How can it be October?

September was such a busy month:  a college reunion and a visit with my cousin, to be followed this week by a trip to Jacksonville to take care of my grandsons.  Hardly time to spend in the gardens.

My college reunion was wonderful, spending time with long-time friends.  The leaves in Allentown, Pa., were just beginning to turn but the copper beech trees were magnificent.  I wish we could grow them in Florida.  See the photo of a copper beech below.

The visit with my cousin was equally wonderful.  I was blown over by her vintage home worthy of a museum, and especially the gardens and landscaping around it.  Here are a few photos:

 

 

Here is a photo of a copper beech that I snapped in another yard:

 

I finished the month of September with a big pruning of all my rose bushes.  It was hard to do because many of them were still blooming.  I left a few flowers on the bushes and will prune those branches when they fade.

 

I can't do any more  until after I return from Jacksonville next weekend.  Then will begin the cleanup for the winter.  I don't look forward to the leaf fall.  Maybe I'll wait longer between rakings; six times was a bit much last year. 

 

Enjoy the fall in your gardens.

Time flies.

Has it really been 3 months since my last blog?  How can that be?

The biggest reason was the issue of my hip.  By mid-May I knew I had to have a hip replacement.  I was never without pain and had limited mobility.  An X-ray showed the horrendous damage done to my hip.  No time to waste.

So, June 22 I had it done by a wonderful surgeon, Dr. John Perry.  Like so many others, I afterward wondered why I waited so long!  It has been a remarkably fast recovery and for the first time in years, I am able to do most of the activities of my life without pain.  That includes working in the yard, planting and weeding.  I spent two and a half hours doing that this morning. 

What happened to my gardens?  The vegetable garden died sometime in May.  We had had a small crop of tomatoes in the Spring but the plants stopped flowering and finally died.  The peppers barely produced fruit and also died.  The zucchini flowered but never developed fruit.  We don't know what was at play here.  The weather could have been one factor.  We had a few weeks of up and down temperatures, high to low and back to high every day.  And finally, Mother Nature settled on hot, with no rain, and then hot, hot with lots of rain.  We were confused with the weather, so I'm sure the plants couldn't adjust.

Another failure is the Japanese red maple.  Within weeks of opening beautiful red leaves, they were curled, dried and dead.  I left the main stalk  along in case something was still alive below ground, but last week I pulled it--fairly easily I might add.  I won't say what I'm trying to grow in that spot now, just that it's something from the garden that re-roots easily.  If it survives and thrives, I will let you know.

But some other things have thrived.  The blue daze is not only flowering but also spreading throughout the back yard garden.  I have had to cull some branches  as they threaten to "bury" some other plants, like the moss.  Where the moss hasn't been buried,  it has thrived, multiplying in neat small balls.  Quite cute, actually.

The snow bushes are 4 feet high even after a pruning in June. 

Weeds are the one thing that keep growing, so I am finally back on a regimen to keep them at bay.  I surely long for cooler weather.  When it is sunny and hot, I can only manage about an hour in the yard.  Today I was lucky, with cloud cover and a reasonable temperature  that allowed me to keep going for more than 2 hours. 

Next chore?  Digging out the weeks from the vegetable corner.  That definitely will require more than an hour.

Until next time,

Stop to smell the roses.

Deja Vu

Best laid plans seems to be my theme song lately.  One of my goals for the yard today was do more digging to find the sprinkler pipe.  I preceded that activity with maintenance of my vegetable garden -- digging out weeds and spraying for bugs.  One of the tomato plants has had its leaves chewed to a lacy pattern.  New leaves not so much.  The other plants have not yet been touched, thank goodness. 

After that I made my way around the back yard, pulling weeds where I saw them -- happily, not too many.  A nice surprise was seeing a flower stalk with buds rising from one agapanthus.  It will probably bloom tomorrow and I'll grab a photo for posting.

When I arrived on the south side of the house -- where the hidden pipes are -- I decided I ought to fill the first holes I dug last week.  Then I decided to rake the ground next to the house and move dirt toward the foundation, trying to create more of a slope away from the house.  I took the time to also dig up more crabgrass.  If we don't get a souce of water to that area, crabgrass may be all that we have growing there. 

After all that -- about 2-1/2 hours' worth -- I realized I had had enough.  So, I was the cause of the plans going awry today.  The next opportunity I'll have for digging will be Friday. 

Don't forget to stop and smell the roses.... I did: a fully opened Mr. Lincoln rose behind the house.  It made my day.

Best laid plans

The slide toward summer is not as easy as I had predicted for the gardens.  The leaves of my small Japanese maple are drying out, the hot peppers are not growing well and may be under attack, one of the tomato plants looks like lace due to a small green worm I finally uncovered.  I have been spraying the vegetables but can't tell if it's working.

A pleasant surprise, however, is the new growth on the magnolia.  New leaves are appearing and what looks like flowers budding.  The rain has helped other new plantings like the ixora and blue daze in the front yard; I hope it continues.

I'm really excited about a new garden space we have.  My husband sold his boat and gave away a car frame that he'd stored in the side yard.  So now I have a space at least 15 feet long by 10 feet wide to experiment with.  I already have some ideas -- one of which is planting a cherry tree -- but it will be a long process of preparation.  First on the list is finding the sprinkler pipes on that side.  Years ago, Jim capped at least one, possibly two, sprinkler heads so they would not rain well water on the trailers and vehicles.  I can't consider planting in that area without a source of water, so I could spend the next months digging, especially when I can only manage 1-2 hours at a time, several days apart.  I already dug 2 holes and a trench 24 inches deep without any luck.  It doesn't make sense to me that the pipe isn't there but I must persevere.   Wish me luck.

I'll keep you all updated on that.

Don't forget to smell the roses (or whatever flowers tickle your fancy).

The crazy weather must have the plants really confused as temperatures have swung from the high 80s to the 50s in the past 2 days.  Still, there is growth and flowering.  Below are some sights as I walked around the gardens.

Blue daze among the roses.  There are only about half the flowers now.

The new Peace rose has a bunch of flowers; the bare stalk in the middle is where I cut a group to bring in the house.









The dark pink hollyhock has grown a new stalk, also flowering.

The Mandeville has 2 healthy long vines and the flowers proliferate.

The Don Juan roses have tripled this year and are finally climbing up the trellis.

The leaves on the maple tree are growing to size.  I hope the "trunk" grows as well and as fast. 

These Don Juan roses are what I would hope to see all over the trellis.  I've been heavy on the liquid fertilizer for 2 months -- I'll keep it coming.







That's all for today.   Don't forget to stop and smell the flowers.







I can't believe it has been 6 months since my last blog. Not much happened garden-wise over the winter so I didn't feel I had much to write about. But now it's Spring and I have been very busy planting new bushes, flowers and vegetables.

Over the winter, I had baked the plot under black cloth, hoping to eliminate the nematodes. Shown in the back of this photo are the Better Bush tomatoes and one cherry tomato (far left).  Parsley is between the bigger plants in back, and super chili peppers and cayenne peppers in front. 

Below shows the zucchini I put in this year.  The variety is black zucchini, which is new to me.  It will be interesting to see how they grow and taste.

I also planted cilantro, a request of my husband's.

  Other backyard plants that are new are a red mandeville vine and hollyhocks.  The mandeville is the third plant I've put at the end of the trellis.  The previous plants (one a rose) did not survive.  I don't know why.  So far the mandeville is growing well so I have high hope.

I had considered the mandeville in previous years, but I didn't care for the colors I saw. About 2 weeks ago, I was walking through Lowe's plant section and spotted this beautiful red flower. A look at the tag surprised me -- it was a mandeville. So I decided to try it.

Later, as I left Lowe's, I looked at the plants displayed outside and discovered the hollyhocks. I hadn't seen those in many years and decided to them a try also. I would love to see them grow to their average 7-foot height.

 

red maple

I'm really pleased at something I planted in the fall. It's the Japanese red maple. A bare-root tree, there was nothing on it but the promise of growth with many buds along the stem. There are red leaves on top and bottom and I hope the growth continues.

That's it for today. Keep your thumbs green.