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It’s now actually starting to seem a little more like fall and less like summer.  Still plenty of bloom time left, though. Fall always seems like black-eyed Susan time to me.  Maybe because they bloom for so long and are still around after other stuff starts to fade.  This is called Tiger’s Eye.

 

 

 

There are all these fancy names for the varieties and they mostly look the same to me.  🙂

Couple of macro shots.  This is a dahlia.

 

Fairy impatien:

I dug up all the hostas on the side of the house.  I kept 2, which I put in the shade bed.  That uncovered this yard ornament that I kind of forgot about:

The next pictures are all with the 70×300 zoom lens. This is playing with the focal point. I took a few shots focusing on the front or rear flower.

 

I have been using a small f-stop, which makes the background blurry, which I think is pretty cool.

My delphiniums are blooming again.  They are much shorter with this flush of blooms:

One of my coral bells:

I do leave those plant ID markers in the ground with all my plants. That way come spring after the snow has  melted and the ground is totally dead, I know where stuff is supposed to come up.

Now for some fauna.  John and I were having lunch outside and it was a complete menagerie in the back yard.

Nuthatch:

Nuthatches are such funny birds.  This is a typical pose for them with the neck at an L angle. It looks so uncomfortable!

Male cardinal.

 

And I finally got some shots of the hummingbird.  This is a tricky little bugger!

 

I will work on some overview shots this week of the garden instead of the closeups.  

I have some fall plants arriving this weekend!  Gotta do some planting.  Looks like Saturday morning/early afternoon for riding will be the only good weather.  Not sure where we are going yet, probably back down to Saratoga.  On a good note, the alligator trunk will be going to its new home this weekend!

I have been making progress on the shade bed.  It’s actually all along the fence on one side, but I am only concentrating on this one area of it right now.   I have been clearing and planting as I go.  I tackled the hardest part last weekend.  This area was full of ground cover when we moved in.  I cut all that growth down in the spring and I have now been ripping up all the root systems that were matted in.

It’s been a lot of work to get to this point.  The roots were matted terribly:

 

This stuff was all throughout the bed.

This was the bed originally:

Tick country and so.much.work.   It’s all pretty much ready for planting now. I am not sure how much I will be planting this fall other than a few plants and a ton of bulbs.  I do have some Solomon seal for the shade bed coming, though.

But who am I kidding?  I will be on the lookout for plants all fall!  I did put in my baby Heuchera!

The big ash tree is dropping so many leaves already.  It makes quite a mess, I have to say.  Anyway, I love the foliage colors on these.  I think this is going to be my new favorite shade plant!

My new camera arrived today, so here is me goofing around with it a little bit.

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I need to work on the bird pictures.  They move too quick! This is either a downy or hairy woodpecker.

 

Female or juvenile cardinal.

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The shy bowling ball shocked at being caught on camera:

 

I have so much to learn about this camera.  It’s pretty complex.  Or, I guess it is really easy to use for a novice, but the opportunity is there to take control over all the functions and take even better pictures.  Good thing that you don’t have to pay for film developing anymore!  It would cost a fortune with the amount of pictures I take – and will be taking 😀

More fall plants arrived for planting now.  I bought some from a wholesaler, so they are tiny baby plants.  These are heuchera (and one heucherella).

That’s 4 plants in this bowl (getting a drink) 😀   I got them from Hostas Direct.  The heuchera are Peppermint Spice, Plum Sugar and Spellbound.  The heucherella is Sweet Tea.  I guess I went with the food sounding ones! The website says with plants this small, they go through 3 stages. The first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap.  It’s hard to be patient, but I was able to get 4 plants at a good price.  I am kind of loving the heucheras for the shade garden.

Front bed is waning a bit.  I started removing some of the cosmos and cleome that were getting dried out.  I told John I wanted to go all out with fall decorating this year.  We will see if that actually happens 😉 .  My foxglove is blooming again:

 

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I have been letting this go to seed and I am going to steal some to put along the back fence and see if they come up next year.

Firecracker sedum:

 

I really do like this color.  I have 2 plants now because I broke a big chunk off of this plant on accident. I stuck it in water and it rooted and then I put it in the ground.  Sedums are kind of hard to kill, so I wasn’t surprised this worked. This was  a free plant, too.  It’s the plant that keeps on giving!

Agastache love:

 

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I was saying to John that the garden beds are like a baby this year. Next year it will be a toddler and then the year after that it will be mature.  I will be making another baby bed next year, too 😀

More globe thistle blooms:

 

The hummingbirds like these.  

I planted a tiny Russian sage earlier this year.  It’s in sleeping stage 😀

 

I really planted this too close to another plant, but I won’t worry about that this year.

This is Autumn Joy Sedum:

 

It hasn’t really even started to change color yet.  I got the original of this plant from one of my flip houses. Then I planted it at our old house, divided it  a few years later and gave some to my mom. Then I took a chunk with me to this house.  So – that one plant is now in 4 different places.  You can mess with sedum quite a bit.

 

My chair in the back:

 

Spike plants are always really cheap and they certainly add drama to pots.  Petunias are not my favorite flower, but they do bloom endlessly with very little care.

 

This weekend I will be splitting some irises. If anyone wants any rhizomes, shoot me an email (javaqueen01@yahoo.com) and I will try to send some.  And lots of work to do on the shade bed.  Not to mention a bike ride. We are going for the cupcake ride again after being thwarted last week!

As I said yesterday, it’s been a little hot to work in the garden much except at the bookends of the day.  I did see a sign at one of the nurseries by our house that had 50% off perennials!  So, you know I had to check it out.

They had a clearance on annuals and for some reason they had perennial agastache in annual pots for $2.  I am currently in love with that flower, so I picked up one of them.  And I got this Salvia to stick in the back for the hummers.

I also got a columbine and a heuchera for the shade garden.  

I also figured I would try the shasta daisy.  For whatever reason, that is a flower that I like, but it doesn’t like me.  However, this one was only $3 so I figured I would try again:

 

I really need to concentrate on shade plants now.  I have a giant flower bed to fill up!

The irises that I planted just a week ago actually are taking hold – all 3 of them. I was surprised at the early growth:

 

That bodes well for them getting nicely established before winter.  Yay!  I can’t believe I am already excited about next year’s flowers.  😳

The cardinal flower:

 

It’s such a beautiful color.  They talk about this as a hummingbird magnet and it’s true!  There were 2 of them on it today.  I have a couple other small cardinal flowers that didn’t bloom this year, so I will be set next year!

I seem to do really well with nurturing plants back from the dead or just regular plants, but I struggle with plants from seed. I planted some marigold and teddy bear sunflowers back in spring and they are so small still:

 

Maybe by Thanksgiving they will be blooming.  🙄 

I cut my delphinium down after they were done blooming and now new growth and blooms are appearing:

 

Enchanted Evening:

 

For a first year bare root rose, there have been a lot of blooms. 

Last gasp of the lily:

I am going to go back and look for more of these, which should be on clearance because they will be past bloom.  I wish I could just drop a bunch of money and buy whatever I want, but with so much space to fill, I have to get the biggest bang for my buck, even though it means patience for the first couple of years.

The hydrangea has the craziest huge blooms on it.  Check this out. My hand holding the bloom is splayed out and you can’t see it.

 

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I harvested some blooms for inside. I usually don’t bring in too many flowers from the garden because I like to leave them out there to last longer, but I will be pruning this anyway in the fall.  Of course, as soon as I brought in the bouquet and set it on the table, Pixie started chomping on it, so I have to put it out of reach.  This is why I can’t have nice things.

The rain came through last night and the weather will be just about perfect for a ride tomorrow. High of 80 and sunny.  Yay!  I sense a cupcake coming on 😀

It’s Friday!  So glad.  In trying to get this account caught up current, we are each assigned to one person’s dictations.  I have been listening to the same woman all week.  I think that is the defnition of insanity right there.  Whew.  At least she is now only 10 days behind instead of a month – so there is some progress.

Anyway, the garden is a little quiet now.  It’s time to start putting in the perennials for next year!  I planted those iris rhizomes from last week.  I also periodically check the nurseries to see what is on sale and I did find a few.  I am really, really trying to just buy for the shade garden, but when I saw these beautiful lilies, I couldn’t resist.

 

I love the turks cap lilies!

 

The David Austin rose is full of blooms now:

 

The bush itself doesn’t seem that much taller, but it has spread some since I put it in. I hope it grows upward like it is supposed to. I really don’t like to move roses as the roots go so deep.  

There is also another flush of blooms on the Belinda’s dream in the back:

 

This really could use more sun, but I won’t move it unless it doesn’t bloom next year.  Hopefully the squirrels will leave this bush alone now.

Butterfly bush:

 

There was a hummingbird and a sphinx moth on this plant earlier in the week.  The hummer was all over the garden, so in time I think I will have a lot more as the garden becomes more mature.

To help, I got a new plant.  This is a cardinal flower:

 

Do you like my crabgrass and plantain lawn?  One nice thing is that it stays green in August, unlike the grass.  Also, it grows by spreading and not upwards, so we don’t have to mow much.  Yay for weed lawns! LOL

The BES:

 

You can see how the eating damage stopped after I removed some bugs. All the new flowers are untouched.

The hostas are just about done blooming, but they were pretty.

 

I took this shot from the dining room early this morning. You can see how the hydrangea has grown funny and needs that pruning.

 

It is a paniculata type, so it can be pruned in the fall or spring.  I will prune it this fall.  If you have a hydrangea and don’t know what kind it is, this site is very helpful to identify it and when to prune it.  I am going to take a cutting from this one and see if I can propagate it in case the pruning goes wrong 😀

I am on the look out for some shade plants, so keeping an eye on the nurseries. I want Heucheras and solomon seal for sure, and possibly black snakeroot – hoping for good prices 😀

 

Love my flower chair!

It’s going to be a warm weekend.  We have a hike planned for Sunday morning with my sister and niece.  We are going early to avoid the heat, but hopefully the views will be worth it!

The August garden. Some flowers are sleeping, some are done and some are just coming out.

The cleome are starting to fade now. And check out that coneflower!  <3

I found a suprise popup sunflower. Not sure where this came from – probably a bird dropping seed.

Now that summer flowers are starting to fade, guess what is showing up at the greenhouse? Mums!

I love the mums, but it is a little bittersweet because it means summer is going to come to a close.

I am still loving the agastache!

 

Stone digging is progressing and we have quite a large pile now – and nowhere near finished!

It’s fun to think of the possibilities with these. I will probably end up with a pile twice this size. Maybe I can just build my own castle!   That would be sweet.

Here is my hydrangea:

You can kind of see here the upper part on its own branch and the lower part. After blooming, we will cut off the upper part since it is pushing on the fence.

John cut down the rest of the last stump in the big garden bed (we couldn’t dig it all up since it was too deep and thick). That meant I could lay the rest of the slate path through the bed:

I have been planning out what I want to put in this section. So many choices! It’s partial shade because of the fence to the left of the path and more sunny to the right.

Globe thistles are just starting. I have 3 purchased ones that aren’t quite blooming and this is a transplant from my old garden:

My coneflowers are doing much better after picking off some of those bugs.

My chair in the back:

I have to quit with this chair obsession I have.

I have 3 new flowers arriving this week – just got notice today. All my bulb ordering I did early in the spring will be arriving in stages. The iris rhizomes come now for planting. I am getting these 3 from American Meadows and hopefully they will look like this next year:

Batik:

Night Ruler:

This is the darkest of purples that looks almost black.

And Brindled Beauty:

I can’t believe I never used to grow irises because I  wanted long-blooming flowers all the time. I never knew what I was missing before I got those few a couple years ago.  It’s so exciting!  I might put one out front – or maybe 2 of them. Gotta prepare the spots for them this weekend.

We will be doing some good riding this weekend, probably to the lake for a change. The weather is supposed to be gorgeous!

What’s blooming today? Rocks!!  Any of you keeping track might remember the little wall we removed from the garden bed by the house a couple weeks ago. The bed was very sloping and I was moving dirt when I unearthed a ton of rocks:

I emailed Debby with a picture of my find right away since she has a current obsession with stones LOL! We knew the ones closer to the house were there, but not these into the bed. There is a mix of the big rocks, bricks, slate pieces (from the roof) and interesting mineral specimens.  I then went into the garden bed in the back and started digging by the fence. There are rocks all along the perimeter of the fence, although I wasn’t sure how many were in the garden bed. Turns out a lot!  These were somewhat deep  – and need to go if I am going to plant here.  This is pile 1.

This is from about a 10 foot section along the fence. I can’t imagine how many rocks there are. Enough to have some sort of rock garden or even making a stone path on the side of the house.  I will keep digging around back there and see what comes up.

Pile 2:

Some of them are large and heavy as well. Here is my foot for comparison.  

Functional fitness doing all this, I tell you. No need to lift weights when this stuff is on the schedule!

Then I used a wheeled cart to bring them from the bed to the patio so I can make a giant pile and ponder what to do with them 😀  Maybe I should make a big inukshuk or something.

Anyway, I think I found some of what has been eating my plants.

I have been checking in the morning and evening and got a Japanese beetle, an inch worm and some other bug that I found actually munching the coneflower petals, so I think that was the culprit. I squished it before thinking that I might want to identify what it was.  Duh. Now the flowers seem to be left alone and new growth isn’t showing damage, but I will keep an eye out.

Fairy impatiens:

 

My hydrangea didn’t die and is going to bloom. I have never been able to keep a hydrangea that I planted alive, so this one is good. Although, it was already here when we moved in, so that probably helped 😀

It needs a serious prune as the top half is flopping over the fence, so this fall we will take that part off.

This is the butterfly bush draped over the sweet potato vine pot.

 

The hostas out back are now blooming:

I may keep these after all, but just move them somewhere else.

My agastache out front are really taking off:

I really, really love these flowers. The bees love them, too.  They also love the cleome. Lots of bees in this front garden.

The cantaloupe supreme coneflower sent out a platoon of blooms. This picture really shows the evolution of how the blooms form over time.

As you can see, I also got another fun chair done. I have bought 4 chairs recently to the tune of $16. Three of them were $2 and one was $10.  Two of them were meant for the garden, and you saw the one I did for the back.  This one I got a couple weeks ago from Second Chance Barn. I used one of my sample pots of paint for it (this was a possible bedroom color at the time) and some polyurethane.  Then I stopped at the garden center and got a container refill.  I like those because they are less expensive since you aren’t buying the container, just the plants in a plastic pot. You just pop it into your own container and there you go!

Originally this was going to go in the shade garden, but I needed to move my tippy pots since this spot is too sunny for them. I didn’t really want to have to water those twice a day, so I moved them and put this in the spot.

 

And – my David Austin rose is blooming again.  Yay!

It also got munched on as well.  Jeez Louise. This will have a nice mid summer flush of blooms. In fact, two of my other roses have new growth and buds as well.

Have a great weekend!

 

This is the view from our dining room out the back:

The way the house is built, this room is actually on the ground floor from the front of the house, but it has a walkout basement, which was dug out making the back of the room look out a story up. The flower colors don’t really show up in this picture, but you can see them in the back bed from this window. Some day there will be a ton of blooms out there and maybe a garden bed smack in the middle of the lawn, too 😀

I am going a little crazy on the birdfeeders, I think. I have 2 squirrel proof feeders, which actually work pretty well. The squirrels now sit underneath and wait for birds to throw out seed.

Somebody has been nibbling at my coneflowers, too.  All of the petals are getting eaten off and leaving the middle. 

 

It’s either japanese beetles or inch worms from what I have read.  I haven’t seen anything on them. I hope they stop soon. I won’t spray, so I am going to have to bring out some soapy water or something.

Here is the white swan, which seems okay so far:

 

I bought a new plant. This is Baptisia, AKA false indigo.

 

This is another tall plant, 3-4 feet fully grown. I hope this will bloom later on.

The butterfly bush is still a little scrawny, but tall!  I have more blooms.

 

I even saw a hummingbird on it! It’s sparse feeding for butterflies and hummers in the garden now, but in the future I hope I will get a lot more.

I have a new black-eyed Susan called Maya:

 

The cool thing about this is that the brown middle will fill out into a yellow puff.  You can see it starting to happen on this flower:

And whatever the muncher is, it seems to be on these as well.  🙄 

This is my potted lemongrass.

 

I got this in the hopes of keeping mosquitoes away, but I don’t think it works very well. It smells great, though!  I love lemongrass.

On to the front.  This is the sunsparkler sedum. It is a ground cover sedum and is spreading.

 

I like the color of the leaves. I probably never would have bought one of these on my own, but it came as a bonus plant in an order and I do like it.

My other new specialty coneflower I planted in June is blooming now. This is the Cantaloupe Supreme and I just love it!

 

I got this one at a local nursery, but I will often buy my specialty coneflowers from Bluestone because they have so many different ones that I can’t find here. (Marmalade is on my wish list).

Here is a balloon flower bud just starting to burst open. This will be open all the way tomorrow.

 

Tall snaps:

 

I need to get cages because some of them are flopping over. Annuals always amaze me at how fast they grow in a season.  Not like perennials at all in that regard. 

Like the Cleome – these came in a tiny little 6-pack in May and now are about 3.5 feet tall.

 

Saturday will be a long ride day. It is supposed to be pretty nice, at least during the day.  I have a hankering for a cupcake, so I hope that is true 😀

Have a great weekend!

I has me some flowers! Last weekend one of the local garden centers had a tent clearance sale and I had to check it out, of course!  They had some great deals on plants and boy were people just piling plants into their pile as fast as they were bringing them out.  The sale was in the parking lot and people were just dragging pots over to their car and getting a receipt to take inside.  I did keep myself in check. People were grabbing willy nilly, but I wanted to make sure that I got plants I wanted and not just plants on sale LOL!  My load:

I got 6 plants for $38 including tax. Good deal. Those 5 feet tall delphiniums were only $5 each, marked down from $17! They each came with a cage, too, which is good since I would have had to buy them because they are so tall. Nothing like building a garden from gift cards, free and sale plants 😀

Here is the delphinium up close:

 

It is the faintest pink blush. Don’t they look like they would smell heavenly? They really have hardly smell at all, though.

I also got another agastache.  This is Tangerine Dream:

It’s in the front next to the Raspberry Daquiri.

I also got some balloon flowers (Platycodon). I have been wanting to get some, and interesting that they had dwarf ones on sale. I didn’t know they came in a dwarf variety and that meant I could get some to put in the front bed closer to the edge.

I love how the buds look like hot air balloons.

Then they pop open.

I also got a Astra pink:

In the back, we finally moved that old fencing and the posts to the curb hoping someone would take them away and by the end of the day, everything was gone – including the posts with cement on the bottom!

That meant I had to get to work clearing out the bed.  There was a broken window buried in there, so I will forever have to be careful in this bed. Here is the progress so far.

 

Hopefully this weekend we will tackle removing that little wall to the right there. It is slanted and really serves no purpose because you can’t sit on it.  I want to be able to walk directly into this bed from the patio and this is where we are going to put a water feature. I was the one that stuck those lilies in there 😀  I did find another flower under the window, though.

This is a gooseneck loosestrife. I have been letting things come up when I see them, and about 95% of the time I have been cultivating weeds, but this turned out to be a real flower 😀  These can be invasive, so I might pot them up and bury the pot so they don’t take over.  If anyone wants some, let me know!

My alliums are just about open:

 

I think these will multiply?

Finally, some blooms have appeared on Debby’s fairy impatiens!

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I have 3 of these underneath what I think is a viburnum, so they get dappled sunlight.

I will have open blooms soon of my new coneflower – this is the cantaloupe supreme and I love the color that is peeking out.

 

Landscaping is really hard work and a bit overwhelming, especially when you start from scratch, but the rewards are so worth it!

 

The planning is pretty fun, too.  I feel like a kid in a candy store at garden centers.  Good thing I have to stick to some sort of budget or I would be in a lot of trouble 😀

 

Hey – I’m back!  It’s been busy around here in the evenings and I just haven’t had time to compile a post.  I haven’t been in the garden as much as I would like, either. 

I am making plans for these bare areas. 😀

I tried a different sweet potato vine this year. I really  like the color, but it doesn’t seem to want to trail so much like others I have tried:

I have a new friend in the garden, too!  

 

 

I uncovered this toad when I was moving mulch. I had to move him since I need to move the pile. Not sure if he stuck around or not, but I hope so.

I am so in love with the cleome.

 

It’s an interesting flower. It always has the bloom at the top. It sort of grows out and up from the middle of the bloom, so it keeps getting taller with a fresh flower all the time at the top. Kind of like a fountain in really slow motion.

White snaps are now blooming:

 

This is my sun sparkler sedum that I got as a free plant with an order from Great Garden Plants. It’s growing bigger.

This is starting to get buds on it, too. I don’t know anything about this plant, actually. I do like the free, though!

On to the back.

This is my trunk plant:

🙂  I wheeled it out on a cart to sit in the sun. I sprayed the inside with vinegar to get rid of the musty smell. Now it smells like vinegar! It’s a cool trunk, I have to say. I might paint the inside instead of doing fabric. The wood on the bottom is stained, so I don’t want to just leave it.

Anyway, back to the flowers.  My razzmatazz coneflower is opening up.  It took a beating over the winter, so it looks a little ragged.

 

More daylilies – and a rose that needs deadheading:

 

We have had a lot of rain lately and I love how the lupine leaves collect it in the center of the leaves like a little diamond:

 

The milkshake coneflower is opening. It starts out looking like White Swan and then the ruffle will open over time.

 

The butterfly bush opened up a huge bloom:

 

It’s so fragrant, too. It smells like honey.  I have already seen a frittilary come visit it.

 

One last shot of a garden ornament that I stuck in with the hostas back in the spring:

 

It’s almost lost in a sea of leaves!

Hopefully this weekend I will spend some weeding quality time in the garden beds. One of the local nurseries is having a big clearance sale tomorrow and I might be salivating just a little bit 😀