Hosta...Surprise!

Annuals I've Missed: Dahlias

This picture of a bug-free white dahlia was taken at Janesville's Rotary Botanical Garden.

I like dahlias almost as much as I like the big, blowsy Japanese peonies.  I have difficulties growing them.  This has not always been true.  Two things about dahlias I have not found a good way around.  I cannot winter over the tubers, which seem to be more expensive all the time (for smaller and smaller tubers).  The best flowers (number, size, all of it) seem to come from large, plump tubers grown on for several seasons.  Additionally, my growing season has shrunk.  Just about the time they have reached big, blowsy greatness, it will freeze here in central Wisconsin. 

The pale ones, like the white one pictured above, seem to be earwig magnets even when I could grow them when I lived in Elgin, IL.  One year I had a massive bouquet, picked on December 1, as the first hard frost was to happen that night; sensational when you can make it happen.

I've been thinking about starting the tiny, ambitious red ones of the Figaro strain next season and treat them like annuals.  This year I'll have to make do with vicarious pleasures.

Rotary Botanical Gardens in Janesville, WI

UPDATE:  When I visited I did not realize this botanical garden had received the All-American Selections Category 3 (100,000+ visitors) Landscape Design Award.

I have had The Rotary Botanical Gardens (RBG) on my list of public gardens to visit for quite some while now.  Given that it is a two and a half hour trip for me (each way), it is not an easy to-do task, but when I lamented the incompletion of my list to Handsome Son and his visiting girlfriend from Elkhorn last Family Supper and Game Night weekend, it jumped to the top of the list.  We visited yesterday.

Orange!

My photos do not do justice to the scope and scale of so much orange; orange, and burgundy, gold, peach, deep greens, and punches of lime.  This is what greets you at the entrance to the gardens.  If you can think of an orange annual and it didn't represent here...you're GOOD!

County Fair Time

I'm pretty sure garlic took Grand Champion honors last year, too!

 I didn't participate in Open Class in the county fair  this year because I felt overwhelmed being on the Garden Walk.  But I always like to see what everyone else has done.

Obviously a good year for cabbage, but no Savoy types!

A good year for pumpkins, too,despite being so cool.

I keep thinking about entering some of my canning, but it seems so methodical.  Correct process, fill, etc. which you need to list on the label should result in a good product with good color, so I'm not sure what is competitive about it.  Not following the proper canning procedures can lead to an unsafe food item.  Does anyone follow me on this?  Either it is or it isn't.  Still, no one had entered sweet pickle relish, chutney (probably because there were no apples last year), or grape juice.  These are three of the reasons I can.  I was checking out the salsas to see how they compare to mine.  I have just a scant few jars left.

Hey, all! Lots of potatoes!  No blue potatoes exhibited, though!

And out of all the cherry tomatoes, only the one plate of my favorite, chocolate cherry tomatoes, which took Second.

This was different!

These blueberry muffins looked good.

Of course, there was this piece of silliness on the part of Handsome Son and his girlfriend, and ther were funny chickens, and cows, and, of course, funnel cake!

Sunflowers = Happiness?

There will be four or five nice large heads.  I'll dry them and save them for the birds in late March when there is so little for those early arrivals.  This last spring, with over a foot of snow on the ground, they were well-received.

Inside Inside, Outside Outside

View from the living room looking out

There are a lot of things about my tiny house I really like.  This year in the course of imagining my garden as I would like it to be (for that dang garden walk), I realized I would really like to interact in some way with my garden when I am in my home.  If I want to do that I have to physically go outside and be outside.  There are no outside views, no catching sight of a bird at a bird feeder while eating, I can't even catch glimpse of what gets my dog so all fired up excited unless I go to the window and peer out.  When I am in my home, I am hunkered down, waiting for the end of the ice age, whatever.  My dining room, which is street side, doesn't even have a window facing the street!

I think my house was designed to be easy to defend.  After all, it has an Indian hidey-hole, like open the door in the dining room floor, jump in and pull the door  down, and throw the rug on top sort of space.  It was built when Indians roamed through seasonally hunting wild game and to partake in the water from the artesian spring north of town. 

My house dates from before the Victorians got their fancy ideas about being able to view their gardens from their houses, with long allees placed to view from a dining room or doors places on porches from sitting and dining rooms for after dinner conclaves.  With the pace of modern life, after dinner walks, conclaves, and even dinner conversation are rare beasts indeed. 

My living room faces the street and a narrow yard just eleven feet from my neighbor's porch.  Fence, arborvitae, and thug of the world akebia quinata, which we know has not been playing nice with the arborvitae for years now, all help screen the view, but a view of what?  Generally the view has the gauzy curtain adding another layer of protection from the neighbors there.

These are only a couple of the obstacles I need to find a solution to more outside inside.  Do I change out windows, window coverings, furniture arrangements, rethink what is happening in areas where I could possibly look out.  I am unsure.  Finding ways to bring my yard into my home is my next big challenge. 

Have any of you come up with easy solutions this problem?

That Feeling of Fall

Hydrangea tardiva 'Unique'

I can't help but have my customary sense of foreboding this time of year.  The oppressive humidity lifts, the tardiva hydrangeas begin to bloom, and the skies are that clear shade of blue I forever thing of as "Parthenon blue".  I think of October, the color of my grandmother's eye, 911, Motorola, cookies, and winter.  And while I should rejoice and cherish such beautiful days,  always in the back of my mind is this ominous sense of foreboding.  My mother has this superstitious vein and warns not to speak too often or loudly of ones cherished moments, things, or people should The Fates be too jealous of your joy in these things and snatch them from you.

It leaves me with a feeling of dread I just can't shake this time of year, and I simply know not why. 

At present, Handsome Son is home with me, anticipating his second year at university upon successful completion of his first.  It was a year when he successfully jumped the breach of coming from very rural and small school to a medium size college where he met a lovely, well-mannered girl.    He has taken time to visit relatives, take a fishing trip with his dad (He caught a 17 pound bass.), work, and spend his few stray moments with his Mom. 

I had a great time teaching summer school.  My garden has never looked better, which gives me great pleasure.  I have had some time to complete and work on a few small projects around the house and harvested a great amount of berries from my small yard. 

My parents are in good health, as is my entire family.  We live clean, healthy lives, but good health should always be tabulated in the plus column on any given day.  I have been having great fun with the Gardening Twins, although this year as four-year-olds, they are much more interested in digging in the dirt and what they can harvest, rather than weeding or the other mechanics of gardening.  Boo, though at just under 17 months, has demonstrated a preference for hanging with me when he can and attempting to pull weeds, adding great sound effects to his and my joint efforts as he pulls, clapping loudly when he manages to get anything out of the ground.

Last night the temperatures fell to 42 degrees.  At midnight, after a short marathon of "the Walking Dead" episodes capping off an afternoon watching the movie "Elysium" at the theatre, I spent a half hour in the dark scurrying about clipping coleus.  I have quite an extensive collection at this point, not every one of which I see from year to year for sale.  I would hate to loose any given one.  They have become the reliable and colorful fillers for my very short-term frost free garden, pots and baskets. 

Our last frost date here was June 6 this year.  Our next full moon is August 22, I believe.  If our trending weather pattern does not change and a clear night comes to pass that day...

It could mean a growing season of a scant 77 frost-free days this year.  Check your vegetable seed packets and note how many list "75-80 days to harvest" and how many a great number more.  Perhaps this accounts for my sense of foreboding, maybe not. 

Regardless, enjoy the days as you can.  No truer words have ever been said than "Carpe diem."

Ants, Bees, and Flies, Oh My!

Sunday Photo

Taken yesterday...today we have a cold drizzle and overcast skies.  I've never had to stake this which can grow 6' to 10' in my garden depending on moisture, sunlight, crowding.  It gives the goldfinches something to talk about in the fall.  I've seen it listed as both a rudbeckia and an echinecea with nitidia attached, might be Herbstonne, the lower leaves and growth habit isn't quite right.

Mid-August Plants of Interest

Evening Primrose grown from seed, it was open last night at 10:00 PM when I walked Cinnamon.

 Plants do not have to be in bloom to have a place in my garden.  This time of year I realize how seriously I am into foliage.

Growing tip of smoke bush 'Golden Spirit'

Sedum 'Matrona'

 This is the time of year when I realize how seriously big my collection of sedums truly is.  Just a handful are pictured here.  I really need to do an entire week of blog posts on them!

By far, my fav veronica, veronica 'Eveline'  The bee's are really working her over the last couple days, although it has been in bloom since mid-July and shows no sign of stopping yet, and I haven't deadheaded it either.

Ligularia japonica.  This needs a fancy name!  The foliage is so incredible.  This plant has only 4 leaves and really hasn't increased since I first planted it, but just this tiny amount of wow it puts out is pretty special  I think I just don't "get" ligularia.  I probably should be moving it, I just not sure where.

Sedum 'Xenox'

Ajuga 'Chocolate Chips'

A messy little group of sedums that languish by my 'Blue Star' juniper.  The color play is nice, though.

This sedum in my cactus pot I do not believe is winter hardy, sedum dasphyllum.

May be sedum 'John Creech'

A species weigelia, the bloom is pathetic.  I keep it around for the red stems and the foliage alone!

Sedum 'October Daphne'; it has a couple sports.  On the left the variegated center of a creamy yellow retaining the red edge, and on the right just the creamy yellow.  I have separated out the left sport by taking a tip cutting and there is no reversion.  I hesitate to try the right sport, thinking it may be a lethal variation.  Maybe I should get on that anyway.  It has come back this way every year for 3-4 years from just about nothing.  Maybe it is more stable than I think. 

A Garden Gem in Oshkosh

As you may know, I went on a number of garden walks this summer.  Many of the gardens were filled with kitschy art, lots of annuals bedded with no sense of design, and not a lot of thought. 

The following picture are not that.  These all come from one garden I would consider a standout.  I'm going to post them in the order I viewed the garden, to give you a better idea of its small space, good gardening, and design.

I hope  you enjoy this particular garden as much as I did!

It's 4:45 PM and the Noon Whistle Just Blew!

Considering a possible pollinator plant for 'Honeycrisp' is crabapple, I guess this pattern of fruiting is not unusual in this apple.  I thought the winds would have taken them.

Okay, I live in such a small town we still have a noon whistle, and it is still being blown at noon.  Quaint, I know.  There are still people who work here in town until they hear it and then go home for lunch.  If the wind is from the right direction, I can actually hear it out at the farm five miles from town.

Today, however, it tells me precisely how long the power was out.  Sometime between midnight and 3 AM, the wind began to howl.  Handsome Son is somewhere near the Canadian border fishing.  For those brief moments of consciousness, I debated getting up and moving to his futon on the lower level and farther from the possible fall zone of the top of my white pine...or the branch broken off but totally lodged (for a while, at least) about 50 feet up.  (I know it's broken off and dead; I get glimpses of its brown-ness from time to time on the summer breeze.)

I debated, for those few brief moments, had passing thoughts about the merits of Code Red (our county's emergency notification call service), and then...fell fast asleep...until sometime around 5 AM when I realized my fan was not doing its shimmy shake, and the only light was from "the light from yonder window break".  Luckily, not actually broken, but my head felt that way, two aspirin were in order.

Two aspirin and juice and a call to the power company to let them know and surprise-- someone had already called--itself unusual.  Then, back to bed.

Horrific dreams waiting for me. 

In the first, my boxer, Cinnamon, Had been attacked by a huge fly, probably the one that carries elephantiasis.  It had laid its larva in her sleek hide and now they were hatching and she was up the stairs to the loft to jump onto my bed and to anxiously display her swirling swarm of airborne abusers.  It seemed real.

The second short dream seemed equally true.  Handsome Son was home from his fishing trip because he missed me and need to impart some urgent message, "Wake up, Mom..."

Shortly before 8 AM, the quiet of the village, the geese, and cranes, were interrupted by the persistent growl of more and more gas generators powering up, and the sound of sawing.  There was lots of sawing.

'Arthur Kroll'-- does this bud pattern look familiar? This is one flowering stalk!

'Frizzled Lace' gladiola, purchased from Brent and Becky's Bulbs.  The flower doesn't even look like a gladiola!

 My house and garden had no damage.  I could take these pretty pictures.  A clump of 5 oak leaves was laying on my lawn.  I stared at it like a foreign thing trying to come up with the closest oak to my property and drawing an absolute blank-- Oak Street?

A half block to the north, nearly every tree was broken off or uprooted, the tops of roofs, deer stands, unanchored sheds were shoved down road ways and flipped like a toys,  Sheet metal was wrapped around stop signs, glass windows on the east sides shattered by debris.  The official word is no tornado, just straight line wind sheer.  No one was injured.  Power has been restored, in almost record time. 

Almost all is well, with the exception of yet another major blow to the number of trees in our village.  The sawing and chipping will continue for some days.  There will be insurance paperwork for some.  Others, repairs if they can afford to make them.

My white pine and I feel very lucky.

Drag Out the Watering Hose!

Don't be fooled.  It may not be warm, but it sure is dry.  With our extreme weather, we need to do what we can to prevent any plant stress.  There is a big difference between moisture for a plant to survive and watering so your plants will thrive.  Here, it can be the difference between a beautiful garden and no garden at all.

Remember to provide water for our pollinators!

If you are in the area, you might consider a visit to the Hancock Agricultural Research Station Gardens, August 6, from 4 PM to 7 PM.

There is a nice display of grasses this year.

The several year old coneflower collection points out something I have been thinking for several years now... (and it is/was a collection not a mass planting).