Garden Djinn

Fascinating Blurs

Still trying to get a good shot of this little beauty.

Visiting a flower.
{Ed: The flower is an ipomopsis. I purchased the seed from Burpee. It is an annual that will reseed in zone 5.}

At the feeder.

Flying over to investigate the human making the funny whirring noise.

Details, Take II

Sometimes you need to put your nose down and just look at stuff. I love the fairy-book illustration quality of this lichen, it's little red caps looking quite dapper. I was looking for spiders this day, for a post I have yet to write. (Haven't got that quintessential spider photo yet, but I'll keep working at it.)

The miniature landscape can be every bit as sweeping and breathtaking as the larger view. It just takes a bit of focus to aprehend the majesty of it, that's all.

I Love Blue

I've tried many times to get delphiniums to grow in my garden. Note I say grow, not thrive, not flourish. Just grow. And many times I have failed. This year, perhaps because they are in a large pot on the patio, they have managed to survive until August, a feat unheard of. And not only that, but they are blooming.

I love the startling, eye-binding blue of the Belladona Delph. These are not the stiff, formal flounces of the delphs that are commonly seen. These are looser girls, not afraid to hike their skirts and show a bit of leg. Love that blue.

Summer Night

The glooming deepens slowly during these waning summer nights. They day was hot and humid, bringing haze and rain, and in twilight the haze persists.

Across the street, the populars whisper and their leaves dance in a high breeze that I can't feel at ground level. The patterns of the twisting leaves is mesmerizing and I watch it a long while, wondering if my camera could capture the fragile sillouette of tree against indigo sky.

Blue TVs flicker like fireflies in my neighbor's homes. Out here, the fireflies are brighter, casting their brief yellow messages as they fly, tail heavy, seeking females. There are fewer of them now than a month ago. Summer is brief.

I sit on the sturdy frame of a raised bed, a dark lamppost rising behind me. I don't like the human need to destroy the darkness of night with false suns, and our lamp is instead shelter to an amazingly large hornet colony. I leave them be.

The mosquitoes begin to find me. The dog barks on his tie out behind me. The fat man on his bike rides into the driveway across the street. (He's rude and swears at the teenagers. I don't like him. He really isn't the fat man anymore, when we first started seeing him he was huge. He's half that now. Still not slim. But much healthier.) I hush the dog, not quite ready to retreat yet.

A single bat flits past overhead, and the evening is at an end; it is officially night. I want to watch for more, but the mosquitoes gather in numbers, and the dog is looking toward the house expectantly.

The day is done.

How Not to Use a Tool

If the tool in question is a D-handled fork, and you are me, don't use it to pry the Stella D'oro daylilies out of the front border. (Most especially if the tool in question came from a discounter and is not put together in such a way that the handle is replaceable...) The tool will break. Clean. At the point where the (terribly porous wood, now that I can look at it's composition) handle feeds into the head.

So. Now I have a fork on my wishlist. From Lee Valley, this time. And I might spend twice as much on it, but it will be guaranteed for ten years.

Honestly though, I was using it to dig up the entire lily clump from a raised bed. (There are four distinct clumps in the photo above. Really.) I wasn't trying to divide the rootmass as I lifted it. I was just working to get the clump out of the ground, and I am not sure I was abusing the tool. I just have to stop buying cheap.

Which means I am without a fork until next year sometime. I did without one for years in the past, I can do it again. Sigh.

I did get 17 new plants from two of those clumps. Those are potted up and in the 'nursery' to be given to friends for their new homes. One of the remaining clumps never came out of the ground and the other was divided in two and repositioned further away from the skirt of the Alberta Spruce - which had begun to resent being crowded. I am contemplating trying cheddar pinks - I've seen a variety in a lovely salmon color - in the place where the lilies were.

Details

We rarely leave time, in our busy days, to sit and notice the small things. I find that being in the garden, watering, weeding, planning... puts me in a state of mind that allows me to enjoy the details.

How often do we sit and observe the delicate tracery of Queen Anne's Lace?

Or study the parts of the flowers that are blooming to notice that some are not the same as the others?

One of these platycodon has the pistal fully open in a lovely star shape, while in the other it has not yet opened. The plant must use this delay to maximize cross-pollination, because the balloon flower remains fresh for several days before it fades.

Do we even notice the wildlife that we disturb as we go about our business? This dragonfly posed for the camera for several minutes, then followed me across the yard to watch me deadhead the shasta daisies. I was the afternoon entertainment, in its eyes...

And I can't help but be amused that the inchworms love my coreopsis, this was the second of them I have found. I 've been letting them be, as I can't find a reference to these little red caterpillers that would indicate I should eradicate them. I've found that a lot of the 'inchworms' attack trees and can be quite a threat. This little guy is just sweetly amusing. He can eat my coreopsis. He makes a great picture.

A Walk in Another Garden

Today Mark and I ran some errands, and as we did I noted that the perennial grower near us was having an open house, concurrent to a larger pond tour. I don't have time or energy to do the pond tour today, so it goes on the list of 'things to do next year.'

But we stopped on the way back home, talked with the growers, and spent an enjoyable hour or so wandering through the hoop houses and talking plants and gardening.

Mark, when I met him, hated getting his hands dirty and equated gardening with dirt only. I never actively set out to convert him, but it's hard to get a gardener to not talk about the garden. Over time, he became interested in the plants, their habits, and their flowers.

When we moved to the giant corner lot, he became even more interested. More garden. Less grass. Happy Mark. We have plans and are slowly converting a large swath of land into a meandering shrub and perennial bed. He even worked a year at the local nursery, giving us fantastic bargains on the year-end sale shrubs.

The grower is only about a mile from our house, but they had critters I've never seen in my garden. Hummingbird moths are fascinating things... they hover and sip just like a hummingbird, but they let you observe them much more closely. And I, alas, without my camera.

We also saw many of the lovely red velvety dragonflies I enjoy so much. Their garden is immediately adjacent to a wetland and the dragon and damselflies were in abundance.

And he let me buy a treat. I am somewhat partial to ferns and woodland plants, and am collecting plants to put under the pergola - which, when the vines are mature, should act as a shade tree. You can see two of the japanese painted ferns in my photo up there on the right. Today I picked up an Athyrium X 'Ghost' to plant behind the two painted ferns, thereby creating the garden design mantra of 'threes.' I'll have to be careful to give it plenty of room, the catalog says it gets 24-36 inches.

It will make me very happy. I love that color of soft celedon. It is one of my favorites, both in the garden and out.

Are They The Same?

Ladybells (Adenophora)

Campanula rapunculoides

They sure look like it. My 'ladybells' also mature to a dark colored stalk, and the seedcases very much resemble those of other campanulas I have in the garden (Blue Clips, Peachleaved, and others...)

I guess I will have to keep a close eye on their spreading habits!

{Update August 9: Still confused. Stopped by a local growers that was having an open house today, and they had Adenophora confusa that looks just like mine. So I don't know what to think at this point. I think it is a well-named plant.}