Eye Candy from Robyn Karp
Monday, June 30, 2008
A hummingbird's territory
The old Southern red oak near the house has a number of bare branches, twigs really, that have been favorite perching places for ruby-throated hummingbirds over the years. There are two feeders nearby, as well as flowers to visit, and this particular branch is perfect as a foraging perch, apparently. It's also easy for us to notice them sitting there..jpg)
This morning, I saw a pair of brown thrashers courting, while I was checking things in the garden, and thought I'd change lenses to get a better image.
Of course, only one thrasher was visible preening up in one of the hemlocks by the time I returned, but I was able to take a few shots of 'our' male hummingbird, waiting for insects and monitoring his territory.
Hopefully, he has a mate somewhere nearby.
Cicadas, crickets, and hoping for rain
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Summer evenings in the Southern U.S. are full of sounds -- cicadas, crickets, tree frogs, with an occasional late katydid. The crickets and tree frogs are melodious; the cicadas produce a harsh whirring sound, hard to describe.
The evening light is a deep purple now turning a peach-apricot color, with clouds hinting of a good chance of thunderstorms. The last two evening's 'isolated' thunderstorms passed us by, so hopefully we'll get more than a few drops tonight. The clouds look thick on the weather radar.
It was a good day in the garden. I put extra lime in the bed near the breakfast room, to make the midwestern Penstemons from yesterday's foray seem more at home.
One of them was labeled Penstemon 'Sour Grapes'. The nursery owner told me it was Penstemon cobea, an adaptable plant of limestone glades and outcrops from Central Texas north to Missouri. 
An Internet search suggested, however, that P. 'Sour Grapes' is of hybrid origin, possibly with P. hirsutus as a parent. Paghat.com suggests it's of muddled heritage, but is a tough evergreen perennial that attracts hummingbirds. Sounds like it's worth a try to me. Penstemon digitalis 'Husker's Red' is a selection of a widely distributed Central and Southeastern U.S. species. The attractive Heuchera 'Palace Purple' turned out to be a patented selection of H. micrantha, which hopefully will like the partial shade/light afternoon sun conditions in this border.
And the Lavender 'Anouk' - one of the give-aways for speakers and volunteers at the recent Master Gardener's conference was a patented selection of Lavandula stoechas. Hmmm. Patenting plants is a somewhat odd (in my opinion) development of American horticulture.
In any case, I settled them all into the bed, and will see how they do. Gardening is always an experiment.
Green Leaf Day
What a week - a dead computer and temperatures which suddenly shot into the nineties. Two weeks ago we were at 13° C - that's 55°F - and seven days later it was 34°C/93°F with about 80% humidity. Nothing strange for this time of year, but a shock when it changed so suddenly.
I just flaked and did the minimum possible. Big mistake. While I was taking tepid showers the red spider mite came back with a vengeance. They hadn't seemed so great a problem this year, but they'd just been biding their time. And as soon as the hot weather struck - so did they. Egged on it seems by a host of other pests and fungus diseases, all of which had been under control up to that point.
So I've been pulling off dead leaves, misting and (as minimally as possible) spraying. But I don't think I'm winning, and the balcony is looking deciding straggly in comparison to a while back.
Which brings me to the real topic of this post. Emma at A Nice Green Leaf has suggested that today we mark the half way point of the year by posting not about what's blooming in our gardens, but to celebrate the foliage - the greenery which sets everything off. I'd been looking forward to joining in and showing off the glossy green of my dahlias, the giant spotted leaves of my leopard lily, the cream and green stripes of my spider plants.... but it's gone, all gone. Or at least far tattier than you'd want to see.
However, one of the (few) advantages of balcony garden is that trees are at eye level. We're lucky in that the house is surrounded by trees of different kinds including some which think are European Limes. Most of them line the alley way which leads into the garden, and as you come through the gate in summer the temperature and the humidity drop amazingly. But there is one just off my balcony which I think of as "my" tree.
The trees are lopped back every two or three years. Immediately afterwards they seem so sad - but by the end of the first summer they've grown back, although not enough to stop the sun beating full down on us. By the second year they're towering over the garden again. If they've left a third year, this one extends its branches right onto the balcony, and its a year when I know I can choose shade loving plants for the far corner.
So today I thought I'd celebrate my tree, and went out with my camera. And just after I'd taken the photo above, the breeze got up and there was too much movement for any more still shots. So here's a video. Green leaves swaying in the wind. And all at eye level. As I said, one of the advantages of a balcony. Sorry about the background noise - it must have been the wind, though it doesn't sound like it. But enjoy the birds singing ...
Read more...
An irresistable group of plants
Saturday, June 28, 2008
It started with the farmer's market this morning. I wanted to check on a type of tomato that was being sold at Thursday evening's market (of course, the tomato fellow must have been at another market this morning). But a local garden club had plants for sale from a small nursery that I hadn't heard of before, so after buying some thread-leaved coreopsis (Coreopsis verticillata), a pink-flowered form called C. rosea, lemon verbena, and dwarf thyme, I thought I'd go check out the nursery. Much to my delight, they had all sorts of things that you usually don't come across locally, so first I broke my rule about not buying big plants in small pots (because they're usually pretty pot-bound) and some of these had been subjected to less than ideal conditions (it's been so hot and dry, it's hard to keep up), and second, it's quite a subpar time to be planting perennials, in early summer with hot, dry conditions predicted.
But I added a perennial foxglove, a Mexican bush sage, several Penstemons (Husker's Red), a couple of other Penstemons that I'm not familiar with, a lovage plant, an unusual lavender, a tricolor sedum, and a dark-leaved Heuchera (to replace the unattractive lime-green one I bought by mistake last year).
Hmm, I think I had in mind that I was going to spruce up the bed outside the breakfast room window, which is looking a bit threadbare?
At least, they're all drought-tolerant and tough!
Lovely Bathroom
Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi
Friday, June 27, 2008
We love all sorts of greens and broccoli relatives, at least I do, and my gardening companion eats them happily, when stir-fried with olive oil, onions, and garlic.
I've certainly got plenty of garlic. This was the large 'main' harvest, now cured and inexpertly braided.
Now I just need to find a place to store the harvest; the garden shed is MUCH too hot, and the basement seems too dark and dank, although it's quite dry. Perhaps, I'll have to rig up a 'herb rack' to hang from the 'mudroom' ceiling? This sounds like it will require crafty things with vines or twigs, not exactly my area of expertise.
The Brassica oleracea cultivars that produce brussels sprouts and kohlrabi should be delicious, and kohlrabi, at least, is supposed to be easy to grow, and harvestable within 60 days. Hard to believe, but worth trying as a fall crop. Brussels sprouts are quite frost-hardy, so they should be a decent fall crop for our region, although I don't know anybody who grows it. I bought seeds of both at our local farm supply store, and the cashier (one of the owners) asked about the kohlrabi, saying she'd seen some at a local upscale grocery store.
It looks to me like it will need plenty of water to mature the swollen stems. This image is from a lovely vegetable-gardening-oriented blog called Calendula and Concrete.
Quirky Kitchen
More spaces to plant
Thursday, June 26, 2008
I harvested almost the last of the garlic, along with all of the remaining bulb onions yesterday. The garlic (a German porcelain type) was smaller than the June-harvested ones, probably because the hot, dry weather limited clove growth, in spite of watering.
But I've been quite pleased with my harvest and have LOTS of garlic for the coming months, enough even for devoted garlic lovers.
There are also quite a few harvested new potatoes that will stretch for a month or two, along with fresh onions.
I'm not quite sure how to properly store onions and potatoes for a long time, and they're so tasty fresh, it's hard to get motivated to do the research.
I think I'll add a second trellis of yard-long beans, for fall production, and another set of cherry tomatoes & roma tomatoes to the vacated space, after adding lots more compost. I'm also going to put kohlrabi, brussel sprouts, and broccoli (oops, and parsnips, too) in beds that I won't need for rotation in fall. Hmmm, maybe I need more beds. That's a slippery slope!
This large red cabbage in a container is ready to harvest.
Sophisticated Guest Room
A new infusion of seeds
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
I just received more seeds (hooray!) -- I love getting seeds for new things, and this shipment includes kohlrabi (Dyna Bio), something called Ruby Streaks mustard, French Sorrel, Giant Winter Spinach (hope springs eternal here in our acidic soils), and parsnips (Cobham Improved Marrow). I've tried growing parsnips before (last year in an equally droughty summer), so this may not be the year to try again.
The drought doesn't get much worse than what we currently have. There are many places that get a lot less rain than we do, normally, so I hate to whine, but the U.S. Drought Monitor place shows the area where we live as one of the worst areas in the country.
Look down to the Southeastern U.S., where the big red patch is; we live there.
Long summer evenings
Close to the summer solstice, our evenings outside stretch past 9 pm; I've just now come in at a quarter-past nine. Our northerly neighbors have later summer evenings, but the trade-off comes in the short winter days.
Recently, talking with a garden writer/speaker who lives in New Hampshire, I asked him about the winters. His response was revealing; he said that was his planning and resting time, and the seasonal cycle was one he enjoyed. Summer was a time of gardening, while spring and fall were speaking and traveling times.
I find even our short winter days difficult, so I'd be a poor candidate for northern winters.
We did have a great trip (in our winter) in southern Patagonia a few years ago -- it was light until past 10 pm -- a fabulous tonic!
I'm taking a group of summer interns on a evening hike tomorrow -- we'll listen to the nocturnal symphony as the day turns to dusk and then dark. Lovely.
Kevin Haley's Sanctuary
Less grass, more interest
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
It's really time to get rid of more grass. The drought is an incentive, not that we ever water our drought-tolerant Zoysia.
But the frequently-trampled patches that used to be full of honeybee-friendly clover have become hard-packed clay punctuated by unattractive tufts of something unrecognizable. And as we're walking more around the house (post-garden shed) and taking Mocha (the pampered Golden retriever) out the kitchen door more (the main vegetable garden side), we're wearing down a path more than ever.
I've been planning a flagstone patio on the porch side for awhile, mirroring the front walkway that I put in last fall, but I'm thinking I'll extend it around the house in an informal path, replacing the scruffy grass between the house and main vegetable garden with some sort of mulch or gravel/mulch mix beyond that. Flagstone there would be too much, competing with the house and the main vegetable garden's stacked stone edge.
And the slope below the house that's drying up after two summers of extreme drought --why not convert it to a drought-tolerant 'gravel garden' like Beth Chatto's in Essex, with mixed herbs and flowers? I could create a retaining wall of stone on the slope with defined paths.
I'm ready to get rid of the riding lawn mower that we had to buy when we first moved in, faced with almost two acres of grass. We're now down to maybe 1/4 to 1/3 an acre of grass, well within range of a newfangled reel mower!
VT Wonen is De Beste
Planting Villages
Monday, June 23, 2008
I heard a remarkable keynote speech (at our statewide Master Gardener's annual conference) this evening by Roger Swain on 'Planting Villages' -- about how plants can connect neighbors, encourage interaction between them, and enrich our lives as a consequence. One of his points was about having a front garden that is welcoming to passers by.
I know the names of my neighbors, but we don't know any of them well, and although we've created a wonderful garden (from our point of view) that suits us, most of it is behind the fence, and I don't know if our front garden welcomes people walking down the bike path (really a walking path) along our road.
This is what it looked like when we first moved in.
But, now, I do know people have noticed our meadow in front of the garage, and the buckeye in bloom, and the striking yellow sugar maple near the road in fall, so maybe we're having an impact in any case..jpg)
At least the folks coming down the small hill across the street now look into a mixed woods and meadow, instead of a row of redtips and lawn.
Room with Character
Admiring natural gardens
Sunday, June 22, 2008
We're not far from the remarkable biodiversity in the Southern Appalachians.
Supported by abundant moisture and an ancient mountain range, it's one of the most species-rich places in North America. A recent visit to a short stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which stretches from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park up to the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia yielded some great plants and 'natural gardens.'
A favorite spot was a seepage slope, covered with sundews, Michaux's saxifrage, a mountain St. John's Wort, and a rare Krigia, among others.
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