A celebration of stonecrop sedums

Well, so much for posting regularly, but I'm going to amend that: I'm setting a goal of posting something every day for the next month, even if it's just a bit of whimsy or a photograph or a quote. (Warning: I am rereading Henry Mitchell.)

Anyway, it's the 15th again and that means Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. I was going to post a selection of what's blooming in my yard, but what I ended up doing was taking a zillion photos of my tall sedums (stonecrop) which Carol at May Dreams informs me is now known as Hylotelephium telephium, which sounds like someone stuttering on the phone, but never mind. It's certainly the most impressive thing I have right now, aside from the incredibly gaudy magenta aster right on the street edge which people are probably judging me for though I don't care. Okay, I'll throw in a picture of that at the end.

But, the sedums. I don't have the variety names (half of them are probably Autumn Joy and the other half... not) because I've lost the tags and/or I got them as hand-me-downs.

 















And here is the aster, in all its eye-popping glory:

And there we are: September. See you tomorrow; I swear I'm going to make this happen.

August blooms

I have been terrible about posting here.  I plan to remedy that soon.   And you know what they say about plans.

Anyway, it is the 15th and hence Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, and since I've failed to participate in this event in recent months it seemed like a good time to jump back in.  It's been a rainy, relatively cool summer full of rampant growth (mostly where I don't want it, but so it goes), and a lot of my flowering plants are blooming earlier and more vigorously than usual, and surprisingly few of them are dying of fungal diseases, so all in all, not bad.

Let's start out with a closeup of a nice bright blue platycodon (balloon flower). I have tons of these; I started the first ones from seed ages ago, and they have proliferated, and nearly all of them open facing my neighbor's yard like everything else in that bed.  Oh well.

Autumn Joy sedum is starting to flush pink for the fall.

 Oh, look, it's a buddleia, not where I planted it.  Huh.

The hardy begonias are HUGE this year, and (I think?) blooming somewhat early.

 Cardinal flower, looking dramatic.

 This is a gladiolus, blooming rather later than its fellows, flopping onto the lawn like a drunk at a party and bellowing for a stake.

 Mountain mint, Pycnanthemum muticum, in the controlled wilderness under the maple tree.  (As opposed to the totally uncontrolled wilderness elsewhere, oh dear.)

And a closeup of one of the Limelight hydrangeas.  Which were planted in the wrong place and have to be aggressively pruned every year to fit there, alas.  We must have done a number on them this winter, because for once they're not growing huge and floppy (I thought, with all the rain, they would), but the flowers still look way too big for the plants, like huge white mittens on a skinny four-year-old kid.  Someday I will chop these out and plant the dwarf version instead.

This isn't from my yard (though it's from the part of the MG demo garden that I planted), and it's not a good picture, but the combo worked out well: Moulin Rouge sunflowers, Jester and Purple Majesty millet, and Bishop's Children dahlias.  All semi-edible, but really just there to ornament the vegetable garden further.

And that's what I have to offer on this gorgeous, cool August morning.  Enjoy your blooms!

Scary purple things

We're traveling in northern California this week, and keep seeing these:

Which are, if the scale isn't evident, tall spikes of flowers about ten feet tall, which we dubbed "scary purple things" until I finally got decent internet today and (since I am the sort of person who Googles rather than, say, calling up the Master Gardeners or grabbing random people on the street and asking) found out that it's Echium pininana or giant viper's bugloss.  Those of us who are familiar with normal viper's bugloss are all going ooh, ah, while those who live in climates similar to the Canary Islands (where it hails from) are probably saying, "what, that old thing?" as you, annoyingly, do.  Though really I challenge anyone to dismiss this plant cavalierly, even when it's overplanted to the degree that northern Californians seem to do.  Because it's scary.  And just because something is common doesn't make it less terrifying.

Ack.

I took this photo in Mendocino, which is a lovely New England-style town that stood in for Cabot Cove, Maine, in the Murder She Wrote series.  It would do that fine as long as you avoided shooting the giant viper's bugloss.  (And any number of other less obvious plant species that don't belong in Maine.)  In the foreground of the photo is some kind of wild radish which I ate the seedpods of, because cruciferous plants are one thing I do recognize in this wonderland of vegetation.

I'll post more wonders later, but just couldn't wait on this.  Ooh, ah.

Never was a story of more woe

I told the sad tale of the death of my Juliet tomato and Romeo pepper over on Grow It Eat It earlier today.  (Plus several of their friends, perhaps named Mercutio and Tybalt.)  Hello, my name is Erica, and I kill plants.  Although I suppose I can blame climate change or locally odd weather patterns for these particular late-frost-related deaths.  (Gardeners don't kill plants; weather kills plants.)  But if I hadn't decided to plant tender vegetables at... an entirely reasonable time, this wouldn't have happened.

I've also concluded that I've lost my Franklinia tree that spent the winter in a pot on the deck.  Probably too small a pot, and/or it didn't get watered enough.  I purposely killed off the Vigna caracalla by leaving its pot outside - three years and it hadn't flowered once, which is kind of the point of it, and two winters inside in which it climbed all over everything and got in the way.  Someday I will try again.  When I get my greenhouse.  (Which is a little like "next year in Jerusalem" but maybe will actually happen.)  I haven't checked on the pomegranate that was still alive last year though not producing, but I doubt it survived since the winter was much harder this year and it's in the way of rampaging black raspberry canes.  The chaste tree is dead (I don't know why), and so is the fig (rabbits).

This is not to mention the things that are dying in various places because they are being smothered by weeds that I'm not managing to keep under control.  You should see what is definitely my former vegetable garden (since I now have the Allotment), or again maybe you shouldn't.  I do have a plan to deal with the mess, but when that will happen is another matter.  Maybe I actually need an elderberry thicket and large quantities of dock, morning glories, cranesbill and mint.

There was a moment last week when, mowing the Way Back, I thought I saw the resurrection of the male winterberry, but when I went to look it turned out to be a baby locust tree.  The females are hanging on, but I really need to clear more space around them (and get them a new friend).

I did get the Winterthur viburnums in the ground, at least, and they look happy.  The rest will come.  I am oddly not depressed about all the plants dying, though I do not approve and I am not resigned and all that.  Much has been done and I'm getting my energy back to do more.

Totally missed GBBD this week; have the white-flowered shrubs that apparently bloom in May now:

Mock orange, oh heavenly smell

Maple-leaf viburnum

Where are the headlines of yesteryear?

It's not every day you spend a couple of hours starting a new garden bed with newspapers from the Bush administration.

(Neighbors' cat is bonus cat.)  And yes, I am a packrat, but finally I am at the bottom of the pile!  There were athletes from the Beijing Olympics, there was "Lost" speculation, there was "Clinton wins Pennsylvania," there was trouble at Bear Sterns.  Lots of it was good to bury.

Here's another shot, from down below:

I wasn't quite finished there; the shape was originally supposed to be a gentle arc and ended up more like a triangle, because I decided to incorporate a patch of daffodils that's been there since at least the Clinton administration (when we used to have a fence; since the fence went away it's been sitting in the middle of the lawn making itself difficult).  The purpose of the bed (besides making room to put plants in) is to connect up the pagoda tree space with the mock orange space.  It will require stepping stones.

The theory here (which I have successfully applied before) is that you mow the grass short, then layer newspaper or cardboard in the desired shape, then put down compost and/or materials that will compost, and eventually get something you can plant in.  For now I've plopped down some fresh wood chips (more than in these photos) from another neighbor's tree removal, mostly just to weigh down the paper so it doesn't all blow away.  I'll add materials as I acquire them, and edge the bed so we can mow around it.  For right now all I'm going to plant are three Winterthur viburnums that have been in pots for a year and a half (big pots; they actually look great) and that I have been flailing about because I couldn't remember where I meant to put them, really, but this is as good a place as any.  I'll move the newspapers and chips out of the way to dig those holes.  In the fall, some bulbs, and then small shrubs or perennials as I acquire them.

It will be fun, but right now my back hurts and my knee hurts and I wish the chip pile wasn't way at the bottom of the hill, but so it goes.  At least I have free chips.

I had a Brandywine viburnum too, which has gone into the bed by the driveway:

Said bed is (like most of mine, unfortunately) solidly in the Evolving stage.  I need another evergreen shrub to form a screen, since the viburnum is deciduous.

Bonus photo of Japanese painted fern in the middle of sweet woodruff, an accidentally stunning combination:

We have a hell of a lot of sweet woodruff now.  I suppose we had better make May wine.

More blooms, more spring catch-up

Some blooms that didn't arrive for GBBD:

Viburnum 'Mohawk' in full flower now, smelling like cloves gone to heaven.  It blooms for about a week, and I go outside every night to smell it.  At the other end of the front porch, the Pieris japonica keeps going for about a month, pumping out the honey scent, and I love it too, but the viburnum, like everything we have only a short while, steals my heart.

When I said that one little tulip was the last of the 'Surprise' era, and none of the others were going to bloom this year?  I lied.  I think they'll be there forever.

I just liked this magnolia with magnolia snow under it.  It's been a little hot (and drizzly) for some of the spring flowers this week, but it'll get cold again tonight.

Speaking of which (seedlings in photo, hardening off outside for reasons explained here, but will have to come in again tonight) I have been terrible about keeping track of seed-starting, but um, obviously I started some tomatoes (and other things) back in mid-March, and they are doing well despite [see link above].  Over the past weekend I put in seeds for squash, cucumbers, peanuts, Malabar spinach, maybe something else... the cukes are coming up.  Need to start melons and sunflowers.

In other news for which I neglected to get a photo, we've had a pair of what we're pretty sure are vultures hanging out on occasion in our enormous black walnut tree (they are high up, and I haven't looked through binoculars yet).  I sort of hope they come back, although on the other hand they are creepy and I am telling the cat not to take a nap in the yard.

Tomorrow I am teaching Intensive Vegetable Gardening at Montgomery College, and am rushing about printing things and doing a last-minute run to the Rockville library to check out Square Foot Gardening which, why do I not have a copy of it, I don't know.  So this is all for now.

Bloom Day April

I'm not doing a great job keeping up with recording things here, but I had to chime in for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, because so much is in bloom so suddenly; it's been quite a week for awakenings, as the cold not-quite-spring gave way to the hot not-quite-summer.  None of these flowers will last as long as they did last spring, which went on for months, so it's as well we celebrate them now.

Here's a quick tour of some of what I've got, unlabeled because I don't want to take the time figuring out for sure which daffodil is which.

The tulip at the end is apparently the last surviving of the supposedly-not-perennial 'Surprise' which has been surprising me for at least ten years now in eight inches of clay by the mailbox, timing itself perfectly to clash violently with the above purple-pink magnolia.  I can't help admiring them as I chant "die, already" each spring.

I didn't walk back to photograph the daffodils on the far back slope, but I'm glad to see they are growing and blooming.  I pretty much had to ignore that project last year, and I know I've got to go down and cut back multiflora rose and Japanese honeysuckle, but at least some of what I put in has survived, and I've just added a few nandina plants that my neighbor wanted to get rid of because they had too much of a suckering habit for her purposes.  In my situation, the more suckering the better.

Hope everyone's enjoying their spring blooms!