawkweed.
It is also known as Devil's Paintbrush and probably many other names.
Isn't it beautiful in macro mode?

Dianne asked what I did with these beauties after I photographed them.
I yanked them out by the roots as fast as I could and tossed those babies far over the rockwall. Beautiful as they are, they are still weeds and I surely don't want them setting and dropping seeds all over my garden!

Whiskey Barrel Planter

Here is this year's combo:

I have Tropicana cannas in the back which should grow 3+ feet tall and have wide richly-colored striped leaves. If you click to make the pic larger, you can see the cannas beginning. They will have bright orange flowers. The canna is the focal point of the barrel -- or will (hopefully) be at some point. The pot of orangey marigolds is just temporary. It will be removed when the cannas begin to fulfill their duties.

I have used Spilanthes (also called eyeball, peek a boo, or toothache plant) in front of the tall yellow daisies. Off to the left side is the bright yellow cascading 'biden' flowers. In the front I have the 'parrot's beak' which will also have orange flowers and a blackish ipomea. I hope to have what the garden designer's are currently calling a "sophisticated" color scheme.


I call it "using what you have (the big cannas) to frugally fill a whiskey barrel".

Valerian

Valerian is a 4 - 5ft. tall perennial herb with delicate fern-like leaves. The flowers are a pinkish white with a sweet scent that is quite irresistible to butterflies.

The name is derived from the Latin word "Valere", which means well-being.

The plant's root has been ground and used for centuries to reduce stress and help people to sleep.

I did find one fact about Valerian that I did not know.

It was once grown for its strong smelling carrot-shaped root.
Evidently this root smell attracts animals, especially rats, and according to legend was the secret ingredient carried by the Pied Piper of Hamlin.

Hmmmm, that should stop everyone from growing it!

I swear, I have NEVER seen a rat near my Valerian.

Paeonia Festiva Maxima (I think)

I waited over 15 years for this peony to bloom.

That's no typo.

Last year the plant had two blooms - the first since I planted them 15+ years prior.

This year the plant had all of these flowers. I cut every one off and brought them inside so I can thoroughly enjoy the pleasures of my patience.

I have two other peonies I planted back then that still have not bloomed. I have moved them two or three times in those years thinking that was the problem. They are not planted too deeply. I was very careful about that. I planted white and pink and so far no pink.
Each year I get a little bit of foliage, but no blooms...............yet......one of them did have a bud this year, but it dried up. I know now there is still hope.

Patience is a virtue.