Category Archives: garden

What’s Blooming!

My in-ground mums haven’t bloomed yet. It’s funny how all the little pots for sale everywhere are in full bloom and the ones I have actually planted are not blooming yet.

My new hydrangea at the Manor is looking beautiful!

I really hope I don’t kill this plant. I need to do a lot of reading up on these. Also near the hydrangea is something my sister found the other day on the fence in the corner:

I think his super powers are the only thing holding this bit of fence upright, along with the string…

Another bloom came out on the darker delphinium:

The butterfly bush is sending out tiny little blooms at the end of the season:

Snapdragons are also blooming:

Here is a better picture of the sedum in full color:

I hope to get some foliage pictures this weekend. Trees are starting to turn around here.

Kitchen update!

Marble going in. That will be the project for most of the weekend, that is for sure. There is a lot of tile that needs to go up! However, there will be some biking. The weather is going to be too gorgeous to pass up riding 😀

What’s Blooming!

I still have blooms in the garden! The mums haven’t even opened yet. We had some frost last night, which I think nipped some of the annuals (mainly my potted vines).

Annual Salvia:

Galliarda:

Black-eyed Susans still going strong!

The Autumn Joy sedum has darkened up quite nicely. It was really sunny when I took this photo. Normally I like morning light or evening because the colors come out more.

The burning bush is starting to turn!

One of my tippy pots has a late flush of allysum:

I also noticed my campanula are blooming again. These plants had so many blooms this year!

This weekend I will be moving over the rose bush and the razzmatazz coneflower to the new house. I don’t have any place ready for them, so I am just going to clear a spot and put them in and hope they make it. It’s getting late for transplanting. I might have to shift them around next year LOL!

Those of you on FB might have seen this pic of the work being done on the roof.

It’s quite the elaborate set up to do the slate. I am glad this roofer is experienced with slate, although he is spendy (and he talks too much!! LOL). It’s painstaking work and hopefully they will be finished by Tuesday.

Inside, we have been working on the counters. I am in sanding mode now:

Lots and lots of sanding to even out the counter. I started with 50 grit and will be moving through finer and finer grit to get it smooth. This counter might actually work LOL!

What’s Blooming!

It sure is feeling like fall now. There is that cool feeling about and mornings have been downright chilly! I have just a few pictures for this week.

My geraniums:

The last gasp of butterfly weed (asclepis):

Still more delphinium. I sure got a lot of blooms out of these this year!

I had some leftover coleus when I made my tippy pots, so I just stuck them in an extra pot and let them do whatever:

I like the color of this coleus.

It’s been such a busy week – well, the past 4 weeks – and I haven’t had much of a chance to get into the garden. I am going to have mums in bloom soon!

We hope to get to see some of the Jazz fest in Lake George this weekend. Tomorrow might be kind of rainy, but we will go anyway. Here’s to another weekend!

What’s Blooming!

It nearing the end the the garden season. Time to start planning for planting and what happens next year. I still have a lot of long bloomers going, though.

You know I had that problem with lily beetles earlier in the year? Now it is Japanese beetles and they totally decimated one of my rose bushes:

Of course, it is the one right in the front. 🙄 And note the black plastic bag in there. That got blown in from somewhere. Being on the main street, there are lots of interesting things that have popped up in the yard and garden like homework, receipts, bottles, cans, even an x-ray of someone’s teeth of all things. Today’s strange item? An egg:

Isn’t that weird? I don’t know if someone was trying to egg the house and missed or if some critter had the egg to eat and left it there.

I have a volunteer petunia. This has never happened before. It has to be from last year because it is pink (which I had last year) and this year I have purple ones.

My 100-pound rose is blooming:

Once this is done blooming, I will dig it up and find it a home in the new garden.

Scentimental:

More delphiniums. I had no idea these were rebloomers!

These make me happy!

Annual salvia:

Purple liriope:

Black-eyed Susan going strong:

Also some Gaillarda:

There is one more day of hot and humid weather with storms on Saturday and then we will have beautiful weather! That means Saturday will be spent rehabbing (like we would be doing anything else HA!) We have an open house scheduled on Sunday for our current house, so hopefully people will show up. It’s a sloooow time of year to sell with school starting this week.

What’s Blooming – Radiance Manor edition!

I thought I would show a little of the yard at Radiance Manor. A prequel of sorts of the gardens that will come later.

I just finished mowing prior to taking these. Here is looking out the back door:

It is amazingly green around here for the end of August, can you believe it? I bet that means we will have spectacular fall color! Anyway – I brought over my friend the bowling ball as the first garden decoration 😀

This whole house has been neglected for years and the yard and garden beds were no exception. Much is overgrown. Here is the entrance to the back yard. We need to fix the gate.

I am not a fan of hostas, so I won’t be keeping these most likely. I have a friend who wants them, so hopefully they will get a new home. I might keep one and move it, but I have other ideas for this space.

This is what I call the shade bed:

What a mess! Lots of maples growing in there and some grape vines, I think. I see a lot of these, which I think are columbine? Or a weed LOL

There is Virginia creeper in there, too – that is lovely for fall color.

This part of the yard is also shady:

Those cedar will be coming out as they are way overgrown. I have lots of ideas for a shade garden in this space. You can see the outline of the old beds. If we take out these cedars, that is likely where a garden shed will go.

Then there is a large corner that gets the most sun. I guess this is the sun bed, then LOL!

I honestly don’t even know where to start here. I haven’t done much except poke around. There are these enormous weeds – these are at least 8 feet tall:

At first I panicked because I thought they were giant hogweed (which will give you severe burns if you touch it), but it isn’t. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not hogweed, thank goodness. If you want to see something scary, google hogweed burns.

There is some goldenrod:

With a ladybug! Yay! (Achoo).

There are some daylilies in this bed and tons of lily of the valley along the side of the house, too. The nicest plant right now is this hydrangea:

Aren’t those blooms gorgeous? You can see where it is in the very first picture. I have never had a hydrangea live for me. I tried growing them when we lived in Illinois and they kept dying. I don’t always have a green thumb. Hope I have better luck with this one!

It’s going to take years to get these up to snuff and I have to sort out a lot of ideas. I am getting a better idea of where the sun hits as we spend time working on the house. I can’t wait to actually get out there and start doing stuff. We just have been doing the lawn for now since the inside is the priority. The only thing I really need to do is make some spots for the plants I want to take with me. I will probably just have to dig them a spot and then move them again next year.

What’s Blooming!

Yay – a blooming post!! I haven’t been out in the garden as much this week with all the new house stuff. I need to do a what’s blooming post at the new place, but I have to admit that I have not really explored a whole lot in the back yard in depth. There isn’t much in bloom there, but there are some keeper plants. However, this is my current flower bed:

The sedum are starting to color up a little more.

I have had a large swallowtail visiting the butterfly bush this week.

That’s the neighborhood waste management flower in bloom in the background, too 😀

The birds at my feeder throw seed everywhere. They are messy buggers. A surprise sunflower popped up by the butterfly bush several feet away.

Surprise flowers are fun! I also have more blooms on the delphiniums this week:

I know someone who is going to have a lot of these in her new gardens 😀

My rose bushes are going through a small flush of blooms now:

You can tell the end of summer is approaching because now my lirope are blooming:

As busy as I am right now, I still take the time to smell the roses! My stress relief.

What’s Blooming!

Well, things certainly turned on a dime this week. I can’t believe how much we have to do now. The great thing is that it is on *my* schedule. No waiting for other people to move their asses.

Lots of blooms, so let’s get a little closer! The butterfly bush has lots of blooms now, even though the bush is a little misshapen.

There have been some monarchs and the little sphinx moth is back! I need to try to get a picture of him/her.

My burning bush is showing a blush of color – what is up with that??? It’s not even close to fall.

I have lots of volunteer coneflowers this year. Here is one that popped up near my delphinium:

This one is at the base of the butterfly bush:

And there are some volunteer black-eyed Susans along with more volunteer coneflowers in by my Tiki Torch:

Closeup:

What is not blooming? Pixie’s catnip.

The kitty that used to eat her catnip was hit by a car earlier this year and no kitty had been bothering this since then until the other day. I came out and found her catnip decimated. I have it sitting on top of the Saturn and hopefully the kitty won’t bother it up there so it has a chance to try to come back to life.

Campanula:

More globe thistles:

The rose bushes are gearing up for another flush – Yay!!

And finish out with some closeup of geraniums:

The weather should be great this weekend. There is a lot to do. I want a long ride since the new house will be eating up a lot of time, but we also have to get the current house decluttered and ready for showing! Eeek!

What’s Blooming!

It’s been good weather this summer for the garden. It’s deserved after such a horrible winter. We have had a lot of rain, but it has come in chunks and not periods of days where it rains and is gloomy. I have had to hand water the garden once or twice this whole summer, other than the potted plants, which obviously dry out faster.

Here is one of the potted plants. This is the firecracker:

It’s a cute plant, for sure! I think some people call it a cigar plant, but I hate smoking, so firecracker it is! 😀

A new flower has opened up this week:

My globe thistle! These did not bloom last year and I had only seedlings, which I let grow and now I have blooms again. This has always been a tricky plant for me and I don’t know why. I have a few seedlings that I will try to take to the new house and see what happens with them.

Garden art:

Kitty is getting a bit faded now.

My butterfly weed is doing pretty well:

I planted some annual salvia to the right of this to make up for the hot papaya coneflower which is still weirdly small.

Something I find interesting this year is that normally I get a bajillion aphids on the butterfly weed and not a one so far. Seems that the red lily beetles are the pest du jour instead.

Speaking of lilies!

I will never get tired of these!!

As we get into August, the fall blooming flowers are starting to set themselves up. Here is my autumn joy sedum:

That’s going to be pretty showy this year. See the campanla in the foreground? Still blooming! It got knocked over with heavy rain earlier this summer and I have just been trimming it down as the blooms die in the hopes that it will become upright again, and it might actually be working.

Tiki torch:

The sundrops are throwing out a couple blooms, too. That’s a surprise.

Remember that huge butterfly bush bloom from last week? Still going!

Here is some white alyssum with the coleus up close from the shade garden tippy pots:

I am picturing that cranberry color in our dining room.

I was trying to do some August goals for today’s post, but my brain is pretty fried from this week. I have some in mind, but I need to sit down and think about them. Not sure how much biking will be done this weekend as the weather is iffy. John will be away tomorrow and that means he cannot put the kibosh on me buying stuff LOL! Maybe I will find a trunk or another piece of furniture to do 😀

What’s Blooming!

Blooms and blooms and blooms! I woke up today to a temperature in the upper 50s, can you believe that? In July! That is not so unusual for later in August, but wow. It felt so refreshing!

Let’s start with a shot of the whole shebang. The lawn is neatly mowed and edged here.

The grass is nice and green. Too bad it is mostly clover and crabgrass LOL, but it looks green, so I don’t care. John also did a lot of touch-up paint this spring, so thank you John!!

The last of the old-fashioned daylilies this year.

The orientpet is also just about done.

I have a terrible case of red lily beetles this year, although it is not just me. This area is being hit hard by them. One of the garden club members said the beetles stripped her lilies to the stems with just a blossom on the top! Guess I am lucky they just are chewing them. I don’t spray, so this is the result.

Tiger lily heirloom:

I love these so much. I feel like you could put one of these on a present as a bow!

Those little black balls on the stem are part of the plant. I don’t know what purpose they serve, but they were there last year and this year and are attached to the plant.

These are quite tall, too>

My butterfly bush has a bloom on it now. This is very stunted this year, probably 3.5 feet tall instead of the usual 5+. The bloom is huge, though! I have never seen one this long.

Maybe some butterflies will come now. There haven’t been many this year. 🙁

My sweet potato vine took over the pot this year.

It’s only July and I wonder how long that will get LOL! Gonna strangle the mail carrier.

Surprise black-eyed Susan in the armeria.

Those blue dots are petals that fell from the delphinium, FYI.

Razzmatazz. This plant is coming with to the new house. I don’t care if I have to dig it up in the dead of winter LOL!

I just can’t express how happy this garden makes me. Even when parts of it frustrate me, I love the challenge and I also love how stuff pops up where it feels comfortable. Like this snapdragon:

I haven’t actually planted snapdragons in years. They are all volunteers. All I do is deadhead and let the seeds go where they will. I never know where they are going to pop up.

My first experience with a spike plant has been a success. This is a traditional pairing, but I have never done it before.

Have a great weekend everybody!

What’s Blooming!

What’s blooming? Lots of coneflowers! 😀 I took time last night and got in the garden. With the craziness of work, some things slipped down the list of being able to do and getting out in the garden was one of them, unfortunately. Last night I needed a good meditational period of weeding. Join me for a seat?

I finally found the name of this flower – Armeria. It’s an annual, but reseeds like crazy. Every year for the last 3 years I have been getting these popping up wherever.