Each Little World

IVOM: The end of August

I had my girlfriends over the other day and put together a quick bouquet for the coffee table. It sat on an antique green wooden tray with pink and green leaf motif plates and napkins with hot pink speckles. After they left, I moved it to this location. 

I mixed all the pink blooms I could find: Alluium 'Millennium', Phlox 'Jeana', Sedum 'Autumn Joy', no id Heuchera and Amenopsis macrophylla. The green glass vase, touched with silver, is by Richard Jones of Madison.

Mark and I drove out to Abel Contemporary Gallery on Friday to see new work by an artist who has a show coming next month. While there, I fell for this vase by Juliane Shibata.

I filled it with Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta, Kirehgeshoma palmata, Heucher 'Brownies' blooms and August Lilies (Hosta).

I was taken with the way the flowers that decorate the vase were loose and painterly.

No two sides of the vase are quite the same. I have a feeling it is going to get a lot of use. 

Rake No. 2

When I posted about Mark's new rake to make patterns in the gravel garden last week, Loree Bohl of Danger Garden commented: "I saw Mark's rake and thought 'how ingenious!' followed by 'but I bet he's working to design something more artistic...'." She was right.

I had barely posted the images of what he was up to, when he showed me his new rake (on the right). This one makes deeper marks which are more visible at the new, larger scale needed in this bigger gravel garden. 

Having made a new rake, he completely re-worked the gravel garden in a new pattern. It looked absolutely stunning. Sunday he created yet another entirely new motif of interlocking circles like raindrops.

There's only one problem with him playing in the gravel. I am not allowed to walk on it which means I can't work around the edges, planting where he's left room for shrubs and perennials. Neither one of us wants to reveal the finished symbolic pond until it is complete. So you will have to wait a little longer to see it in its full beauty. 

Evergreens: Before and after

Not long after we added the fence across the back of the garden, we decided to create a lower maintenance area all along there by planting Yew and Boxwood. We used cardboard circles to estimate mature size and how many shrubs we'd need to buy. The hose is marking the future path. Despite its simplicity, this has turned into one of my favorite features of the garden. 

While it's not totally low maintenance, all that's really required is an annual trimming of the shrubs to keep them from getting too big for the space. Mark used to do that job, but our great garden assistant has done it the last few years.

As they were wildly sending out new growth, I decided I would trim them if necessary. But I am so glad I was able to leave it to a pro. Jutta's a horticulturalist and knows her stuff; it is a pleasure to work with her. The huge increase in interest in gardening, however, has limited how much she can work in our garden, as she has a full time nursery job. She managed to come one morning in July and trimmed all the yews in the back garden: 27 of them!

I don't think I ever walk through this part of the garden without running my hands over those tightly curving globes as I sigh with pure pleasure. 

In a vase on Monday: This and that

As often as I spend time and effort putting flower arrangements together, I spend an equal amount of time creating something on the fly. These bouquets are all the result of storm damage, or damage from a careless gardener. One of my tall lilies came down during a windy night and brought a few stems of Thalictrum with it. The lily was past its prime, but the Thalictrum still had enough life left that I couldn't just compost it. 

I broke off this little Coleus stem when I was moving the big pot it's in. As I was taking it indoors, I passed Clematis 'Guernsey Cream' which has gone to seed. I love its wiry golden pods that look like jewels. They definitely added a glalm note to the Coleus. 

The seedpods were recently replaced by a broken stem of unknown Sedum. 

I picked this Sedum up at the grocery store and did not notice it was missing an id tag. It appears to be similar to the classic 'Autumn Joy' variety, but is a wonderful combination of delicate pink buds opening to pale yellow flowers. If you know the name of this variety, please put it in the comments. 

A nice hit of rain

Woke to a gently falling rain this morning that made it a pleasure to have Saturday coffee at home. We usually meet our friends at our local coffee shop, but all the news about the COVID variants made us wary of coffee indoors, anywhere but here. 

We got .41" of rain and are hoping for a bit more this afternoon. 

The view from below

It is too hot, too sunny, and too humid with just enough mosquitoes to make working in the garden anything but pleasant. i put on my garden clothes, hauled out my wheelbarrow this morning and then promptly came indoors again for the rest of the day. Mark briefly ventured out with his came and captured these images.

When Mark showed me this image. he pointed out that it should make me understand how little sun my garden actually gets.

Practice makes perfect

Last Friday, Mark went to the quarry in Waterloo to get a pickup-load of quartzite chips to finish the pond project. Though we'd had 14 cu. yards of the chips delivered, he wanted a tad more to get it all even and to the height he wanted.

He spent Saturday unloading them and getting the surface completely even. On Sunday he got out all the big garden forks and rakes and tried them out to see what kind of patterns he could make in this gravel. 

None of them were quite the right size to make marks of a scale that works with an area this large.

So he went to the hardware store yesterday and came back and made his own temporary wooden "rake." We both agreed that he's moving in the right direction. 

Here's his temporary rake: The handle and screw plate from a sponge-style floor mop fitted with a board into which he inserted dowels. Once he decides exactly the size and spacing of the dowel markers, he plans to make a more artistic version in keeping with the artfulness of the garden as a whole. 

Mark dug out a huge swath of Carex siderosticha variegata to make a working route from our gravel garden path down to the pond. Along the way he decided to leave the path as a way to get closer to the gravel garden. You now walk down a gray gravel path with these limestone bars (filled with Mexican river rocks) across it. You can then step out onto the grindstone and flat rock in the third photo above.  

This whole project is coming together nicely. He now needs to work on the rock placement around the edges of the "pond;" then I follow with the plants. 

First year sleep . .

You don't have to garden very long before you hear the old adage about plants: "First year sleep, second year creep, third year leap." When I plant something in May or June, I think that concept holds true.

But I am never sure how one counts when plants don't go into the ground until late August or September. That can be pretty dicey in my area, hoping that those late plants make enough roots to get them through the winter. 

. . .

I put in a pair of Agapanthus 'Galaxy Blue' in June 2020. The one in the slightly shadier spot came up but did not send up any flower stalks, unlike its partner. I've already moved it to a sunnier location. Though this is a variety hardy to Zone 5, I had my doubts. So I am thrilled they returned and I got flowers; great progress for year two. 

I planted Phlox paniculata 'Jeana' in mid-to-late August last year. This is a new variety that is supposedly less susceptible to mildew. It's the first time I've had Phlox in my garden in years. 

To my eye, it is a much more elegant plant than most Phlox, with its tall willowy stems and upright panicles of tiny lavender-pink flowers. I am considering this as the end of year one. So I am definitely impressed with this plant's performance.

I planted Angelica gigas last August in full bloom. It was one of my last purchases from our wonderful local nursery, The Flower Factory, before it closed for good. Since this is a re-seeding biennial, imagine my surprise when it showed up in the same location as last year and sent out flowers. 

I am absolutely enthralled with the way the flowers unfurl

I am making trips to check on what this plant is doing multiple times a day.

Every time I've gone to look at it, it's been covered with flying critters. Half of them took off when I came near the flower to take a photo.

Given that this plant can reach 6 feet tall, I am considering the fact that it is nowhere near that height proof that it is in year one. I let it go to seed last year, but did not see any progeny. I even took a photo of the leaf so I would recognize babies and not pull them, thinking they were weeds. We'll see how it goes this year.

Wet and wild

Saturday night's storm dumped 1.36" of rain on us in about half an hour. The garden was absolutely gleaming the next morning.

Pennsylvania sedge (foreground) and Adiantum x tracyi growing in the moss. 

. . .

Monday, 6:30 a.m.: Just woke up to booming thunder, followed by rain. So I guess we won't be getting the last load of quartzite chips put into the pond this morning. Looks like this storm is going to be over us for a while, so I'm going to settle in with a cup of coffee and a garden book.

Wordless Wednesday