Each Little World

PR humor

This tag was on one of the shrubs I recently purchased. Someone at the nursery was having fun.

Is this really August?

I've been working non-stop in the garden because the weather has been beautiful. Hot, but not enough to note the actual temperatures in my garden journal. What I am tracking is the rain. Sunday afternoon we had measurable rain for the third time in four days.

Amazingly, our rain total for August — as of yesterday — is a glorious 5.31". I can relax and be pretty confident that all the plants I am adding, moving and dividing will survive. I hate to even mention this wonderful weather knowing what so many of you are experiencing elsewhere. But, in truth, I'm looking forward to another week happily spent outdoors.

Garden gifts

Is there anything nicer than admiring a plant in a friend's garden and being offered some for your own garden. Look what my fellow Garden Gal brought me yesterday: A monster bucket full of Saruma henryi. I lost my big plant during a Polar Vortex a few years ago. I kept meaning to replace it but hadn't gotten around to it. 

Now I am the proud possessor of a plant that is as big and beautiful as the one I lost. i'mm getting it in the ground today since rain is in the forecast this week. 

She also gave me a nice clump of Penstemon 'Husker Red'. This was the first Penstemon everyone I knew started with. Now there are all kinds of other varieties but you rarely see this one to purchase. It was a great, trouble-free plant and I'm happy to have it for my garden again. 

Garden pals are the best kind to have!

Wordless Wednesday

IVOM: Are flowers necessary?

"Are Flowers Necessary?" is the title of an upcoming garden walk at Olbrich Botanical Gardens. I've been thinking about signing up for it, but haven't decided if I really need it. My most recent bouquets suggest perhaps not. 

The leaves of Hardy Begonia (B. grandiflora) are green on the front and red on the underside. They look perfect in a vase all by themselves. They're best in the garden in a location where the foliage gets raking sunlight that emphasizes these colors. 

This is another vases by local artist Richard Jones of Studio Paran. Love that red stripe.

The table runner and tray are still in place on our table. But this time, they're the backdrop for my trio of Heath vases. 

Carex siderosticha 'Variegata' with a stem of Euphorbia 'Ascot Rainbow' centers the display.

Foliage from Heuchera 'Pinot Gris' and a stem of Caryopteris divaricata 'Snow Fairy'

Astrantia 'Vanilla Gorilla' leaf with a Heuchera flower stem.

There are enough flowers in the garden that I could have easily made an arrangement with them. But I've definitely enjoyed skipping the flowers to concentrate on foliage. 

Mystery behavior

Like many of you, my garden has suffered from higher than normal temperatures, starting last spring. Add sun and periods of dryness and you are left with a lot of foliage plants that are unhappy and showing it with crisp, curling, drooping and brown leaves.

But not necessarily the plants you would expect. Consider my Brunnera.

B. 'Emerald Mist' is in rather a shady spot and doesn't have all that much white or silver in the foliage and yet it looks miserable. 

B. 'Looking Glass' is quite silvery and is partly under a big Tree Peony but still unhappy.

Just a few feet away from the above plants is B. 'Dawson's White.' It is finally getting a bit of brown along some leaf edges but nothing problematic. These leaves are huge and have looked beautiful all season. 

Brunnera 'Alexandria' has had a browned leaf now and then but generally looked good. This plant gets eastern sun but is never in any deep shade. It's getting enough sun for Calamintha to flower.

All four plants are Brunnera macrophylla and in locations that I would consider moist enough and shady enough. But clearly this summer showed me that may not be the case. I don't plan to move anyone until I see what next summer is like. What I'd really like to do, is to divide B.'Dawson's White' as it is clearly a a plant that doesn't need babying. 

I've had it for a long time and had forgotten all about it until last summer. I re-discovered it then as a small fading plant in a very shady spot. I moved it to this sunnier location and was thrilled when it came up this year and put on a lot of growth. We'll see if it's big enough next year for me to try dividing it.

August abundance

In Wisconsin we wait every year for August. We've spent weeks and weeks driving past farm fields watching and calculating. And now it's here: The moment when local corn and tomatoes arrive at the farmers' markets. And not just arrive; we are awash in the food we dream about all year.

We've had corn on the cob, off the cob, as the main dish or a savory side. The same with tomatoes: grape or cherry, beefsteak, heritage, organic. We enjoy them every way and every day that we can. They are the glory of life in the Upper Midwest.

Fresh tomato sauce for pasta is a long-time favorite. Seed and chop tomatoes, add minced shallots, diced Kalamata olives, a splash of balsamic vinegar and one of olive oil. Pile on assorted herbs, but especially lots of basil. 

You can heat this melange a bit or serve it at room temperature as soon as you've finished slicing and dicing. I've put it over long spaghetti, but my favorite way is with farfalle — bow tie pasta. Grate a little fresh Parmesan cheese over it and voila! Dinner is served.

GBBD: 8.15.2022

My garden is in transition. These are all late summer blooms with fall Anemones, Cimicifuga, Tricyrtis and mums all budding up but not yet flowering. The August stars have been a few new plants among old favorites that have kept me engaged watching their progress.

I fell in love Gladiolus murielae when I saw it in a friend's garden last summer. I bought a dozen bulbs to try it out in my garden. I'm going to attempt to overwinter my bulbs and will definitely add more next spring.

My two Agapanthus 'Galaxy Blue' made it through the winter, though one is much happier than the other. The plant that is getting a bit more sun has 5 flowers while its partner only has one. But even one of these blossoms is a beauty. 

From the way the flowers emerge between a pair of leaves to the way the spent flowers twist themselves up, I've been fascinated by Belcamda chinensis 'Freckle Face.'  Plus it's a butterfly magnet.

My Phlox paniculata 'Jeana' got beaten up when I knocked this lantern over on them earlier in the season. But they've bounced back. 

'Jeana' is tall and willowy with heads comprised of small flowers compared to most Phlox varieties. 

Geranium 'Perfect Storm' is a new purchase. Initially I thought of putting it with the Phlox, but eventually planted a pair of them with a pair of Geranium 'Crystal Lake' if you can picture that. 

Astilbe chinensis 'Delft Lace' is a mid-size Astilbe that performs well for me. But it never looks, to me, like the picture that all the nurseries use in their catalogs. 

Hosta 'El Nino' is one of the rare Hostas that I let flower. 

I have big patches of Heuchera 'Brownies' all over the garden. Neither the flowers nor the foliage is showy but it is a problem-free Heuchera. Plus the flower stems are very tall making them useful for bouquets. 

Great Blue Lobelia is one of the few natives that I've planted that is doing well. I'm hoping the flowers last until the yellow and white fall flowers around them open. 

Visit May Dreams Gardens to see what's blooming in a host of other gardens. 

A lasting solution

In the summer of 2018 I had my garden helper dig and divide the Hostas that were planted at the end of the driveway. We rearranged smaller plants into a nice grouping and I thought that little garden was done for good.

But the loss of a neighboring tree stressed them more than I anticipated. I'm not a big fan of Hosta flowers so I spent a lot of time removing the flower stems and damaged foliage. Then the Hostas filled in so fast they were going to need diving agains. I realized I had created a high maintenance bed. It was small but called for too much attention. 

Last summer I started over and decided to recreate the no-maintenance bed I had designed in the traffic island in front of our house. 

I put in three groups of Allium 'Millennium' surrounded by Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta with two blue Hostas that withstood the conditions in that location better than the others. For some early season color I planted Muscari and big Alliums. Then I added a few clumps of Penstemon 'Dark Towers' from the back garden where they were getting shaded out. A few weeks ago I added a row of Allium senescent 'Glaucum' across the front edge of the bed. When the city does our big street project next year, the sign will be removed. 

I am crazy in love with this bed — even though I have to stand in the street to get a proper view of it. 

It is always alive with bees and pollinators and needs no supplemental water during dry spells. 

i had forgotten I plunked in a Geranium wallichianum 'Crystal Lake' until it made its way through the Calamintha to the light. It is a lovely companion to the Alliums. A. Millennium blooms later than A. 'Summer Beauty' which was in the traffic island. It also has tighter spheres and a more intense color. 

Since plants don't stop growing, I will have to do some work here in the future as well. But all of the plants here now are much easier to deal with than a Hosta bed. Even the two Hostas I left in place are smaller sized and so shouldn't be quite as much work as the massive ones that were here before. 

IVOM: Heuchera extravaganza

Every summer I wait impatiently for this unknown Heuchera to bloom. I have more than a ?dozen clumps of it scattered along the backside of the driveway border, where no one sees them unless they go exploring. 

This is the only Heuchera I grow that is so floriferous I can pick a bouquet of just these flowers. They stems are tall and the blossoms are large and intensely colored. I added a few stems of Ninebark (Physocarpus) 'Amber Jubilee' that I'd just pruned for a little contrast. 

I plunked it all in one of my many beautiful glass vases by Richard Jones of Studio Paran. 

If you slowly rotate the vase, the pattern of silver rectangles change in size and relationship. 

Both the front and back of the vase have a thin stripe of red running vertically through the design. 

The Ninebark foliage echoes the wider orange band that circles the neck of the vase.

To see what other gardeners have put in a vase today, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this long running meme.