Each Little World

IVOM: Flowers for Rich

I put together these two bouquets last week for a memorial celebration. Since they were for someone who was a big fan of Piet Oudolf and the Lurie Garden, that made it easy for me to know what kind of display would have appealed to him. I went to the Lurie Garden website to see their summer plant list and discovered I am growing a huge number of things on their list. 

This first vase was suggested by an image one of my sister-in-laws texted me and is more contemporary than I often do. I really like the simplicity of it and have to remember the less is more concept in the future. This has Alliums 'Millennium' and 'Summer Beauty', Seslaria 'Autumnalis' (autumn moor grass) and foliage of Heuchera 'Palace Purple'. I used the foliage of Byzantine Gladiolus for some dramatic contrast. The vase is quite tall and is by Midwestern potter Dolorus Fortuna.

This antique Chinese vase is short and squat and made a nice unmatched pair with the other one. More Alliums, Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta, Thalictrum buds, a few stems of flowers from Heuchera and Hosta 'Halcyon', a large branch of Astilbe 'Chocolate Shogun' foliage and a dark Begonia leaf.

This list of blooms pretty much comprises what is in flower for August GBBD, other than some Agastaches and Phlox.

Finding their happy place

As I was walking about the front garden yesterday morning I noticed this clump of Cyclamen that had self-seeded into the gravel path right up against the stone wall. I remember seeing them before and just deciding to leave them alone. Any time I've tried to remove Cyclamen seedlings to replant, I've usually lost them. Maybe letting them alone long enough to bulk up is the answer. 

Seeing the Cyclamen in the path made me wonder how the plants in the nearby bed were faring. Only the original plant is visible and it looks good. Critters, heat and drought mostly likely have done a number on a couple of different varieties that were nearby. They had been doing pretty well but our increasingly hot summers are not helping.

Furter along the path I saw self-seeded ferns, Geranium phaeum and another tiny Cyclamen. 

The first two plants have the same patterning and are likely C. purpurescens. The next one doesn't look quite the same and I'm not sure of exactly which one it is. The last one is the reverse of the first two and is likely C. hederifolium.

I've had enough problems with critters digging these out that I've given up adding any new varieties despite the beauty of the foliage. 

Still perfect

It seems like everywhere I look in my garden I see unfinished areas. It's been so hot that I haven't been able to make myself deal with most of them. Instead, I am luxuriating in the one area of my garden that is picture and pollinator perfect.

It took a number of years and a lot of loss and learning but I finally came up with plants that can take sun, poor soil, snow, winter road salt, massive summer road construction and never slow down.

Geranium wallichianum 'Crystal Lake' is a sprawler that needs companions to thread itself through. Beautiful markings and a color that is bright without overwhelming everyone else. 

'Crystal Lake' is growing with Alliums and Calamintha and hasn't overtaken either plant. 

This little bed has clumps of Penstemon 'Dark Towers'  at the back corners and blue Hostas (probably 'Halcyon') at the front corners. In between are three clumps of Allium 'Millennium' which is much pinker than A. 'Summer Beauty' which is also in bloom elsewhere in the garden. Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta fills the rest of the space. This garden always looks like a slight breeze is blowing but it's the movement of all the bees that create that impression. 

We're not losing our gutter here, so the big machines never get too close. They have never even broken a stem in this plot. 

They still do get close. Here they're digging trenches for storm sewer pipes and moving the dirt into the nearby dump truck. Note the workman down in the hole. (Double click the photo to enlarge it.)

You get a sense of the size of the bucket with Jake, one of the crew who's about 6'3" tall, standing next to it. Jake is covered with tattoos that he's had done by artists around the world. A very friendly guy. 

Success

I won this Eucomis last summer as a door prize at a garden event. At the end of the season I put it in our unheated garage and ignored it. It looked so sad in the spring I didn't really think it was alive. But I removed the flower stalk and foliage, watered it and put it outside where it immediately started to send up beautiful new foliage. I underplanted it with a native Carex and set it in a heavy ceramic pot to raise it about critter height. Alas some big critter came along and knocked it over more than once. 

You can see its damaged leaves. I finally moved it to a new location where no one has bothered it. It also had some damage from a being outside on a couple of nights that were colder than predicted. But it just kept going.

I think this may be the variety 'Sparkling Burgundy' based on the initial foliage color and the flowers. I don't really care what variety it is. I'm just happy it survived and is blooming. This is one plant that is definitely easy enough to overwinter that I will keep doing it. 

IVOM: Ashes, ashes

Mark goes out multiple times a day to photograph the project on our road. Usually he's just checking to see if they're doing something interesting or something he hasn't seen before. Recently he and a neighbor were watching the excavator when it exposed this stash of old glass containers; possibly an old ash pit. 

Lots of them were broken . . .

but some were still intact. 

When the crew realized the guys were interested in the find, they gave Mark and our neighbor a few of the bottles. 

Mark cleaned them up a bit and left them on the deck where I discovered them.

I cleaned them up some more; mostly just removing dirt. There's a lot of marks that may never come off and we decided to enjoy the patina. 

The greenish bottle in the back left in the photo below had a cork in its neck when it was dug out of the road. The bottle in the center back says "Valleyview Dairy /JJ Collins" while the one on the right says "Lavoris" in raised letters on the shoulder of the bottle. The bottle in the front left is a pint milk container from the old Kennedy Dairy, whose building still stands on West Washington Ave. in Madison. The other two small bottles have no markings. 

It seemed obvious to me from the moment I saw them that these old bottles were perfect Monday vases.

I thought about putting them on the limestone steps outdoors or sitting on a silver tray on the gray pebble paths. Then I remembered this chrome bar cart. 

I liked the contrast between the old and new glass. The flowers include large 'Summer Drummer' Alliums, small 'Millennium' Alliums and an unknown Hosta flower. 

Van Engelen bulbs says Allium 'Summer Drummer' is the tallest and also the latest blooming of the large Alliums. In my garden the paper covering started to come away from the flower heads on July 4th. This is what they currently look like. Very atypical flowers but in a group in the garden they present a light and attractive effect given their size and height. 

Latest garden attack

The last part of our road project that involves damage to our plantings was done last week. The fire hydrant is being moved across the street but that won't be a big messy job like all the new water and sewer pipes being laid and then hooked up to the houses. 

The workman who was using this excavator scooped out a clump of my Geranium macrorrhizum and attempted to relocate them before they started the big dig. I was thrilled with his thoughtfulness.

Our neighbors' pipes were being done at the same time as ours. The crew tends to do the same jobs in a row starting at one or the other end of the street. 

Mark was standing in our garden to take this shot. 

There is a fair amount of hand work that's done around new and old pipes in the dig location. 

These guys are so skilled at operating these big machines. 

The orange fencing goes around holes in the street where the work was not finished in one day.

Our hole is all marked as the other excavator uses his machine to make the road passable for residents. 

The yellow ribbon marks the oak tree at the end of our driveway. All this equipment is parked along our property for the night.

I went out to see what it looked like once the crew stopped work for the day at 7 p.m.

This is the view through the front garden towards the street. 

Looking toward our garden as the guys work to move our water service from the old water main to the new one. Note the yellow gas line which was the first utility to be replaced.

The new copper water piping . . .

is hooked up to our house. 

Clearing the new section of copper pipe before connecting it to the existing line to our house. The pipe had to be extended because the new main was installed on the far side of the right of way from us. We were only without water for a very short time.

Keeping cool

I grew up in houses with no AC. Of course, we never had weather as hot as it is now getting. Luckily our house today had AC already in place when we bought it. Before then, I made do with more traditional methods of keeping cool. 

I bought this rather large fan when visiting my sister who lived in San Francisco. It didn't fit in my suitcase so it sat on the empty seat next me to me on the plane ride home. Those were the days. 

This one is from Africa though I no longer remember which country or tribal group. 

This is another large fan but I have the same style and pattern in a small size as well. 

Too bad I'm not into the Barbie hoopla as this would be perfect for a pink party. 

I have folding paper and fabric fans and tiny Chinese paper fans encased in metal that open up and the metal pieces are a sturdy handle. Fans like these were available everywhere when I first moved to Madison. Over the years I've downsized my collection but I still have enough fans that I've put them out for guests to use at summer parties.

The sky was dark when I began writing with thunder rolling through. But the sun has come out and another chance for rain has passed us by.

Gardener gardens

Our recent rains coupled with reasonable temperatures have kept me out of the house and away from the computer. I dug out three Hostas on Tuesday and replanted chunks of them to complete unfinished areas of the garden. Did the same with Maidenhair ferns. Moved a young Rodgersia and spread out some Iris germanica. The front garden is laughably out of control as I am ignoring it while the road work continues. I am a tired but happy gardener and I'll get back to blogging soon.

This is Hydrangea quercifolia 'Pee Wee'; one of my last purchases from Song Sparrow in 2019. Size-wise it's reached its 4' x4' size in a mere four years rather than the eight suggested. I plan to move it this fall as it's hiding too much of the other plants in this area. It was eaten almost to the ground by rabbits in its second year but clearly that didn't slow it down one bit.

Weather report

Went out late this morning — a little after 7 a.m. — to get some watering started. Since the temp is only supposed to get into the low 80s° today, I thought I would also plant a few things that have been sitting in pots for weeks. Managed to get a Heuchera and an autumn fern in the ground before I had to come in. It's only 10 a.m as I write and the temperature is already at 87°F with humidity in the 70% range. 

Despite endless watering the plants in the entire front garden are coated with grit and dust from the street construction. It was lovely having a four-day holiday weekend with no noise or dust. I watered out there in particular hoping to clean the leaves as well as give all those plants a drink. 

This is what the deck looked like the last time it rained. It wasn't heavy enough or long enough to get any water through the tree leaves and into the ground. We've had rain forecast for days and days and it just passes us by. We're currently 6 inches below normal. 

I know it's summer and supposed to be hot. But I am quickly wiped out with the kind of high temperatures we've been having. I've spent way more time watering than planting, weeding or fine tuning the garden so far. OK, rant over. Maybe today's predicted rain will materialize.

Ferns

I love ferns. Large or small, native or not, I can't get enough of them.

This is Cheilanthes lanosa 'Mighty Tidy' aka Hairy Lip fern. Eventually it's supposed to spread into a foot-wide clump. But that is going to take so long that I am not worried that these two are planted too close together. They're in my so-called rock garden which gets sun and great drainage as these ferns require. Almost every plant in this bed is a quirky dwarf and I need the tags to id them.

I have had terrific success with our native maidenhair ferns as well as the Himalayan variety. So I decided to try Adiantum aleuticum imbricaturm, the dwarf western maidenhair fern, which is also found in Wisconsin. The fern in the center left is a no id variety. What I really love is this mix of ferns with Carex morrow var. temnolepsis 'Silk Tassel.' This Carex is at the top of my "must get more" list.

The autumn fern, Dryopteris erythrosora 'Brilliance,' emerges latest of all the ferns I grow. I always leave last year's fronds in place so I know something is actually planted in that bare spot. 

When they are most autumnal looking I can see them in this view from inside the house. The yellow flag marks a newly planted shrub that needs watering. 

I just realized that the spores on the back of the fronds of the nearby Christmas ferns (Polystichum acrostichoides) are the same warm cinnamon color as the autumn ferns. A happy accident rather than planned planting. 

Now I'm thinking perhaps I should add a couple of these Digitalisferruginea into the mix.

Or perhaps the Digitalis should go by the Tea House where they'd nicely echo the 'Mrs. R.O. Backhouse' martagon lilies.