The First of October

I can't believe it's the first of October already. Our weather is holding.

I've cleaned up the front some, in preparation for winter. The butterfly bush is gone. (I cut it down to the ground every year and let it grow back.)

I've cut the dead stalks off the daylilies, and pulled out most of the dead and damaged leaves. I cut the suckers off of the corkscrew hazel bushes. And, most important of all, I planted the mums in the cast iron urns, and moved the urns to the side of the house so they would get partial shade instead of full sun. It won't look quite as good as having the urns frame the garage, but the mums will last longer.



Another item fitting the beginning of October is a sweet little (expensive) hosta I bought when we were planting the side beds. It's called Red October, presumably because it blooms in October and has red stems.

Just Gardening

Although yesterday was dull and rainy all day, today has emerged bright and sunny. So sunny in fact that it is uncomfortably hot out in the sun. So much for cooler weather. We are suffering from shorter days -- it's still dark at 6:00 in the morning, and evening comes more quickly now -- but for now, the air is still warm.

I am reluctant to plant my mums in the cast iron urns where they will get fried in the sun. I don't know. It's a difficult call. I'd like to move them around to the side of the garage, where they would get partial shade, but they are heavy. So, like much of my front gardening this year, it is all half-measures. Good intentions not carried through.

I was out there today, though, tidying the front garden and planters.

Thornless Honey Locust

I am thinking of naming this tree Raymond. Can you guess why? Of course, because everybody loves it.



This tree is a Thornless Honey Locust. He is actually male, because these trees are dioecious and ours does not get flowers or fruit, therefore it is male.

Previously, when I have read about this tree in books, the instructions always said not to prune it. However, the first year we had it, the branches all doubled in length, while the tree did not get much taller nor the trunk very much thicker. When rain came the tree looked awful -- the branches drooped to the ground -- so I thought, "Instructions be damned, those branches need cutting." So we did a judicious pruning, and the tree looked happy again and continued to grow. Since then, it has always responded well to having its branches cut back.

Today, when I was researching on the web, I see that you are supposed to cut the branches (and we were even doing it right).

So now, everybody loves this tree.

Coleus Cuttings

A couple of nights ago it went down to less than 10 degrees Celsius (about 50 degrees Fahrenheit). It reminded me that frost could sneak up on us anytime soon, so I decided to take cuttings from my coleus plants while the cutting is good. I was also able to get a few cuttings from my mom's plants while I was over at her place today.




So now I have seven or eight varieties of coleus cuttings on a table by my dining room window. As you can see, the coleus is sharing space with some of my glass collection.

Also, because it is fall, I broke down and bought some pots of mums at the grocery store. I would have planted them in the urns today, but it rained so much I never got a chance.



As I was outside taking pictures of the potted mums, I noticed a monarch butterfly (where else?) on the butterfly bush. I snapped a quick picture, but realized I hadn't set the camera to macro. By the time I set it all up for a second picture, the wind had changed and the butterfly flew away. Luckily, the one picture I did get wasn't so bad.

Ungrateful Iris

My husband calls this the "ungrateful iris". He feels it is expressing its opinion at being divided and moved.

My Hope

My Hope is a daylily that starts blooming a little later than in the season than most others, but it makes up for it by continuing to bloom and bloom and bloom, even this late in September. The following picture is from yesterday, September 22.

Late September Pictures

A Tale of Two Oak Trees

Last year we bought two oak trees at the end of the season, for a good price of course. They were about the same size. One had a straight trunk and leader and looked very healthy. The other was rather twisty and seemed like more of a risk, but we bought it anyway.

I only have a winter picture to prove that these trees were the same size last year.



It actually doesn't show up very well, but the oaks are back against the fence, sticking up on either side of the elm. (As you can see here, the Camperdown elm is a lovely tree for "winter interest" in the garden -- something I'm told that northern gardeners are supposed to pay attention to.)

Well, here is what they look like circa September 2005:














The one on the left has doubled in size. There is now as much of it above the fence as below. The one on the right has actually been shrinking. We had to cut off a dead leader and several branches. But it's still alive, and its leaves seem to be the right colour, although earlier in the season we were worried because they seemed a lot lighter than the other oak tree.

Now, guess which tree is the twisty one and which is the straight?

The huge tree on the left is the product of a twisted trunk, while the original straight tree developed into the tree on the right.

We're waiting to see how they both do next year.

In Spite of Valiant Sweet Kate

It's not summer any more.


In spite of my wonderful spiderwort, Sweet Kate, valiantly blooming anew after I cut her back a week ago, no, I must say, it's not summer anymore. Fall is out there, in the air.

Coleus

Okay, this is going to be a post with pictures of coleus. But I have to go and take all my pictures over again, because I forgot to set the camera to macro. Grrr.



So the two I am saying have small leaves are the ones on the outside of the pinky-purple plant (that would be Black Dragon coleus) in the top photo. They started out really small in June, but without my realizing it they have grown to epic proportions over the summer. The two coleus in the bottom picture were bought much later in the year as large plants. They need constant watering and look pretty dreadful if they wilt.

I never thought of growing coleus from seed, but maybe I should do that. That way, I can control the type of soil they root in and make sure it's something that stays moist longer than that dry, peaty stuff plants at the nursery are usually grown in. (Oh I know there's probably a really good reason for using that stuff, but I haven't ever had a problem putting container plants in dark heavy soil rather than light flyaway material that won't hold water.)

September Blahs

I thought I'd include a picture of the new steps as they are supposed to look, with lots of blooming containers squished in the corner to cover up the peeling pachetting. Next year, I am going to do more with the coleus that has miniature leaves. They don't require so much water and, unlike the large-leaved kinds I have, they hardly ever wilt in the sun. I got maybe six dahlia blooms this year. I have to remember not to get them next year (though these were from a bargain basket I got at Wal-Mart, so I didn't spend a whole lot).


To continue this post, I'll create some kind of collage of what's still blooming or just starting to bloom, like various versions of sedum, and my white butterfly bush.


On the front, I have my icicle pansies planted, and a second batch of Moonglow daylilies.

Dragon's Blood and Dog's Vomit

Beauty and the Beast

Just look at this gorgeous Dragon's Blood stonecrop. It used to be an indeterminate reddish-green, but in the past week or two it has morphed into a thing of beauty:

This image doesn't do it justice. The colour is even richer than what you see here.

So much for beauty. As someone who has used wood chip mulch over a large area for several years now, I've become familiar with this strange beast:

If I'm not mistaken, this stuff is called dog's vomit fungus, or dog's vomit slime mold. It grows on wood chip mulch. There's more information (should you be curious) located here.

But if you prefer a cuter kind of beast, here you go. I caught this guy on camera today.

A Lesson Learned

I hope it's not too late for me to have learned this lesson: don't store harvested seeds in plastic baggies.

I thought it would be good, you know, because I could see through the bag. So I even kept the pods intact and just threw them in. Now, a couple of weeks later, everything is moldy-furry.

I am now transferring the actual seeds to paper envelopes, and discarding the pods. I hope the seeds survived. Well, seeds are made to survive, aren't they? And if they don't, I still have plenty left to harvest.

Brainwashed

As you may know I've been looking (hoping) to find other gardening blogs out there. So today I found this random blog called The Gardening Slave and it had a picture of flowers as the profile photo, and I thought, "Yay! A gardening blog!"

But it turned out to be a woman who's into sexual slavery and I really couldn't find a whole lot about gardening in it. Well, maybe a picture of a tomato.

It made me sad, on so many levels.

Cooler Weather

The flowers are liking the cooler weather and I am getting some reblooms in the garden. Today there were three different kinds of daylilies blooming by the elm. I think it was the last hurrah for Little Business, but My Hope and Daring Deception have more buds. Still!

The vinca (also known as periwinkle, or myrtle) is also blooming again and got me thinking of Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. So I made a blog post about character names derived from plants. J.K. Rowling has put more than a few of them into the books. Check out that post here.

New Steps

The final landscaping project is finished. We wanted new steps made out of brick for the front porch. The previous steps had been made of precast concrete, and were hollow inside. After dealing with skunks living under our shed, we didn't want to provide a potential home under our stairs for skunks or other small animals.

Well, the new steps are in, but we can't use them for 15-20 hours. And the landscapers made sure we wouldn't forget it, too:



Now the house looks like a crime scene. (Well, a minor crime has been committed. Look at those trampled lamb's ears beside the stairs.)

More Work

I worked on the front garden today. I planted some icicle pansies, and got a start on the bulbs. While I was digging a hole for new bulbs, I discarded the decayed remains of one of last year's bulbs. How many more are out there under the mulch, I do not know.

Last year, my Queen of the Night tulips that I had planted in 2003 returned for a second showing, but the cream tulips (can't recall their name) did not. I'll have to see if anything I planted in 2004 will return this spring.

It wouldn't actually be a tragedy if they did not. Up to now, I've been a terrible bulb-planter. I did not have the sense to visualize the finished result, and simply placed bulbs in no particular group or order. I'm trying to change that by planting clumps of bulbs this year, rather than echoing last year's haphazard placement. I'm hoping that next year's spring garden will look better than 2005's ratty collection of Raika, Zurel, Ballade, and Shirley.

Can you see how the bright red flowering quince is playing havoc with my (attempted) restful purple and white theme? I wonder how long it will be before I rip out the quince and replace it with weigela, or something prettier. Those red flowers do yield fruit, but this variety is not considered very edible. (Didn't stop me from cooking one up and trying it anyway. Not very tasty, as expected.)

Catching Up

I've been actually doing things in the garden lately, rather than just blogging about it.

I divided my irises and replanted them in a new location, using the propagation instructions I found in the book Growing Perennials in Cold Climates. The book said to discard the old part in the middle and just cut the edges free with a clean, sharp knife. So I did that. It also said to cut the leaves to about 6 inches, so I did that too, and it looks like this:



I cleared out a lot of overgrown bushes along the fence under the willow. The things that are left stand out much better now:



First Snakes, Now Spiders

A spider the size of my thumbnail has spun a web through my petunias:



Shopping for Bulbs

Bought these tulip bulbs at Terra today:

10 Queen of the Night (dark purple)
10 Jackpot (dark purple with white edges)
10 Christmas Sweet (white, new for 2005)
10 Holland Chic (lily flowering, white with pinkish-purple stripe)
10 Pink Diamond (pastel pink -- a new colour for me)
15 "Moonlight Sonata" (mixed dark purple and cream)



Other Terra Purchases

As well as bulbs, I was looking for icicle pansies, which I love to plant at this time of year because they last until snow comes and then they bloom again in spring. I am sticking with my purple and white (or cream) theme. An added bonus is that these seem to be ruffled pansies, so they have a delicate scent.

Today's real find though was a ruffled echevera. It almost looks like ornamental kale, but it's a large hens & chicks plant. I have a "normal" echevera, which has done well this year, and even has some daughters hidden beneath it.

Here are some icicle pansies surrounding the ruffled echevera:



The echevera I have right now is in a shallow bowl planter with some different types of stonecrop:



Here is a closeup showing one of the daughters: