The Garden Worm blog Digging up the best dirt on gardening!

September 30, 2014

Falling for Fall

Filed under: Fall,Flowers,Grasses,Our gardens — Judy @ 4:41 pm

We really don’t have much in the way of excessive summer heat here, but when fall rolls around, you do notice the difference. The air is softer, the sky seems bluer, and sweaters and jeans become the fashion choice. Leaves start changing their colors, becoming more intense like this blueberry bush before littering the ground.

Blueberry leaves in fall

The frantic growing pace in the garden slows down and time seems to be suspended for a bit as the landscape prepares for its winter nap. That is not to say that nothing of any interest is blooming or showing off its stuff in the autumn though! Daisy-like flowers like asters, chrysanthemums, and rudbeckia are familiar stalwarts. Here is Boltonia ‘Snowbank’ covered with a flurry of little daisies.

Boltonia 'Snowbank'

How about tall Japanese anemones or cimicifuga waving in the breezes?

Cimicuga 'Brunette'

Flowering sedums like the ‘Autumn Joy’ cultivar are wonderful paired with ornamental grasses and rudbeckias. The pennisetums like ‘Hameln’

Pennisetum 'Hameln'

are beginning to throw their flower/seed stalks. Swaying easily in the wind, ornamental grasses add a rustling sound and the appeal of (more…)

August 30, 2014

Best of summer 2014

Filed under: Birdwatching,Creatures,Flowers,Grasses,Our gardens,Summer — Judy @ 3:47 pm

A photo essay of some wonderful plants this summer.

The first one is of my ‘fried egg’ peony – a single type of herbaceous peony. The lighting sort of makes it look like a Georgia O’Keeffe painting, doesn’t it?

White peony

An unknown variety of clematis with huge purple blue flowers. Could be a ‘Jackmanii’ with the reddish ribs, but the anthers are also red. Similar to ‘Ramona’ but darker.

Purple clematis

This is Liatris ‘Kobold’ with mauve flowers blooming from the top down. Bees love it!

Liatris 'Kobold'

The daylilies were floriferous this year. The red one is ‘Chicago Apache’ and the dusky pink one is ‘Catherine Woodbury.’

Hemerocallis 'Chicago Apache'

Hemerocallis 'Catherine Woodbury'

We had lots of hummingbirds flitting around all summer long, but this one decided he wanted to stop and rest for a bit. Lucky me!

Hummingbird

Red bee balm sparklers!

Bee balm

Ornamental grasses are a great addition to the garden, and this brown grass, Carex ‘Toffee Twist,’ goes with everything.

Carex 'Toffee Twist'

We had lots of these little guys running around – we call them all ‘Harvey!’ They love to perch on the rock wall or on top of the stair railing where they can survey everything.

chipmunk

Roses, of course! These are dark pink ‘Cuyahoga’ and red ‘Double Knock-out.’

Roses

More wildlife – notice the big green-eyed fly on the bright yellow-gold coneflower? It’s a type of horse/deer fly called Stonemyia isabellina, a flower feeding non-biting species.

Coneflower

Heading into fall now. Time to clean up the gardens a bit.

August 17, 2014

Birdwatching: Chukar

Filed under: Birdwatching — Judy @ 5:55 pm

Well, here is an oddity! This bird landed on our deck, out of nowhere and looked pretty lost. After looking it up on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology All About Birds site here, we identified it as a Chukar.

Chukar

This is a game bird introduced from Pakistan and usually lives in rocky regions in the western US and southern Canada. Obviously, if it was on our deck, it was waaaaaaay off the reservation! Well, I happen to know that one of my former clients about 7 miles away raises game birds and this is one of the types they raise. Nevertheless, they keep them in pens until their time is up so this guy must have decided that ‘freedom was a precious thing’ and let himself out of the pen!

Chukar

He looks pretty contented there, but he took off for parts unknown not too long after.

August 1, 2014

Outdoor Tour

Filed under: Our gardens,Shows and Tours,Summer — Judy @ 10:58 am

After getting all the clients taken care of, we finally got a chance to tackle our own home. We are pretty much caught up with edging, mulching, and weeding around here and things are looking fairly good. Click the link below to view the pictures.

birdhouseOutdoor Tour 2014

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