FONA plants

One day at the end of April I took a few hours off work and headed over to the National Arboretum for the annual FONA plant sale.  I didn't go with a list, and just let myself impulse buy.  Dangerous, I know, but I didn't overdo it.

Here's what came home with me:

Abutilon - flowering maple

Dahlia 'Firepot'

White wood aster, Epimedium 'Orange Queen', Brunnera 'Jack Frost', and and Ajuga whose name I've forgotten

Showing restraint, I only took photos of the labels for some of the other plants I thought I wanted.  Maybe next time I'll get these:

Now here it is mid-May, and I don't have these plants in the ground yet.  I've put the abutilon in a pot on the front porch, but the others are still in their nursery pots.  I really wanted to get that done today, because I'll be coming home with more (free, this time) plants tomorrow.  But I was busy digging things up, not planting, as I prepared for tomorrow's plant swap.

May 2012 Blooms

It rained on Bloom Day (two days ago).  It rained the day and night before that, too.  But everything's green now!

For this Bloom Day post, I'll focus on the side garden.  It has a lot going on right now.

At the driveway entrance to the garden, the geraniums are blooming.  Lambs ear provides a nice contrast.

A week or two ago, this garden was full of various irises, mostly along the house side of the path.  Most are finished, but there are a few that are later than the others.

Yellow bearded irises with white rose campion

purple bearded irises with rose campion

 Think I have a lot of rose campion? I sure do. Its shocking-pink blooms are about all you can see at the front end of the garden.

a sea of rose campion

Taking a closer look, it is hiding one of the first daylilies of the year.

Also along the house side, I have a few patches of mazus reptans.  It has been blooming for about two months, though it is finishing up now and the blooms are more sparse.  I bought two little pots of this groundcover last year, to see if it would spread well enough that I can redo the path with it between stepping stones.  I planted them along the edge of the existing path, and it has spread very nicely.  It should be easy to divide so I can put some along the whole path.  I love it when a plan comes together!

Mazus reptans

At the front end of this side of the garden (ok, actually in the front yard, but humor me...) is my rather prolifically flowering white rose.  I have no idea what it is, but the one-inch flowers are covering the shrub right now.

Along the fence-side of the garden, Centaurea have been blooming their funky flowers for a while.

Centaurea with lamb's ear

 The heuchera I planted for foliage accents actually have nice pink flower sprays.

Heuchera flowers

 The doublefile viburnum I planted last fall (to replace a nandina) is still very small, but growing and flowering happily.

Viburnum

 And at the front end of this side of the garden, peonies and salvia.  Why does it always happen that as soon as the peonies bloom, we get a big rainstorm?  I think I could predict rain better than a meteorologist, just by looking at the peony blooms. As a result, they don't last very long.

And that's the tour of the side garden.  Here's what it looks like from the front:

 Thanks to May Dreams Gardens for hosting another Bloom Day!

Baptisia

One of my favorite scenes in the upper terrace garden is this blooming Baptisia australis.

The plants are a bit leggy, but some Stokesia and New York asters in front hide the stems.
 

I just wish the blooms lasted longer; they are already nearly done.  But next come the beautiful seed pods. 

terrace garden, last June

Ooh, I'm in trrrrrouble!

I arrived home from work yesterday to find a notice taped to my front door.  If it's never happened to you, let me tell you it's never good to find notices from the city taped to your door.  Last year it was a note from the fire marshall that some of my fascia was loose and hanging down.  What that has to do with fire coe, I have no idea.  This time it was from code enforcement.  The fun part looked like this:

The letter went on to say I have a week to prune my tree, or the city will do it for me.  I have a feeling it woule be very expensive to let the city do it for me.  So I grabbed a ladder and my loppers, and went out to remedy the problem.

What problem?  This one:

 Yeah, I guess people have to do some limb-dodging to walkk down the sidewalk.  I'd noticed that recently, and figured it was just a good way to get people to use the sidewalk on the other side of the street (where they need to end up anyway, since this side's walk only spans four houses).  But the city had other ideas.

Half an hour later, I'd made myself quite a brush pile in the back yard:

And created a passable walkway in the front.  I hope it is sufficient to keep me out of trouble.

Blue-eyed grass

Several years ago I planted two clumps of blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) in the upper garden.  Blue eyed grass is not really a grass; it's actually more closely related to the iris.  Maybe that's why I like it so well.  Unfortunately, it was never happy in my garden, and didn't last very long.  These pics from 2009 document the last time I saw it:

When I was cleaning up the terraces this spring, I saw a clump of grass just ouside the daylily area:

I wasn't sure what it was, so I let it stay for a while.  Checking back, I saw that yes, my blue-eyed grass has returned! 

I'm confused, but happy. Now I need to find a better home for it. 

De-Neglecting (Bloom Day, part two)

 I've been working to un-neglect the Neglected Bed, which so far has meant pulling out the ivy that has been smothering it.

 

 (Sorry, no picture of ivy running rampant.  I bet you can imagine it, though.)

 I actually started the de-ivying about two years ago, with a plan to replace the rotting timbers forming the terraces.  But the ivy was all intermingled with the timbers, and it was actually the ivy, not the rotten wood, holding everything in place.  I got discouraged, and abandoned the project.  I stopped caring for this bed at all, the ivy grew over everything, and I named it the Neglected Bed.

Ivy growing through the timbers

At the end of March, taking a break from whatever other yard chore I was doing at the time, I started pulling out some ivy.  And more and more, until the surface of the bed was free from ivy.  I still don't have a plan of attack for the timbers, but I'll get there.

A pile of ivy

 

Look - there were plants under the ivy!

I took the following photos on Bloom Day, then decided to save them for their own post:

It seems I missed a few pieces of ivy here among the euphorbia.  This is the only time of year I like this euphorbia, with its version of "flowers" (later on, it gets sprawly and leggy).  But this makes up for it enough to keep, at least for now.

 

 My only non-purple phlox, banished to the neglected bed, is an attention-grabbing pink.

  

I used to have a blue and white columbine here, with giant flowers.  Its offspring has reverted to blue-purple, as columbine tend to do, but has maintained the huge petals.

  

Can I call this Gaillardia blooming?  Probably not. (A week later, it is in full bloom!)

And last Wednesday, my Sunsprite Rose had its first bloom of the year.

 

With all this going on (and more to come), I'll try not to neglect this part of the yard this year.

April 2012 Blooms

Everything's blooming at once!  And I want to show it all off!  (But I don't have the patience to edit that many photos)  Here's a sizable sample:

An overview of the garage bed:  rue, moss phlox, columbine, geranium, and violets.

Up in the edibles garden, the strawberries are blooming.  So are last year's bunching onions and this overwintered kale, with flower stalks nearing five feet tall:

The red and yellow columbine have been filling in nicely over the years:

 
 Under the japanese maple, the green-and-gold I planted last spring have made themselves at home.

 

Over in the side yard, the black cherry is blooming, and is quite fragrant.

Around front, the catmint is already blooming.

So is this coreopsis, hidden among the daffodil foliage.

Over in the side yard, my pink bleeding heart is MIA.  But the white one has been very showy this year, seen here with a centaurea:

Both green and variegated solomons seal are up and blooming in the side bed, thought the ones in the upper garden are just breaking the surface.

Finishing up, here's my favorite iris blooming today.

Thanks to May Dreams Gardens for hosting the monthly Bloom Day.


(Also blooming today:  hellebore, periwinkle, creeping and woodland phlox (nearly finished), moss phlox, S-O-B (pulled today), spanish bluebells, camassia, anemone, pansies, lavender irises, mazus reptans, euphorbia, dicentra eximia (nearly finished), flax, and pasque flower)