An Iowa Garden

There comes a day, every year in the garden where, sometimes without really realizing it at first, you find yourself doing the first fall, winding down, chore. Today I found myself pulling up the tall lily stakes, and realized that all too soon, frost will creep into the woods, and the show will be over for another year; a thoughtful moment, for sure.

While I was gone this weekend, Liz went for a garden walk on a misty day, with her little Canon, and took some snapshots. I was quite interested to see her view of the garden; no spectacular shots of double blooming whatsit bushes or wide angle shots... rather, a series of quiet, intimate little pictures, showing small details I'd never see. If I live with her for a hundred years, I'll never grow tired of discovering who she is.

Winding trail. 

Drippy nose. 

Fungus amongus. 

Taking a leaf out of the book? 

The hosta bed is this way. 

Rose view. 

Tomato and bench. 

Ornamental grass. 

It's hard to find a place to read in peace around here.

In my woodland garden, over the years I've picked up plants from here and there; some bought, some grown from seed, some were gifts, and occasionally I don't know where the heck they came from; they just appear one day, quite to my amazement. This is an example of a mystery plant... it has a label (which was slightly mis-spelled), by which I know it is Leucoseptrum stelliperum. The catalogue descriptions of this plant are quite glowing... it is a Japanese woodland wildflower... but it doesn't do much for me, and looks like it could cover a lot of territory. I'll be keeping an eye on it, now that I know it's there.

I recently blogged about how I seem to dig up at least one yellow jacket nest every year, to my regret. This is a record year, probably because of our drought, in that I've just unearthed my third nest of the year. The first nest only got me once, the second time I didn't get stung at all, and this last nest, which was the mother of all yellowjacket nests, was pretty awesome, but I apparently beat a retreat before getting stung . Five minutes later, as I was walking up the path, I found out too late that one of them had gotten into my shorts.

This is the season when darkness starts to creep into the garden, when tiny fall flowers and foliage look like bright jewels on the somber earth, and when the gardener needs to pause, and take some time down on hands and knees, to closely observe these little plants... this is the newly emerging foliage of Cyclamen coum E. A. Bowles.

Gentiana paradoxum. 

Cyclamen coum; a silver leafed form.

Tricyrtis 'Lightning Strike'. 

I've before touted Podophyllum 'Kaleidoscope'; this shows how fresh and interesting its foliage still looks, even after a summer of record heat and dryness (of course this connotes some concern about winter hardiness... so far only one Iowa winter under its belt, and it emerges very early in the spring and MUST be protected from hard freezes then, in our climate).

Heuchera ' Frosted Violet'. 

Tricyrtis 'Moonlight'. 

Japanese fern 'Silver Falls'. 

Cyclamen hederifolium Silver leaf. 

Late rose. 

Late rose. 

Cyclamen cilicium... this is not supposed to be hardy here, but has done well for a number of years. 

Early mums. 

Rita now has the third lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in an eye of a hurricane, only bested by the monster Gilbert, and the 1935 Labor Day storm; may God have mercy on all creatures in its path.

My new favorite toadie: 'Rasberry Mousse'; flowers blotched and spotted with deep rasberry purple, and the flowers seem to open all at once all the way down the stem, so much more spectacular.

Tricyrtis Ohsumiense, with pale lemon flowers spotted lightly in red.

Tricyrtis 'White Tower'. 

In spite of our drought and heat wave, the hellebores still look good, and continue to put out new foliage; if only all plants were this tough! 

Fuschia. 

Pot of begonias on a stump.

The colchicums are just starting to spring up; a sure sign of fall. 

Tricyrtis Hatatogisu... the early fall toad lilies are starting to bloom.

Tricyrtis Empress... a fine toadie.

This is why this hybrid hydrangea is called "Endless Summer". 

Chelonopsis yagiharana; an Asian cousin to our native turtlehead... this one is only 6 inches tall, with rasberry red flowers.

Behind this fence is where I store my tools, bags of peat, bricks, and stuff. 

Bee on anemone. 

The one acre of our woods that is our garden, is ringed by a six foot wire fence, because of the deer. In many spots the fence is obscured by rows of yews, arborvitae, and other shrubs, so it is very unobtrusive. There are five gates that pass through the fence. This gate, which I showed a while back, leads from the back of the garden, down to the pond, where we have a little area to launch our canoe.

This gate is at the back of the garden, and leads out of the garden into a large, wooded ravine, that is home to a wide variety of wildlife, with some of the shyer songbirds nesting there. This part of our woods will stay undeveloped, but I am slowly working on a hiking trail that will wind through it. 

There are three gates leading from the backyard into the garden; I've shown the main center gate, the "Sun Gate", several times before. This gate is uphill, to the left of the main gate, opening to a long, shady, wooded path. This area of the garden is just getting developed.

This gate is at the right front of the garden, and opens to a long wooded pathway along the pond; the path curves down to a ravine, and across a bridge, then up past a lot of azaleas and rhododendrons. All of the pathways intersect.

After a collaborative effort on the following posts, we sign off, until we can dream up tomorrow's new story line.

This little caterpillar was crawling across the concrete driveway, so I scooped him up, photographed him, and put him in the weeds on the other side of the drive. He was less than an inch long, and is kind of like those little fluffy dogs at the dog show, where you can't tell which is the front end... in this case it's at the left.

I've several times before, mentioned my brother-in-law, Bob, who lives in Marin County, California, and who is a man of such color and intellect, that it would not be an exaggeration to say that I am in awe of him. I was therefore very attentive the other day, when Liz relayed that when she was talking to Bob on the phone, that he harrumphed, that now that we had new kittens, he supposed my garden blog was going to turn into a kitten blog! Well, when I first started this blog, I vowed that I would fold it if I ever blogged about what I just ate for lunch, or if I posted pictures of the cats wearing funny hats. I also would mention that I hope I'd never stoop to using some silly excuse of a story as a pretext to post a picture of our new, growing, kittens, P.J. and Punkin'.

Now, I have alluded often to Bob, and his lovely, tap-dancing wife, Mary's glorious garden in northern California, sitting in an acreage on a hilltop (we'd call it a cliff in Iowa) overlooking Tomales Bay, and surrounded by thousands of acres of the pristine Point Reyes National Seashore. Perhaps I should finally give this garden some reality by posting a few pictures, taken on our last visit there. Here we see the sun just rising over the bay at their doorstep, lighting their acre of garden, containing a multitude of plants I can only dream about, like rhododendrons the size of a garage. Their garden contains a charming guest cottage, where one is likely to find a chocolate on the pillow, though there has been some controversy about the fact that the guest bed is not positioned perfectly, so that one can gaze through the skylight on awakening.

The last time we were in their garden, was the first time I'd had a digital camera along, and it was December, so alas, I can only wave my arms and speak rhapsodically about the glories their garden contains. I will confess that for many years, I've suffered a severe case of garden envy over the Eden that they live in, and I've harbored the urge to outdo them in our own little woodland. I am at peace now, though, having realized we each have our own unique little niche in the gardening world (Mary has been most helpful, in her visits here, by graciously making a big fuss over my daylilies, peonies, and such).

The bell in their garden is from an old church in Oklahoma, where Bob's father was an oil wildcatter. The bell is rung on New Year's Eve, and for the arrival of guests, and sundry other special occasions I only have a fuzzy knowledge of.

A beautiful afternoon, with fluffy clouds drifting over Tomales Bay and Black Mountain, seen from Bob & Mary's garden. 

Liz, my little adventurous eater, tackles a barbequed oyster at a beautiful restaurant, The Farmhouse, in Olema, on Pt. Reyes.

Glen and Hanne have been our friends for many years, and you'd have to look far and wide to find a more interesting, well-travelled, renaissance couple than they are. They have a garden that is modest in size, but charming and peaceful, reflecting their personalities. We have enjoyed their hospitality and their garden many times over the years, but I will say our first visit to their house was somewhat auspicious. Hanne brought Glen down to Iowa City, where we now live, and innocently dropped him off to tailgate with our gang (The Bright Family) at an Iowa football game. Now I will admit in those days we were a pretty hard-partying crew, and somehow ended up not leaving the parking lot until it was completely dark, around 9 p.m., and also somehow we all ended up jammed in one R.V., with Glen having talked us all into driving to a small town thirty miles away, where he said a reggae band was performing in a small bar. When we got there, it turned out the reggae band had been there last week, and there was instead a cowboy/biker band wailing away, with the kind of crowd you see in movies, throwing bottles through the windows, and hitting each other over the head with pool cues. Well, being the good friends we are, we didn't kill Glen on the spot (though the vote was close), but it was now 10 p.m., and nobody had eaten since having a hot dog for lunch, but Glen had another idea... he had heard of this fabulous pizza place that had opened up in the small town that Liz and I lived near at that time, so after some grumbling, we all piled back into the R.V., and headed off to get pizza. Now, I thought it was odd that I'd never heard of this place, which Glen said was named "Tasty's", since the town only had about four thousand people. It seemed like we shouldn't have much trouble finding it though, as there wasn't much of a business district. We drove all over that place in the dark, and never could find Tasty's. Finally we stopped somewhere, and Glen looked through the phone book, and found out the place he'd heard about was CASEY'S, which is small town Iowa's version of 7-11, with slices of day old pizza revolving under a heat lamp. Well, by now there was mutiny, and they kicked Glen out at our place at 11 p.m., so he could call Hanne to drive down and pick him up. Not so surprisingly, she hung up on him (more surprisingly, she later married him, and they've been a happy couple all these years... women are strange critters). It was now almost midnight, we'd been up since 6 a.m., and partying since 7:30, but Liz and I drove Glen back north to his new house, which we'd not seen yet. It was pitch black, in the middle of the night when we got there, and the first thing Glen wanted to show us was his back yard, where his present garden is. Now, you can perhaps just tell from the above picture, that his back patio drops off abruptly, at a retaining wall, which drops straight down perhaps 6 or 7 feet, to a steep bank, covered densely with brush and trees. Glen wandered out the back of the house, spreading his arms wide, expounding on how this would someday be his zen garden. Unfortunately, he walked right off the retaining wall... it was just like one of those Wiley Coyotey cartoons... for just an instant he was in mid-air, still talking and waving his arms, and then he was gone in the darkness. We ran to the edge, and peered carefully down into the gloom, seeing nothing, but after a moment, hearing this groan from far down the hill, saying that he'd lost his glasses. Well, I guess that old adage about how being really relaxed protects you from injury is true, as Glen was bruised and scratched, but otherwise fine. We went inside, and listened to Glen's collection of old Frank Sinatra records, and laughed and talked, and got home about 3 in the morning... just another football Saturday, folks...nothing to see...just keep moving.

Fountain and art piece. 

Close-up of a garden art piece that Glen constructed, with aluminum sheets. 

Moon over the pond. 

Succulent Trough. 

Geranium. 

Their balcony is jam-packed with plants. 

One of them Japanese Island/Ocean Rock Thingies. 

Although strictly an amateur, I'm a fair observer of nature, so most days I know what's going on in our woods... then there are days like this, when I haven't the slightest idea what's up. This morning as I walked one of the back paths, a shadow so large it almost made me jump, momentarily blocked the rising sun, and I looked up to see a female bald eagle just clipping the treetops right over my head. Soon more shadows flitted through the woods, and I looked up again, to see numerous turkey buzzards, also flying rapidly across our woods, just above the treetops. Other buzzards now flew in lazy circles higher up in the sky, and then a stocky broad-winged hawk blew straight through the woods. I thought perhaps, due to the drought, we'd had a fish kill in the pond. Then, I decided maybe I'd just wander up and check on Toaster, our ancient cat. I felt a little silly doing it, especially as I'd just fed her breakfast in the kitchen a couple of hours ago, but you never know... she kind of looks like roadkill even when she's hobbling down the driveway. She was, as usual, sprawled under her favorite tree, but woke right up for me... I just petted her, and didn't tell her why I'd awakened her; then I walked slowly back down the hill.

Hydrangea 'Limelight'.

Kerengoshoma palmata; a rather late blooming woodland perennial from Japan and Korea, it's sometimes called yellow wax bells. This plant suffered the worst damage of any plant in the garden from our late freeze this year, being killed to the ground, but it has put up new growth, with now a few blooms. It had been quite a large plant, and is worth growing for its pale lemony flowers in late summer, and interesting foliage.

Hosta 'Remember Me'. 

Butterfly bush 'Ellen's Blue'. 

Heuchera Cream Brulee' 

The golden rod is yellow,
The corn is turning brown,
The trees in apple orchards
with fruit are bending down...
By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather
And Autumn's best of cheer.


-Helen Hunt Jackson-