Often I stand confused in the garden. I tend to garden in “fits” , crazy behavior of planting, transplanting, moving or installing paths,and  ripping out shrubbery all in a haphazzard unplanned fashion and at completely inappropriate times.Then I forget what I planted or moved and have a little ‘moment” staring at a plant I have no idea what it is or an empty hole where one has gone missing.

But I will tell you emphatically, I did not plant this

what the *&#* is this?

a.) It is blooming in the Pink Garden, all plants in that garden bloom either pink or white. That’s it…pink..or white.

b.) Daylilies generally have more defined  eyezones (see the petal that has no indication of one?) and are usually more subtely bi-colored , very impressionist looking in their mottling. But, puh-leez, this is wacky .

I  am chalking up the mis-placement to a small confusion when I was dividing last fall. The coloration is another story altogether. I could be drought affecting the bloom. In the pink garden I have plants that bloom early when rain is usually ample, but they need to be cut back right when they are done so that they do not block the sprinklers that reach the garden later in the season. Before we went away on vacation I never got around to that chore so the plants in that bed got no water from me, and no help from god either so they were very stressed when I got home. Maybe this guy went a little crazy with the heat and thirst.

 It could also be viral. Mosaic plant viruses are responsible for many variations in coloring including varieagated foliage and the  wild bloom variations in tulips affected with the tulip breaking  potyvirus.It could also be something I have not even thought of,  or even know of.

 I guess I will know if the day lily weakens and dies (virus) or pulls through(drought) or someone else sheds some light on the subject.

For now I must resist the temptaion to pull his ugly a** out of my pink garden for to do so now would mean certain death for him(I use the male pronoun because it is icky looking, if the mutation was lovely I would use  the female…perfect logic!).

I am curious to see what will happen. There is currently only one scape and only one flower has bloomed. His fate is out of my hands, time will tell if he gets a new home  or goes in the trash. (never compost anything diseased).

This week there are so many things on my To Do list I am struggling to manage my time. Now that I have decided some tall shrubs need to go , I can’t wait to get it done, and there is a hydrangea I want to prune into a tree,  I want to plant day lilies along the edge of the street, the chipping pile is HUGE, and on and on and on it goes. Today the indentured servant (CJ) will be pressed into service and over the weekend hopefully Bill too, and by Monday I will feel better about the state of the yard even with the ugly red day lilies messing up my pink garden.

The great thing about an established garden is that despite all the critter troubles, a brutal heat wave and accompanying drought, and most importantly  my ineptitude and impatience when it comes to  optimal planting and growing conditions, the garden keeps on keepin’ on.

Day Lily blooms take center stage, bunnies apparantly don’t like them

There are also many clematis, here is Ernest Markham

and also bee balm liatris, garden phlox, coreopsis,trumpet vines,coneflowers,roses,rudbekia,verbena ( a new perennial one called ‘annie’) , veronica,astllbe, hydrangeas including this h. paniculata ‘limelight’ 

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I do not under any circumstances want you to believe for even one second that I am content and whistling a happy tune…that goes against my nature. So here is a photo of the empty spot where there should be Asiatic lilies in full bloom for all to enjoy ….stupid rabbits!

Following that is a clematis  viticella ‘betty corning’ that is growing like jack and the beanstalk up the roof of the ceiling of the porch with nary a blossom in sight. See I can still be crabby. Under “what’s blooming July 12th ” you can see other photos of the garden in July IF  I can get the software to work, it has been defying me for an hour now, but I will try again just to prove I can win.      Cheryl

You know what I like best about my garden in July? It is the time it most reflects my personality. In the explosion of colors you will see no modesty, no shyness or subtlety, and no apologies for it either. You may even think it garish or borderline tacky.It is brazen , in your face loud and no to be overlooked (but with class like me 🙂 )

Beyond the fence now blooms the ubiquitous orange day lily. Brace yourself for the next sentence. I paid for them. Yessirree I did. I scoured around for different cultivars of this roadside freebie plant so I can have them in bloom from July throughout August and into September some years then parted with cool green cash to get them.Some are single, some double, some ruffled, and they all play a big part in the look of the” back 40″.

I think I like them so much because they are commonplace and predicatable and can be weedy and most  gardeners would not waste one minute even thinking of planting them in the garden. Planting them  is sort of a tongue in cheek jab at those who will not utilize the pedestrian or ordinary in their space  for only the reason that it is just that, pedestrian and ordinary. I am nothing if not a nudge and a gadfly to those who take themselves too seriously. Almost any plant no matter how common can be used to improve a space if done right.  

My orange day lilies do not exist alone, the are joined by about 10 other varieties of day lily in other colors giving such a bright profusion of blooms you can’t take your eyes off them. This year I added purple  ( Bela Lugosi, Regal Warrior and Super Purple) and only a few are blooming now, but next year watch out ….we are headed into Lady Ga Ga tackiness! It will be perfect!!!

a short FYI,

depending on cultivar and your state hemerocalis fulva

may be considered weed, a wildflower, or an invasive species banned for cultivation

do your homework before planting. Hybrids (the doubles, ruffles etc) areusually sterile

and pose less of a threat

I have also heard they will crowd out other day lily cultivars but in the 10 years they have been here they have peacefully co-existed with not only other day lilies but also with the  phlox, clematis, climbing roses, and coreopsis that share their small space.

Cheryl

we're huntin' wrabbits

Call it karma, call it payback, call it eye for an eye, whatever you want to. You can even say I deserved it for my zeal in rabbit population culling…… but ouch.

Out in the back 40 today I was weeding and deadheading to get ready for an upcoming garden tour. Happy as a clam I was lost in my own world until Faithio came back to say hey and see what was up. She spied a huge honkin rabbit and pointed it out to me, none too quietly might I add. Rabbit just stared back at us and continued eating. Grrrr.I told Faith to hang out and watch it’s every move while I went to get Bill’s pellet gun which I am just learning to shoot. ( I was kinda hoping to go to the grave having never used a gun of any kind but my gun virginity is now gone , oh well)

So I came back  , noisily loaded the pellet into the barrel while the rabbit just chewed away 2 ft away from me. I aimed and took a shot, and missed. The rabbit did not flinch at all. I re-loaded and shot again, missed, bunny still sitting there just looking at me.

I decided to use the sight thingy which is no mean feat since god did not give me the ability to close one eye while the other stays open so I have to hold one shut with my hand  to look through any one-eyed apparatus. Now using my left hand to hold my left eye shut, my right eye looking through the sight, and my right hand trying to hold and steady the very heavy and awkward rifle (don’t get me going on why in gods name it is a rifle and not a small handgun) I take a half blind unbalance shot at the bunny and this time the re-coil of the gun hits me full on in the forehead knocking me back and giving me a huge egg in between my eyes. Great. I am seeing stars as they float around the bunny that is STILL SITTING THERE!  ARRRRGGGHHH!!! I had to take a little lie-down with some ice for a while.

 Bill is now a pro, a sharpshooter, a marksman. he can re-load speedily and never hits himself. Unfortunately when he gets home at night and we head out to rabbit hunt there are never any bunnies. I guess word travels fast when the time is to make yourself scarce in the garden. So now he wants to shoot robins and such. No No No silly Bill. I must walk you off the path to redneckdom.

Faith is calling me Daffy Duck, amused at my bump and ineptitude and bad language. Although she says she is concerned about my bump, she just  keeps laughing at me…….deee-spicable!

Last week Bill and I took the girls to Washington D.C. I am a history buff, an art freak, and enjoy long walks so , really , as I was reminded over and over again, this was MY vacation. (thank you family). Wasn’t it hot you ask? Well, thank you for your concern, yes it was. The weather systems there come up the coast via hell and stifling can not even begin to describe the air quality, but we gamely proceeded through all the “musts” (Capitol tour, memorials, Smithsonians , zoo, etc)

On the day we had planned (and when I say “we” I mean “me dragging the others in protest”) to see the United States Botanical Garden ,it was about a million degrees and high heat plus high humidity led to high irritability , so even I agreed that we should bail and head for the nearest a/c , preferably in a bar, which is what we did (thank god for brew pubs!)

Now I was a little sulky and missing my plants, but brave soul that I am I got over it and moved on. The next day we  headed to Mt. Vernon on a river boat. We got there and started to walk around, and lo and behold George W was not only a farmer but an avid gardener and landscape designer!! Woo-hoo!!! When we walked past the house and saw the upper garden all the Monroes in unison shouted “PLANTS!” …..although me in ecstasy and the others in horror.

There was also a lower garden (JOY) and a formal herb /veggie garden with espaliered fruit trees and grapevines , an experimental garden for new  seeds and plants Georgie boy was interested in trying , a gardeners house, a greenhouse and a farm area for crops of corn, wheat and such. Heaven I tell you. So we toured around, saw the house too and met Martha (well not really, she’s long gone, but an incredible interpreter/impersonator).

I bought a lovely book about George and his farm and homestead and as I was reading it was fascinated by the fact that fragrance was one of the leading directives behind his garden and plantings. Turns out things were really smelly in the 18th century.(  B.O, and lack of  speed stick, outdoor privies, no fans, horses and other livestock and their waste products, garbage in piles since there is no curbside pick-up , the list goes on and on.) So our first president planted lilacs and other strong smelling shrubbery near the outhouses, grew many fragrant herbs to help not only outside, but to be dried and bought in to sweeten bedrooms, pillows, drawers,and clothing.  Brilliant.

When I walked outside this morning and was greeted by the strong fragrance of the roses that grow right near the walkway I was reminded how important it is to think of the garden in that way. I mostly think about color, height and foliage, and rarely think about fragrance , probably because Glade does it for me. But what is the first thing everyone does when they encounter flowers? Lean in for a sniff of course.

That is not to say I do not ever plant things for fragrance. Here are a few of my favorites

I adore the smell of lilacs, reminds me of childhood and grammy’s house, so I have planted 8 in their own special bed comprised of 4 different varieties  syringa vulgaris, ‘Donald Wyman’   ‘Miss Canada’ and one labeled french lilac whatever the heck that means. Their bloom time is staggered and they are all fragrant although the common lilac (vulgaris) is the strongest. I also grow the old fashioned but wonderful mock orange .

Then there is lavender. I have a bed of that too, as well as many scattered throughout the gardens including the white one belowlavandula x intermediacv. White Grosso .

lavendula x intermedia

I add in lots of  Asiatic and oriental lilies, and fight like a mad woman to control the red lily beetle so I can enjoy them (only outside I think they are too strong of a scent for indoors). I planted orinpets last year but they were rabbit lunch.

In the summer there are roses, clematis,monarda (bee balm) and phlox to enjoy.

my FAVORITE garden scent is spicy and clove like so in the spring there are virburnum x burkwoodiibushes and dianthus and in the summer summersweet  clethra anifolia  ‘ruby spice’ and the best smelling garden phlox , phlox paniculata ‘David’ that is simply intoxicating.

my favorite scent in general is lemon so I plant lemon balm in containers (it is a garden thug)  and place them around the garden so I can grab a leave or two and crush it in my hand and inhale deeply on the way by.

in my not thinking mentality I have also planted some real winners in the “smells like crap” category. Number one is the penstemon ‘Husker red’ that I have planted en masse and had to deadhead for like 6 hours on Sunday. It smells like dirty feet.

penstemon 'Husker Red'

one more note about D.C., on our way back from Mount Vernon we disembarked in the newly finished National Harbor area at the foot of the Gaylord Hotel. That is quite possibly the best commercial landscape job I have EVER seen (both inside and out) . Needless to say my family was done done done with plants and threatened to leave me there if I did not hurry up through the atrium to catch the car service taking us back to the city.  I didn’t even get to take any pictures, sob sob. They have a website but it doesn’t even show the pool area that was simply phenomenal.

Stay cool….Cheryl

p.s. what’s blooming ??? Roses of course!! Look under “What’s Blooming” to see!

  [cincopa 10640593]

This year our garden is just overstuffed with birds. They are nesting everywhere! Every birdhouse is filled to capacity, we have hummingbirds in the clumping birch by the street, robins in the crabapple, and some obnoxious creature in the apple tree out front that screeches in an almost human way every morning so loudly the entire household is up. In the photos you can see a nest in the living wreath that hangs on my garage doors. You can’t even go in or out of the garage without almost peeing your pants when the parents startle you bolting from the nest when you come near.

Also , see the two red chairs that sit on the front porch? There is a nest in the basket hanging there making the porch a danger zone to all humans.

 The dwarf Alberta Spruce also has  a nest, you can see one of the parents sticking their head out of the bush , and also the mess they made when they were dragging stuff in there to build a home. Even the birds expect me to clean up after them.

Speaking of clean up, when Bill came home last night the entire driveway was covered in, guess what??? A layer of bird poop. Must have been either a flock, or one who made a bad dinner decision! He actually had to hose it down it was so bad.

At the end of last summer I cut off the top four feet of an arborvitae (don’t ask) and watched in horror as a nest full of baby birds hit the asphalt. Yeee-ikes!!! I leaned the tree top against the house and carefully picked up all the babies and put them back in.  It took the parents a whole day to find where the nest went ….see photo of confused looking bird peering down at where nest used to be… but they did finally. For three days the tree kept toppling over in the wind and I would patiently put all the babies back. On day three I had to fish one of them out of Baby Dear’s mouth, that is when I got the bright idea to TIE the tree top to the porch railing, and there they lived until all the babies flew away. Guess it is an old wives tale that if you tough the nestlings the parents won’t come back.

Kind of wishing I had listened to bird call lady I laughed at at the garden club program meeting. I would love to know what that god-awful avian mess-up  is in the apple tree , he needs to be silenced or relocated . I can deal with the poop and the array of seedling erupting everywhere the poo lands, the feathers and dead bodies from the mating fights, the clean-up of the birdhouses filled with those weird little armies of  teeny  bugs that apparently co-habitate with the birds. It is all in exchange for the lovely songs, funny antics to watch, and bug eating they provide, but I AM NOT a morning person, so I draw the line at the screeching. I wish I knew how to make him move over to the neighbors.

Have a great weekend

Cheryl

clematis 'Nelly Moser'

p.s. just a reminder  to login so you can get email updates of postings

and that if you scroll over slideshow pictures you can see the caption, and if the pictures are just stills you can click on them to see them larger.

Ninebark (physocarpus'diablo') in bloom

On my to-do list today I had two very small garden related tasks..a gardening friend had given me divisions of geranium macrorrhizum  from her garden I wanted to plant near the new blue spruce (picea pungens), and I had to re-pot a houseplant that needs to summer outside. So I planned to go out in the garden quickly before my age concealing hair coloring appointment and knock these two items off my to-do list. I get the geranium, shovel , and cow manure and head to the side garden. While planting I notice a few weeds around and start to pull them.

 Working my way down the bed I see that my Rose of Sharon( hibiscus syriacus’?’ -until it blooms there are 4 and I never remember which is which*) has fully leafed out  and there is some dead wood I should prune. , so I head to the garage again to get my pruners.

 On my way by I notice mr. hyrangea is blooming white and should be blue so I figure while I am in the garage anyway I will grab the aluminum sulfate (used to change the soil ph ) and work a little into the soil quickly while I am outside. Getting the aluminum sulfate off the shelf I notice that behind it is the bag of organic 10-10-10- that I was looking for to spread around some transplants the other day and grab that too. I augment the soil around the hydrangea , then head to prune the hibiscus ,but notice two roses (one called “canyon” and the other a white flower carpet) that could use a little deadheading to keep on blooming since I have a garden tour coming up ,so I stop since I have the pruners in hand and snip them.

 When I am finally pruning the hibiscus I scan and see that the summersweet (clethra alnifolia ‘ruby spice’) in the same bed could use a little tidying as well and over the tops of those bushes I spy that my new red knockout roses are blooming. I should really take a picture of that before I forget. I run into the house to get the camera and also grab a plastic bag to clean up the dog poo in the adjacent lawn on the way back.

 Coming out of the house I see a dead mouse floating in the pool, and all chores stop right then and there until I get that sucker out and thrown over the fence. Then I clean the dog mess, snap some photos and realize it is time to go in and get ready for my hair appointment. The houseplant is still sitting on the deck waiting to get re-potted, the geranium transplants have not yet been watered in, and the bag of 10-10-10- is sitting on the walkway.

How many of you garden like this? It is a wonder that anything ever gets done around here, or maybe that IS why things do get done around here.  I am not sure which is true.

Cheryl

*If you do not already grow Rose of Sharon(hibiscus syriacus) in your garden ADD ONE! They are tall and narrow so easy to squish in the border and flower profusely from August until first frost. The pollinators love them as there is so little else blooming and they are nectar filled so will keep the hummingbirds around longer.YOU will be happy too because August can be a real down time in the garden if you let it be.

Don’t whine that they self seed rampantly, because there is a series of cultivars introduced by the U S National Arboretum , all named after greek goddesses,that produce little or no seed and flower in profusion. Not to mention the dark green leaves and wide soil tolerance this shrub has. What is not to like?

The cultivars are ‘Minerva’-lavendar    ‘ Aphrodite’-pink   ‘ Helene’- white and an older one   ‘Diana’- another white.

You will not be sorry to have any of these around, maybe even all of them!

let’s talk damage: Last week I lost (as in eaten to the ground) ALL the cleome starts, 6 newly planted snapdragons, a climbing rose, 4 clematis including  a ‘Betty Corning’ near the deck . It is hovering in some sort of stasis refusing to leaf out again or grow at all (probably in self-defense ). It has been caged and all the other caged plants have started to recover, a definite WTF or WTH if you don’t like the F word.

This Monday in some sort of selective dinning extravaganza all the asters were chewed to within an inch of their lives, an amazing feat considering they are interspersed throughout all of the gardens over the entire acre+. Tuesday night they went on a clematis binge, 3 more vines chewed off at ground level thank you very much.

The gardens here have a very twighlight zone look to them, as anything that has managed to bloom is doing so at a greatly reduced height so no vines are even halfway up arbors and you have to sqwouch  done to see or smell anything else.

I have left one, yup one, lamium plant. Apparantly they were too full to finish them off. This year I will have no lovely sweet peas which I will mourn because no sweet pea flowers=no sweet pea seeds and I planted my whole stockpile. Out of all my cosmos seeds I have 3 struggling plants hardly even worth noticing. Every poppy bloom has been eaten before I ever even see a flower , so no heroin either (just kidding, humor me please I am grief stricken).

New attempts at thwarting them were:

REAL fox urine-liquid in a little bottle. I soaked strips of wool in small ziploc bags that I then punched lots of holes in and hung from strategically located plants. So far the areas of the garden they are in seem to be undisturbed……Is there hope?

Plantskyyd-that’s the blood product- I sprayed this on  every plant in the garden, so all future pictures will look like crime scene photos. Turns out I missed a bed out front and it was the only one devastated in the morning. So maybe again….hope?

Also….a few bunnies have met their maker. Although I am not at liberty to tell you how for fear of repercussion, did you read Watership Down??    Do you know about PETA??   Silence is all you will get from me.

On an unrelated note, did you know that in Australia where the rabbits are trying to take over the government   people use this concoction of oats infused with rat poison to kill the varmints? You can’t get it here, it’s illegal. And did you also know that bunnies can’t swim, well at least they can’t if you are holding them under water with a stick. They are also sensitive to fast moving small metal projectiles. This is all FYI, and has nothing to do with me, Bill or the Garden in the Burrow.