Halloween
I’m testing a new version of iPhoto — and this lovely photo of my daughter on Halloween is my test item!
Signs of fall in my garden…plants and projects…
There are several signs of fall in my Central Texas garden. The Mexican Mint Marigold is in full bloom after a summer of green. I can always count on their bright and cheerful flowers after the temperatures begin to cool.
The fall asters are look like lavender firecracker bursts with the fine little petals.
The end of summer also brings out these sunflowers – Helianthus Maxmilliani. They are rather leggy this year from getting too much shade under the oak trees, but I still love their statuesque 6 feet tall form.
Blooms are the only thing that comes with the fall garden. As the temperatures drop, I get the itch to start a garden project…or two!
This little bed on the edge of our woods was pure happenstance. After laying out the bed below, I had quite a bit of leftover recycled glass and decided to make use of it, clearing out little understory scrub oaks and cedars and making a proper place for the birdbath that was tucked in the brush.
But this was the real project. This very large terra cotta pot (not my favorite) had been sitting at the edge of the woods gathering dead leaves, because I kept forgetting to water it and the deer kept eating my plants.
So I decided to move it to the crushed granite path entrance as a focal point and surround it with some recycled glass so it would look like a pond leading into the dry river rock dry creek.
Inside it, I planted a volunteer agave, from a passalong given to me by Phillip of East Side Patch . (One of many, I might add! He’s renown for sharing his agaves.)
And the small river rock outlining the tributary came as a donation from my neighbors — left over from a project they did and sitting by the side of the road with grass growing in it! I asked to buy some and they gave it to me.
With the free rock, $5 worth of recycled glass from the city, and old pot and a volunteer agave, this was designing on a budget! My only real cost was labor for the help I had hauling and spreading the rock.
I’m happy with the result, and now I have some more space in the accidental bed for planting! Imagine that!
While we’ve had temps down to 40, the days can still get up to 80 here, so we have about another month to garden here.
What’s on your fall project list? Or is fall already over for you?
Who knew?
Who knew?
Well, maybe you knew!
But I sure didn’t.
This is an Aralia that I planted two or three years ago. And this is apparently the beginning of a beautiful bloom stalk. I had no idea it would bloom.
I can’t wait to see what it looks like when each bud is open.
Do you have an aralia? Did you know?
Got a little garden bling?
I love bling.
I loved bling when bling wasn’t even cool.
Don’t know what I’m going to do when clothing styles change, because I’m taken with the swirls and the sequins and the glitter that are so popular right now.
Then I got to thinking, I like a little bling in my garden, too.
And I don’t mean gazing balls (I’m not so fond of them, actually).
Like this ginger I recently planted — it’s kind of like bling in my garden.
What’s garden bling, you ask?
You know — it’s those one-of-a-kind specimens, the exotic plants or the plants that perform amazingly. The plants you and your gardening friends ooh and ahhh over time after time.
So here is an overview of the plants I think of as bling in my garden. For starters, there’s this Carara Ginger — a tropical perennial with reddish bracts with pale purple to greenish tips. It blooms for several months and like part shade. It’s new to me, and I don’t know if it will do well here, but it called my name at the nursery.
This “Phoebe” hellebore is another delicate favorite that is a shining star in my garden. It never ceases to amaze me that she almost disappears in warm months, but comes back in the cold of winter like a pale princess.
Even though the foliage is less than attractive at times, when it blooms, this Night-blooming Cereus is stunning. Sadly, you have to catch it late at night or first thing in the morning to enjoy its one-night bloom.
The cassia, with their tall, exotic structure and candle-like blooms is always a thriller in the garden. Especially the year before last when they didn’t die back in the winter and grew to be about 12 feet tall in its second season.
Then of course there is the Moy Grande hibiscus — phenomenal blooms as big as plates. On a mid-summer day, there were as many as 12 giant blooms open at once. It’s a real show-stopper.
These irises are really exotic, but I’m so enamored with the color that I eagerly await their bloom every spring. It’s a Louisiana iris, “Professor Neil” and one of my favorites.
The Bletilla Striata, or ground orchids are defnitely bling. Just the thought that I have “orchids” growing in the ground amazes me!
The plumerias definitely are exotics, but they love it here. It’s been a particularly good year for them this year. They’ve liked the extra moisture in the air.
But on the same note, I’ve had to pull this Desert Rose out of the rain many times this summer because I wants to be dry, dry, dry. And it rewarded me with these great blooms.
These? No exotic at all, but the giant patch of wine cup that completely covers my rock path each spring is another jaw dropper. I walk around the path for months, because I can’t bear to cut it back one little bit!
And this ia a perfectly ordinary Wisconsin ditch lily, brought to me in a bucket by car by Lori, the Gardener of Good and Evil . Hemerocalis experts frown at these common ditch lilies, but this amazing plant bloomed for me ALL summer long and at times had a dozen hot tangerine blooms at once.
I had a hard time limiting my choices because there are so many plants in my garden that I think are special. So, these are just a few of my favorite things.
Which plants are the bling in your garden?
One of these plants is not like the others…
When I build a new bed and take the time to plan it out and do a real garden design (that means measure, plan, research and shop all at once), it usually works out nicely.
But, do I do that much? In a word, No.
I fall in love with something at a nursery, or in the glossy pages of a garden porn catalog, and I buy. Then I plop. Plop plants wherever there is room and the conditions are right.
We all do it, right? But then it comes back to haunt us.
Or, sometimes, invasive plants behave badly and stretch their limbs and vines to end up far away from where they once started!
Looking around the garden as fall arrives, I can’t help but think, many of these things are not like the others! It’s sometimes hard to see in the photos, because both plants aren’t always in focus, but look carefully and you’ll see reds and pinks, oranges and lavenders, you name it. And I’m all for color and bright combinations, just not hideous ones!
But I’m not a mover. (Maybe a shaker!) But definitely not a mover by nature. Several of my garden blogging friends are always moving things around, trying to find the perfect spot, sun, soil for a particular plant.
Not me.
But I’m done with that. This fall the change of season also marks a change in my gardening habits. I’m going to fix all of the mis-matches in my garden. Or at least those that I reasonably CAN fix.
Because I have 2 Pairie Sun Rudbeckia, and 2 unidentified red plants and as I look at them sitting on the edge of my driveway, I realize — I haven’t planted them because I don’t have a red and yellow bed. Well, I have a yellow bed and tried to have red with it, but the deer didn’t like the color combination and ate all my Standing Cypress this summer!
So, with new resolve, I’m attacking my garden in an attempt to impose a Sesame Street style order to the most unruly of my plants.
What about you? Any mis-matches in your garden?