In our garden high summer comes in a very literal way, with the first blooms of some very tall plants. My favorite among these are the Cup Plants (Silphium perfoliatum), which grows eight to ten feet tall. Their height gives Cup Plant a certain majesty combined with a gangly, awkward beauty. They are the Abraham …
Finally! Our wet, cooler weather has delayed some of the excitement of summer in the garden, but as of today things are moving along. Just yesterday the ‘Eye-yi-yi’ Daylilies (Hemorocallis) in the Driveway Border started bursting into bloom. Here they are with Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa). Too much orange? Have I mentioned I really like orange …
Tomorrow is Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day, when bloggers around the world share pictures of the flowers in their gardens. In our garden things are a bit on the quiet side. The excitement of the spring blooms has passed, and the hot yellows and oranges of summer are yet to be. But there are still flowers to …
Until I got home on Monday, peonies had been growing on me. Not literally, but over the last couple of years my enthusiasm for peonies had been slowly increasing. , Initially, that level of enthusiasm was quite low. In fact, it was only the steady barrage of wistful sighs from Judy that persuaded me to …
On Sunday night I got back from a business trip that lasted seven whole days, meaning seven days away from the garden. And not just any seven days, but the seven days of that crucial last week of May when so much happens so fast. There is only one way to recover from a case …
Actually, this is a short post with two goals. The first is to show how good Nepeta x faassenii ‘Kit Cat’ looks when it blooms along the edge of my Driveway Border. The second is to say farewell to the tulip season. I love ‘Kit Cat’s’ mass of small blue flowers. And it looks pretty …
Happy Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day! For those of you who don’t know, GBBD occurs on the 15th of every month, giving garden bloggers everywhere an opportunity to show off their best blooms of the moment. It is hosted by Carol of May Dreams Gardens. The timing of May’s GBBD is very fortuitous as it occurs …
All my beds and borders have names, though most are rather pedestrian. There’s the Sidewalk Border, the Driveway Border, the Patio Border, etc. The most evocative name I’ve come up with is the Left Bank Border, for the area north of the ‘Donald Wyman’ crabapple on the far side of the driveway. Now I have …
When I speak of the springtime blues, I do not refer to a feeling of melancholy. Rather I mean the blue flowers that bloom in early to mid-spring. I am always cheered by these, as blue is one of my favorite flower colors. Perhaps the Queen of the blue flowers in this season are the …
Of course you also need rain, but it’s the fresh green leaves of April that herald the flowers of May. For some this tender new foliage is barely noticeable, certainly unremarkable. However, to me their appearance is a moment of cheerful drama. For example, the blue-green leaves of Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) which are among …
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