Sunday, June 21, 2015

Catching up with Weeds

This past week or so has been taken up with finishing up the school year, finishing up grad course work and trying to play catchup with the weeds. It's a never-ending battle to keep the weeds down, corral the beautiful but invasive plants, like evening primrose and to maintain the paths so I can actually walk around a bit.  Oh... and the strawberries need picking every other day. I started to cull out the lupines that were taking over the world, digging and composting and cutting spent blooms off as well as trying to get rid of pink musk mallow- lovely, invasive with a tap root.

 So... tonight I decided to go through the folder on my desktop and curate the piles of photos from the week.  I cut it down to ~ 70. Needless to say,  I take too many pictures and like too many of them.  Later on in the season, when I try to choose a half dozen or so to put on canvas, I'll have to get serious about curation as it's way too expensive to get too many produced.

What has impressed me this week, aside from the prodigious amount of work I did- check out the paths below... were both the poppies and the peonies.

Adding straw mulch to strawberries

Adding bark mulch to paths

Weeding and more weeding!












I have added a few new types of poppies over the last year and they have really begun to put on a nice show- from the Icelandic poppy to the Oriental poppy to the California poppy- they are all flowering this year.

Here are a few from this past week: Beautiful colors!



















The other plant that has had a spectacular year are the peonies. The intersectional peonies are amazing. I wasn't crazy about the variety Julia Rose at first, but then really enjoyed watching it change color every day.  A new one for me, planted last year,  is Callie's Memory.  This is a relatively small Itoh, at least compared to the Bartzella, but the flowers are beautiful and like the Julia Rose, change hue every day.

Julia Rose
Julia Rose
























Callie's Memory
Callie's Memory
Callie's Memory

This Week's Photos




Thursday, June 11, 2015

Six New Peonies Today!

Just when I think that I have a favorite peony- 6 more varieties came out today!! So hard to choose.  Unfortunately those nasty little light brown beetles came out today too. They love to munch on peony flowers, hydrangea leaves, comfrey leaves... you name it, they like it.  I am not crazy about using chemicals on my garden, but the brown beetles and those nasty little red beetles that destroy almost all lilies, get dusted with sevin.  I use the dust so I can see where it goes vs the spray and I am careful not to get it on the other flowering plants. I like my bees!

But- check out the peonies that came out today. There's still a few others that have yet to bloom- a white one, and I think there were a couple singles too.  I guess I better find the labels- didn't realize that I went on a peony splurge last year.  I still think that the Itoh Bartzella may be my favorite- love the yellow, but these are putting on a beautiful show!

Other new blooms... the drift roses are just starting to bloom, as well as the echinacea. There are also a few new poppies, with a gorgeous peach colored one emerging today. The mountain bluet- Centaura montana is still going strong with all 3 variations still blooming.  The only one not out is the black one. The bearded iris are still looking good as are the lupines.  Oh, and the sweet william is just beginning to bloom.

The weather looks to be pretty warm for the next few days,and hopefully we'll have no big thunderstorms to trash the heavy flowers.

Red
Pink with dark pink center
Magenta with yellow center
Pink with puffy yellow center











Old fashioned pale pink














Small pale pink with yellow














 Today's Photos

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

June Gardens

Gardening in June is one of my favorite times of the year. The worst of the spring weather is gone, all the leaves are bright and brilliant shades of green, usually nothing has failed yet, and the bugs don't get hungry til dusk.

When I walked around today, wondering what new plants I would see, I anticipated the continued bounty of the peonies and poppies, as well as the resilient display of lupines.  However, there were also a few other new blooms to check out. The yellow lysimachia (loosestrife) is in full bloom. Although this is not one of my favorite plants as it tends to spread too much, it is one hardy mass of yellow flowers, which would be great to put in a higher traffic area as they can take a little more abuse. Another beautiful, delicate yellow flower is the Trollius or globeflower plants. I think the ones pictured are in the New Moon series, but I'm not positive. They almost look like pale yellow roses mixed in with the geranium. They are very hardy and hopefully will act like the other trollius, Golden Queen, which self seeded as well as being easy to divide in the fall.


Other new blooms today include  knautia. It used to be all dark red knautia, but it seems to be reverting back to a paler magenta on some plants. Knautia is easy to grow, self-seeds, but not obnoxiously and if spent blooms are removed will continue to bloom through til frost.  There is also a really nice light pink poppy that is blooming for the first time this year.  The flag iris are still coming along with the pale lavender joining in this week. The bearded iris, including my favorites, Hello Darkness and Lady Friend continue to bloom this week. The yellow Siberian flag iris is just starting to bloom after I pulled the whole gigantic clump apart, not last fall, but the fall before that. Much healthier and happier now.  The Japanese iris will be along later.

Up in the vegetable garden- the first strawberry of the year is almost ready. If the deer, birds or other critters don't get to them first I should have enough to freeze this year.  I have albino strawberries planted as well, which I am looking forward to trying out. 

Today's Photos



Monday, June 8, 2015

Peonies!

The peonies are just starting to bloom. Coral surprise is leading the way, along with an old magenta variety that I planted almost 40 years ago- still going strong.



The intersectionals are budded up and several are starting to emerge.  What's an intersectional?  It's a hybrid of a tree peony and a regular perennial peony. Sometimes they are called Itoh peonies, after Toichi Itoh, who successfully crossed the first tree and herbaceous peonies in the '40s. These are big beautiful plants, which have a long flowering season, sometimes producing up to 50 blooms from secondary buds. The Julia Rose is a smaller plant, new last fall, and is so far, not terribly impressive.  However, Cora Louise is out with a couple flowers and looks great and my favorite itoh so far, the Bartzella- big beautiful, pale yellow just opened the first bud today.

Cora Louise Itoh Peony

Bartzella Itoh Peony

What else is new today?  I took a few photos of the peonies, the poppies, some blue-eyed grass and the elusive painter's palette (Persicaria virginiana var. filliformis).  I enjoy the multicolored leaves, looking like someone spattered them with paint, but it never overwinters where it was planted, seeming to prefer to surprise me by popping up other in places.  The last couple of years it has turned up at the base of my stone stairs, along with Greek oregano, and a few stray foxglove plants that have escaped from their plantings.

Today's Photos















Sunday, June 7, 2015

Eye Popping Poppies

This morning, when I headed off to class, I noticed that a couple of poppies had finally bloomed. By the time I came home- close to a dozen, bright orange poppies were waving in the breeze.


I'm enjoying the various lupines this year, simply beautiful. The blue flag irises are gorgeous, but really, really need to be divided. Good intentions did not result in any action last fall or this spring. The first 2 varieties of day lily have started to bloom. I think the one pictured in this album is an Olallie Eastern Sunburst... or something along those lines. I have another blooming- but will have to find my day lily map to give it a name. It came from the Hudson Valley Sale years ago.

A few peonies are beginning to open, aside from the now spent tree peonies. The intersectionals look great and I can't wait to see the buds open- probably later this week.

This delicate shade loving thalactrim is new this year.
I have several others- but this one came from Cady Falls last year. It loves the shade, grows to be 3-5 feet, as far as I can tell. The sun loving thalactrim plants in other parts of the garden are already taller than I am, with big thick stems. They are merrily self seeding all over the place, but I really like them anyway.

What else was new today... the splish splash geranium (white with blue splash), the other pink geranium- cannot remember the variety, but the leaves are variegated. The burnet is starting to bloom. This variety seems to have attracted a spider web, but is about 12-18 inches high,  with pink bloom.  The blue-eyed grass is blooming, the dunce cap sedum-like plant is happily making dunce caps and the blue star, amsonia blue ice looks great. I divided it up last year and have a bunch of small ones here and there as well, but they are not blooming.

Check back soon for peonies!

Today's Photos

Friday, June 5, 2015

Russian Comfrey-Today's Favorite

I first saw this plant last spring up in Vermont and loved the way the variegated foliage looked with the other spring plantings up at Cady Falls. So, of course I had to try one. The plant, Symphtum x uplandicum ' axminster gold',  is related to borage. It seems to be very winter hardy and came right up this spring. Starting as a rosette, it's already about 3-4 feet tall with large variegated leaves and is beginning to flower. After flowering, it can be cut back and new leaves will form.

















Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Choices Choices

Beautiful day! Got up to 70° F, and the rain is finally gone. I got some of the mowing started when I got home.

 Walking around the garden, taking a few pictures, I couldn't decide what today's favorite plant/bloom was.  I love all the lupines- the wild ones with all the different shades of blue and pink, the cultivated lupines in red, or the dark purple ones, yellow and the blue and white "The Governor" variety.  I wish I could find more of the West Country series- although they were never winter hardy here for some reason.  I really liked the pinkish red ones today and the really dark purple ones... look good enough to eat.














But I also love the irises at this time of year. The Hello Darkness Iris is beautiful and even the yellow iris is looking good with the other irises, geum and salvia caradonna.























June 3rd Photos