Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Field Trip!
This time of year, when the rose bushes are so weighted down with flowers, they reach the ground, and the catbird is singing in his tree so enthusiastically, I fear he'll burst, it's hard sometimes to get me out of the garden. However two words will have me packing the cooler in a flash... GARDEN TOUR! As we drive through the countryside, Liz loves to stick her head out the window, and yell "Here Bossy" at the cows, but even she was on good behavior today, as we were going to the big city to see our friend Wanda's garden for the first time, when the iris are blooming... so we drove right past Shueyville, and right by the siren lure of the cowboy bar in Swisher, and into town. I guess Wanda wasn't sure we were going to be able to find her place in the city, as she gave me instructions over the phone, then e-mailed me a map, then for good measure she was out front in the driveway when we pulled up. Not to worry... as we rounded the corner there were typical suburban lawns sporting a couple of arborvitae as far as the eye could see, and then there was Wanda's place... flowers everywhere, with a rainbow of iris in full bloom. I decided maybe she wasn't out front waiting for us, but instead eyeing the street to see if she could plop some pots of flowers there, as there wasn't much room left in her yard! I took some pictures, which follow; I have a pretty good memory, so didn't think I'd need to take notes, but after looking at about the jillionth iris, I just gave up on names. We also got to see where various roofs and porches had landed during the tornado that went through her back yard a year or so ago (I noticed she didn't seem too heartbroken over the trees she had lost... more sun for planting iris
My woodland garden leads to flopsy iris, so I was amazed (and jealous) of Wanda's iris looking like small, straight trees.
A Walk In The Garden Today
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Garden Mysteries
There are lots of mysteries in the garden... where did I leave that trowel, why did I plant a bright pink rose right next to a chartreuse arborvitae, but this is a bigger mystery, involving a very small plant... what the heck is this, anyway? It's popped up in the middle of an azalea bed, and I have no idea what it is, but have this nagging suspicion it's something I planted and promptly forgot about. It's only about four inches tall, arising from the ground like a rolled up newspaper, as on the left, then spreading a pair of waxy leaves that suggest a pair of kidneys. It looks like it might be getting a tiny flower bud at the base of the leaves. It's cute whatever it is. Of course things do pop up around here that I had nothing to do with. My Sister had given me some cleome seed, which I scattered about. Last sping a plant sprang up in a sunny spot in the mum bed, so I left it be, and it grew taller, and taller, and then one day, when it was about five foot tall, I really looked at it, and realized it was a marijuana plant, lustily odiferous, and sticky. Now wild hemp is actually pretty common in Iowa (during WW II they tried growing it to make rope), but we do have some pretty big parties, with people wandering at will through the garden, so who knows. At any rate I pulled it up, in case my Mother-in-law brings her church garden group back for another tour.
A Walk In The Garden Today
Primula cockburniana. Orange normally isn't my favorite flower color, and the thought of an orange primrose doesn't fill me with delight, so I resisted for a long time purchasing this primrose, but in fact it's rapidly become one of my favorites; the combination of its whitish stems and buds, and dainty, sweet smelling muted orange flowers is delightful.
Friday, May 27, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Arisaema triphyllum, our native jack in the pulpit. I have a variety of Asian jacks, but our plain old native is really more spectacular than many of them. Wayne, on Native Plant Blog (see Garden Links) had a nice piece on the sub-types of our native jack... the picture is of the dark spadex type.
Arisaema fargesii; I LOVE the foliage on this jack in the pulpit... it looks so tropical, and can reach three feet tall, with HUGE leaves. The flowers are at the base of the plant.
Peony; this picture looks like I altered it by turning up the blue, but it was just taken in late evening.
Desert candle (eremurus) is a plant I wish I had more space for, but it likes full sun and space, so a woodland garden is not really it's idea of heaven (if it doesn't get a lot of sun, it can really get the leans). This is E. robustus, which gets 6-7 feet tall.
Corydalis flexuosa doesn't exactly cherish our hot summers (it's not THAT crazy about our winters), but I'm slowly nursing along a couple of plants.
Corydalis 'Blackberry Wine', on the other hand, grows maybe TOO well, threatening to swamp everything around it. It's an o.k. plant, but with our hot summers I have to grow it fairly shady, so it gets flopsy-mopsy.
Helleborus X sternii. This isn't supposed to be hardy here (a fact I discovered AFTER I planted it last spring, but it came through without a scratch with only some bark mulch. The leathery leaves are just smashing, but I'm not going to get too attached to it just yet.
This is an aguilegia seedling from seed given to me by my sister in law and her husband, from their world-class garden overlooking Tomales Bay north of San Francisco. The flower is ink-stained in a most beautiful manner.
Arisaema heterophyllum is SLOWLY continuing to unfold, like some prehistoric pterodactyl. It will reach three feet tall, with a wing spread of almost three feet.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Cypripedium 'Ulla Silkens' is showing more cherry pink in the pouch now.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Daphnis Tree Peonies
This is a flower of the tree peony, 'Gauguin'. Earlier, in showing some of the double flowered tree peonies in the garden, I said that most of them had no names, as I had bought most of them cheaply from a box store, just labeled as, "such and such color tree peony", and to my eye they are just as good as the hundred dollar named varieties. But, when it comes to single flowered tree peonies, I am in love with the Daphnis hybrids. Being mostly single or semi-double, and being progeny of a strong-stemmed form of P. lutea, they hold their flowers high, instead of drooping into the foliage, like so many of the Japanese and Chinese hybrids, and the colors... WOW! They are like shot silk, with colors so rich and subtle, I have no names for them. I have Gauguin, as shown (it usually has more gold in it, but was almost cherry red this year), Icarus, Kronos, and have Nike ordered for the fall.
A Walk In The Garden Today
Showy Orchis. As mentioned before, this native orchid grows in our woods, and has seeded into several of the flower beds. It grew commonly throughout the woods when we first moved here, but the deer have pretty much wiped it out except in the one acre fenced in for the garden, where it is still doing well.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Yippee!
Sometimes, when little critters get out and about in the late spring, you see something you've just not quite seen before. A cardinal was hanging with a couple of sparrows (which in itself is odd), so when they flew down onto the grass to scratch around, so did the cardinal. At that moment two little chipmunks came hopping through the long grass like they had springs on their feet, and one of them jumped on the cardinal. Tag, you're it, I guess.
I'm Still Here
Well, the fun part of the gardening year is over; spring planting. Now begins the work; weeding and mulching, so that next spring I'm not walking about trying to find my rare frubish mopflower in a patch of ragweed. To this end, I have ten cubic yards of mulch sitting smack-dab in the middle of the driveway tunaround, looking at me reproachfully every time I open the garage door. I can almost hear it go "tsk tsk" when I maneuver the car around it to go lollygagging somewhere. I'd get on it today, but the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and I've got places to go and people to see. Maybe it will be cloudy tomorrow.Thursday, May 19, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
The bearded irises are blooming.Unfortunately I don't have names for them; they got moved in a jumble from our last house and garden (another story).
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
The Cat's Meow
The second line storm of the day just drove me indoors. A steady wind out of the southwest is pushing these narrow, gusty storms towards us, like ripples on a pond. They move very rapidly, so that we go from warm sunshine to cold downdraft winds and rain in a matter of minutes. As I walked up the path towards the house, the birds were scattering before the gusty winds, like so many leaves, heading for the fir trees. Just a few minutes before, I was marvelling at how many different birdcalls I could pick out just standing in one spot: house wren, cardinal, chickadee, robin, tufted titmouse, Carolina wren, red-winged blackbird, red-eyed vireo, flicker, field sparrow, dove, house sparrow, Baltimore oriole, and the catbird. I love the catbird's endless, enthusiastic singing, but when they show up in early May, listening to bird calls gets a LOT more complicated, as they make as much noise as all of the other birds put together, and imitate so many different birds (as well as meowing at the cats, which the cats pretend they don't hear). We've never had quail here, so I was quite excited not long ago to hear the clear "bob-white" call several times, only to have my hopes dashed, as the catbird then went off into a long song containing parts of the calls of about six other birds, and lots of made-up stuff. You've got to like their enthusiasm, though.