Christmas is coming…

 

Prairie Buffer Update

As promised, here is an update on my own  little piece of wildness – the recently installed Prairie Stream Buffer along Duck Creek. I blogged about it back in July when it was brimming with flowers, bugs and birds. Here’s what it’s up to in November:

that's a lot of brown

OK, admittedly, that’s not exactly “pretty” at least in conventional terms, but it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing – spreading seeds, establishing deep roots, providing shelter for bugs and wildlife. Now it’s time to rest up – there’ll be time enough in the spring for showing off.

 

Done and Done

I’m declaring the garden season for 2011 finished. Done. Finito. Complete.

Leaves are raked, gutters cleaned, the last bulbs tucked away.

Whew. What a relief.

fritillaria waiting to be planted

Although the big job of planting the cutting garden tulips was done, I still had some tiny so-called “minor” bulbs to plant. Ipheions (also called starflower) for along the side of the house under the red-twig dogwood and fritillaria for the new hellebore bed. These little bulbs are dangerously seductive – so tiny! so cute! so cheap! However, they still require being actually poked into the ground before they’ll become flowers, something that’s hard to remember when you’re reading through those colorful catalogs in the comfort of your favorite chair. Fortunately, they’re pretty easy to plant; 75 tiny bulbs tucked away in less than an hour, the hardest part figuring out which end is up (look for the root plate or simply plant them on their side – they’ll figure it out from there)

Now, I’ve got some serious sofa surfing to go catch up on.

 

A Four-Letter Word that Starts with “S”

early snow on geranium leaves

Yep, that’s snow, as in frozen-water-falling-from-the-sky. Here, in my backyard. In November.

Mother Nature can be so rude.

It just can’t be winter yet – I still have bulbs to plant and more leaves to rake than you can shake a stick at. Of course, there’s still time – this little snowstorm only lasted a couple hours and the snow melted quickly, but this is surely a sign that time is running out. Fortunately, I’ve finished with putting the flower beds to, well, bed. Perennials cut back, annuals pulled up, pots tucked away into the garage, rain barrels emptied. It’s almost time to hunker down for the long haul.

Now if only those pesky leaves would go ahead and fall already…

 

Fall Clean-Up Begins

It’s time to put the garden to bed again, not my favorite thing. It’s probably, physically, the most difficult garden chore and well, I’m kinda lazy. Sure, there’s a lot of hard work in the spring, but it’s, you know – spring! The flowers are blooming and the birds are singing and there’s more sunshine and light every day. Fall is no (or very few) flowers blooming and the birds (the smart ones anyway) have left for warmer climes and it gets darker earlier in the evening every day. Fall is cleaning up after the party.

that must have been some party

No good procrastinating – best get it done and dream of curling up on the sofa with a warm blanket and wait for spring.

(Yes, I realize I haven’t written about Paris yet – I’m working on it! Soon!)

 

Ode to the Zinnia or, I Never Promised You Iambic Pentameter

Zinnia zinnia bold and bright

Friend to bug, butterfly and gardener

How beautiful are your colors!

How sturdy are your stems!

Blooming in sun, wind, rain and storm

Undaunted to the end.

After a chilly September we are enjoying a warm, sunny October. The zinnias are still going a strong giving us one last shot of brilliant color before the frost. They can almost make you believe winter isn’t coming. Almost.

Pictures from Paris coming soon!

 

Fall Arrives

As of 4:05am 0n September 23, fall has arrived. After a July and August that made us feel like we were mired in the seventh circle of hell, it comes as a bit of a surprise that the weather can be something other than steamy hot and humid. It can be pleasantly cool and refreshing, with sunshine that is friendly rather than threatening and clear skies of deep blue. It’s nice, but disconcerting.

sweet autumn clematis

The garden seems fine with it though. The fall colors are in full glory – reds and yellows and oranges plus the white of frothy sweet autumn clematis. Things are winding down, but they’re going out with a bang.

sedum "Autumn Joy"

The long anticipated trip to Paris is over now and I’ve been home for about a week. Paris was glorious and beautiful and amazing and I loved it and can’t wait to go again. Pictures have been downloaded and I’ll be working on writing about the gardens and flowers I saw to post over the next couple of weeks. However, I must warn you – I got sick while on the trip, missing an entire day of sightseeing and then moving slower the last two days. Therefore, several major items on my list got dropped including the Luxembourg Gardens and the Promenade Plantee. This is very disappointing to me, but I tell myself that any trip – especially to someplace as wonderful as Paris – has things that you couldn’t get to, and also, there was no lack of beautiful gardens on this trip. It’s just more motivation to go again, right?

gardens of the Champ de Mars

 

Scenes from a Garden I : The Hummingbird Corner

It’s been a tough summer garden-wise. Of course, I say that every year (in part to cover for my less-than-consistent weeding technique) but this year I can prove it with statistics and empirical evidence. Our weather was mostly bone dry, occasionally broken up by violent downpours (which did little to cure the drought in the long-term) and always – always – it was hot and humid. The weeds thrived, the gardener wilted and the garden was left to muddle through as best it could.

To take my mind off the messy parts of the garden, I’m going to take a closer look at some areas that have been quite successful despite less than ideal conditions. A little tunnel vision can be a good thing sometimes. First up: the Hummingbird Corner.

hummingbird smorgasboard

Located just inside the front gate of the garden, this corner succeeds on several levels. I’d like to claim full or even partial credit for this, but mostly it was serendipity – it just came together over several growing seasons by luck and by chance. Here’s what makes it such a success.

     - Year-round interest. This corner has something going on virtually year round. This picture was taken in mid-July with bee balm, daylilies and coral bells are in full bloom. What you don’t see is spring with “Thalia daffodils”, allium christophi and the pink, white and green variegated spring foliage of a Japanese willow; the late spring peonies (there are two of them in there) and a peach Asiatic lily; or the fall colors of “Black Beauty” lilium, sedum “Autumn Joy” and fragrant sweet autumn clematis. A hanging basket of hot pink calibrochia, and an urn of dark purple annuals provide color during transitions (although there’s a lot of overlapping bloom times here). Winter interest is minimal of course, but include the seedheads of the clematis and the bare branches of the willow.

     – Beloved by hummingbirds. And who doesn’t want a few hummingbirds in their garden? Amazing and fun to watch, hummingbirds are about as bold and exotic as you can get in the Midwest. The bee balm, of course, is a well-known hummingbird magnet but I was astonished to find that they love the coral bells – several times I’ve watched a hummingbird patiently visit one tiny bell after another on the coral bell. They’ll also check out the calibrochia and even the white “David” phlox that lives just next to this corner. Fun for everyone.

     – Low Maintenance. Seriously, I do almost nothing special to this section – cut down everything except the sedum and clematis in the fall (they get cut back in the spring); stake the “Black Beauty” lilies in the spring; some deadheading (although many of these plants do fine without fussy puttering) The biggest ongoing jobs are keeping the two pots watered (which has been especially difficult this year – there’s a rain barrel handy but it’s been empty a lot this summer) and cutting the willow back hard a couple times a year. It’s a willow after all, and they like to grow; it’s quick and easy to trim, you just have to be firm with it.

close-up of the urn, newly planted in May

     – Pest free. Seriously – a few Japanese beetles will munch on the calibrochia and the willow, but leave only minimal damage and sometimes the bee balm will have some mildew (this one seems to be particularly resistant) Oh, and some weeds have the audacity to show up, but mostly this corner stays untouched.

     - It’s on view all the time. Probably the best thing about this corner is that you can see it all the time! It’s beautiful to stand in front of it and admire it up close of course, but it’s also easily seen from multiple locations inside my house – from the kitchen window, from the dining room windows, from the sunroom windows. So if it’s raining or snowing or it’s just too humid to go outside, you can still see it. The fact that it’s ever changing (rather than static evergreens, for example) means there’s always something to observe and enjoy.

 

There’s No Such Thing as Too Many Lilies

The lily season is winding down – just a few “Black Beauty” and “Stargazer” Oriental lilies still in bloom – as summer marches inexorably to autumn. Hot and dry conditions brought the lilies on fast and faded their colors, but they were still lovely.

Lovely lilies

Regal yet surprisingly easy-to-grow, they bring welcome pops of color and texture to the flower border. I often tell people that I have a lot of peonies and I do (when people hear how many, the next question is usually, “just how big is your yard?”), but I recently realized that I also have a lot of lilies! It’s easy to build up an inventory of them quickly – they have a small footprint making them easy to intermingle with other perennials. They also add a nice, spiky contrast to the more common rounded shapes of many perennials. You’ll have to experiment with which lilies work best for you – some start strong, then gradually disappear. I’ve had good luck with many Asiatics (which bloom in June); less so with the Orientals (the July/August bloomers) with the exception of “Stargazer” which are going strong. Be sure to try some of the new hybrids, especially the Orinpets and the LA Hybrids which combine the best of different types of lilies. (Note: these are all lilium lilies, not to be confused with hemerocallis – daylilies – which are an entirely different breed of cat)

 

Sizzlin’

black-eyed-susans, bells of ireland, ageratum, nicotiana, snapdragons

There are a lot of words that you could use to describe the current weather. Hot. Humid. Horrific. Ridiculous. Unnecessary. Like over half the country, we’re trapped under a “heat dome” and we’re all suffering, including the garden. Everything is brown and brunt, colors are bleached by the intense sun, leaves droop by mid-day, the rain barrels are dry (until last night we hadn’t had any rain for almost three weeks) Containers – especially the hanging baskets – need to be watered at least once a day, sometimes twice.

Still, the garden keeps going. The black-eyed-susans – both annual and perennial – have been stalworth. Daylilies and lilies continue blooming right on schedule. And as you can see, the cutting garden continues to produce bouquets. The plus side to this weather is that the lawn doesn’t need mowing, and even the Japanese beetles have been (somewhat) subdued (they prefer wetter weather) It’s good to find the positive wherever you can!