Category Archives: Fall garden

plant profile: cobaea scandens

Looking for a great addition to the late season garden? Of course you are! After the absolute explosion of bloom in July and as we head into August it is nice to still have many things to look forward to garden -wise. I speak often about vines, and especially how annual vines are just the ticket to a great Fall show, and cobaea scandens or cup and saucer vine is a standout among them

. ( a quick Latin refresher-the word scandens refers to anything that scrambles, so when you see it in a plant name assume you have a climbing or rambling grower).

Cobae scandens is sometimes dismissed as a garden plant here in the Northeast because it is a late starter. I will admit, getting it off and running can be tricky. The seeds are flat and tough and can take a few weeks to germinate. If you are starting them indoors from seed, tip the seeds on their sides to avoid rotting. After germination they will take a while to get growing and need a lot of attention in hardening them off for growing outside, If you like , you can direct sow the seed , but don’t even dare to do it before the June 1st here in z6 as it will gain you nothing and may loose you everything. The vine hails from Mexico , where it is perennial…and revels in the heat ,so a cool spring can do them in. I prefer to order green house grown plants to start with , and really ,at less than $10 no matter where you order them from, they will repay you with quicker growth and earlier flowering.than if you started them yourself.

Once growing this vine will quickly cover a trellis , and if you use more than one plant you can cover a pergola or arbor. 20 -25 feet in a season is not unheard of. By the middle of July my vine was well over 10 feet and it has now hit it’s stride. ( the other vines in the photo are a moonflower and a sweet pea that is done blooming)

The foliage is a gorgeous dark green with purple undersides and stems ,and the many spring-like tendrils enable it to grab on to just about anything. After my vine outgrew the trellis, it had been happily climbing the siding by latching on the any little nook it could. I did, although, move it and gave it some twine to not only guide it to where I want it to grow, but for added support during all the windy thunderstorms we get here in the summer.

The first flower appeared this week , and they are quite unusual. The bell or cup shaped flower emerges a creamy white and will slowly darken to purple over time. The flower sits on open sepals that look very much like a saucer surrounding the cup, hence the common name.

A word of caution, t his plant likes humidity and water and will quickly be infested with spider mites if left to dry out. It is very humid here in the summer and I have it planted in a self-watering planter, so it is loving life.

Being a tender perennial, as opposed to an annual, I am going to try to overwinter this vine inside this year. I hope to give it a good haircut in the late Fall and place it in the bay window and see what happens. At the very least I hope it will survive to be replanted again in the Spring…and at the very best I hope I will be enjoying the lovely flowers indoors all winter long. Only time will tell!

The photos I took below are of the flower over just two days.The change in color is already remarkable.

Take a Penny-Leave a Penny

The 15th of the month is when many Garden Bloggers gather virtually at a wonderful site called May Dreams Gardens to share what is currently spectacular in their gardens. Here in New England there are months when the list of what is blooming on the 15th is so long that I have to edit down to a few plants that are currently holding my heart by the strings to write about. As the year wanes on, it gets easier to pick what to show, and in November it is usually chrysanthemums that appear here.

This year, for whatever weather or any other of Mother Nature’s reasons, it’s the the sheffield mum called Chrysanthemum x rubellum ‘Copper Penny’ *that is at the height of bloom. I love this mum for all it brings to the fall garden, and as an added bonus for me it is the “right” color for the autumn. ( …For those that know me will be perfectly aware that plants like evergreen holly ripening their red berries on green foliage conjuring the Christmas season too early , irritate me ) . True to its name these adorable blossoms are indeed coppery in bud and beginning of bloom and open to a lighter russety-orange with bright yellow centers as time goes on. I have divided this plant a few times to increase its visibility in the garden, and will do so again in the spring (BTW NEVER divide and transplant perennial mums in the fall).

I have been cutting this for arrangements since a couple of weeks before Halloween, and , in fact, one of the pumpkin shaped bowls that adorned the buffet on Halloween is still sitting there looking as beautiful as the day I cut them. When I went to speak to a Garden Club in Welsley/Dover on Thursday I brought a little tussie-mussie bouquet to starring Copper Penny to give away. I meant also to tell the gals in attendance that if anyone is looking for a division of this plant ( that is unavailable in commerce to my knowledge) they can come for a visit and I will give them a plant division . Now I will extend the offer out to all the locals, if you visit ( and ask ) in the spring , I will gift you one. I will also be potting up its cousin , the pink sheffield and a few Red Mammoth and maybe some Wil’s Wonderful as well.

* the

*name told to me,as yet unverified

Missed it! Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

So, I missed GBBD graciously hosted every month on the 15th by maydreamsgardens.com, but I am going to share with you today a mini-post anyway.

Today I finally had the time to get out and plant the rest of the several hundred bulbs I bought ( tulips, daffodils, hyacinth and chionodoxa, and dogs tooth violets if you must know) , and while outside I noticed a few surprise garden happenings that warrant some acknowledgement.

This clematis, Ernest Markham, came into bloom in May and has not spent one single day out of bloom since. Polite golf-clap if you will for its status as MVP in the garden this year.

A coneflower I just had to have, called ‘Green Envy” has done anything bit make anyone envious as it rarely blooms at all. This year it has waited until this week to start flowering , so I believe that some positive reinforcement may encourage it to try a little harder next year.

The feverfew which usually only blooms once a season, is is full bloom again and this little stem was broken in a wind storm yet has continued on despite the injury. Good effort, my friend, good effort.

Despite several light frosts which usually mean the end of the annuals, they are still standing and today I ripped many out just because, frankly, I am tired of them. Cosmos, morning glories,dahlias verbenas,coleus, the list goes on and on of stalwart survivors.

One of my favorite roses, Julia Child, is cycling through yet another bloom cycle. Record year for her too.

As for what else is blooming, the list is long. Sheffield mums ( both the standard pink and the variety called Copper Penny), ‘Ruby Mound’ ‘Lilac”and ‘Centerpiece’ Chrysanthemums, Montauk Daisies, ‘Major Wheeler ‘honeysuckle, dahlias, the Drift roses, monkshood , asters, persecaria,agastache, cupheas, verbenas, geranium ‘Rozanne’ sedums, petunias… ‘Bloomerang’ lilac, Eupatorium ‘Chocolate’, nasturtiums, roses ( New Dawn and an unknown red climber) a smattering of hydrangeas, berries on the symphoricarpos, callicarpa, viburnums and hollies, …did I miss anything? Oh yes! I am still picking ‘Heritage’ Raspberries, apples and grape tomatoes! Not bad for a New England garden in mid October.BTW….I will be giving a talk Sunday in Lancaster, MA on successfully blending native and non-native plants in the garden..wish me luck!

BLOOMBLAHYUCK gets turned on its ear

Off and on I participate in something called Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. It is the brainchild of Carol over at maydreamsgardens.com , and bloggers who want to play along post on the 15th of the month about what is blooming in their neck of the woods and the posts are all linked on Carol’s blog for everyone to view. It is fun to see what is going on in other areas of our country, and even in some distant lands, as bloggers from other countries are welcome to link and often do. It is also a nice record to have personally . If I manage to keep up with my postings I can scroll back through time and see what has been going on in the gardens on a month by month basis.

Some months the 15th happens and I am completely in a fog and don’t get around to posting. Some months, like this one, I feel like “BLAHBLAHBLAHFLOWERSGARDENBLAHBLOOMBLAHYUCK”. Why this happens? Who’s to know. Boredom. malaise, the feeling of ‘been there, done that’, etc etc. October is also a very busy for my speaking business and having to go out and talk about the garden and plants means less time for he garden and plants and also lends itself to feeling the aforementioned feeling BLAHBLAHBLAHFLOWERSGARDENBLAHBLOOMBLAHYUCK.

BUT…even though I missed the date completely, I could not miss the opportunity to do a little happy dance online about said garden and one plant in particular because it is so remarkable. The weather here has been delightful, and by this I mean days in the 60s and nights staying very warm mostly in the high 40s and 50s. We have had a few scattered light frosts, but they have only affected the coldest most exposed parts of the gardens and actually helped the other parts providing very dramatic fall colors and the romantic look of a frosty garden without the freezing to black death part. Usually by now the last of the clematis are just finishing. Clematis ternifora, or Sweet Autumn as it is commonly known ,is the latest clematis to start blooming, and it is typically accompanied by a few stragglers on Pope John Paul II and maybe Ville de Lyon or Elsa Spath. This year however, the Comtesse de Bouchard out front began another round of blooming AFTER the Sweet Autumn started and is still blooming now. A very rare and very wonderful treat for me.

What makes it even better is that the variegated garden phlox ‘Nora Leigh’ that the Comtesse winds her way through has also decided in solidarity to continue blooming even though the cold temps have been affecting her foliage . What a team player ! Thank you Nora Leigh, your commitment to making this garden all it can be is duly noted.

Three October Bloomers Your Garden Shouldn’t Be Without

Here in New England and other northern regions of the USA, our growing season is limited due to cold temperatures. Since I have been gardening it has been my mission to extend that season as long as humanly possible, and thus my constant hunt for plants that bloom into October and November.

One garden stalwart that certainly helps in this pursuit is Sheffield mums (chrysanthemum rubellum). Sheffield mums are NOT the florist mums you can get at the garden center now. See my post here for info on all things ‘”mum”. Instead Sheffield mums are very late perennial plants that overwinter here quite well. I have a variety called ‘Copper Penny’ ( below) and cultivar ( a cross) named ‘Wil’s Wonderful’ and the tried and true pink version . The Sheffield pink plants are easy to find via friends and fellow gardeners and often local garden club plant sales in the spring which is when they should be (as any mum should be) planted. That is why you don’t find them in garden centers routinely, they are not in bloom when they should be sold and that is not good marketing, even though it is in fact excellent GARDENING which is something many GARDEN centers choose to overlook. The others I have seen on Lazy S Farms website and that is in fact where I ordered my ‘Wils Wonderful’ from.

Another that is also a tough find is the Montauk or Nippon Daisy. More and more I am seeing this plant available and that is a good thing as it is such an asset to the fall garden. Montauk Daisy has very woody stems and cool leathery like foliage . Its flowers are just like those of Shasta daisy though. Both the Sheffield mums and the Montauk daisies get an early summer shearing here to keep them from getting leggy and too tall by October. Both also benefit from leaving their foliage intact and uncut through the winter to help them survive .

The third plant is a favorite here because it is completely rabbit proof.

( Montauk Daisies are said to be as well but looky here, that is rabbit damage my friend)

Allium thunbergii ‘Ozawa’ has lovely strappy foliage and adorable nodding blooms. Only growing to about 1-2 feet it is easy to find a home for. Like all alliums it prefers a sunny well drained spot to grow and other than that is undemanding of your attention. It is super hardy , to zone 4. The good thing about it blooming now is that it reminds me, and hopefully you too, how useful alliums are as an easy to care for and visually interesting plant at the perfect ( well really only) time to plant them. You can find allium bulbs in nurseries and garden centers now and popping a few in the ground here and there will bring loads of delight next year. A few of my other favorites are ‘Purple Sensation’, Allium schubertii which looks like fireworks, and the cute but floppy drumstick allium (a. sphaerocephalon). ‘Ozawa’ looks great in a rock garden , although those in this photo are actually in the front garden, just near a rock. Great companion plants for the rock garden are earlier blooming saxifrages or even thyme, but in this garden they are planted with peony and perennial geraniums for spring color, allium senescens var. glauca or curly allium, clematis , sunflowers and verbena that bloom in the summer, and heleniums for the later part of the season. All alliums make great and long lasting cut flowers.

All three of these plants have the added bonus of feeding our favorite winged pollinators, the bees, in warm fall weather when they are still active yet nectar sources are more scarce.

Arranging Fall

Here in New England, much like our friend the ant from Aesop’s fable, we feel the press of time as the days get shorter and the nights longer and colder, knowing soon we will be bundled up and rushing through a bleak landscape or viewing it from within our heated homes that will be even bleaker without the addition of fresh flowers picked from the garden.

Always when the weather starts to turn I feel frantic about cutting and photographing my flowers. Part of this has to do with work, as any presentations I am writing will need appropriate photos taken during blooming season, and the success of the Pressed Flower Workshop relies on me having cut and preserved oodles of stuff. But an even larger part has to do with my adoration of all things floral and knowing that even though I can ( and do) cuts many things from my winter garden it is not the same and often I will resign myself to heading to the floral market to add some much needed color when days are long and gray.

Hence this post on Arranging Fall. I have been busy speaking to groups over the last two weeks and I bring a floral arrangement with me any time I can. The photo up top is a view of the one I am bringing tonight when I will lecture to a local garden club on growing clematis. In the container are just three clematis ; terniflora or ‘Sweet Autumn’ as it is commonly called,’ Comtesse de Bouchard’ that remains blooming out front, and the leaves of the groundcover ‘Mrs. Robert Brydon’. The rest of the arrangement is a virtual snapshot of the garden and includes two mums ‘Centerpiece’ and ‘Matchstick’, cosmos, the Drift Rose ‘Sweet’, garden phlox ‘Nora Leigh’, snowberry ‘Amethyst’, callicarpa berries, salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’, hosta flowers , yellow lantana, and foliage of Ipomoea “Black Heart ‘ or sweet potato vine and dogwood berries. Also stuck in there are several fluffy clematis seed heads .

I have also been bringing in many hydrangea blossoms . As the weather starts to cool ,hydrangea flowers start to turn color, almost like someone was burnishing or antiquing them. It is a look I adore. If you cut them now when all their flowers are fully open and the color is stunning and place them in a vessel with just a scant amount of water that their stems can reach now ( maybe covering them by 1/2inch) and then let that water evaporate (don’t change it or refresh it) they will dry naturally in the vase and you can enjoy them all winter. My most beautiful blue, a variety called’ Nikko Blue’ dries so perfectly and with such intense color I have vases that are several years old still on display ( admittedly dusting them is the not so fun part of keeping them for such a long time ).

Dahlias , another of my late garden loves, make the most incredible cut flowers. Never cut one until it is fully open, they will not open any further in the vase if you do. They combine so well with other late season garden bounty, like berries and changing leaves, and often just one or two flowers is enough for the whole arrangement. I usually make an arrangement with just 2 or 3 dahlias and as much coleus foliage as I can cut on the night of our first frost warning. Coleus is among the first plants that turn mushy and die , yet it will keep for weeks in water and I can just change out the dahlias to whatever I want after they pass.

.This small vase of Staffordshire pottery I picked up on my last antiquing trip is filled with dahlias, sunflowers, purple fountain grass, reddish peony foliage (so dreamy when it changes color! and I faced it the wrong way in the photo!) blue gentian and a rose called ‘All the Rage”. In the second photo you can see it when it opened.

The trick when arranging flowers/garden material in fall is to think outside the box and cut lots of interesting things that are not necessarily flowers. Viburnums have great berries, as do callicarpa, snowberry, red osier dogwood, roses (hips),and hollies. Foliage of peony which I never cut in the summer but use constantly this time of year , viburnums, evergreens, hucheras that sport stronger color variation with cooling temps, grass plumes, seed heads from perennials like coneflowers , penstemons and clematis, branches of heptacodium or seven sons flower tree after the bracts turn red. The list could go on and on.

As for flowers , make sure you have planted a variety of winter hardy mums, re-blooming roses, dahlias, hydrangeas, sunflowers ( seed several times over the summer), pansies, rudbeckias, asters , heleniums, late blooming phlox like ‘Nora Leigh’, Montauk daisies, sedum and gaillardias (which will bloom even through a few light frosts) .

Plant profile x 2

Two very fun berry producing bushes are in the spotlight this time around in Plant Profile; snowberry symphoricarpos albus and beautyberry (callicarpa dichotoma ‘Early Amethyst ‘).

From early September and into November a lot of what makes my garden interesting revolves around the seed distribution mechanisms of many plants; the fruit of apples, pears, crabapples, cool looking seedpods of baptisia and woodland peonies, prickly seed heads of coneflowers, clematis and black eyed susans , rose hips and the seed bearing berries of hollies, viburnums, dogwoods and the two shrubs featured today , beautyberry and snowberry.

Snowberry, or symphoricarpos albus, is a suckering native shrub and although it can be easily overlooked in spring and summer is a can’t- be- missed highlight starting in late August. This shrub is absolutely humming with pollinators all through June, July, and August because it is smothered in tiny bell shaped pink flowers that are a great nectar source for bees and wasps. The berries form in late summer and early fall and will adorn the bush well into the winter as they are favored by grouse and ignored by most other birds until the robins return and devour them in spring. This tough shrub can tolerate poor soils and drought, even thriving under mature oaks. It will grow to be about 3-5 feet tall with a similar spread, and given its suckering habit is perfect for embankments and other tough garden situations. I grow not only this species , but also symphoricarpos x doorenbosii ‘Amethyst’ which produces coral-pink berries. “Amethyst’ is a far less vigorous grower but the berry color is so lovely . Both make superb additions to late season flower arrangements.

The second shrub ,beautyberry (callicarpa dichomata)is one you would be very familiar with if you have ever heard my presentation “Shrubs for Year Round Interest” as I tend to gush about it and may have even called it my favorite on a few occasions ( pssst ! don’t tell the other shrubs!) .

Just like snowberry, this shrub is covered along it’s branches with tiny flowers all summer long and frequented by many winged pollinators. Unlike snowberry, the beautyberry is a very well rounded and well mannered plant. I cut my beautyberry back to about a foot tall in the very early spring just like I would a butterfly bush ( buddleia) or blue mist shrub ( caryopteris) because many times here where it is so cold there will be winter die back and even if there is not it flowers better on new wood (and the shape is better too). VERY quickly the shrub will form a lovely mounded form topping out at 3-4 feet and proceed to flower profusely.

These flowers turn into , for lack of a better word, electric purple colored berry clusters that generally remain on the bush right through leaf drop and through the first few snowfalls. There is NOTHING in the gardening world as colorful and wonderful beautyberries in the snow. ( snow images from google, I can’t seem to find the folder mine are in ) A few freeze thaw cycles will take away the bitterness of the berries and then the birds will gobble them up, but we can count ourselves lucky to have enjoyed them for the months they were there.

This shrub is also a pretty tough customer, being able to grow in sun to part shade and fairly tolerant of a myriad of soil conditions. It is said you will have a larger crop of berries if you plant more than one beautyberry ( and boy oh boy would a hedge of them be divine) but I grow only one and have had stellar berry production every year. It can also be clipped for use in arrangements where it will be greeted with ooohs and ahhhhs and other excited utterances, because it is that cool.

There are many available varieties of callicarpa but I chose ‘Early Amethyst’ because some of the others can get quite large and frankly a little rangy looking and also because ,as the name implies, it berries much earlier than its’ cousins. ‘Profusion’ ( callicarpa bodinieri var.giraldii )is another good beautyberry if you have room for a larger shrub .

Fall is a great time for planting shrubs , and many nurseries have great sales now , so look for these two great garden additions and get planting!

Roses , Berries and Seedheads

Fall here is all about roses, berries and seedheads. In my lectures on Easy Care Roses, I often reccomend a number of the newer shrubs and climbers that have long bloom times, and at this time of year I am always grateful I take my own advice 😉 .

Blooming right now are Climbing Iceberg, both the red and double pink knockouts, the white Magic Carpet, Seafoam, Easy elegance Yellow Brick Road, the Fairy, Carefree Spirit, both the pink and red Drift roses,( from the breeders of the Konockout series),Elsie Poulsen, and two David Austin Roses; Chritopher Marlowe and Sharifa Asma( both of which have lovely fragrances). They all certainly earn their place in my garden.

Rounding out the picture are of course the mums and the asters ( check out the photo of one called Matchstick-you will know it when you see it!) and the hydrangeas in their ever changing glory of course.

But even better yet are all the berries on the viburnums , the hollies, the winterberries , the rose hips and the seedheads and pods.

Clematis Texensis whirly seedheads are surrounding my garden sign, the baptisia has long stems of rattling black seed pods waiting to open, and I wish I could snap a photo of the coneflower seedheads when the goldfinches visit..it is like a new garden of bright yellow flowers when they are all perched on the stems devouring the seeds, but they are very nervous and take off when I approach no matter how stealthy I think I am .

Hover to see what’s what and click on to embiggen!

Who says a September Garden is a Yawn??

Funny, in the past week or two I have extended an invitation to several people to come see the garden and they have all replied the same way..”ooooh , I’d love to , but September probably isn’t a great month to view your garden”. Well, that is just flat out wrong when it comes to this dessert location. First off, I have just as much in bloom, berry and color as I do at any other time, AND you can enjoy it in the beautiful gentle September sunlight (that would be unlike the July sunlight that here in The Burrow could incinerate you in a matter of seconds).

Here is a photo ( or 40 lol)

Joe -pye weed Eupatorium “Gateway and black eyed susans co-mingle

Asters growing in pots to save them from the rabbits are starting

this large sunflowery plant whose name I do not know is lovely

red velvety snapdragons beg to be touched

The dahlias are in full bloom everywhere. I just read today that the double forms lost their nectar forming parts(?) in an effort to super size the flower and are therefore useless to bees. Next year it is back to the single forms for me.

This sunflower came from a mixed seed packet and I really don’t care for it’s droopy petals, but here it is alongside a hyacinth bean vine .

Rudbeckias add so much to the garden in September. Here is “Denver Daisy”

These tiny inconspicuous flowers on the calicarpa bush mean a great show of vivd purple berries is in store for the winter garden

I grow lots and lots of sedum. This is an’ Autumn Joy’ paired with a ‘Brilliant”. The bees go nutso like wacky nectar addicts looking for a fix when the sedum is in bloom

Rosa’The Fairy” goes all summer long, right up until frost

I let the amaranths self seed wherever they wanted to this year, and only ended up pulling a few. They really add a lot of color and drama in a very effortless lazy way.Here the green and burgundy seeded next to a rose bush

This new mum, ‘Centerpiece’, is growing next to salvia ‘Royal Crimson Distinction’ . The salvia has been one of my star performers this year. It has flowered for great lengths of time, been cut back, and reflowered 3 times already with hardly any break. The mum came from Faribault growers in MN. In spring (which is when you should plan the hardy mums they are trying to sell you now) I ordered quite a few of them from this grower I heard of from a fellow blogger . many of them are in bloom now, and I am hoping many overwinter (crossed fingers)

Here is one called ‘Red Daisy’, in it’s handy dandy rabbit fence enclosure

Rose of Sharon adds lots of punch to the late summer border without taking up lots of real estate. I grow quite a few new cultivars, but here is an old standard pink that is just as nice

and this verbena called “Annie’ came from High Country Gardens.It blooms non-stop from probably late May until frost and is hardy here in zone 5 and gently spreading. Awesome groundcover plant!

The paniculata forms of Hydrangea all have the first pink-ish tinge on their white flowers, and soon will be cut to dry for arrangements and wreaths.

Rosa ‘Carefree Spirit” is still going strong

and the perennial geraniums are in their second flush of blooms after being cut back in late July

Caryopteri ( Blue Mist Shrub)s is alive and humming with polinators, who can’t seem to get enough of it

The Butterfly bushes, this is ‘Pink Delight’, are also humming with bees and butterflies all day (and Pumpkin who is fascinated by them and wandered into the shot)

This Sedum, a new one called ‘Hab Gray” is lovely both in foliage color, and it’s interesting pale yellow flowers. After it bloomed I left it uncut and the wind knocked it over. In a first for me with any sedum it flowered again all along the top of the stem that was facing the sun (like climbing roses do). Interesting, and a new thing to remember for future years.

The Heptacodium Miconoides tree is blooming for the first time this year.

The catmint has been going like gangbusters all summer, with little sign of slowing down.

The clematis vines that are done flowering are sporting their funky little seed heads all over…they are so fun to look at and great to press.

The new Drift series of low growing roses from the breeder of Knockout have performed wonderfully here all summer and look great now in the front gardens. The darker pink has a lovely light fragrance to boot.

Every year I grow a bunch of different annual vines. This year my fav has been the love in a puff cardiospermum halicacabum . The delicate foliage and flowers are crazy adorable, and the little puffs are beyond cute. When the puffs are dry you pop them open and the seed inside has a cool heart shape on it, hence the name. It is a viscious weed elsewhere in the country, but is not hardy or a nuicance here. Lucky us!

My standard fav annual vine is , hands down, the hyacinth bean vine lablab purpurea. I hand out seeds to anyone who will take them, and like Johnny Appleseed (Cheryl beanseed ??) , hope many get planted and enjoyed. This year I planted them along the new fence, and WOW do I like the effect. The really come into their own in late August and throughout Sept-Oct, at a time the garden yearns for color. They are so easy to grow, too, needing nothing but sun and a little water to get them going.

Another beauty in the climbing department is this Thunbergia called ‘Blushing Susan’

Add in clematis vines: ‘Gravetye Beauty’, ‘terniflora’, ‘Pope John PAul II’, Comtesse de Bouchard’, ‘Rosea’, and Betty Corning’. Salvia ‘White Sensation’, Geum ,turtlehead , the pink and red Knockout roses, the end of the coneflowers, Roses Seafoam, New dawn, Golden Celebration, Magic Carpet, and my unknown red climber; the awesome berries on all the viburums, hollies,and snow berry bushes (symphoricarpos the species and ‘Amethyst’), massive colorful hips on the rugosa roses and rosa glauca, thesweet pink flowers covering the bushcloverlaspedeza t. yakushimaNora Leigh and Franz Schubert phlox, ‘Annabelle’ hydrangaes, both yellow and pink potentillas, mallows, the fragrant hosta ‘Fragrant Boquet ‘, gallardia, lonicera ‘Major Wheeler ‘ the two trumpet vines, the heavily loaded pearand apple trees and heritage raspberry canes,

then add in the annuals; nasturtiums, nicotianas,cosmos, verbenas, sweet peas, osteospermums (in purple, yellow and orange), torinia, and probably a dozen things I overlooked, and that DOES NOT add up to a yawn. I LOVE the September Garden

Happy Bloom Day!!!

So here is something I like to do……

In my quest to find colossal ways to waste my valuable time…every fall I dig up all my dhalias to store for the winter. After frost has blackened the foliage,( which by the way has only happened to a few so far, Jack ole buddy where are you?) I dig up the tubers and roots shake off any loose soil and lay them on my deck to dry in the sun for a few days. Then I give them a better cleaning once the dirt has dried and falls off more easily, and pack them in either peat moss or vermiculite .After that I try in a ridiculous fashion to find a suitable place in this airtight overly insulated house with finished cellar. My parents had a dirt cellar in their first house , and an actual honest to goodness root cellar in their second.Those would have been perfect . We have a carpeted heated man-cave and work out room which never dips below 60. The garage, although insulated ,still gets way too cold. In a spectacular failure last year I listened to a garden speaker who said she just leaves hers in containers which she places in her unheated garage for the winter and Viola! in spring they get put back outside to start to grow again. Well, guess what? mine were rotted disgusting wet mush in the spring, thank you very much! So they went where ALL my dhalias go, the great compost pile in the sky. As you can see from photo, year after year of nothing but dried or rotted tubers has done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for trying to store and re-plant my dhalias. What is that definition of insanity?….do the same thing over and over again expecting to somehow get a different result?……well ok…… point taken.

Moving on to fall, or the lack thereof….many of my plants and I , as well as a few grasshoppers so the story goes, are harboring the delusion that winter may never come. Although the trees seem to get it and their foliage is stunning, my daylilys have fresh strappy green leaves , the hosta although a little fried from a September night, are all still solid not translucent and melting away into the soil. How the heck I am supposed to clean up the garden like this??? Cutting down all this lively foliage is work work work and I am not a fan. I know I could leave it until later, but then it’s soooo cold( piss moan piss moan). I refuse to leave it until spring because it gives the rabbits great cover as they decimmate the evergreen stuff, ain’t happenin’. While I think on the dilema, please feel free to enjoy some stellar (humor me) photographs taken at the peak of fall color here in the Burrow.