Thursday, June 30, 2005
Orienpets
Orienpet lily 'Visa Versa'; when this new class of lilies first came on the market (a cross between ORIENtal lilies and trumPETS), I wasn't all that impressed, but the newer crosses are just gorgeous, with enormous vigor, thick substance, bright colors, and some with a wonderful scent... sweet, but not as cloying as its parents. Visa Versa may be my pick as the best of the lot, but I'll show more as they open. A garden filled with these giants would be spectacular indeed.
A Walk In The Garden Today
Daylily Red Alert; an older hybrid, but still a good one, with very stiff, tall stems even in shade.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Iowa Summer
The humidity today has been incredible, with a heat index of 101 degrees, and tonight a powerful cold front is sweeping into the state from Nebraska, with the radar showing ugly amoebas of red racing to the northeast at 45 miles an hour, as the cooler, drier air rolls across the prairies, lifting the moist, heavy air to form billowing thunderheads to 50,000 feet. I turned on the garden lights and went for a walk, with distant lightning flickering constantly on the western horizon, and a warm wind from the southwest, starting to swirl and gust fitfully, rustling the leaves in the tops of the tall black cherry trees. Wind to 60 miles an hour, rain, and possible hail are expected. It will be a rocky night.
A Walk In The Garden Today
On these hot, sultry summer days, the perfume of the trumpet lilies is so thick and sweet, you can almost feel it, and at night as we sit on the screen porch watching the lightning bugs, and listening to the frogs, every time a little breeze stirs, the aroma of the lilies wafts into the house . Add the rumble of distant thunder, and I'm in heaven.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Note To Self
When weeding in the garden with bare hands, try not to pull up a stinging nettle (ever again).
Flirting With The Dustbowl
This morning we woke up to the blessed sound of rain and thunder; it has been incredibly dry here in eastern Iowa, and it had been almost a month since our last rain. Gardeners tend to be a cranky and paranoid lot when it comes to the weather, always thinking, when it's dry, that rain clouds conspire to go around them. My brother has some quite incredible tales of rain storms making extensive evasive maneuvers to avoid his garden. THIS year, though, our paranoia has been justified; eastern Iowa and central Illinois have had the driest March-June since the dust bowl years of 1934-5. We have been trapped, sweltering, under a persistent cap of hot air, which consistently steers large storms around us, or like last night, huge storms head right at us, then fall apart 10 miles to our west, when they hit the cap. Most of Iowa has been deluged, with up to 10 inches of rain in just the last two days, and yet in east central Iowa we've had only 6 inches all year. Well, a powerful cold front may finally be breaking down our cap, and hopefully it won't just re-form. I will never take rain for granted; a wonderful sound.
Monday, June 27, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
The daylilies are in full bloom, with perhaps two hundred different kinds, making the garden quite spectacular right now, with the asiatic and trumpet lilies blooming above clouds of daylily flowers.
Hosta 'Pathfinder'; this hosta maintains a very neat clump... because of its incredible hard substance (like plastic), and its moderate size, it doesn't flop all over the place. It stays neat-looking all season.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Daylily 'Furnaces of Babylon'. This flower has a dynamite, deep orange-red, fiery color; one of my favorites.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Friday, June 24, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Daylily 'Forever Red'; I wish I had more sunny spots for daylilies... I'd love to have an area where you walk around a shady corner into a sunny area with about twenty different red daylilies. You're right if you just thought "I'll bet he had a shiny red sports car when he was young."
Daylily 'Awesome Blossom'. This flower truly is awesome; the substance of the petals is uniquely heavy, the color saturation is very nice, and in spite of the ruffles and crinkles, it opens well, and is even a heavy bloomer. If I was limited to only one daylily in my garden, this would have to be it; I still look forward to seeing it bloom each year. It was released by the hybridizer, Salter, in 1996, and is, I note, being used a lot in further hybridizing. Interestingly the daylily 'Wisest of Wizards' shown below is one of the parents. Some of the newer daylily hybrids are just jaw-dropping, but so are their introductory prices ($100-$200), so it will be MANY years before any of them grace this garden (Awesome Blossom is now available for as little as $15).
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Passalong
This red daylily is perhaps outdated, compared to some of the newer red hybrids, but it's priceless to me; you see it's a passalong from an old gardening friend, who died many years ago. It came with no name, but I call it "Dr. Ellyson", after my friend. There are many such plants tucked away here and there in our garden, all with shining faces, like my old friends.
Jewel of Summer
Azalea 'July Jewel' is my favorite June-July blooming azalea. It does lack one thing: fragrance, but otherwise it is a great summer shrub. The June-July blooming azaleas have smaller flowers that tend to nestle in the foliage, so the bright orange color of this hybrid is all the more important in making a display. It is vigorous, and drought-tolerant, and stays in bloom for a month in the hottest of weather; when other azaleas are wilting, this plant is as fresh and crisp as the day it opened...a keeper.
Jack or Jill
Pinellia tripartita is an unusual Jack in the pulpit cousin, with a long, green spadix, and leaves just like an arisaema. It stays in bloom a long time, and is just an all-around fascinating little plant.
A Walk In The Garden Today
Daylily 'Solar Man'; a great flower to lighten up the garden against a lot of green.
Daylily 'Wedding Band'; This plant got buried under an azalea, and I finally rescued it, bringing it out into the sun.
Daylily 'Graceful Grace'; an older hybrid, but a very heavy bloomer.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Small Illusion
When I first saw this little critter from a distance, I did a double-take, because I thought I was looking at a small insect waving lobster-like claws around in the air. As I got closer I could see it was just a little fly (a walnut husk fly?) that had these peculiar black markings on its wings. It constantly moved its wings back and forth as it sat there, giving the illusion of "claws" waving back and forth, and the illusion that its tail was the front end. I suppose this would give pause to, say, a jumping spider sneaking up behind it... rather clever.
A Walk In The Garden Today
Monday, June 20, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Sunday, June 19, 2005
A Deer's Life
A Walk In The Garden Today
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Endless Summer Hydrangea
Endless Summer hydrangea is, to my mind, the biggest biggest advance in cold country gardening since... well, maybe ever. All those years of having beautiful hydrangea foliage, and no flowers, have come to an end. Apparently there are a couple of similar new hybrids on the way. I suppose us northeners will eventually be blase about blue hydrangeas, or even contemptuous, but believe me, it will be a while!
A Walk In The Garden Today
Awww.... in the cute zone, we have Disporum sessile 'Cricket', a variegated fairy bells, which stays small.
Un-named daylily: in the process of moving through four gardens, many plants lost their labels. Most of the daylilies without labels are now so "dated", that it doesn't matter anymore, but these old diploids still make a nice splash of color. When I get to the point where I start ripping out old daylilies to make room for newer hybrids, I'll have arrived at a point where I'm so garden snooty that I'll probably stop talking to myself.
Friday, June 17, 2005
The Sweetness of Summer.
One of the things I've worked towards here in the garden, is to always have something deliciously fragrant in bloom, and ideally to have a whole section of the garden perfumed. Since we have about half a mile of interconnected trails, that wind up hill and down, many of which are hidden from view, it is especially delightful to catch whiffs of perfume as you walk along the trails, trying to track down its source. Right now we're enjoying the later old-fashioned roses (Charles de Mills, is above), mock oranges, Hall's honeysuckle, and especially June flowering azaleas; the azaleas include Lollipop and Popsicle, that were recently shown. The summer -flowering azaleas are small yet; they are planted on the edge of a ravine, but already, as you come down the steps into this cool, shady spot, and cross the bridge over the ravine, you're delighted with their sweet aroma... I can well imagine what it will be like when the six different summer-blooming azaleas that I planted, each reach five to seven feet tall. Now the next wave of perfume to fill the garden will come from the trumpet lilies, which are almost over the top on a still, warm night. I had planned this year to keep a "perfume diary", to try and fill in any gaps, but it will have to wait until next year.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
June...
Oh for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon...
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming birds and honey bees...
Laughed at the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night.
Whittier
Crowding years in one brief moon...
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming birds and honey bees...
Laughed at the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night.
Whittier
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
That Voodoo That You Do.
A few years ago, some friends gave me a Voodoo lily bulb to pot up. I decided to plant it in the garden for the summer, but forgot to dig it up in the fall; I felt badly about wasting their gift, but gardeners have to be pretty blithe about killing things (at least this gardener does), so by the following spring I'd forgotten all about it. One day I noticed what I thought was a jack in the pulpit popping up in one of my beds (not an unusual occurence in my woodland garden), so paid it no mind, though it became very tall, with a nicely spotted stem. Well, the following spring, and every spring since, my "jack" has produced this flower! I thought maybe it is in fact a dracunculus (dragon arum), which is more hardy, but the flower doesn't seem right; but then it doesn't quite seem to match the pictures of the true voodoo lilies, amorphallus, either. Either way, it smells very badly in bloom, and is way cool. The foliage looks very much like an arisaema, with heavily spotted stalk and large palmate leaves.(Since posting this it struck me that I had previously identified the flower as Sauromatum venosum. Three things about this surprise me: first that a plant native to India is hardy here with no protection. Second, there are three different genera commonly called voodoo lilies. Third, I sure have forgotten a lot of things.)
A Walk In The Garden Today
This is for Jenn: you wanted to see the form of Sinocalycanthus chinensis; I tried to get a shot showing the whole bush, but it is so overdraped by a climbing rose, that I just couldn't get a picture that looked like anything... this at least shows the leaves.I said the bush is 7 ft. tall; it's closer to 9 ft. tall.
Azalea 'Lollipop'. This has a wonderful perfume, but the summer bloomers have smaller flowers that tend to nestle in the foliage, so certainly aren't as spectacular as the May blooming azaleas, but I love deciduous azaleas, so extending the season is just outstanding. I'm going to gradually add more late bloomers.
Azalea 'Popsicle' , one of the summer blooming Weston azaleas. It's growing right next to ' Lollipop', shown above. I like the flowers much better on this, but it doesn't have as much perfume as 'Lollipop'... I guess take your choice.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Some Find It Hard To Grow, But It's Become A Pest For Me.
Sometimes things work out just right... a few years ago we went to California to visit my wife's sister & her hubby (see previous references to their garden to kill for on top of a cliff looking over Tomales Bay, north of San Francisco). While there we were able to accompany the Inverness Garden Club on an exclusive tour of The Quarry Hill Botanical Gardens, which is a sanctuary for endangered plants, mainly from Japan, China, and Korea. It's a gorgeous place, filled with rare plant gems, nestled on the side of a mountain in an old quarry near Glen Ellen. As we walked in, the director told our group that he was really excited, because they had just obtained a specimen of a rare shrub from China that was new to them, Sinocalycanthus chinensis, and he was not even going to show it to us, out of concern, I guess, that someone might purloin it. In what might be my single hardest act of self control in my life, I didn't tell him that I had one five feet tall growing in the midlle of Iowa (he probably wouldn't have believed me anyway). It WAS quite scarce then, having just entered commerce, and I got mine, by fluke, having picked it out of a long, obscure plant list. It's about the size of a lilac now, with very nice, unusual, shiny green, twin leaves, and flowers that look like they are made of sugar to go on top of a cake. I have a bright pink, climbing rose intertwined with it, for a nice combination. There is available now, a hybrid between this shrub, and it's cousin, the American Calycanthus floridus, the sweetshrub; the hybrid carries the moniker Sinocalycalycanthus. I might have to pick that up next spring just for the name.
A Walk In The Garden Today
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Idiosyncracy in the Garden
We're always up for a party, and what could be better than a party with a garden tour? Last night we were off to Dennis and Jane's house; Larry and his Aussie wife, Jeanette were there too, and their back yard is so stuffed full of hostas, it squeaks, so I must trundle my camera over there, too for a future pictorial. Now, I've previously shown the front gates to our garden, showing a smiling sun; the gates were a gift from Dennis, who started making original garden art on a whim. Dennis and his wife Jane have three acres of wooded property, with a good sized frog pond at the bottom of their ravine, right in the middle of town, and it has gradually become populated with a charming collection of his garden art, ( with a few commmercial items like the frog globe holder above). Their dog, Riley, is a jolly dweller in the garden, too. I have always loved gardens that were created out of the unique, and personal vision of one person... anybody can buy a lot of expensive plants, or plant a few dozen geraniums, but only a precious few people like Dennis suddenly wake up one day with a spontaneous urge to create something that is singularly an expression of their view of gardening and art. Denny's garden is idiosyncratic; my highest compliment!
Dahlia trellis. As the dahlias grow upwards, the wires can be bent around them for support; Dennis calls these "grabbers".
What would a garden be without music? This was a tuba Dennis found by the curbside on the citywide trash pickup; now it's graced with white petunias, adding a sweet note to the garden.
Friday, June 10, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Saving Postage
I think I just unintentionally pared my Christmas card list. I related here, about my side trip to the Missouri Botanical Garden last week. It was a VERY hot day, and as I walked all the way around the large Japanese garden, it progressively struck me, that I wasn't all that thrilled with it: it just seemed so static, and frankly uninteresting; I just really couldn't relate to many of the set pieces. The trees, tending to be smaller Japanese maples, offered little shade, and white gravel on a blistering hot midwest summer day, just made me think of a gravel driveway. I think part of the trouble was, that being a public park, the open spaces were large, which removed all the intimacy from the garden. I post occasionally on a well known garden message board, and rashly decided to share my thoughts on Japanese gardens in the midwest on the Japanese garden message board. Well, THAT certainly dropped the temperature in a hurry. Woof... Japanese garden fans are a mite touchy. The picture above shows, to me, what I'm talking about: this is one of those gravel thingys that's supposed to be the ocean surrounding an island. ZZZZZ.
Roscoea
Roscoeas are little-known, small cousins of the gingers, with the flowers being very suggestive of small, terrestrial orchids. They are native to S.E. Asia, and it is quite surprising to me that many of them grow here in Iowa with no special fuss. This is Roscoea tibetica. Also growing in the garden are cautleoides (which has the largest flowers, but has a bit of "wet laundry" look to the flower, and a somewhat tepid pale yellow color), beesiana, capitata, scillifolia, and purpurea. They come up VERY late in the spring, so the first time I aquired one, I thought it hadn't survived the winter, and reacted as I always do when something disappears: I planted about three hostas in the bare spot. Then one day about two years later I wondered what that strange little flower was that was trying to grow up through the hostas. Roscoeas look cute in their own little spot in a shady garden; I wouldn't stick one in the daylily patch (and I wouldn't intentionally plant a hosta on top of it).
A Walk In The Garden Today
Loessel's liparis; not exactly the most showy native orchid in the world. Several plants popped up in one of my azalea beds; kind of a nice little "weed". When we first moved here, this orchid was quite common in our woods, but it has been totally wiped out by the deer, except in the area I have fenced in for a garden (I mentioned before, that the showy orchis is in the same boat).
Martagon lily; waxy flowers (also called sealing wax lily), beloved of hummingbirds.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Garden Whining
A rolling, billowing thunderstorm has driven me inside this afternoon, but that isn't the only incentive to be inside; there is a lot of whining going on in the garden, in this case emanating from clouds of hungry mosquitoes. We had a very dry spring and early summer, then suddenly turned hot and wet, with clouds of mosquitoes appearing; the worst I've seen in many years, making it all but impossible to work in the garden. Weeding has just gone by the wayside. Anybody had luck with Mosquito Magnet??
A Walk In The Garden Today
Arisaema heterophyllum, showing the long spadix. Incidentally, while I'm short, I'm taking this picture standing upright, eyeball to eyeball.
June
How softly runs the afternoon
Beneath the billowy clouds of June.
Helen Hunt Jackson
Beneath the billowy clouds of June.
Helen Hunt Jackson
Monday, June 06, 2005
A Visit to Shaw Gardens
We were on a 'Bright Family Tour' to St. Louis for a nephew's graduation. Being away from my garden doesn't mean though, that I can't see someone else's garden: in this case, while the womenfolk were decorating for the party, I drove to Tower Park, nice and early, for a tour of Shaw Botanical Gardens, especially enjoying the woodland garden (it was a hot day), and the Japanese garden. The latter was a sobering experience, seeing how the cute little Japanese maples I've been buying in one gallon pots are someday going to be the size of a two car garage. Gulp! Someday I'm going to have an arboretum, not a shady flower garden. It was also amazing seeing all the relatively tender plants they can grow, that I can only dream about. People did look at me a little strange when every ten feet down the path I went, "Oh jeez, they've got one of those, too!" However, I've thought from time to time about taking a crack at growing a sacred lily (Rhodea) in my garden, but after seeing how ratty the foliage looked even in St. Louis, I know they aren't worth growing in Iowa. Two additional observations from touring the garden: the founder, Henry Shaw is buried in a mausoleum in a little grove of trees, and I'll bet it's a spooky spot at night, and secondly, seeing a botanical garden from a motorized "train", as many of the visitors did, looks really dumb. Anyway, after a four hour walk under the hot sun, I was ready to sample some cold beer and a brat on the riverfront and puzzle over how I'm going to fit anything else in my garden.
A view in the Japanese garden; I like Japanese maples, but I finally figured out why I don't really like Japanese gardens: they are too static. I like change and surprise in the garden, and would think I'd be bored by a Japanese garden.
The most dramatic rose I saw at Shaw Gardens was 'About Face' (also shown in the next two pictures). I had decided not to ever buy any more hybrid tea roses, because of the spraying required to prevent blackspot, but if I run across one of these in the parking lot at K Mart on sale, it will follow me home.
Mature Japanese maple by the pond; maybe in my garden I shouldn't have planted a pair of these three feet on either side of a large rhododendron. Hmmm.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Bright Family Road Trip
We're off on a Bright Family Road Trip (I'll be wearing my road trip T shirt: "We're here because we're not all there!"). We'll be in St. Louis until next week, so the garden will have to fend for itself (sound of weeds going "yipee!".
A Walk In The Garden Today
Tricyrtis 'Moonlight Treasure'. This toad lily is a real keeper; it is a clumper, only growing 8" high, with huge yellow flowers. It's very vigorous; this was a tiny, one stalked plant last year.
Tricyrtis 'Key Lime Pie'. The flowers are quite insignifigant, but I really like the foliage on this toadie; it's very stiff and upright compared to many toad lilies.
Primula cockburniana; I showed this earlier, but it's more open now. This stays in bloom for a month.
Lonicera (honeysuckle) 'Pink Lemonade', with red cardinal shrub. It's hard to tell from this picture, but the honeysuckle is growing over an archway over a path. There is a long hedge of the cardinal shrub, all in full bloom, running up the hill. Spectacular right now.
