Depradations

Overcast and humid, quite gloomy looking all day today, but cool, in the 70s.

I saw a large doe in the yard yesterday, right out in the open.  And of course when I checked today, the sunflowers were chomped.

I had taken the cages off a few days ago, as the stalks were overtopping them, and had gotten woody enough not to be so tasty, I thought.  Even though the flowers were above the cages, they had not been touched.  Since removal of the cages, all but two have flower heads and top leaves eaten.

They also got all the blooms on the phlox planted by the gravel garden.  I'm not crazy about phlox, but they were big and bushy and would have added some deep purple color there.

I sprayed everything today.  Eeew.  Stinky, and I don't even know if it really works.

Something is curling and twisting all the new growth on the black gum in front. I don't see aphids, but the new leaves are deformed and curled.  Same thing with the new growth on the buckeyes.

Gearing Up for Summer

We got a good soaking inch of rain three days ago, and now several days of beautiful sunny, dry weather.  Sunshine is predicted for the next week too.  Gorgeous early summer weather, although we'll want some rain by later in the week.

I love the way the new Forest Pansy redbud pops in the distance.

And the tiarellas just keep blooming!  It's been since mid May, weeks and weeks of foamy flowers.

The little dwarf goatsbeard, Aruncus aesthifolia, never did anything for years.  It bloomed in tawny little spikes, but the plants stayed little lumps of green in the garden. This year, finally, they have really bulked up and are blooming profusely.

I put the largest of the goatsbeards into a clay pot on the porch, and it is big and leafy, but just starting to bloom now.

I moved the allium bulbs today, and put them in the middle of the Drive By Garden.  I'm still planting more and more of the Rhus aromatica there --- so much real estate to fill and for them to spread into.  I've lost track of how many I've planted now!

I must do something about the curve of the garden in front of the patio wall.  This looks goofy.

Containers are giving me fits, but I have moved stuff around, took out the lettuce and pansies in the big bowl and put the struggling Bonfire begonia in it.  All my containers are struggling, although the Pretty Much Picasso petunias have filled in.  The basil in a pot is wimpy and stunted, and nothing else looks very good in any of my attempts at container plantings.

Although I have to say the purple Jackmanii clematis in the big pot is nice. And the Alba Luxurians clematis is very nice and full.  The flowers this year are not as pretty as the first year.  They are limp, but not like delicate handkerchiefs, just kind of droopy, small and blah.  But the plant is full and lush.

New Redbud

I replaced the lost redbud, the Forest Pansy sapling that was decapitated in last October's snowstorm.

We found a large specimen at Twin Nursery in Canton.

The leaves will fade during summer's heat, but right now it is bright wine colored.

I also got a honeysuckle, Lonicera 'John Clayton' with yellow blooms and I put that by the tuteurs in front of the meters.  It says it will take full sun as well as deep shade, and I did not realize how dark it can be behind the Alberta spruces there.

The house shades the area until afternoon, and it is a very deep shade.   Then, after noontime, the western sun hits it.

Perfection

I sat outside this morning and did not feel compelled to weed, or think about what to move, or mull over the changes I want to make.

It was all perfect.  The air was refreshing, the sun mild, the breeze tickled.  I finally have dappled shade to sit in under the birch trees that surround the Birch Garden.  The plants in all the gardens have filled in and look so nice.

The nepeta and sundrops and dianthus and what is left of the salvia were quivering with bees, hundreds of them. 

Butterflies flitted everywhere.  The whole garden was just alive with feeding, flying, zipping critters.  Birds called and swooped all over the yard.

I went from garden space to space, sat a little, tweaked a branch, and just enjoyed it all, for hours this morning.  The Drive By garden needs work, but I was okay with just ignoring that for now.  I spent the whole morning wandering and thinking how restful it looks.

It's a real garden now.  Changes are needed, but it is no longer so raw and unfinished.  It's perfect just the way it is.  The hummingbird visits every few minutes.  The clematis is abloom.  The smokebush foliage is iridescent.  The Red Drift rose is a ball of red.

Even the hodgepodge of plants under the maple in Meadow's Edge are more cohesive now.  The creekbed bridge just fits.  The meadow hasn't overwhelmed yet.

Then we went out this afternoon and I bought a large Forest Pansy redbud to replace the little one that was lost.  And a John Clayton honeysuckle for the tuteurs by the meters where the sweetpeas are doing nothing so far.

Changes after all.  New plants.  And it was all so perfect this morning!

White in the Birch Garden

Still gloomy and overcast, rain off and on.  And very cool, in the 50s only getting up into the low 60s at points.

The Birch Garden really is glorious this year.  Without the crowding Elfin Pink penstemons in front of them, the row of Husker's Red looks lovely, very pinky white.

The Baptisia pendula is arching and stretching.  The white spires are hard to capture.

And the white blooming itea is so full and cascading right now.

There is color at the edges, with pink evening primrose, the nice wine colored heucheras, and the little red rose on the other side.

Sundrops and coreopsis are coming out.  And the Orange Dream Japanese maple continues to be a bright, colorful beacon.

But the middle of the Birch garden is dressed in whites.

Clematis

Cool, cloudy, rainy.  June Gloom.

The Jackmanii clematis is blooming and the viticella Alba Luxurians is just getting ready to open her hankies.

The Jackmanii is a rich, deep magenta, but the foliage is sparse and I am hoping it develops more bulk and more presence soon.  I expected a blue - purple flower. This is RED!

I can't get enough of the Knockout Blushing Pink rose by the front steps.  So delicate, sugary and fragrant. Mmmm.

I'm pretty sure there will be blueberries this year, despite moving all four plants this spring.  One has no leaves and a ton of fruit, another has a ton of leaves and little fruit.  The other two are in between.

I love that dense little red rose in the front of the Birch Garden. 

And the nepeta is beautiful now.

And the pink evening primrose is so pretty.

The colors on the front porch are nice.  Pretty Much Picasso petunias and a mixed container from Lowe's.

 

Baptisia Twilite Prairieblues is such a weird color, but it's a healthy, full plant and the blooms are a smoky kind of color.  Sort of.

Nice.

A Heavy Drenching

Over an inch and a half of heavy rain on Saturday and it was cold, in the 50s.  The West Hartford garden tour was wet but we still went, under umbrellas, and saw five interesting gardens.

Of course everything is soggy in the garden today, and worst of all I left one of the plastic storage bins open, with the top off.  It filled up with water, soaking the sponges, pruners, and gloves that I store in there to keep them out of the weather on the potting bench!  Sheesh.

Here's an idea I like:

Instead of keeping a mailbox out in the garden, I could put a couple on the potting bench and use them instead of the plastic bins.  I like the look, and I could even mount one on the side of the bench, just nail it in.

Or mount it on a short post next to the water faucet in that empty corner by the wall.

I might do this.  Cheap and easy, and they do make great storage bins.

The Pinks

Just a lovely day.  Dry, sunny, cool.  It was a little hot working in the garden, but after dinner the air is cool, the windows are open.  This morning was clear and dew spangled and I had my coffee sitting on the front steps inhaling the sweet fragrance of the pink Knockout roses.

I moved the little sassafras out to the back hill to replace the one that didn't take this spring.  It is now limp and unhappy, but I moved it before, and it recovered.  We'll see.

I also moved a white pine out from the depths of the treeline along the back hill and put it out in the meadow.

I got more rhus aromatica at Warner's to continue filling in the Drive By Garden.  The hot pink penstemons that I moved from the Birch Garden are blooming. They are a very hard color to coordinate with anything else, but I am actually liking them with the dusty blue green Rosa glauca. 

Hard to photograph, but this might be a nice combo when they mature.

The Beverly Sills iris is another pink bloomer right now.

Sticky Hot

Very humid today and yesterday.  And on Sunday when we visited Tom & Joanna in Brooklyn (at the Botanic Garden) it was uncomfortably humid as well.

I wanted to get out and pinch all the mums back, and cut the flowering stems off the Angelina sedum, but I waited until 10 a.m. and it really was too miserable to be out there.  I need to get out after supper maybe, and get some minor chores done.  The stem cutting of turtlehead and Frosty Morn sedums need to be planted.

And I want to move the sassafras that is on the berm out to the back hill.  It really does not belong so close to the spruces, and it will cause problems in the future.  And one of the little saplings I got this spring and put on the back hill has died.  I'll put the healthy one from the berm out there, poor thing --- it has been moved three times already.

Thunderstorms are predicted, though.  We need the rain and the cooling.

But really, all looks good.  Very good.  I am loving the Birch Garden this year with the addition of the white Immortality and peachy Beverly Sills irises on the right side.  Both are blooming now and can be seen from the house.

I put a tiny red dwarf rose on the left side and plunked the Angelonias there and they are colorful blooming together along with a few surviving bright yellow allium moly in what had been an empty spot. (I took the tricolor sage out, too blah and it didn't come back well this spring.)  For the first time it all looks so colorful and full.  Wait till the Carolina Moonlight baptisia fills in on the left side in a few years!

Twilite Prairieblues baptisia is blooming.  I did a much better job this year of staking it early so it is very full and upright.  The blooms are pretty when I look out the bedroom window in the early morning, but in the full noonday sun they are such a weird rusty color.

The roses in front of it are not groundcover roses at all, but they are small, and a pretty red.  The tiarellas are now getting shaded and overtopped by all the foliage around them, but are still blooming!

Even the geums are still blooming a happy orange, but sparser now.

Blueberries abound on three of the bushes I moved.  One has far fewer.

I had two strawberries for breakfast today. Sweet, ripe, not overly strawberry-flavorful though.

The sweetbay magnolia is blooming, and if I get right in the flowers and disturb them a little I do smell a nice fragrance, not quite lemony though.  This year the tree held its leaves (the warm snowless winter), and the dessicated icky leaves are still hanging on while it blooms and starts to fill in again.  Not a great look.

For fragrance, though, the Blushing Pink Knockout rose by the front door is great.  Very fragrant and a gentle, nice smell.  I did not like the cherry red Knockouts, and took them out, but the pink one is a delightful complex color, and so sweet.

I Got a New Tree

Just when I thought I needed no more large trees, I bought a small sweetgum from Kevin Wilcox's new nursery in Bloomfield.  It is Liquidambar styraciflua Silver King.

Look at the variegated leaves.

It is a regular sweetgum and will get large and will produce gumballs.  After all my dithering about a yard tree, and my rejection of sweetgums because of the mess and the size, I went and got this one and put it right by the driveway, where the gumballs will be a problem.  I planted it at the end of the Drive By garden, where the hydrangea serrata is.

I have long wanted shade on that side, and this tree will shade the open pavers by the garage.  The cornus mas will stay smaller behind it, the hydrangea will remain under it (that's the pile of twigs in the photos, ack), and I can keep it limbed up to walk under.  The gumballs - - - hmmm.  I will have to keep them cleaned up.

It adds a light look at that end of the long garden.  After seeing Cheryl Fox's mature garden Thursday night at book group, I just felt like what I had was tentative and I could use more of everything.  More shade, more trees, more mass, deeper borders, more repetition.  Sigh.

It was very hot and humid today, in the 80s, but I got it planted before it got too miserable.  The rest of the day was oppressive and it feels like a storm may come up.  I hope.

I also planted another salix yezoalpina that I got from Kevin's nursery.  The whole patch on the east side is spreading out beautifully.  What a neat groundcover.

The climbing hydrangea is blooming at the top (I pruned all the blooms off the lower branches when I shaped it this spring.)  The doublefile viburnum is gone by finally.  Amsonias are blooming including the transplanted Blue Ice dwarf ones.

The Korean spirea Pink Parasols is blooming.

The kiwi vine seems to be recovering from something that had tinged the leaves brown.

The male has the distinct pink markings.

So much is happening now. Something new every day.