2011 « The Garden Worm blog

September 27, 2011

Caution: Winter approaching

Filed under: Fall,Flowers,Grasses,Our gardens — Judy @ 3:52 pm

The air has been soft and warm these last few days and the pool warm enough to swim in, BUT time to be outdoors in shorts and tank tops is getting short before the snow flies. The signs of winter approaching are getting more numerous. The fall grasses are starting to throw up their plumage.

The Virgina creeper in the trees is starting to color up, and a few of the early maples already are turning red and orange. Some yellow is peeking through on the birches and the ashes and, with a little bit of rain, the last roses of summer are pulling out all the stops and blooming like crazy.

Rosa 'Cuyahoga'

Rosa 'Morden Blush'

The sweet autumn clematis is putting (Clematis terniflora, formerly C. paniculata) on a spectacular show this year with, it seems like, millions of tiny flowers.

The ‘Nikko Blue’ and ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangeas are pinking up.

The crabapples

and the seedheads on the coneflowers and rudbeckias are ripening, soon to be devoured by the hungry birds.

But the Autumn Joy sedum is still pink and the Amsonia hubrechtii is only just beginning to turn yellow.

Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and Amsonia hubrichtii

This is one of my favorite fall plant combinations – their glory is still to come! Maybe there is still time yet!

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September 22, 2011

Oregon

Filed under: Miscellaneous,Travel — Judy @ 9:11 pm

Oregon. Ok, that is somewhere out to the west, says she, waving her arm over in that general direction.

The other day I was checking out YouTube, pondering whether it would be a possible direction in which to expand. You know, adding videos of important gardening topics to my business website like . . . well, important stuff. Lo and behold, my business name of Just the Gardener was already taken! What? Why? How? Seems that a boy named Isaac from Oregon was posting some Lego videos he had made under the same name. If you have a mind, go and check them out – pretty clever!

Those of you who know me are probably questioning why I would even think of making videos. Ha! ha! Momentary lapse of sanity, I assure you. Anyways, there are plenty of pretty good gardening videos on YouTube – and some pretty bad ones too – so I decided to save myself from going down that route.

Back to Oregon. My friends at Oriental Garden Supply tell me that they make buying trips out there. I know that Al has some terrific stuff so maybe it’s the climate. Apparently, Oregon has two climatic regions separated by the Cascade Mountains. The Cascades serve to block the warm, moist winds coming from the Pacific Ocean and cause relatively heavy precipitation and moderate temperatures in the western part. The eastern part has relatively little precipitation and more extreme temperatures. I’m going to guess that the western part is home to some great nurseries.

I’ve never been there, but it would seem like a great place to visit – Crater Lake,

Mount Hood,

the Pacific Coast,

. . . and the nurseries! Have any of you been there?

Original photos found here, here, and here.

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July 18, 2011

Midsummer

Filed under: Berries,Flowers,Grasses,Our gardens,Summer — Judy @ 10:10 am

Wow! We have been so busy that I haven’t given a thought to updating the blog. First, so much rain in the spring that it was hard to get in the gardens to do cleanup. Then, it was rush, rush, rush to get everything cleaned up, planted up, and spruced up for the holidays and beginning of summer. And, in the meantime, all the moisture in the soil dried up and huge cracks appeared in the parched earth while we were experiencing temperatures hovering around 90. This morning? A bit of soft, steady rain to moisten things up and maybe some more this afternoon – yay! We surely need it.

I’m loving this corner of the yard now – the red doublefile viburnum berries, the dark purple foliage and berries of the Diabolo ninebark, the hint of yellow on the chamaecyparis pisifera aurea, the wispy threads of the Morning Light miscanthus grass, and barely seen at the bottom of the picture, the bluish green fronds of a microbiota decussata. So much going on!

A closeup of the center shows all the coloration and texture variations going on.

Here is another corner with lots of interest now – amsonia hubrechtii in the center, coreopsis ‘Zagreb’ and ‘Goldsturm’ rudbeckia just below, lamb’s ears (which interestingly have not browned out and turned to mush this year) and ‘Amethyst Myst’ heuchera at the very bottom, hosta (can’t remember the name) and aruncus on the far right, hakonechloa ‘Aureo-marginata’ and sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ on the left, and spikes of siberian iris ‘Caesar’s Brother’ and ‘Butter and Sugar’ punctuating the scene here and there.

Despite the flooding rains this spring, the horrific heat this summer, and the tough love we are meting out to our gardens this year, they don’t look too bad! What’s going on in your gardens now?

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May 14, 2011

Unfurling of Spring

Filed under: Contests,Flowers,Our gardens,Spring — Judy @ 11:21 pm

The unfurling and uncurling of spring is now taking place in gardens all around me. This miraculous process is one that I love to watch. The emerging leaves or flowers give only a little hint of the final show!

“I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.” ~ Ruth Stout

Watch the Christmas ferns bending over backward as their fronds uncurl.

Polystichum acrostichoides (Christmas fern)

The ‘Lady in Red’ ferns unfurl in red, but their leaflets turn green while the stems stay red.

Athyrium filix-femina 'Lady in Red'

The next picture is one that I am submitting to the Gardening Gone Wild Picture This contest for May. The unfurling leaves of the Crimson King maple, though red, remind me of newly emerging bat wings drying in the sun. Or what I imagine they would look like. I love how the early morning sun lights up the leaves against the clear blue sky.