Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Beautiful Plant Images (Totally Random)

Coleus

Giant native penstemon

Golden barberry with daylily

Spring at The Paine, Oshkosh

Allium 'Purple Sensation'

Dogwood 'Golden Shadows'

Iris 'Wine and Roses'

Sunday, October 27, 2013

More of the Best Stuff I Saw This Summer

Perfect path over a wetland

Crisp, clean, sinuous bed line

Cute blue roof over an old milk house

Painted on clear glass

Farm rust to art

A butterburr in a private garden!

Need to have just the right place for this.  I'm not sure this is it, though...

Metal cactus sculpture in a cactus garden, art mimics life?

Friday, October 25, 2013

Best Stuff I Saw This Summer

A not too common bench painted just the right color

'Gold Heart' bleeding heart


A statement piece of pottery

A simple bird bath rising above the hosta

Rockery

This fantastic allium I didn't think hardy here

More rockery


Sunday, October 20, 2013

Thursday, October 17, 2013

The House by the Side of the Road

The first thing you start to feel when in my brother's house is that you can't seem to get the layout of the house firmly in your mind.  It is two full stories over a full basement (of a sort), but it seems there are jigs and jags here and there. Which rooms back onto one another? Which rooms are above or below each other?   

It is surely a puzzle.  And which puzzle piece is precisely where? 

When my son and his friends, who have all spent numerous nights within the house for Family Game Nights, talk about the house they seem to have the same discussion.  I believe one intends to pee in each of the bathrooms, but how many are there? Six?  Or seven?  And both my son and his girlfriend have declared the existence of an upstairs room which it seems I have never entered.  With all the time I have spent in the house over the course of years, how can this be?

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Golden Spirit Smokebush

Picture taken September 30, 2013
I like smokebushes.  I first came across this genus at the Planter's Palette in Wheaton, IL.  It was the Morton Arboretum's selection 'Nordine' that was the hook about 20 years ago.  I still have a clone of that first purchase in my Wisconsin garden, although the original purchase has since died at my former garden in Elgin, IL.

I believe this golden selection of smokebush to be more cold hardy than the 'Nordine', which was killed to the ground last spring by a very late hard frost.  This 'Golden Spirit' planted in a more exposed area suffered little damage, although I did cut it to the ground to improve its shape and encourage a bushier growth habit.
Picture taken June 8, 2013. Smokebush 'Nordine'  Often purple-leaved smokebushes are kept cut to the ground to encourage the fresh, deeply colored foliage.  I cut mine to the ground after it was frost damaged this year.


Smokebushes are vigorous growers and will quickly resume their pre-pruning size, although in any year in which you trim back terminal growth they will not "smoke".  They are drought hardy once established.  It appears they are most intolerant of late hard frosts once they have left dormancy.

The 'Golden Spirit' makes a nice addition to the alley shrub border and shows off my ripe 'Honeycrisp' apple to good effect.

And, of course these days, I hope its shining golden spirit to be contagious.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

View of a Different Garden

View of a garden taken through the glass
This is my new garden view. It is a garden I drew up a plan for over five years ago.  It is a very formal parterre, 30' wide by 90' deep.  It has a diamond in the center with a fountain and pea gravel walks leading from each point and around the center diamond.  On the longitudinal sides are privet, which if maintained as I do in my yard could be a nice privatizing element, but is overgrown even with my impromptu hedging efforts taking it back a foot or so about once a year.  The differences with this privet hedge and my own show the need for constant pruning of privet used in this way.

There were several poor plant choices made in the lay out of this garden, however there are also a couple plant choices which have been excellent.  Lining the pea gravel paths is Autumn Joy sedum backed with shades of blue iris.  I would say the first 3-4 years this was an incredibly good choice.  It always showed to advantage.  At this point being perennial, desperately needs to be re-divided widening the path.

Pointing up each of the centers of the corner rhomboid shapes are Alberta spruce.  The original thought was to clip them into a formal spiral.  Clipping is, however, a time-consuming activity, and has not been done.  Running parallel to the center diamond are bands of yew clipped flat in a wide curled double "S".  There are some good bones here.

Plants were massed in the planted areas.  Still, there are a large number of interesting plants here:  the large large-leaved rhododendron which bloom in large balls of bloom in the spring, the Annabelle hydrangea, sundrops, allium glaucum, pink and white bleeding heart, masses of Asiatic and Orienpet lilies, various other species alliums.  There are also pedestrian things like rudbeckia which, however, is a good choice interplanted with the sundrops providing a continuously blooming triangle.

As the long view of this garden positions the sunrise behind the fountain from my window and the fall fog will hang like a mist above this garden at sunrise it provide a view of a garden in transitional light with the dew hanging heavy on the fall-colored foliage.  The fall colors backlit in the morning sunlight is something not present in my home garden.  It is an aspect of the light I have been admiring here, however over-run "my" new garden is.

It brings me joy.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

My Fall Garden Project Continues...and Has Stopped: (Progress This Fall)



Note: Hurriedly all the stray bulbs, unplanted perennials and whatever got heeled in to the corner (open ground), by my caring Handsome Son.  Beggars and the incidentally and unexpectedly disabled can not be particular.

It all started when the neighbor sided the garage.  The idea, that I could remove the black pine, began to take shape.  The fence which is such a nice backdrop to my long border could be continued.

You could see why the idea had never occurred to me before...
I didn't realize how bad this looked.

This is the berry bramble side.  The side to the right was obscured by the black pine.

Pine with floating glowin the dark globes before Garden Walk this summer.
This is the seedling of a 'Bloodgood' Japanese maple I selected which got a new home today (10/1/13).  The leaves on this selection are more of a rusty orange than the clear deep burgundy red.  Rather than a wide palmate leaf, the leaves are thinner and more finger-like and serrated.  It will need some structural trimming over time, but I will probably keep my lock on my trimmer until early to mid-winter I am back on my feet.
Close-up

I have erected and stained the fence.  I moved the brambles behind the leading edge of the garage.  Most of the brick which formed an non-permanent wall will be re-purposed in my next project.

I hope I am not just making a Raceway for Rodents!
My thought is to make a place to cover as a cold frame in spring.  This is the foot of my potager and strawberry bed and perennial herbs. I will be able to grow early lettuce here, maybe spinach, harden off seedlings and cuttings, give winter sown seeds a head start.  I think it will be a useful space.  If it works as anticipated, instead of dry stack I'll use mortar and make this a bit more permanent next fall.  My intent is to put a wooden frame top on the brick with plexi panels.

I'm not sure what else will come into play in this corner other than room for the Japanese maple to spread its limbs.  I am the thinking process of upgrading my plant selection.  The other plants in this section are filipendula, a Korean boxwood, a 'Moorpark' apricot, sundrops, white geranium, 'Johnson's Blue' geranium, a heliopsis, rubeckia triloba, a purple cone flower and echinecea nitidia. an apricot daylily and some large alliums.  Also is an Apps daylily I have had for years, 'Apricot Sparkles', which I bought before I met my neighbor Dr. Darrel Apps, but which has been suffering in the shade of the black pine as the pine grew too large for its space.

Pre-project
Pre-project

An aster I need to remember to pinch hard and often!
  1. Looking west at this corner, a piece of shabby chic oak motif railing I will possibly be using elsewhere in the garden.  It shows off well against the brown fence and is a nice backdrop for the Japanese maple. (Fall, mid-project)










Monday, October 7, 2013

The Physics of Walking


The size of my entire garden...
I am suddenly shuttered into a very small world.  What looked like a promising October filled with blue skies and nice weather, the thought of purchasing a very small sailboat, meeting up with family, and decorating for Halloween; instead the closing up my housing tying up personal affairs and an uncertain future. 

I have fractured my acetabulum.

Bed rest, a walker, possibly surgery with no guaranteed results, loss of work,and catastrophically staggering medical bills may well be my future.  I'm not sure  of my future, any part of it.

My son is trying to keep it together, but he is shook up, too.  In his third semester in college he is just three credits from junior standing-- I don't want him to drop out to deal with this.

Faithful Companion has already bitten a substitute caregiver, Cinnamon doesn't understand what is happening. My son's dad is willing to take her indefinitely, but we could not connect all of our dots.

Strangely, I'm not in pain.  Finding a comfortable sleeping position-- difficult does not describe it.  Moving from place to place takes incredible forethought, strength of will and planning.

Out of the blue, perhaps not so much, Baby Boo and the Gardening Twins' parents--my brother and beautiful SIL have offered to take me in.  Surprisingly, my rough and tumble sister in the Twin Cities and her companion offered to do the same, if needed. 

You could say simply I broke my hip, but that's a bit too simplistic.  The type of break is typically seen in motorcycle accidents, plane crashes, high speed crashes.  There are typically lots of associated injuries.  I have none of those.  Twenty percent of those suffering this and the associated injuries and subsequent issues are dead within the year.

Scary statistic.

So if I seem to be talking to plants a bit less often, now you know why.