Each Little World

Something soothing

At this point in the growing season, I see bright colors everywhere I look: Asters, Dahlias, Zinnias, sunflowers and goldenrod. Not in my garden. With a summer that has been both hot and dry, I want a visual break; a sip of something soothing to cool everything down. The following are a few favorites that provide that experience in my garden.

Astrantia major  'Vanilla Gorilla' tends to throw out a number of solid green reversions in midsummer. As long as I cut them off, the plant quickly perks up with new variegated leaves. It is a different shade of green than every other plant I grow. 

Hedra helix 'Glacier' needs light to full shade which makes it a treasure in my shady garden. I've been growing this since 2017 and have not lost any of it to polar vortex weather. So far it has not spread more than I want it to nor have I seen any kind of flowers or seeds on it. 

I discovered a small clump of unhappy Brunnera 'Dawson's White' and moved it to a sunnier and more moist spot where it has quickly started to spring back to life

The pond re-design necessitated pulling out a big sweep of Carex siderosticha variegata. I moved it to the slope that I am reclaiming from dying grass and weeds. I love this Carex but don't see it for sale anymore. 

I am absolutely in love with the way Carex pennsylvanica flows down this slope like a waterfall.

Hope your garden is helping you to stay cool.

Foliage that fascinates

If I thought my witch hazel suckers were unexpectedly beautiful, I fell in love with this foliage quirk on a friend's mum plant.

If there was a variety that sported leaves like these all the time, my garden would be filled with them. Alas, an unexplained quirk that we can appreciate, but never expect to see on a regular basis.. 

IOVM: Pruning pleasures

My spring-blooming witch hazel, Hamamelis vernalis, sent up a bunch of suckering stems that I finally got around to cutting out. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the foliage was lovelier than it ever is on the shrub when it emerges in the spring or colors up in the autumn. I immediately decided those stems were worthy of spending some time being admire in a vase indoors. 

Once that little project was done, I walked across the driveway to cut down some of the seedpods of my red Martagons, Lilium martagon 'Claude Shride'. Unlike my peachy flowered variety, these seed pods were as unexpectedly beautiful as the Hamamelis foliage. 

The pods provided the perfect companion for the suckering stems. 

One quick and easy bouquet and one that I am enjoying as much as any I've put together all summer.

Wordless Wednesday

Learning to love orange

Back in the 1960s, I loved wearing bright colors like hot pink and orange. I remember I had an orange wool dress with white trim and a dress whose fabric was printed with big orange flowers.

But orange in my garden? I've mostly steered clear of that color other than Asiatic and species lilies. But suddenly I am noticing that I have orange in a number of long-time favorite plants and I seem to be adding more and more of that color. 

Hecherella 'Hopscotch' is a villosa hybrid which means it copes with hot, humid summer weather. i love the fact that it really holds its color all season.

I have Heucheras all over the garden. They've been moved and divided so many times that I can rarely identify them anymore. I believe this one is H. 'Pinot Grigot', planted to echo the Berberis thunbergii 'Admiration' on the far side of the Peony. Most of the orange flowers and foliaged plants are around the Tea House to complement its color.

'Amber Jubilee' Ninebark (Physocarpus) has orangish, bronze new foliage. My shrub would like more sun so its color is not as intense as it might be. The shade has also kept it a size to easily fit into the garden. I am always pruning it for shape and that produces the nice bronze color, though it means I never get flowers.  This is what it looks like at the moment; not quite as bright as when the first leaves appear.

I've been growing Spirea japonica 'Magic Carpet' for years. I love that I can cut it to the ground to keep it the size and shape I want. It also makes great cut foliage for flower arrangements.

I added Hydrangea serrata 'Mountain Madness' this year, specifically for its orange new foliage that fades to yellow through the season. The lace cap flowers are a very delicate peachy pink. I fell in love with it from the moment it arrived from Issima Nursery.

I've been growing Penthorum seloides aka Starfruit at the edge of the pond for years. But I'm not sure if it will survive without its roots actually growing down into the water. There is one small clump remaining after all the re-design work Mark has been doing on the pond edge; we'll see if it stays the course.

I don't think you can garden in the Midwest without growing daylilies. Many people like the really large-flowered varieties. I like the little dwarf types like Hemerocallis 'Petite Sioux'.

Hemerocallis 'Lady Inora' is bigger than 'Petite Sioux' but I believe she still falls into the dwarf category.

I've always wanted to have poppies in the garden. Last year I put in Papever atlanticum, a Spanish poppy that is a very bright orange.

The only orange grouping not near the Tea House is this trio by the red front door. Bowman's Root (left), Berberis thunbergii 'Orange Rocket' and Japanese Blood Grass 'Red Baron' are at their most dramatic peak in the fall rather than the spring.

March in black and white

Late last week the weather was so beautiful I began a little light cleanup in the garden. Hellebores, like H. 'New York Night, were sending up big fat buds, snowdrops were blooming in white clumps and it seemed like spring might really have arrived.

But it is March in the Midwest, so snow immediately followed the first flowers on Monday.

It came down wet and heavy, but there's not enough of it to last. The roads were clear by mid-morning Tuesday, so we drove out to our favorite gallery to look at a group of new tea bowls by one of our favorite potters, Bill Farrell. 

We have serving dishes, large containers and many tea bowls by Bill. We have enough of his work that we really didn't need any more. But these are raku, unlike all of our other pieces by him which are wood-fired stoneware. They were too lovely to resist; a fact we were fairly sure of before we even left the house. 

By the time we got home from the gallery in mid-afternoon the view out the window showed the snow was melting on all the stonework in the garden, nicely re-iterating the tones and marks of Bill's bowls inside the house. 

Rain is predicted for much of next week, which will get rid of the snow and send the spring bloomers above ground for sure.

In a vase any day

Just to remind you of my holiday treatment of the fireplace mantle: A beaded Christmas tree and a pair of votive lights and i called it done.

The flowers that were on the dining table during the holidays took a long time to fade.

I decided to enjoy their slow demise by moving them to the mantle and adding a dried fern leaf that nicely matched the browning flowers.

Mark enjoyed the Foo dogs so much that I added them to the opposite end of the mantle. There were just enough bits of teal in his painting that the dogs and the vase seemed appropriate partners for the painting.

I replaced the flowers went I went grocery shopping recently to complement my new painting, which we'd swapped for the little girl's portrait.

Mark decided that the new painting perfectly melded his painting with the textile filling the wall space next to the fireplace.

This is a closeup of the top of the beautiful Miao baby carrier. The Miao people are one of many different Chinese ethnic groups.

Miserable weather, miserable news. Thus I am sitting opposite the fireplace to enjoy the view before I lose myself in a book. Hope you are all managing to survive this scary end of Trump's administration. Definitely sending thoughts and prayers to Joe and Kamala.

IVOM: A Thanksgiving arrangement

I posted a version of this foliage display on October 26th, noting I had actually put it together on October 14th. It's now more than a month later and it's still looking good enough to use on our Thanksgiving dinner table — with a bit of sprucing up. 

I added a number of Bergenia leaves which had started to get burnished bronze and red out in the garden. The rabbits tend to munch these during the summer, but they return in the fall and are untouched now.

I decided to make one last foray around the garden as the bouquet still looked a bit blah even with the Bergeinia foliage. The addition of variegated Arum italicum foliage and yellow Epimedium leaves definitely brightened things up, along with an 'Autumn Brilliance' fern frond. 

Epimedium 'Waterfall' is the only one of my many Epimediums to turn this wonderful buttery color with dark edges. 

I clipped this Maidenhair fern frond when it was a flat fan. In the house everything has delicately curled up.

I only grow Arum italicum 'Ghost,' a plant that appears in the autumn when the weather cools down and pops up again when the snow melts. There are other varieties with different degrees of patterning that I continue to lust after. I've never been able to buy one as they are always sold out as soon as I seem to discover them in on-line nurseries. 

The wonky flowers on star fruit (Penthorum seloides) get better and better as the days go by.

Hope you have a pleasant and safe holiday.

Late November walkabout

November has brought us days that got up into the 60°'s and a lot of nights, like last night, that hit the low 20°'s. That means last weekend was the perfect time to stroll through the chilly garden to see what is still looking good.

The pond froze on Saturday night but it was warm enough Sunday that it melted again. 

The mossy rocks are always a thrill for me to discover. The densely weedy shoreline less so.

I moved and divided Pulmonaria 'David Ward' rather rudely midsummer. I was worried that I lost it by my thoughtless behavior in hot weather since it is not a plant that I see to buy anymore. This is the only Pulmonaria that I intentionally grow, so I am thrilled to see it again.

False Rue Anemone (Isopyrum biternatum) is one of the treasures of the cool garden in early spring and late autumn. It has white flowers in the spring but I grow it for that lovely foliage.

Some of my Hepaticas are looking good while others have disappeared. 

A lot of gardeners consider Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium 'Aureum') weedy, but I love it. The tiniest seedlings are recognizable and easy to pull. I appreciate the note of bright green it adds whenever and wherever it appears, and the tiny daisy-like flowers are perfect additions to any bouquet.

Epimedium 'Waterfall' has been one of the stars of the autumn garden. None of my other Epimediums have this thrilling mix of color in their leaves. 

Who doesn't love Hellebore foliage? It is dramatic at any season, but especially now when it has a lot less foliar competition.

Whatever the weather

We've had a week with overnight frost, high winds, rain and just plain November days. I went out midmorning today to check the rain gauge (only .36") and to look for fallen branches from the winds that began yesterday. No big branches were down, though I found some lovely pieces of bark. I left this one on the bench by the front door to dry out a bit before I bring it indoors. 

Despite the miserably cold weather I found a lot that caught my attention no matter where I went in the garden. The beds, paths and upper pool in the back garden were absolutely covered with needles from the lone Austrian pine of the original three trees planted in the mid-1950s.

Some things, like this Himalayan maidenhair fern, seem to take the change in the weather in stride. It looks green and gorgeous until it gets buried by snow. 

Big healthy Foxglove seedlings are such a hopeful sign. But I probably should have moved them out of the path when they were tiny. I am going to have to tread  carefully next year. 

Late last fall I planted a pair of dwarf Hydrangeas. They came through the winter and grew this year with no problems. I need to put larger cages around them so they are protected from critters this winter and next spring when they put out new growth. Love their deep purple foliage. 

I've been growing this Paeonia lutea for four years. I moved it last year after deciding it was in too much shade to flower. I've never noticed pink stems on it before. Now I am going to have to make a note to see what it looks like next spring when it reappears. 

This ornamental cabbage was looking so sad that I almost tossed it. Yesterday's rain suggests it was lack of water, not the cold, that was its problem.

I discovered this Hellebore, that typically tries to flower at Thanksgiving, up and beginning to bloom ten days ago. I cut a few blossoms to enjoy inside and assumed it had succumbed to the cold weather by now. What a trooper!

Its twin, planted across the path, was budded and buried deeply in autumn leaves. I left it that way, hoping that would preserve the buds to flower in the spring. But it was ready and did not want to wait. 

Though I think winter is on its way, clearly my garden is not yet convinced.