Hot White

It's mid summer and I want to enjoy being outside on a summer's day. I don't want to be a wimp and spend all my time in the air conditioned house. But even a short stay outside just isn't that nice.

Sitting in the gravel garden under the umbrella with a glass of wine was anything but enjoyable at 4:30 this afternoon. It is 93 degrees and the humidity is 66%. The A/C unit by the garden roars. The sky is a blank white. No storms threaten, but the whole atmosphere is heavy and oppressive.

The patio is not shaded enough yet to sit on under that hot white sky.

But . . .  despite wilted lacecap hydrangeas and suffering containers, there are pretty things going on.  A lot of mid July white!

Big white Becky daisies

Clear white handkerchief clematis blooms

Creamy white bottlebrushes

Delicate white lily of the valley flowers on the sourwood

Boltonia's light lavender rays read as white asters in the hot glare

But there is color too. Scarlet crocosmia Lucifer, and peachy pink daylilies and the candy red of the berries forming on the doublefile viburnum.

And the magenta purple of trailing lobelia, which isn't looking so full or robust, but is still a nice color with the cool lambs ear below the pot.

And there are bright yellow daylilies, and wine colored drumstick alliums.

It's all pretty enough, but the weather does not tempt me to be out there looking at it. A few moments in the early morning with my coffee, a few moments to go out and take pictures, and then a day spent inside with the constant air blast of the A/C. Sigh.

A Fine Morning

The humidity broke and the temperatures this morning were in the mid 70s. It was lovely to be outside and I had one of those mornings that was so rewarding -- digging, moving things about, redesigning areas.

Unfortunately one of the areas that got redesigned was the spot where the katsura tree was. This is what  it looks like now. Gone.

It had completely died since earlier in the month, as I knew it was going to when I saw the bare branches and dropping leaves. With only a small strip of bark still intact, it could not carry nutrients and when hot weather hit, it was over.

I do want to replace it. Jim took out the root ball --- boy was it a swampy mess, a big sodden pool of water in there.  We spent a lot of time talking about what to do with the east side of the house, but I just want to keep it simple and replace the tree with another katsura in that spot. I think.

I also took out all the penstemons in the Drive By garden. So much better now, but bare, and sorely needing something there around the little blue juniper.

I actually moved the juniper. Moved it over 20 inches, maybe two feet. That's how I do all my garden designs, I randomly place things, then find out they are too close to other things and move them, sometimes just a foot over.

You can see where the juniper was too close to the growing ninebark, which will get much larger. The juniper was in the spot where the light colored stone is, and now has been moved to the right just a wee bit.

I know, crazy. But boy did it feel good to have a shovel in my hands today and scrabble around digging and planting!

There is so much more to do here. The smoky-foliage rose to the right of the juniper will be moved in fall. And I am thinking of moving the new Parrotia (which is just beyond the rose) over a few feet, closer to the empty spot where the rose is now.  Just a few feet. That's how I garden.

Then I need more plants to underplant around the main trees and shrubs here.

Some of the aromatic sumacs suffered this year -- I think they got hit with lawn weed killer at just the wrong time, and those near the edge had dieback. I need to fill in, and add some more, and so I took cuttings today of new growth from the healthiest.

I just stuck the twigs in potting soil. No rooting compound (I didn't have any). We'll see if they take.

Diagnosis: Scorch

Another inch and a quarter of rain yesterday. Unbelievable. It is only in the high 70s today, very darkly overcast, so I went out to weed and start moving things around in the Drive By Garden, which needs a total redesign.

But the mosquitoes were awful and the humidity was so high that it just wasn't doable. I did manage to cut back the floppy Huskers Red penstemons in the Birch Garden, and do a little weeding. Not much.

I don't think the alpine willows (Salix yezoalpina) on the east side of the house have bacterial scorch. The brown edges do not have the ring of discoloration at the edges. But they do have a scorch problem, and my diagnosis is that heat and sun are the problems.

The whole patch looks terrible, with new leaves all deformed and banded in brown.

When these groundcover willows scorched in last summer's dry stretch, I put it down to drought. But this year that simply can't be.

We've had so much rain! Three and a half inches just in the first ten days of July. Over 12 inches of rain in June, record breaking downpours.

The older leaves look great, and I think when the temperatures were cooler with all that rain, they did well. But then we got very high temperatures for a while, and it is the new leaves that seem to be affected.

These are alpine plants and they want cool temperatures and perhaps more shade than they are in. They get what amounts to full sun -- even though they are on the east side of the house and in deep shade during the height of the afternoon, they are in a full seven hours of direct sunlight from dawn to 1 p.m.

So even with all the rain, I really think the bright summer sun and temperatures in the 90s are browning the leaves. It's not a water problem. They surely are as wet as can be this year. Maybe too much, even. As alpine plants they can take dry conditions, but I do think they need cooler weather.

So, what to do?  They are not diseased, they are spreading well. But they look awful in the height of summer.

• Should I leave them and just don't look?
• Or take them out and replace with vinca or pachysandra? Those are easy, overused but reliable groundcovers that will do what the willows are doing for coverage.

What to do, what to do.

Chocolate Cosmos

An inch of rain last night with thunder and lightning. A real downpour. It's cooler today. Overcast and in the high 70s. Everything is wet!

The mid season Berkeley blueberry shrubs are now ripening and I had a few of those today.

The early ones (Northland, Northblue, Northcountry) are all still producing and I pick big bowlfuls every day.

And still no birds or critters bother any of them.

The rabbits are exploding everywhere, though. A rabbit did eat the new young baptisia that I had put at the back of the berm. Ate it down to twigs.

I've been sprinkling hot pepper flakes around other garden plants, especially the annuals.

I'm loving the chocolate cosmos and would like to get more next year. Sweet and pretty, but they don't smell like chocolate!

I Don't Get This

It got very humid and sticky over the 4th of July weekend, and quite hot, in the 90s. A thunderstorm rolled through, but only brought 2 tenths of an inch of rain, and not much change in the humidity.

I don't get what is happening this year with the fruit crops. The blueberries are phenomenal, and I am not netting them. No birds or animals have touched them, and the blue bombs are producing like gangbusters. The same thing happened with the strawberries.

This is what breakfast looks like, and it is only what I picked from two bushes while the coffee brewed. I still have to go out and haul in the bounty from the other two bushes.

Then I have to get the blueberries from the two early-bearing shrubs in the meadow. There are four more shrubs that have unripe berries that will come in at mid and at late season after that. And the early ones are not even close to being done yet, with tons of ripening berries still on them.

And this has been every day for a week now.

No netting, no battle with the animals for the fruits --- I just go out and fill bowls, and then go get more the next day.

First the strawberry bonanza, now the blueberry boom, after years of having almost no production at all from any of my plants. Barely a berry. And what there was always got eaten by critters.

But this year . . .

It can't just be maturity of the plants this year. Something else is going on and I don't understand it.

Problems

Humid and damp. Not terribly hot -- it has only been in the 80s the past few days, but the humidity makes it so awful to be outside. And the mosquitoes are ferocious. On my morning walk around the garden today they were a torment.

Those are the problems with the summer conditions here. I also have some plant problems.

The salix yezoalpina, groundcover willow, has a bacterial pest I think. I'll have to do some research to see what it is.

The whole stand was looking great in spring, filling out rather aggressively and blanketing the east side of the foundation. But now the browning tips of the leaves are showing up and some are curling and wrinkling.

It got the same condition last year and defoliated, looked awful and of course never colored in fall.

Another problem is the white pine weevil in the Norway spruce out on the hill. I know what this pest is, and I know I have to get out there and cut the leader off.

Here's a design problem, not a pest issue. The nasturtiums just won't climb up the towers, and so they look like lumps of greenery trapped inside a cage.

They were supposed to be trailers, so I thought I could get them to roam up the support, but it isn't happening. I liked 'Gleam' last year because it climbed the inkberry hollies nearby so well. I might try that one again next year in these twig towers. So far pffft on these 'Variegated Queen' which are supposed to trail 6 feet.

Another design problem that I might change next year is the little St. Johnswort in the blueberry garden.

It's blooming well and I like the bright yellow. But I wish I had put in the St. Johnswort I had several years ago that has blue green foliage, big daffodil sized yellow blooms, and gets tall and bushy. That one was Hypericum frondosum 'Sunburst' and I loved it.

This one, 'Blue Velvet', is nice enough, but the leaves are little and the flowers are profuse but small. Next to the small leaved blueberries and groundcover fleeceflowers, there is no contrast. And it isn't bushy enough to cover the sparse bottom of the clematis on the iron tower.  It's tidy and cute, though, and I will move it somewhere else.

So those are the problems in the early July garden. I must do something about the pests, but I will wait till next year to do something about the design issues.

And of course there are tons of successes in this wet summer garden!  Just a few:

Love the drumstick alliums popping up all over.

 The California poppies are open. I thought they'd be orange.

The one remaining New Jersey Tea shrub is blooming. I like its low roundy shape and pretty flowers so much, and the bees do too.

I'm pleased with the Black Beauty dahlias, and would definitely plant more next year.

Oh, and the blueberries are coming in great. Despite not netting them, I am getting a bowlful every day. Birds and critters seem to be ignoring them so far. How can that be for long?

New Month, Same Rain

July has arrived, but still brings the same weather: heavy downpours.

We got over an inch today, about 1.2 inches measured in the rain gauge. On top of the three inches while we were away last week.

It pours.

And Now We Are Back . . .

We are back from Pennsylvania, and while we were gone three inches of rain fell. Everything looked so refreshed and sparkly as we pulled into town around 6 p.m. Then when we arrived at the house, I saw the rain gauge and it was filled to 3 inches.

And while we were gone the blueberries started coming in. Northcountry has just a few on the one small bush.  All four Northblue plants are bearing nicely. And the earliest of the blueberries out in the field, Northland, is also bearing. I mixed them all in this little bowl and won't be able to taste which is which!

While we were gone the stand of Shasta daisies behind the grill opened, and Alba Luxurians clematis burst forth.

And the irises by the creekbed opened, tall and gaudy.

Everything in the yard and meadow looks so well-watered!

How to write about our trip? Chanticleer was fantastic, but I don't know how to do a post on such a well documented garden. We got a ton of pictures. The day was very hot and sticky, so there is haze in the photos and we were pretty beat by the time we had walked the garden.

How to write up James Golden's garden? He was the most gracious host, welcomed me and walked the whole tour with me. He was genuinely pleased that I had come. His garden is phenomenal, all controlled wildness with beautiful structure and paths and areas, but plants grow and seed themselves in a way that he edits to look natural and graceful. It's a strolling garden with paths that wander in and out of shade, into and out of lushness, with surprises tucked in along the way.

And our day at Valley Forge was a fun tour too. The park is hugely expanded. We drove the car tour with iPhone narration, and it worked out really well.

We just got home, it was a long drive and we spent our days in heat and humidity, so we're tired. But all three tours --- Chanticleer Garden, Valley Forge park, and James Golden's home, were a complete success.

I Think It's Over

Hot and humid, in the 80s, starting to be very unpleasant.

For a while now I have thought the katsura tree was kaput. The trunk damage was just too extensive. A callus had formed, but there is barely a quarter of the circumference covered by bark. Mike from Bartlett thought it might recover and eventually the growing trunk would subsume the open part.  This spring it leafed out and looked okay, sort of. Not full and lush like the fast grower it is, though.

Today all I can see are bare branches and dead leaves on the ground.

I think it is finally over.

I have been trying to grow a katsura in this spot since 2009. Five years now. The first one didn't take, and was replaced in the first year. The second one did great, but in the last two years has had a run of trouble, with deer damage, snow damage, torn branches, rubbed bark and a huge open wound at the base.

I think it is time to have Bartlett put in a large specimen shade tree there. After five years I don't know if I want to start over with a small whip.

Should it be another katsura?

A Great Idea

Today was the longest day, the summer solstice, and it was a great one. Summery, with a delightful slight humid smell to the air, but not overly hot. It was in the 80s, but nice in the shade. Just a really pleasant summer day.

Jim had a great idea. I have been complaining about the rosa glauca being in an odd spot in the Drive By garden.

It has no hardscape or complexity around it and looks strange there by itself, not playing well with the penstemons or the dark ninebark nearby. I did a post on it for my main blog.

He suggested moving it to the dry creek bed, to the empty spot where I had some red salvia last year.

There is hardscape -- rocks, a bridge. There is a small spot for it to be tucked into and for it to lean out over the creekbed. There is a dense dark Alberta spruce for contrast. There is complexity behind it with the meadow and the tall trees in the distance.

Everything I think this rose needs. A great design idea! I am definitely moving the rose to this spot.

All four of the clematis vines are blooming now.

Henryi on the garage wall.

Jackmanii spilling over the top of the iron tuteur in the back.

There has been one lone flower on Niobe, as it begins, barely, to climb the Austrian pine. Still just the one blossom today.

Finally, Alba Luxurians is just opening, the last of the clematis vines to flower. Just a few hanky blooms are out, but the vine is full and lush and packed with buds.

And the stewartias are both blooming (and surprisingly there is no rain in the forecast to knock the big fried egg blooms off!)

Here is Stewartia pseudocamellia, which has big flowers that are so heavy they usually last only a few days before falling. It is still a wild shape.

Stewartia monadelpha has much smaller flowers, smaller leaves, and is nowhere near as showy, but it is maturing now into a delicate little tree. It is so far a tidier, more upright shape than the pseudocamellia.

These two stewartias are really quite different looking.