Talking to Plants: clematis

Showing posts with label clematis. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 19, 2024

June 2024

Yes, I still garden.

I have no space. I will admit my garden is over-planted. I have a serious issue with having to have "all the plants". My veg garden is off-site (not at my house), which is fraught with things I can not control. And, it's clay. My home garden is sand. There is an adjustment there! But it does get me strawberries. And in time, peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes.

This view of my garden seems so sedate. (I think this was pre-injury.)

Not so the picture I titled, "Welcome to the Jungle" recently.

Handsome son has married. Beautiful Daughter-in-law is fast becoming a good gardener. She says she wants to be a Dahlia Farmer when she grows up. Last Christmas we built a grow room and light rack set-up for her so she can prestart Dahias and seeds. Her front porch pots:

I have adjusted my gardening style to my infirmaties and work schedule. Although, I technically retired, and may be you could consider I have been retired since moving here in 2003. I do quite a bit of social media for things I am involved with or work at. WHen I pulled up my blog, I realized I have 3 unfinished posts I should probably upload covering the last 2 years! I have gone crazy starting annuals and perennials from seed. I am not sure where I am going with that. I do know the weather seems to be just crazy and the way I hunt for plants has also changed.It has given me some unusual plants.

The Gardening Twins and Baby Gardener have been joined by the Protector of the Frogs. But they have grown!

I have started growing more roses again.

I often look back to this blog to find the right picture of a plant for reference. I am amazed at the change in my garden. I grow a lot of Clematis.

My hedge still looks good as does the scree garden off my deck. ANd the peonies and lilacs are magical in their own special way.

The rain has stopped. It is out to weed. That hasn't changed.

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Clematis Seed Heed

You've got to love big, fluffy seed heads like these on clematis 'Blue Dancer'.

I also have to ponder the size of the bird brain which makes their nest in a clematis vine...

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Making it through the Heat and Guilt with Change

I don't like the heat. I love shade, air conditioning, and misters. While I dislike the cold equally, I don't feel the overwhelming guilt associated with the heat, because in winter the garden is in stasis, nothing changes. During hot days, plants can literally die without water. I think this may be why I have gravitated toward planting everything in the ground while others are planting more pots. You have to water though and that entails going outside in the heat. In an effort to be a more effective waterer, I hooked up a 4-faucet attachment to the outside faucet and have a separate hose for the plants on my deck, a soaker hose for the hydrangea along the house and a separate hose for the rest of my watering. In the future, may attach a buried fourth hose to my hosta garden to run some sort of watering system there so I can just turn a valve and water.

I think these weather extremes may force me to be a more efficient gardener if nothing else.

Clematis 'Diamantina'

Daylily 'Arthur Kroll' and allium 'Summer Beauty'

Spider daylily 'Northwind Dancer'

Phlox and balloon flower

It is too hot to move plants around, although I did move some orange daylily flava.

Daylily flava

And, I have been doing some major editing. In the battle between sun and shade; plants preferring sun while the gardener prefers shade, I have done some major editing. I mean major in that I purchased a chain saw.

My parents were both concerned with this purchase as was my son. Graceful, I am not, as some of you know. This is probably why my father never taught me the ins and outs of using a chain saw as a girl. As it was as a supervising gardener to my son who was doing the actual work, I managed to trip backwards over some branches and bruise my butt, hit my head, and put the majority of a 1/4" by 1 1/2" stick into my calf. Not as gory as that sounds, I didn't feel that stick, nor notice it until about a half hour later when I was eating lunch and the back of my leg itched. It didn't hurt when my son pulled it out, nor does it bother me to walk. It is a bit sore to touch. I would guess the muscle at the back of my calf deflected the stick placing it between the skin and the muscle. My head hurt worse and my butt will be sore for a couple days I suspect.

But if a chain saw could be considered cute, this one is. I purchased a cordless Greenworks 10" chain saw. It seems more like a amped up hedge trimmer. (It ran for about an hour and a half on the battery which was fully charged again in an hour.) And with all its safety features, I felt confident letting my 22-year-old son wield it. Over the course of a few minutes we cut down the cherry tree, a sheared balsam which was 12' tall, took out most of the lower limbs of my katsuras and even trimmed out the leader on one (I have been keeping these shear in lollipop forms about 8' tall for years.). The smell of almonds was redolent on the heated air. The largest diameter trunk was maybe 8" but it sawed through an 1 1/2" branch on the katsura in seconds. I hate to consider how long it would have taken us with my handsaw. We even used it to cut through the shrubby base of the dead side of my ninebark which had many branches of 5/8" to 3/4", making it the prefect tool for trimming and limbing up small trees and shrubs.

The brick makes a spot where the balsam once grew.

Two barberries were removed here. As the trees filled in, the amount of sun they received did not show their color to its best. Why have something so prickly when there is little upside?

This cherry is 10 years old and has borne little fruit. It was shading out a variegated dogwood and my grapes. We left the trunk long to use as a fulcrum to remove most of the root ball.

The growth habit of this 'Limelight' hydrangea has suffered from too much shade. It will need a major shaping now that it has more light.

Once it starts to cool down and with my son off to his first adult job and his own apartment, I will have time to make some major overhauls to my garden and yard. He got his degree in chemistry this spring and has accepted a job as a raw materials tester for Sigma Aldrich, a subsidiary of Merck.

Changes all around...

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Clematis 'Diamantina'

Clematis 'Diamantina' is a double clematis in the style of 'Josephine'. 'Diamantina' is supposed to be a blue purple lavender, while 'Josephine' is a pink rose. On first blush they seem much the same in color. Some petals on the first flower appear frost damaged. It got down to 26 degrees while this flower bud was forming.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Emerging... Clematis

Clematis alpine 'Blue Dancer' is a very early and very vigorous clematis.
It blooms in May, which is impressive given our central Wisconsin winters.
It is also floriferous and has beautiful large seed heads.
I actually divided this clematis in this its third year to share with a friend.

This is clematis texensis 'Diana'.
It is vigorous in the foliage department, not so much with its flowers.
t sends up multiple stems. Its flowers are a deep red getting lost among the red beebalm
and dark brown fence. The seed pods are not particularly showy.

This clematis was planted the same year as 'Diana', yet it sends up a single stem.
It is 'Elsa Spaeth'. It has just a handful of blooms.

This is clematis 'Roguchi'. I planted this just last spring.
I choose it for its purple flower which I thought would be nice against the pale pink of my house.
It seems to have a more continuous bloom than many clematis.

Another clematis that seems to grow just a single stem, 'Etoile Rose'

Clematis 'Alionushka' is also an alpina, but lacks the vigorous growth of "Blue Dancer'.
The flower form is similar, that of a drooping ballerina's skirt,
t it blooms later and longer and is a pale rose.

Some of these clematis in full bloom in my own garden.