Big Empty Bed

Humid, summery, gray and foggy most of the mornings lately.

We just got back from a wonderful weekend in Denver with Greg --- what a great time!

I started planting the area that the Manns created along the edge of the driveway.  It's a big strip bed and the pots show where the transplanted 'Tardiva' hydrangeas will go.

I dug up and moved two of the larger rhus aromatica plants (Low Gro sumacs).  One looks good, the other is clearly distressed, very brown and wilting!  Yikes.  I do have more small rhus plants on order.

this one transplanted okay

this one looks crispy and wilted

I planted the rooted stem that Cyndy from Gardening Asylum gave me.  She dug it out of her garden before she moved, stuck it in some gravel, and it took!  This will be a doublefile viburnum, V. plicatum tomentosum 'Mariesii'.

Still going strong in the very end of September: the plumbago towers. Wow.

Also very nice at this time of year: the hydrangea blooms.

And the grasses --- this is miscanthus 'Zebrina by the garage door.

New Garden

Very cool, it has been in the 40s overnight for several days and in the low 60s in the daytime.

Yesterday I went with Pam to Julie Kamis's house off Dug Road in S. Glastonbury, and had a wonderful tour of her 10 acre farm and house, as well as the neighbor's garden.  What a place!  No pictures, it felt awkward to be fussing with the camera while the conversation was going on.  Her house (a Colonial reproduction) is straight out of Deerfield in every detail.  Exquisite.  The barns too  --- a dog kennel (clean as a tabletop), a 6 stall English horse barn, paddocks, it was all beautifully laid out and immaculately kept.  What a place.

And she took us to the neighbor's gorgeous garden, built in the woods in Japanese style with a rustic teahouse and a burbling stream and pond.  A ravine in the woods themselves, lit by dappled sunlight, was so beautiful.

Money.  Lots of it.  It can create a wonderland.  But Julie is so unaffected and engaging, and she has such a passion for her home, her dogs and horse, it was all so appealing even if way out of my financial range.  Wish I had taken pictures.

Sharon and David Mann came Friday and again yesterday to cut the new expanded gardens.  Sod cutters --- what a time saver!

Before . . . .

. . . . .cutting the new shape

Before . . . .

. . . . . not entirely happy with the shallow layout, but they work

Now to plant up the new spaces and get it all finished!

Clean Up & Fall Planting

Humid and unsettled today.  In the low 80s.

I cleaned up all the raggy geraniums along the walk, and spent a lot of time tidying up all the daylilies.  Pruned back the mums which are getting very full and overtaking the nearby plants like the St. Johnswort and New Jersey Tea plants.

I trimmed the hydrangea next to the walk so that the fothergilla below gets some light, and the tirmmings made a nice bouquet.

I planted several more cardinal flowers in Meadow's Edge.  These are 'Fan Scarlet' or 'Dark Scarlet' I think.

I planted the Bluebird clematis in front of the garage.  I will need to do something about securing the little trellis.

If it does well it will overgrow this small structure.  I'll need to figure how to attach wires for it to scramble along past the trellis.

I love how the Hakonechloa Beni Kaze looks in pots on the front steps.  These are really looking nice this year.

Early Fall

Meadow's Edge

Birch Garden

Foggy morning

Unbelievable

It's been raining for three days, heavily.  It started Tuesday with 1.75 inches and when it wasn't raining hard it was drizzling all day.  Last night it poured, and added another 4.6 inches overnight!  That's almost 6 1/2 inches now.

It's still raining this morning.

Further north and to the west they have gotten 9 to 12 inches from this storm, on top of the flooding from storm Irene 10 days ago.  Vermont and upstate NY are in terrible shape.

Meanwhile Texas burns with its worst drought on record and wildfires.

Ready to Plant at Pam's

Warm and humid today, in the low 80s.  Sun in the morning, but high overcast in the afternoon.

I have all the plants ready to take over to Pam's to plant up her patio area.

 

I dug up yellowroot and potted them in the containers sitting on the wall.  I also dug up two 'Bridal Veil' astilbes, and two bergenias.  She has hostas and heucheras that can be retained.

I bought a chamaecyparis 'Drath', a "Green Mountain' boxwod in a nice pyramid shape, and two golden Hakonechloas.  For flowers, I bought a fall anemone 'September Charm' and a clematis 'Jackmanii superba'.  The clematis is said to do well in partial shade, which will be the case on her wood fence.  It should flower profusely all summer. (I also got a bubbler urn fountain for under the deck!)

After Labor Day I'll go over to plant.

Today I pruned the katsura tree to remove the one remaining upright side stem that the deer left.  It just looked awkward.  The tree is now much smaller and will have a single stem, but it looks ok.

The turtle head is blooming, but so hard to see at the back of Meadow's Edge.  It's not tall enough, and the flowers are subtle.

 

The Lespedeza, Bush clover, is blooming.  The effect is very subtle and washed out from afar, but the tiny blooms are pretty very close up.

The deer have eaten all the blooms off the mountain hydrangea by the driveway.  Only a few remain at the bottom, and the buds are the most incredible mix of colors.

Marigold Madness

Yes, you can overfeed your marigolds.  Yikes.

The plumbago towers are looking better and better as the season goes on.  I want to dig them up and winter them over in the garage.

And the caryopteris is so pretty in bloom now.

Aftermath

Gorgeous, sunny, cool day.  The storm roared through, dumped 5 inches of rain on top of the steady inches of accumulation from days before, then departed.  Sunshine and clear skies today.  The ground is awfully squishy.

The wind was not so bad.  Irene was a tropical storm when she arrived here.  There is flooding and power outages and trees down all over the state, but we never lost power, and had little wind damage.  

A silver maple on the hill broke apart, but that was it.  Zinnias flopped over.  The flowering tobacco couldn't be propped back up, so they had to come out.

Today the deck furniture is back in place, a few of the toppled annuals are staked, and all is as if the storm never came through.

Ready . .

We brought in all the containers and any loose things like plastic pots in preparation for the tropical storm headed directly at us.  It is a Category 1 hurricane in North Carolina and will reach us as a windy wet tropical storm, but not a hurricane.

But it is very big and it is very slow and the track consistently shows it coming smack over northwest Connecticut.  We turned the deck chairs upside down, brought in the umbrella, and put the glass panel back in the porch door.

This will be a flooding event, and to be safe, after Katrina, NYC has shut the subways, and airports from DC to Boston are closing (Becky has to get out of Dulles today to get to Zurich, and I am sure her flight is canceled.)  New York has mandatory evacuations for areas near docks at riverside.

But boarding up the windows?  C'mon, that is excessive.  The realty company is spending all morning today putting plywood over the windows on the empty house next door.  A year on the market, uninhabited.  There were interested buyers before I left for Santa Fe, but I don't know if they made an offer.  This looks like the company has given up and declared it abandoned.

I really hope they will come back after the storm and take down the plywood.

We are ready.  There is kind of an excitement, waiting for the winds to pick up and the rain to start.  It is gray and overcast this morning.  It should come over us tonight and tomorrow.  A big slow mover.

It reminds me of waiting for a blizzard, watching out the window to see the snowflakes start!

Back From New Mexico

Returned from a week in Santa Fe and everything looks great.  We got rain while I was gone, then another half inch yesterday and overnight.  A massive hurricane is bearing down on us for Sunday.

The butterfly weed has rebloomed and is gorgeous orange.  I love how the Karl Foerster grasses weave among the plants in Meadow's Edge.  They are still wispy, but will get bigger next year.

The caryopteris is blooming in jewel tones of amethyst.

Hydrangeas are blooming.  Look how defoliated and awful the birches look in the distance in this picture.  Bleeeah.

The lespedeza is starting to get its "wild" look, and little tiny buds are lining all the branches.