Garden Bloggers' Book Club April-May Meeting Post

Welcome to the “virtual meeting” of the Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for April-May. Our selected book for these two months is Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing.

Now go get yourself a tall glass of iced tea (green tea for me!) and take your laptop with your wireless connection out to your favorite spot in the garden and visit the posts linked below to read about the book and some of our favorite passalong plants. (No wireless connection in the garden? Then at least sit by a window so you can enjoy your own garden view while you read these posts). If this was a real meeting, we would most definitely sit outside tonight and I’d be serving some kind of strawberry dessert because I have a lot of strawberries ripening in the garden this week.

Here are the posts in the order I received a comment or email about them:

M. Sinclair Stevens (Texas) at Zanthan Gardens

Connie at Rose Cottage Garden

Carol at May Dreams Gardens

OldRoses at A Gardening Year

Annie in Austin at the Transplantable Rose

Bonnie at Kiss of Sun

Mimi at Gardening on a Very Small Scale

Lisa Blair at A Shower Fresh Garden

Kris at Blithewold

Tracy at Outside

Gloria at Pollinators-Welcome

Entangled at Tangled Branches

Gotta Garden at Gotta Garden

Carolyn Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago

Pam at Digging

Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening

Melissa at Dilly Dalley Doolittle Garden

I hoped you enjoyed visiting all the blogs and reading about all the passalong plants and the book, too. If you want to know more about Felder Rushing, one of the authors of the book, you can check out his web site here.

If you are feeling left out now and want to join in and post your own thoughts, feel free to do that, and then let me know via a comment or email and I’ll add you to the list above. Or if I missed your post, please let me know!

That’s what’s wonderful about a virtual club meeting… you can’t really be late. I can add you to the list at any time!

Did you notice we had some new participants this month? I found several new garden blogs and bloggers who’ve joined us for the first time with this book, which is a side benefit to the book club.

And thank you to all who participated in the book club this time. I hope you will return for the June-July club post. I’ll post more on that later, including how to participate even if you can’t read the book selected.

We gardeners do love our passalong plants. If not for the miles and climate zones that separate us, I’m sure those participating in the book club and other garden bloggers lurking about reading these posts would be passing along plants to each other at a furious pace this spring.

Now, who would like some of my chocolate mint, an easy plant to passalong, with a suitable warning about mint in general! (And shame on you if you’ve ever passed along a thug like this to a naïve, new gardener! Anyone want to confess to doing that, even accidently?)

And with my mint, some Lamb’s Ear, another plant that is easy to share with others.

“Gardeners are generous because nature is generous to them and because they know what it means to read about something and not be able to get it.” Elizabeth Lawrence in the introduction to Gardening for Love: The Market Bulletins, another book about how gardeners share plants with each other.

What I Have... Is Yellow

A garden should be more about what you have and what you've done than about what you don't have or haven't done. Gardeners, me included, spend too much time thinking about all that needs to be done and all the plants we want to get, which can be discouraging.

Sometimes you just have to sit back and think of all that you have done and all that you do have in your garden. The end of May is a good time to do that.

What I have right now is a lot of yellow flowers. Want to see them? This first flower is a coreopsis, Coreopsis lanceolata. I grew it from seed back in 2000. Let's all take a vow to not call this by its common, Tickseed. That's a terrible name for a carefree flower like this!

This is a yellow daisy flower with silver, lacy foliage.
I long ago lost the name of this flower, so if someone has an ID on it, please let me know. It self sows quite a bit, but not in an annoying way, more in a way that you end up with lots of little starts to passalong to others. If I want to impress someone who comes to visit, I won't call it "yellow daisy that I forget the name of", I'll call it Daisius argentifolia 'May Dreams'.

The evening primrose is blooming!

This one is Oenotherea tetragona 'Sunspot'. It isn't real obvious from the picture but the foliage has little yellow spots on it. This forms a nice clump, so it would be easy enough to cut out a few starts to passalong to others.

To put a positive spin on this next yellow flower, I won't say, "this is a weed that I just haven't pulled yet". Instead it is a wildflower that I have let stay for awhile.

I wish I knew the name of it. Anyone? I once took a course in Weed Science, but don't recall having to learn about this particular weed. Maybe it's a more recent import and wasn't so prevalent 'back in the day' when I was in college? You don't think I once knew what it was and forgot, do you?

I bought some yellow Lantana to put in hanging baskets. I like how they are performing now. They are in full sun and seem to be able to take it in stride.

I can't really have a post about yellow flowers without showing the Stella d'Oro daylilies.

At least, that's what I think this is. I'm not 100 percent positive, but I don't recall buying any other yellow daylilies, so that must be what it is. This is another plant that is easy to dig and divide and passalong to others. And look at all those buds, I'll have flowers on these all summer long.

I'll wrap up with some yellow foliage.
This is Tradescantia 'Sweet Kate'. In previous posts and on the last Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, I mis-identified this as 'Blue and Gold'. I think they are probably quite similar.

There you have it, those are my yellow flowers blooming now. Since I've focusing on what I have, I won't mention that I don't yet have yellow tomato or squash flowers yet. I'll have some soon enough, I'm sure.

So Happy Gardening and please enjoy the last day of May tomorrow by remembering what you have in your garden and what you've done so far this spring. I'm sure it's a lot.


(By the way, I'm looking forward to tomorrow when I post the virtual meeting of the Garden Bloggers' Book Club. There is still time to post about the book or passalong plants, as I won't be publishing the virtual meeting post until later in the evening tomorrow. We have at least three new gardener/readers participating for the first time, which is wonderful!)

Excuses

Excuses present themselves all the time, excuses for why you can't do one thing or another in the garden. It's too hot, it's too dry, it's too wet, it's too cold. It's too early, it's too late.

Or my new favorite..."there's a bird's nest over there that I don't want to disturb".

This evening I found a nest of eggs in my 'Miss Kim' lilacs, about five feet off the ground. Does anyone know what kind of bird this is by the seeing the eggs? Mama bird was way up on the neighbor's roof squawking at me and telling me to get away while I carefully parted the branches and took this picture. Now I have an excuse for not pruning off all the seed heads on the lilac. It's a tedious task but I think it increases the next year's bloom when you do it at the right time.

Later, I found my neighbor's cat, Jake, lounging beneath my grape arbor, back by the vegetable garden.

I praised Jake for helping keep the rabbits out of the garden, and told him he was most welcome to stay for doing such a good job. He's a sweet kitty. Then I went about my business, never thinking to check the vegetable garden for rabbit damage, as Jake seemed to have the situation under control. (Yes, those are dandelions and grass growing in that bed, but thank you for being kind and not noticing or saying anything about that.)

Later as I was wrapping up my work in the garden this evening, which including mulching around the trees and watering the container plants, I decided to quickly check the vegetable garden to see if my squash or corn or beans were coming up.

What I saw was not pretty. Brace yourselves...

The bunnies have eaten off at least six tomato plants, six pepper plants, and all but one eggplant plant, maybe more. The picture above is of the pepper plants after I dusted them with cayenne pepper. The ones without pepper on them are the ones the bunnies chewed off. And they don't even eat the whole plant, they just bite it off.

What is Jake's excuse? I left him in charge! He was supposed to be keeping the rabbits out of the garden.

Fortunately, the corn and beans have row covers on them, so the bunnies can't get to them, and they are sprouting. The squash is not covered, so I sprinkled them with cayenne pepper, too.

Any other suggestions for keeping the rabbits away?

But lest you think that May Dreams Gardens is just about excuses and ravishing rabbits...

Here's some Beard-Tongue blooming in my renovated perennial garden.
It's fancy botanical name is Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red'. I like the white flowers with the red stems and the dark green foliage. And the white flowers glow at night.

And I picked more strawberries yesterday, a big bowl full. I'll be eating these all week, and I think there are this many more berries ready to pick today.

The variety is 'Ever Red', and I hope they produce some berries all season, though I know most of the berries will be ready to pick this week.

And that's today at May Dreams Gardens.

What excuses do you have?

Time to Relax

The garden is moving into its summer phase, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

Just a few weeks ago, I found these robin's eggs in a nest out front, and I could not get anywhere near this tree without Mama Robin squawking and flapping her wings at me from the safe distance of the roof.

Then the babies hatched out one day.

And grew.

And now they are gone. Sometime in the last few days, they learned to fly and have left their nest.

And when the baby robins left, they took with them all my excuses for not cleaning up the bed around this tree. So today I cleaned it all up and mulched it.

I didn't redesign this bed as I had hoped to earlier in the spring when it seemed like there would be time to do everything. Instead I just cleaned up what was there and re-mulched.

Around the tree are some black-eyed susans, and over by the fothergilla are some large, bright yellow daylilies. Along the sidewalk, I've left the sedum and variegated liriope. And I've left the limemound spirea which all came back after I cut them down to the ground earlier this spring.

Now it's time to move into "summer maintenance mode" in the garden. In between mowing the lawn, tending the vegetable garden, and keeping everything watered, along with occasionally pruning some shrubs and trees and weeding, there should be time to relax and enjoy it all.

Did anyone get everything done this spring that they intended to do , or had hoped to do?

Gardening in the Racing Capital of the World

Wonder what it is like to garden in the racing capital of the world?

When you live in Indianapolis, you can’t help but learn a little about Indy car racing and race car drivers because of all the media coverage throughout the month of May. No information is deemed too trivial to talk about or write about if it relates somehow to the Indianapolis 500.

Finally it is “race day”. All morning, all three local network stations have been broadcasting extended news coverage from the track to give updates on the traffic, the crowds, the celebrities, and the weather. And this morning, the weathermen are getting the most air time as they try to predict if there will be enough dry weather to run the race.

Yes, we are finally getting much needed rain in central Indiana today. We’ve had some periods of rain since Friday, but now it looks like it is really going to rain. We definitely need this rain and I’m happy to hear it on the roof and see it watering the garden. If we hadn’t gotten this rain, I was going to have to haul out hoses and sprinklers and start watering everything. Ugh, I hate to do that!

But out at “the brickyard”, “the Speedway”, “the 500”, whatever you want to call it, I would guess this rainy day isn’t making anyone happy.

Did you know that the race is blacked out on TV here, so the only way to see it is to either go someplace where it is on TV (anywhere in the rest of the world) or go to the race in person? Growing up around here, we all listened to the race on the radio, and for the longest time I thought that’s what everyone did, until I realized it was live on TV worldwide, but just not for us.

So I’ll listen to the start of the race on the radio. The big highlight will be the singing of the chorus of “Back Home Again in Indiana” as part of the starting ceremonies. Right then, that moment, will signal the beginning of summer for me.

Then I’ll go about my business in the garden, which today, if the rain let’s up, will probably be the business of weeding. I still need to clean out these non-performing forsythia and the weeds that have grown up around them. It has become a terrible mess!

Or maybe I'll paint my garden bench or finally use those 15 bags of mulch that have been piled up on the patio since last fall. But whatever I am doing, and whenever it is dry enough to start the race, I'll stop and listen to the singing of "Back Home Again in Indiana", so I don't miss my own official start of summer.

Back Home Again in Indiana

Back home again in Indiana,
And it seems that I can see
The gleaming candlelight, still shining bright,
Through the sycamores for me.
The new-mown hay sends off its fragrance
Through the fields I used to roam.
When I dream about the moonlight on the Wabash,
How I long for my Indiana home.

If you would like to hear Jim Nabors sing this sacred Hoosier song, accompanied by the Purdue University Marching Band, here's a video. It's the wrong race, but you get the idea...

Passalong Plants: My Post for the Garden Bloggers Book Club

Night Blooming Cereus, One of My Passalong Plants

When ever I go away on a vacation, I like to go to whatever bookstores are nearby to see if they have different books from what we have “back home”. One year I went to Mantoe Booksellers in Manteo, North Carolina, where I found and purchased my copy of Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing, the current selection of the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club.

I was not too concerned that this book was written by “southern” gardeners because in looking through the book, I quickly recognized many plants that I both had or could have in my own zone 5 central Indiana garden.

Like many gardeners, I have a garden enriched with many passalong plants, some from family and some from friends, all reminders of how generous gardeners are to each other. As Bender and Felder write in the introduction “Luckily, to a gardener, all other gardeners are friends”. And I’ll add to that, all other gardeners are a source of new plants!

When I had my first garden, I turned to my aunt for starts of Michaelmas daisies, Lily of the Valley, mums, spiderwort, old-fashioned roses, hostas, daylilies and more. I filled my new little garden with those passalong plants from her garden. Then when I moved, I passed my plants along to several other friends and family members so I could circle back around and get new divisions of these same plants from them for my next garden. And this was repeated once again to bring my passalong plants to my current garden.

Now whenever I go to one of my sisters’ houses in the spring or summer, inevitably we end up on a slow walk around the yard, looking at our commonly shared passalong plants and noting new plants we can share. Then magically, someone produces a trowel and some plastic bags and we are digging and dividing and sharing again.

I can’t imagine a garden without passalong plants, constant reminders of the generosity of other gardeners.

But my favorite of all my passalong plants doesn’t grow out in my garden, it stays inside. If you’ve visited my blog before you may have read about it before, My night-blooming cereus, the night bloomer, the queen of the night, Epiphyllium oxypetalum.

Every passalong plant has a story to tell or a memory of someone associated with it, a history about it that makes it special. Here’s the history of the night-bloomer.

My main plant was my Dad’s and it happily occupies a corner of the sunroom. He got his start from a family friend who came from Czechoslovakia, though I doubt she brought hers from there. This night bloomer has only bloomed three or four times for me, but each time it has bloomed, it has been an eagerly anticipted event. I have a second, smaller night-bloomer that was a start my Dad gave to my aunt probably 30 years ago, which she asked me to take last spring. I was happy to take it. While transporting it, a branch broke off, and from that I started six more night-bloomers. My older sister took one start, but she says she doesn’t plan to let hers get as large as mine. We’ll see. Now I have five remaining starts to pass along to others and I hope to find some willing takers before the end of the summer.

What’s your favorite passalong plant? Even if you didn’t read the book, Passalong Plants, for the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club, you can still join in the club “virtual meeting” by posting about your own passalong plants before May 31. Then leave me a comment or send me an email to let me know about it, and I’ll include it in the “virtual meeting post” on May 31st.

How's Your Garden This Year?

You just never know what might happen when you ask a simple question like "how's your garden this year"? The other day, I asked my neighbor who lives next door to where I grew up how his garden was doing and he said he was only planting a few tomatoes this year. He was just not in good enough health to plant the rest of it.

Well, a good garden should not be left unplanted! So, this morning I went over there and tilled up the rest of the garden (it had been tilled up once earlier this spring by another neighbor) and with my niece Sophie's help, we planted some acorn squash and sweet corn. Later this weekend, I'll be back to plant some bush beans.

With corn, squash and beans, I almost have a "three sisters" garden. Almost because I'm not being quite true to how they should be inter-planted together. In this garden, each is in its own rows.

My own vegetable garden is all raised beds, which never need to be tilled up, so it was fun to run a tiller again, especially through his rich garden soil which really just needed a 'back scratch' to be ready for planting.

And I got to use his hoe, which he has probably had for 40 plus years. The hoe was at one time straight across with sharp corners, but after years of use, the corners are rounded off, one very noticeably so. I loved the weight of the hoe, the length of the handle; it seemed so easy to use, as though that old hoe knew what it was supposed to do in that garden. I let it lead me.

You can see in the above picture that I had my "tilling boots" on, an old pair of hiking boots with red laces that go back to my own college days nearly, how many years ago? Geez has it been that many years?

And up by their house I saw these beautiful yellow columbine flowers. I've never seen any that color, they almost looked like little orchids from a distance.

So you just never know what will happen when you ask a simple question. Who knew at this time last week that I'd have a second vegetable garden this summer? One big enough for lots of corn, beans, and squash.

How's your garden this year?

How To Photograph a Robin's Nest

Several people have commented asking how I am able to take pictures of the baby robins that I've posted a few times. I'll attempt to provide some step-by-step instructions here.

First, plant a crabapple tree like this one.

This is Malus 'Guinevere', one of the first ornamental trees I planted 10 years ago.

Let the tree grow for a few years until it has this nice, natural "nest platform" formed where the main branches were grafted on to a standard. This platform is about four and half feet from the ground.

Then wait for a robin to find this perfect nesting platform and build a nest. Wait, wait, wait.

Once there's a nest, to get the picture, you crouch down to get under the tree branches, then carefully raise yourself up between the branches. This part is kind of tricky because if you mis-judge where a branch is above you, you can hit your head on it

Then, with camera in hand, raise your arms up above the nest and snap some pictures.

This is how the babies look tonight, catching a few rays of the early evening sun.
You need to be kind of quick about the process because the whole time you are taking the pictures, Mama Robin is perched nearby squawking and flapping her wings to try to scare you away.

I don't think it will be too much longer before these birdies leave this nest and fly off to start their own families next spring.

That's why I went ahead and picked these strawberries this evening. They are a little undersized because of the lack of rain, and I might have left them another day to ripen just a bit more. But then I might have lost them to the birds and bunnies.

This way, they were mine, all mine! And good, too! Just a little tart, yet a little sweet, and perfect because they came from my own garden.

Thirsty

Do these baby robins look like they are thirsty?

These cactus don't look thirsty at all. I'll be writing about them when I write my post for the Garden Bloggers' Book Club in a few days. I haven't finished the book that we are reading, but I have enough passalong plants to write about, including these cactus, so I'll probably go that route. I hope you, garden blogger reading this now, will join us with your own post about passalong plants or the book. Send me an email or leave me a comment when you have posted, so I can find you and include you in the book club post on May 31.

Yes, this cactus is hardy here in Zone 5!

These Variegated Sundrops (Evening Primrose of some kind) look very thirsty. Almost dead thirsty.

We've just not gotten enough rain this spring. Only one inch of rain in May so far.

There is a chance of thunderstorms every day throughout the Memorial Day weekend, but you don't win any popularity contests around here wishing for rain on the Biggest Weekend of the Year for Indianapolis. I still want it to rain, and rain a lot, even on Sunday.

I've never had to water in May. Usually after I finish planting the vegetable garden, I just water where I sowed seeds. But tonight after I finished sowing all the seeds in the garden, I decided to run the sprinkler to give it all a good soaking.

It even smells dry outside. You know that smell of "dry", right? Generally, we don't smell this kind of dryness until August. Yes, it smells like August outside, not like May.

If it doesn't rain by Friday morning, I will have to begin to water and I'm not talking about just the lawn, which is already showing signs of going dormant. I am talking about watering trees and shrubs and established flowers. Unheard of in May. Simply unheard of, at least in the 20 or so years that I've had my own gardens.

And yes, I didn't wait to water those sundrops, I took care of them after I took the picture.

My Best Peas Ever?

Are these my best peas ever? This is somewhat embarrasing to admit, but I've never been all that successful at growing peas. Some years the bunnies eat the vines to the ground before they have a chance to flower, or the vines end up so short from bunny nibbling that the few flowers that do form pea pods don't seem like they are worth the effort of finding and harvesting.

Other years, I lose track of time and before I know it, I've got dried peas on the vine. Or I plant too late and it gets hot and the pea vines wilt and the few pods that form are small and have one or two peas in them.

But this year? I think this will be my best pea harvest yet.

It won't be a lot of peas because my row of peas is only eight feet long. But I think it will be enough to actually taste the peas.

And what has been the difference?

The wisdom of an experienced gardener scrawled out on an old seed packet that I found in a box in my garage. You might remember me posting about that in January, when I boldly declared, on that cold winter night, that this was to be the Year of the Pea.

The seed packet I found was the from the last peas my Dad sowed before he passed away twenty years ago. I learned two things from that packet. Sow early, and get the variety 'Green Arrow'. And from others' comments to my post about the Year of the Pea, I decided to add an innoculant to the soil.

See how many peas are forming in these pods?

It's a critical time now. I need to water frequently, I think, so the peas are nice and plump.

I also need to watch out for the rabbits. See that little bite out of that pod? That is no doubt from a rabbit. I saw a rabbit in the garden yesterday when I went back there to plant the tomatoes. They are eating my food. I am at war with them.









One of my tactics to keep the rabbits away is to set out this fake owl, which I have been doing faithfully for many years. But it doesn't seem to scare the rabbits one bit. That's what I get from trying to get garden wisdom from a marketer trying to sale fake owls as a cure for rabbits. It is just a decoration at this point.

Where do you get your gardening wisdom? I'm convinced that the best source of gardening-know-how is to talk to an experienced gardener, one who has learned from other gardeners before them and from their own trial and error over years, if not decades, of gardening. Watch what they do, see when they plant, find out what varieties they like to plant. Then maybe you won't have to wait so many years, like I have, for a decent handful of fresh garden peas.

First Strawberry

I found the first ripe strawberry of the season this evening, on the corner of the raised bed, where it probably gets more sun. These are everbearing strawberries that I planted last year. My hope and plan is to have a few strawberries to pick all through the season, if I can beat the bunnies and birds to them. I've already noticed that the bunnies have eaten one section of the plants, but there should still be plenty of strawberries for me.

I also planted the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant this evening.

Are you a staker or a cager of tomatoes? I was raised a staker, and so that's what I do. I've never caged a tomato in my life! I set out stakes, plant two tomatoes at each stake and then pinch off the suckers and tie the tomatoes to the stakes as they grow.

This lasts until about July 1st when I realize some suckers have gotten away from me and are bigger than the main plant. Then I just do what I can to contain the tomatoes and swear that next year I'll do better. So this year, I will do better!

Here's a picture of how I do my stakes.

I pound sections of PVC pipe into the ground as far as I can. Then I drop the stake into the pipe. I find this is a lot easier than trying to drive a six foot stake into the ground. I still don't get them all perfectly straight, but I tell myself that even if I pounded the PVC pipe in straight to begin with, over the summer the stakes would still end up leaning this way and that way, so it isn't worth it to try to make them perfectly straight to begin with.

I planted Beefsteak, Oregon Spring, Cluster Grande, German Johnson and Jelly Bean Grape tomatoes, all started from seed this spring. I still have room for a few more tomatoes, so I'll venture out to find something in the garden centers to fill in with this weekend.

By the way, in the picture of the stakes, ignore that mess behind there, that's the compost bin piles. I have some bamboo screening that I put around all that to hide it better, but the screening is in the attic and I just haven't gotten it down yet. But I will this weekend!

I will also finish planting all the summer vegetables by this weekend, a little each evening. Tomorrow night, I think I'll plant the squash and cucumbers.

Does anyone want to help? What I could use everyone's help with is rain. If you know how to conjure up some rain, please do so for central Indiana. The weatherman said this is the driest spring since '92. I can smell how dry it is (you know that funny dry smell, don't you?). When I hoed up the raised beds for the tomatoes and peppers, I raised up big dust clouds. We need real rain, not just a sprinkle. We need a steady rain for an entire day.

Oh, and that ripe strawberry pictured above. Like I said, I'm competing with the bunnies and birds to get to these. Yes, I could cover the strawberry patch with white cloth to protect them, and I just might. In the meantime, though score is Carol 1, bunnies and birds 0.

And it was very good!

First Daylilies

The first daylily bloom appeared this morning. It is no doubt a 'Stella D'Oro', which should bloom all summer long to the point that I'll likely not notice them along the edge of my patio after awhile. They will be a background to the rest of the garden.

These were some I had dug and divided this spring and I'm glad that has not kept them from blooming.

I'd be more proud of this first bloom if I had not stopped at my sister-who-does-not-garden's condo yesterday to put a few small trellises in a couple of pots with sweet potato vine growing in them. They have a whole row of these already blooming by their condo. I consoled myself that those daylilies are along a south facing wall, so the soil there probably warmed up a lot faster.

I will further console myself in large bowls of home grown lettuce. Look at all that lettuce. How shall I eat it all? In salads, on sandwiches, as snacks! I have lots of lettuce to eat and also some spinach.

The spinach is buried under all that lettuce, I promise. It has been YEARS since I've harvested any spinach from the garden, though I try to every year. Usually the bunnies get to it first. But not this year! I don't know what is different, except the neighbor's cat, Jake, comes to play in my back yard occasionally. It almost makes me want to get a cat. Almost, but not quite. Why have a cat if I can borrow the neighbor's to chase off the rabbits?

Have a great day in your garden today.

Garden Bloggers' Book Club May Newsletter

Welcome to the May edition of the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club newsletter.

Update on April-May

Who is going to join us for the book club post this month? For the Garden Bloggers’ Book April-May selection we chose Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing. There are two ways to participate. Read the book and post a review about it or write about your favorite passalong plants, either those you’ve received or those you like to give to others and post that. Post by May 30th so I can include you in the club post on May 31st.

If you would like a sneak peek at a book review, check out M. Sinclair-Steven’s review at Zanthan Gardens. Or go over to Annie in Austin’s to read about her visit to Florarama in March, which included a talk by Felder Rushing. If between those two posts you don’t get excited about passalong plants or the book and decide your going to post something then, well, let me know what would get you excited about one of the best things about gardening, the sharing of plants. What other hobby allows you to divide something and multiply it at the same time. Think about that!

June-July Book Selection Announcement

For June-July, the selection is Who Does Your Garden Grow by Alex Pankhurst. And this time we are also offering an alternate selection, Legends in the Garden: Who In The World is Nellie Stevens? by Linda L. Copeland, Allan M. Armitage. The idea behind these books is to read the stories of the people who have plants named after them. You don't have to read both books, you can read either one. For those who would like to participate but can’t find either book at your local library or you don’t want to add either book to your library, you can still participate by just figuring out who some of the plants in your garden are named after and posting about that.

A quick note on the alternate selection… I ordered it from Amazon some time ago, and have not yet received it. It is supposed to ship in June. Not sure why that is, but wanted to let people know that the Legends in the Garden book, the one that is the alternate choice, seems to be taking a long time to ship, at least from Amazon.

August-September Book Selection

August-September will be the last of the “two month” selections and then we’ll go back to reading a book a month. If you have a suggestion on what we should read, leave a comment or send me an email note.

That’s it for now, and I hope some of you have haven’t participated before will join us this time for Passalong Plants!

(The little Geranium above is a passalong plant from my younger sister, and she doesn't really garden. But everyone has plants to passalong so I can always find something for my sisters to share with me whenever I visit them!)

Light Frost is Not a Color

We did have some light frost last night (Thursday night, Friday morning). I do not believe it was enough to cause any damage. It was the kind of frost that if you weren't an early bird, you probably wouldn't have noticed it.

Who are you calling an early bird? Oh, me. Yes, I am, generally. That's how I knew we had some frost.

Here's a close up of the frost. Only on the Internet, right? Stare into that frosty picture for a full 60 seconds and tell me what you see. Or just 15 seconds...

Yes, I thought I saw some garden fairy footprints in there, too. They go from the lower right to the upper left corner. Or did you see something different?

In other garden news, some of the daylilies I transplanted to my renovated perennial garden by the patio already have bloom scapes on them. I assume it won't be long before I have some daylilies blooming.

I won't know what the variety is until they start to bloom. Then I'll try to match the flowers to the tags I have or ask Gotta Garden, because she has hundreds of daylilies.

I was going to plant the vegetable garden today, but it might be cold enough for light frost again tonight, so I decided the tomato and pepper plants are safer on the brick patio next to the house for a few more days. With radiant heat coming off the brick of the house and the brick of the patio, it is unlikely that they will be bothered by any frost.

So I cleaned up the garage instead of planting. I had pretty much destroyed it when I was on vacation last week, leaving stacks of pots and flats and spilled perlite and peat moss all over. I still have stacks of pots and flats, but at least now they are neat stacks of pots and flats and the floor has been swept clean.

Tomorrow I plan to put together two wooden towers that I bought on clearance last fall at Menards. I'm going to put them in the vegetable garden to grow pole beans on. They are not cedar, so I should put a wood preservative on them.

While I'm doing that, and in a painting mood, I'm also going to repaint the bench in the vegetable garden. See it in the first picture? I painted it cream the first time. Now I think I should branch out and find an actual color on the color wheel to paint it. Any ideas? Pumpkin orange, tomato red, maybe eggplant purple? How about tomato blossom yellow? Or maybe all those colors?

Some gardeners are confident about using bold colors in their gardens, like Pam/Digging in Austin. Hey, until I saw her garden, I thought the cream bench I had was a little "edgy"!

Just kidding, I knew it was b-o-r-i-n-g, but I think I had some spare cream paint or something like that when I decided to paint the bench. Yes, that's my excuse, I already had the paint and I didn't want it to go to waste.

Another thought... why I am I thinking of just putting a wood preservative on my new towers. Maybe I should paint them a color to match the bench?

They Came Back, Can I Keep Them Awhile Longer?

The spirea along the walkway, Spirea japonica 'Limemound', that I cut back to the ground in early spring came back all nice and springy-green. They look so pretty and I love that color of foliage. That's why I bought them, for that pretty foliage.

When I posted about cutting them back completely to the ground, the comments to my question about whether or not I should let them grow back were all, "no, don't let those grow back there". I know it was a bad design to line them up along the sidewalk like that. I know that bed has more potential without them there.

But look how pretty that foliage is! Can I keep them there awhile longer? Maybe I can keep one there and move the rest in the fall?

The shrubs I really wanted to see come back after cutting them back were the St. John's Wort shrubs, Hypericum frondosum 'Sunburst', on the side of the house. But they are still just stumps with ivy growing around them. (Don't ask about the ivy, I know it was dumb to plant it, but I couldn't help myself.)

And next to them are three Deutzia shrubs, Deutzia gracilis 'Nikko', that were killed off by the awful winter weather we had in April.

I found one little tiny Deutzia bloom in that bed.

But that isn't enough, I'm afraid. They just aren't going to make it.

So I think I need to spend my time cleaning out this bed of St. John's Wort and Deutzia and English ivy before I get too concerned about the poor design in the front bed. I want to remove all of these dead shrubs and the ivy, then add new soil and replant it.

And if the fact that there are dead shrubs there isn't a good enough reason to work on that side bed instead of the front bed? In the front bed is the crabapple tree and in that tree are the baby robins and oh my, did I hear it from mama robin when I took this picture this evening.
She squawked and hollered at me like nobody's business. I'm sure she wouldn't like it if I did too much in that bed right now while she still has her babies in that nest! I'll just have to wait until the robins grow up and fly away before I clean up the mess of black-eyed Susan's, bee balm seedlings, sedum, daylilies and water sprouts growing around that tree. Or dig out those shrubs.

Rumors

Peony for your thoughts? Some old timers call them "pine-ys". They are fully in bloom and lovely right now. These are the kind of plants that can benefit from some staking because those blooms are BIG and heavy. But I don't stake my peony plants, so tomorrow I might find all the flower stems bent over double trying to hold up these BIG flowers.

I hope not.

I also hope that the rumors aren't true. My boss first told me about the rumor on Monday, almost as soon as I returned to work.

Then my sister called and left a message in the evening to tell me her husband had heard the rumor and if it was true, what should she do?

I didn't get right back to her, so she left me another voice mail on Tuesday. Then a couple of other people asked me if I had heard the rumor.

I did some checking, and I don't think the rumor is going to turn out to be true. That's the thing about rumors, you can't always believe them. But sometimes they are so believable, you should take the time to check them out, just in case. Then you can prepare yourself.

And the rumor?

That we might get some frost Thursday night or Friday night.

F-r-o-s-t.

That would not be good.

It would be cruel. The month of May can not, would not, do that to us! Not after all the lovely warm days we've had. Could it?

But I checked the weather and it appears the lows will be in the low 40's Thursday night, high 40's Friday night, so we should be okay.

I didn't panic when I first heard the rumors. I stayed calm, I kept my wits about me. I didn't even flinch. Why? Because I haven't planted the frost-tender vegetable plants yet. And if we have a spring frost around here, it would only really settle in the lower lying areas, and of course the vegetable garden is at the lowest point in the back yard.

But even though I think there won't be frost in the next few days, I think I'll wait until Saturday to plant my tomatoes and peppers and the rest of the vegetable garden. Just in case...

Official Hoe Portrait - Stirrup Hoe

Every hoe has to have an official portrait and this is it for the new stirrup hoe, purchased earlier this spring. What do you think? I thought the blue of the Blue Dogbane (Amsonia tabernaemontana) would complement the lovely blue of the hoe itself which is why I chose this spot and this time to take the picture.

This is a fine hoe and quickly becoming one of my favorites. I've used it several times in the raised bed vegetable garden beds to clear out weeds and find it is easy to use, light enough that you don't feel like you are dragging a club through the ground, but substantial enough to whack off those weeds!

I've also added this portrait to the whole hoe collection post.

I'm always available to give advice on hoes, which ones to use for which occasions, which hoes to avoid, where to buy a good hoe, just ask! The only thing I don't know about hoes is how to stop acquiring them!

Does anyone else have more than one hoe? Is anyone gardening without a hoe?

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - May!

Welcome to May Dreams Gardens for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day this fine May day. I have flowers blooming, flowers budding, and flowers fadng! Here are some pictures of a few of them. On the side there is Baptisia 'Purple Smoke'.

This next flower is a mystery to me. I should know the name of it but I don't. Can anyone help? I assume it is the Allium family.


This is a creeping veronica, Veronica repens 'Sunshine'.

And the star of every Indiana garden, the state flower, the Peony. These should be fully in bloom by next weekend. This is a passalong plant from my Dad.

I have a pea blossom! I just might have outwitted the bunny rabbits by sprinkling the pea vines with cayenne pepper and letting the neighbor's cat play in the garden.

Here's Blue Dogbane, Amsonia tabernaemontana. It's pretty when it flowers, but the flowers only last a few weeks and then you just have green leaves. It is a bit of a self-sower, but not so much that you can't control it.

My best performing clematis is this White Solitary Clematis, Clematis integrefolia ‘Alba’. It's a shrub type and does require some support, or it would sprawl all over the ground.

I tried to keep the gnome out of this picture of the Japanese Iris, but couldn't. You just don't say "no" when the gnome wants to be in the picture. There might be consequences, mysterious happenings in the garden, if you know what I mean.

I tried but didn't get everything planted last week while I was on vacation. Now that I am back to work, these purchased plants will have to wait awhile longer before I can plant them in their summer homes.

And look, the robin's eggs have hatched in the crabapple tree in front!

That's enough pictures. Now the lists.

First, the fading flowers. “Wish you’d stopped by last week because they were really something to see then, but now there are just a few flowers hanging on, relunctant to say good bye so soon.”

Allium (Allium karataviense, I think)
Bleeding Heart (Dicentra spectabilis, a passalong plant from one of my sisters)
Drumstick Allium
Helleborus x orientalis (Lenten Rose)
Lilacs (Syringa patula ‘Miss Kim’ and Syringa meyeri)
Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis)
Miniature Iris ‘Smart’ (newly purchased!)
Snowball Bush (Viburnum opulus ‘Sterile’)
Strawberries (I see little strawberries coming on as the flowers wane!)
Tulip ‘Deidre’, a late bloomer
Variegated Kerria (Kerria japonica ‘Picta’)
Violas and pansies

Next, fully in flower, or at least a few flowers beyond the bud stage

Beardlip Penstemon (Penstemon barbatus ‘Nana Rondo’, blue flowers)
Blue Dogbane (Amsonia tabernaemontana)
Blue False Indigo (Baptisia, ‘Purple Smoke’)

Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium bermudianum)
Catmint (a passalong plant which is probably Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’)
Chamomile
Chives
Columbine (Aquilegia ‘Tower Blue’, ‘Tower Pink’, another double purple that I don’t know the name of, ‘Black Barlow’, and a single-flowering purple one that also has no name.)
Creeping Veronica (Veronic repens ‘ Sunshine’)
Daisies (probably Ox-Eye Daises, Leucanthemum vulgare)
Dwarf Columbine (Aquilegia flabellate ‘Cameo Mixture’, also newly purchased)
False Forget-me-Not (Brunnera macrophylla)
Grapes
Japanese Iris
Mystery flower, some kind of Allium?
Snow-in-Summer (Cerastium tomentosum)
Snowmound Spirea (Spiraea nipponia ‘Snowmound’)
Spiderwort (Tradescantia ‘Blue and Gold’)
Spiderworts in various shades of purple (probably Tradescantia virginiana)
White Solitary clematis (Clematis integrefolia ‘Alba’, a shrub type clematis, but it does need support)
Woodbine Variegated Honeysuckle Vine (Lonicera periclymenum ‘Harlequin’)

Next, those in the bud stage, too shy or too stubborn, to be fully a part of bloom day! Sometimes plants just do their own thing, in spite of any coaxing or cajoling you might do to get them to bloom!

Coral Bells (Heuchera ‘Petite Pearl Fancy’, it’s part of my miniature garden along with the dwarf columbine listed above)
Cranesbill (Geranium passalong plant from my sister, variety unknown, but they are pretty)
Cranesbill (Geranium x cantabrigiense ‘Karmina’ and ‘Biokovo’)
Dead Nettle (Lamium maculatum ‘Aureum)
Mockorange (Philadelphus ‘Buckley’s Quill’)
Peas
Peonies (passalong plants from my Dad and a friend at work, plus one I bought called ‘Shirley Temple’)
White Flower Carpet Rose

And finally, here’s a list of some of the annuals I purchased for containers.

Amstel Begonias (‘Camilla’ for hanging baskets)
Argyranthemum ‘Madeira Deep Rose’
Cleome ‘Linde Armstrong’ (a dwarf cleome I had last year and loved how it performed)
Double Impatiens (white and pink, plus a variegated leaf one called ‘Fiesta Ole’ Peppermint’)
Euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’ (another winner from last year)
Geranium (Pelargonium, white)
Impatiens
Lantana (lots of lantana, first year I’ve tried them)
Laurentia ‘Beth’s Blue’
Osteosperum (two kinds, one white flowering, the other purple)
Verbena (white, purples)
Wax Begonias also known as Fibrous-rooted Begonias
Zinnia (Cherry Profusion)

I am sorry to report that the Deutzia, (Deutzia gracilis 'Nikko') which should be flowering now, does not appear to have survived the “winter of April ‘07”. Please take a moment to remember how it was last year.

What’s blooming in your garden today?

Please join us for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day by posting on your blog what’s blooming today in your garden, and then leave a comment here so we can find you and visit to see all your pretty flowers.

If you don’t have a blog, feel free to list your blooms in a comment below.

If you have too many blooms to list or not enough time, just go with your top 10 list and join us anyway. And botanical names are strictly optional! All are welcome!

And I'll end with one more picture. This is Tradescantia 'Blue and Gold'. It's a morning bloomer and I took most of my pictures the evening of the 14th, so I borrowed this from a post last spring. I promise it is blooming like that now!

Gardening Time Management

Do you ever get overwhelmed by all you need to do in your garden? Weeds to pull, flowers to dead head, mulch to spread, shrubs to dig out, annuals to plant, seeds to sow, the list seems endless at times!

My sister was feeling overwhelmed by all she wants to do in her garden and her time is limited. The picture above is of a simple bird house with a clematis vine wrapped around it sitting on a ledge on her gazebo. A gazebo! I don't have a gazebo. Do you? If I did, I'd love having a garden accent like that on one ledge and that's where I would spend my time.

Here's the advice I gave my sister.

Stopping thinking about EVERYTHING that needs to be done or that you want to do in the garden. Instead figure out what you can do in 15 or 30 minutes, when you have time, and then go do just that without thinking about everything else. It's a little time-management mind game.

For example, I'll tell myself to just weed for 15 minutes or until the container I have is full, whether that is a wheelbarrow load, a basketful or a trash bag full. Or I'll think, "I'll just weed from here to there" maybe a distance of 10 feet and then I can stop. Then I do just that and stop and decide if I have time or the desire to do more. I don't look at the whole bed and think how long it might take to do the whole thing, because most times you won't have that much time to spare all at once, so why go on thinking you will someday?

Enough of these 15 minute sessions and pretty soon, you see some real progress.

Of course, you don't want to be like one of those people who stop to mow their lawns when a hurricane is swirling out in the Atlantic heading right toward them. You have to prioritize and make sure the urgent matters are attended to first, like making sure the chairs in the gazebo all work, which you do by sitting on them and relaxing with a good book and a tall lemonade.

And occasionally you do have to plan enough time to do an important big project, like spreading mulch, or replanting an entire perennial bed, or building a gazebo, but you won't do those kinds of projects every day.

Other high priorities include, for example, getting rid of poison ivy, making sure prized perennials aren't being overrun by weeds, planting the vegetable garden before the fourth of July, planting trees, watering if everything is parched. Stuff like that.

Speaking of watering, I have some neighbors who are already running sprinklers on their lawns. I'm not talking about those people who have irrigation systems and turn them on in the spring and off in the fall and so end up watering nearly every day rain or shine. I'm talking about neighbors who have to go to some effort to drag out hoses and sprinklers and position the sprinklers just right so they aren't watering the street or their driveway.

It is a little dry outside, even though we had some rain last Wednesday. Regardless, I think these neighbors are making a mistake. May is not the month to be "babying" the grass and having it think there is an endless supply of water right at the surface, so that's where the roots stay. No! The lawn must not be babied along like that. It needs to learn to send those roots deeper for moisture, so that when it is really dry out, in July and August, it has a better chance of surviving without additional watering.

That's what I do with my lawn. I even let it go dormant mid-summer and only if it is really, really dry do I do some watering in late August-September, when it starts to cool down in the evenings. And I've not lost it all to a drought yet.

Thank You, Internet Neighbors!

Thank you, neighbors across the Internet, for voting for me to win a 2007 Mouse & Trowel award for “Garden Blogger You’d Most Like to Have as a Neighbor”.

I’m thrilled to win and humbled to be “Internet neighbors” with so many other wonderful garden bloggers, especially Colleen who thought up the awards and made it all happen. She did a great job coming up with categories, putting together a great website for nominating and voting, and making us all aware of some new garden blogs we hadn’t found yet.

Thank you all, and have a happy day in your garden today!

Where the Lilacs Bloom

There are many firsts of Spring, the first crocus, the first robin, the first tulip, the first day of a vacation week dedicated to gardening. But these pale beside the first whiff of lilacs in bloom.

Their scent is sweet and heavy and fresh, all at the same time. I can not walk by my lilacs in bloom without slowing down and pausing to breathe deeply the scent of Spring, the scent of lilacs in bloom.

In my own garden, I have four varieties of lilacs and weather permitting, I have lilac blooms in late April, early-mid May and the first of June.

But the star of my lilacs, the queen, the one I enjoy the most, is Syringa patula, ‘Miss Kim’ which has perfectly timed its blooms for me to enjoy this past week.

I can not imagine Spring without lilacs in bloom.

Lettuce, Blogs, Book Clubs and Bloom Day

Lettuce...

My sister has instructed me to bring a salad for Mother's Day lunch tomorrow. Do you think she is expecting some of this lettuce growing in my garden or a nice big head of store bought iceberg lettuce?

Blogs...

I've been using Google Reader to keep track of new posts on blogs I like to visit. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be reliably informing me of new posts. Sometimes I get to thinking, "hmmm so-and-so doesn't seem to have posted in a while", then I check their blog and there are all kinds of new posts (or one or two) that Google Reader failed to let me know about! Is anyone else using Google Reader and having these issues, or not having these issues?

Book Club...

The Garden Bloggers' Book Club is on "summer schedule", reading a book every two months. The April-May selection is Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing. You can either post a review of the book, or post about your own favorite passalong plants, those you give and those you have received. When you've posted your review, let me know via a comment or email, so I can find the review. I'll publish the "club post" with links to all the related posts on May 31st. I hope you will all join in, even if you didn't read the book. Everyone has a passalong plant or two to share about, right?

I've also determined the June-July selection and will post about that soon.

Bloom Day...

The 4th monthly Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day is this Tuesday, May 15th. Post on your blog about what's blooming in your gardens on the 15th, then come here to my blog and leave a comment on my Bloom Day post, so everyone can find you and visit and see what is in bloom in your garden. It's like a virtual garden tour. So far, gardeners in the south, especially all those Texans, have led with the most blooms, as we would expect in early spring, but I have a feeling May is going to be different!

Thank you!

And finally, I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me to get a Mouse & Trowel award. Regardless of the outcome, I was and am thrilled with being nominated and happy to have been included with other great gardening blogs.

Have a great day in your garden!

Tired

Do these pansies and violas look tired to you? Like many gardeners, including Susan down in Texas, I know these flowers won't last too much longer as the days grow hotter, but it seems a shame to pull them out now. They still look good.

But I have new plants to plant here, and this is one of the last of the 'containers' that I need to plant up. So I think tomorrow, they are coming out.

I'll send good thoughts to the other pansies and violas in nearby pots to let them know they can stay as long as they look decent. I don't want them to get scared seeing what happens to the ones in the window box. They are in their own special pots that I use only for them, so there isn't a new flat of other plants waiting to crowd them out. Never mind that the summer colors on the porch are pinks and whites, for the most part, and these don't fit in. Like I said, they can stay as long as they look good. (What? Plants don't have feelings??)

And while I'm replanting the windowbox, I think I'll refresh that moss lining. It's starting to look a bit shabby.

I hope I have enough green moss to also line this planter. I still need to put something in this. Any ideas? It's on the porch, which faces south, but is somewhat shaded due to the nearby crabapple tree.

And then once I plant it up, plus three more hanging baskets, which also need to be lined with moss, I think I'm done with containers for this year, at least until fall, or unless I see another plant I have to have.

And I'm tired, but it's the good kind of tired that comes from physical labor, not that kind of tired that comes from over-thinking during the day.

I might be more tired than usual because I mix my own potting soil, which means dumping 40 pound bags of top soil into the wheelbarrow and hand mixing in peat, perlite, and vermiculite. Over and over again.

Around lunchtime I realized I was going to run out of top soil, so I went to the local Meijer to get some more. I always ask if someone can load it for me, because I have to unload it, and they always say they will call someone to come back and help. But no one ever shows up. I'm to the point that I ask for them to send someone to help, then I drive around and load it myself while I'm waiting. Oh, well, they are no worse than Lowes, who also said they'd send someone to help load but didn't.

I wasn't sure how much more top soil I would need, so I got 20 bags. But when I finished up this evening I realized that "my eyes were bigger than my containers". Now I have extra top soil, maybe 10 bags extra. No matter, I'll use it eventually.

And all afternoon as I wheeled back wheelbarrow loads of top soil to the back yard, I made sure to walk on the side of the house where the 'Miss Kim' lilacs are blooming. Yes, they smell wonderful.
And that was Friday of my gardening vacation week. But don't say that my vacation is over. I've still got Saturday and Sunday to enjoy.

Focal Point for the Garden

Back in the early spring, when I posted about renovating my perennial bed by the back patio, several people suggested via comments that I should add a focal point at the corner of the patio.

I'd like you all to know I listened and after looking around, I think I've found just the right focal point sitting in my own garage.

Without further ado... ta da! Here it is

Yes, that's a snowman! I originally bought it for display on the front porch in the winter time, but I really like it and thought having it on display all summer would make it seem cooler outside.

Plus it is a bit of the "unexpected", and doesn't one of the hosts on one of those decorating shows on H*TV always preach to have the unexpected in your design, whether inside or out?

This is one of the side views.
And here's another side view. See in the background my newly planted miniature Iris 'Smart'?

Kindly ignore that empty pot on the right, I'm not done planting!

I know it is hard to tell what this snowman is really going to look like because the plants aren't mature yet. You will just have to use your imagination.

Oh, and one more thing about the snowman...

I'm kidding, pulling your leg, making up a story. That is not going to be the focal point. I put it there to see if it was about the size that I am looking for, when I do get something to put there.

I think it is on the small side.

In the meantime, I put the original temporary focal point back in place and I promise the snowman is back in the garage, patiently waiting for December.

I think this is closer to the size I am looking for, at least it will be the right size once those plants mature.

What do others think?

I did briefly consider keeping this in place for the summer and growing some vines on it. But this perennial bed is only for well-behaved plants, and I've yet to meet a vine that could behave itself, except for maybe a clematis. But I don't want to put a clematis there if I am going to find some other focal point, and then have to move the clematis.

And that concludes my gardening activities for the day... weeding, transplanting, potting up containers, mowing the lawn and trying out a new sculpture. I can tell you it was hot mowing the grass and that snowman didn't cool me off a bit!

Morning Snack

I've been working on planting containers this morning and was making good progress. Then I took some stuff back to the compost bin and spotted these radishes, begging to be picked and eaten.

So I picked them, photographed them, cleaned them and ate them.

They were good.

My motto is when the radishes are ready to pick, by all means pick them and eat them.

Now that I've had this delicious morning snack, I need to get back to planting containers... break time is over!

And When It Rains?

Gardening Vacation 2007 - Wednesday

When you take a whole week off to garden it can't be go-go-go all week long. At some point, the gardener rests. I took advantage of the rain today to slow down and "sit a spell".

Early in the morning I did some general weeding and pruning. Finally, I cut back the butterfly bushes (Buddleia davidii), which around here die back to the ground each year, and I trimmed off all the suckers that come up around the base of the serviceberry (Amelanchier x grandiflora). Serviceberry is one of those trees you can grow as a single trunk tree, like I am doing, or you can grow it as a multiple trunk tree, which is more common around here. Anyway, as a single trunk tree it gets a lot of sprouts around the base that I have to cut back regularly.

And while it rained? I rested some and then potted up my Delphinium seedlings. I'm growing two varieties, Delphinium elatum 'Foeresters Hybrid' and Delphinium x cultorum, both from Hardy Plants. I don't remember ordering the second variety, so maybe they threw it in as a bonus packet? I currently have 13 seedlings of 'Foeresters Hybrid' and 5 of the other. So for less than $5, I could end up with the 18 Delphiniums. Let's hope the little seedlings make it through these next few weeks and grow big enough to plant out in one of the flower beds!

I had another project in mind to do after messing around with the seedlings and tending to the houseplants, if it was still raining, but the rain stopped after a few hours, and I started working on planting the containers on the front porch. I didn't get too far because it was afternoon and I'm more of a morning person. Good excuse, huh?

I wonder if most gardeners are morning people? Especially in climates where it gets hot in the summer, which is nearly everywhere, when else would you get anything done in the garden except in the morning? And morning is the best time to harvest vegetables, before the sun beats down on them and sucks all the moisture out!

Speaking of the vegetable garden, some may wonder why I've not written about it this week. That's because it isn't the focus of this week! This week is about flowers and container planting, and weeding and getting out all the rest of the garden decor. I've already scheduled a four day weekend off starting next Thursday, and that's when I'll work on the vegetable garden.

Yes, this week is about the flowers. I'm sure most of you recognize that the picture above is of a lilac, in particular the buds of a 'Miss Kim' lilac as they were yesterday. Today they've opened just a little bit more and the smell is wonderful. Whenever I walk by the lilacs, I naturally slow down and linger a bit to enjoy the scent. Every garden needs at least one lilac!

Vacation Traditions

Gardening Vacation 2007 - Tuesday

Did you ever offer advice to another customer at a garden center? I'm not talking about working at a garden center or nursery and giving advice, I'm talking about being a customer and offering advice to another customer.

Today I was at a greenhouse and the woman in line behind me had two one-gallon containers of Evening Primrose, Oenothera speciosa. I said quietly, "that's a spreader so you probably only need one container of it". I also volunteered that after the first big bloom in spring, she should shear it back and then she'll get some repeat blooms through the season, but it won't be as prolific as the first blooms.

She seemed a bit disappointed because she was looking for a perennial to put around her mailbox that would bloom all-out, all season. She ended up putting both of them back.

I hope the greenhouse people didn't notice our little conversation and the result. But gardener-to-gardener, sometimes you have to speak out when you see that someone is about to make a mistake or spend money on plants that, when you get right down to it, are somewhat weedy or invasive, like Evening Primrose. I think it has a place and is a pretty pink delicate flower in the spring, but it wasn't what this woman really wanted after I told her about it.

I think I've finished shopping for plants for awhile, at least for a few days. After visiting one big box store and four independents today, I've got enough plants now that I can start planting containers. If I run out of anything, I've picked out one greenhouse I'll go back to, where I ended up buying most of my plants. Regardless of "needing" any more plants, I'm going back there on Friday because the owner told me she would be all stocked up by then for Mother's Day weekend.

And so I move on to planting as I reach mid-week. Right on schedule. The picture above is of some of the containers I planted for my younger sister. She doesn't garden. She says she got her green thumb from my mother, who also doesn't garden. For the last several years, I've planted her containers for her as I am faster and surer with a trowel than she is. In past years, she went with me to buy her plants, but this year she left it up to me to get whatever I thought she would like. So as I went shopping for my own plants, I got plants for her, tough drought-resistant annuals that would live in containers and put up with full sun for most of the hot afternoon.

And then lickety split, "we" got them all planted this evening. She's all set. Most of what I got her won't even need to be dead headed, just watered.

Tomorrow, I'll start on my own containers. And as I do so, I'm eagerly awaiting the next Garden Blogger's Bloom Day on May 15th, just one more week. The idea behind this one day a month is for all garden bloggers to post on their blogs what is blooming in their garden on the 15th, and then leave a comment here on my post for that day, so we can all go to the different blogs and see who has what blooming. Based on the comments for the last bloom day on April 15th, I would guess around 50 bloggers participated.

From bloom day, I've learned that it takes a long time for spring to reach some of the northern garden bloggers. But by May I'd hope that everyone has a lot blooming.

Here's a peak at something just starting to bloom in my garden, the first Spidewort, Tradescantia virginiana.

I've got some other flowers and shrubs just starting to bloom, but I'm going to hold back posting pictures of them as buds and single blooms now and wait until May 15th to hopefully show them in full, glorious May bloom, so you can see why May is such a great month to garden around here.

Some Thank You's

A few thank you’s to pass along…

I love Lee Valley Tools. I sent them an email on Sunday because several years ago I purchased some “Y” valves from them, the kind you use to connect two hoses to an outside faucet. This spring when I put the “Y” valves back on, they were leaking badly so I sent an email to customer service at Lee Valley asking what I could do to stop the leak. They replied back that they are sending me a refund check. And it has been at least two, maybe three years since I bought them.

I didn’t ask for a refund, but they were not happy with the quality, so had discontinued carrying these valves and are looking for a new supplier and decided I should get a refund. I hope they find a new supplier because these valves had nice big levers to turn the water flow off and on for each hose. I will always shop Lee Valley first for my gardening tools, because of their great customer service. (I'm still going to try to fix them so they don't leak.)

And thank you to Annie in Austin who gives good advice and shares her gardening knowledge freely in her posts and comments. A while back, I had posted about my hand-digging hoe, and how it was the best thing for removing sod. Annie left a comment that she used a Cape Cod weeder with great success for the same task. So, I bought a Cape Cod weeder similar to this one from Lee Valley, and it is indeed a wonderful tool. I like to use it when I am removing small patches of grass and weeds. I still like the hand digging hoe for the major sod removal chores, but find I am using the Cape Cod weeder a lot, too. Thanks Annie for suggesting I try another tool. I love gardening tools!

I'd like to also thank my younger sister for giving me the passalong Bleeding Heart plant pictured above. It suffered quite a bit in the "winter of April '07", but has made a nice comeback and is blooming again.

And I'd like to thank my youngest sister, too. She doesn't know it yet, but this fall, she'll be giving me a start of her yellow irises, blooming now in her garden!

Thanks to all!

Smart Shopping

Gardening Vacation 2007 - Monday.

I decided this morning that I needed a break from planting, after re-doing the hosta bed yesterday. Instead, I thought I would relax by going plant shopping!

As everyone knows, running around in the spring to buy plants for containers and annuals can take a lot of time. There is no single garden center or nursery or big box store that has everything you want and need.

Today I went to three independents and three big boxes with a friend of mine who relies on me to help her buy her plants each spring. I'm off to a good start, but nowhere near done. My friend, on the other hand, has most all the plants she wants.

The little blue flower above is a close up of Bermuda Blue-Eyed Grass, Sisyrinchium bermudianum, that I bought at one garden center. And here's the whole plant.

I challenge anyone to pass this plant up. The tag didn't list the hardiness zone, so I looked it up when I got home. My searches were inconclusive. It could be hardy to only zone 6 or it could be hardy in zone 5 (my zone) or even zone 4. I'll just give it some extra winter projection and hope for the best.

Some would say that this plant wasn't a smart purchase, not knowing what the hardiness zone was. Did you know you can't assume when you buy a perennial in a zone 5 garden center that it is hardy to zone 5? And I'm not talking just about buying from big box stores who sometimes sell plants here from the south *gasp* that might not survive our winters. I'm talking about buying from garden centers where the staff should know better.

One shopping tip I give people who ask is don't buy a tree or shrub in the spring that is more leafed out than the trees and shrubs already growing around here. To me, that's a sign it was brought in from a southern state, and while it is probably hardy here, it might not be. I know, that tip only works when you shop early for trees and shrubs. But I also have no problem asking the garden center where their trees and shrubs came from and if they came from too far south, I don't buy them. Too far south for me is Tennessee and points south of that.

I think I'll be okay with this perennial, I would have bought it even as a container plant. But it is "buyer beware" when buying a perennial that doesn't include the hardiness zone information on the tag.

Now how about this purchase? Was it a smart purchase?

I say Yes. This is a dwarf iris, variety 'Smart'. Hardy to zone 3! Both it and the Blue-Eyed Grass are going in my replanted perennial bed where I can keep an eye on them. They'll add some much needed early color there, because there are no other early bloomers in that bed, other than some columbine. They will also stay fairly small and well-behaved, which is a requirement for being planted in that flower bed. I have another flower bed for the perennials that spread and self-sow.

By the way, I did not intend to buy perennials today, but I ended up with four. I really was after container plants, really I was. But this was my first plant shopping trip of the season and I had been good all spring about not buying plants too soon and I had the new perennial bed with some open spots and you all know how you can get all confused at the garden centers especially ones where the plants all look well-tended and loved and practically scream out "buy me" and my shopping list was in my head not written down and the sun was shining and did I mention it was my first day of plant shopping?

Tomorrow, I should plant what I bought today to keep up and not end up with all these plants that I am trying to plant next Sunday. And I will plant a bunch early in the morning. But as soon as the garden centers open, I'll head out again, and this time I will get some container plants and annuals and I'll have a shopping list and a better plan. I will!

Hosta Sunday

For this hosta, I dug out and replanted my entire bed of hostas.

It doesn't look like much now, but when it grows up, it will be quite large. It's a passalong that I got from my sister last spring. Unfortunately, I didn't have a good place for it last summer after I moved it it to make way for some miniature hostas, so it's been in a container until today.

Oh, and the reason it looks all mangled? It was in a big clay pot, and when I tried to slide it out of the pot, the whole thing ended up root ball on top, which is wrong. But I'm confident it will pull through. If it doesn't, I'll just go back to my sister's and get another division. In spite of her concern that when I divided this last spring, I took the nicest division, I left her with TWO plants and even planted them in two different locations. She's got plenty to share.

Here's the hosta bed right before I started digging. I did widen the bed earlier in the spring so I would have plenty of room for the Big Hosta.
First order of business was to dig out all the hostas. I did leave two hostas that were more or less where I thought they should be, which is good because I thought the one on right was too far along to move this spring, anyway.

Here are all the hostas I dug from that bed and long with some variegated dead nettle (Lamium maculatum 'Beacon Nettle'). Dead nettle is a terrible name for an innocuous little ground cover, don't you think?

And now, fast forward through amending the soil with bags of top soil, raking it all smooth, dividing and replanting the hostas, watering, mulching with cocoa hulls (remember, poisonous to dogs!) and watering again to get this finished bed.I promise that little tiny hosta with all that room around it is going to get really big. It's going to be a show stopper!

And here are the leftovers. These are primarily some basic old fashioned "August Lilies" that I got from my brother and sister-in-law and moved from my last house to this one via another friend who let me plant them in her garden temporarily. I believe I've had these for about fifteen years.

I found places to plant the leftovers at my neighbor's. I promise, none of them ended up in the compost bin.

Tomorrow? Look at this weather forecast. This is from one of those weather email updates that you can subscribe to:

Dear Carol,
If you happen to have the day off tomorrow you are going to be thrilled with the weather as sunny skies propel afternoon temperatures into the mid and upper 70’s. A desert-like atmosphere hangs with us for a while meaning cool mornings and warm afternoons. Dry weather dominates until late week when a few t-storms will be possible. ...
Sincerely,Meteorologist Jude Redfield

I am thrilled. I happen to have the day off tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that... the whole week! Looks like the weather is cooperating. I think I'll dig out the shrubs in the front garden bed tomorrow and plant them someplace else and then prep that whole front bed to plant something else there. Won't that be fun!

But I'll need to be careful and quick about it, because right in the middle of that bed is a crabapple tree with this robin's nest with four eggs in it. Mama bird does not like it when I am around. She'll be squawking at me the whole time.

Green Thumb Sunday - Tulips and Allium

Tulip 'Deidre'

Allium I'm in the garden today...

Join

Let's Go With a Green & White Theme

We were fortunate today that we didn't get any of the rain that the weatherman said we would get, so I got to mow the lawn! And that's primarily what I got done on my first day of vacation.

It seems that no matter when I start my vacation, the first thing I do is trim and mow the lawn. It makes it nice for the rest of the week, and I enjoy doing it. You can see that today I followed a curve as I mowed the lawn in the back. Yes, I am one of those gardeners who likes to mow her own lawn! It's good exercise and when you are done, you can see a result. So much of what we do at times doesn't show immediate results like that.

Since the lawn is green and I seem to have a lot of white flowers blooming right now, let's go with a green and white theme for this upate on Gardening Vacation 2007.

This little allium is blooming by the front step. It's one of my favorites. That bloom will last a long time and then the "skeleton" of the bloom will be around most of the summer until I cut it back.
I believe this is Allium karataviense. It's one of my favorites.

The only tulips blooming right now are 'Deidre', my late season green striped tulips. Around the lamp post are giant purple allium. I did not save the package, so I don't know the exact variety of allium. That white blur in the background is snow-in-summer, Cerastium tomentosum.
And in the back yard, taking up some of my precious shade, are some woodland ferns. I took these from my sister's yard, excuse me, she let me dig some of these up as passalongs. (I'm pretty sure I told her I was taking them.) My dad got these some time ago, so I am happy to have them in my garden now. (And yes, peaking up through the ferns are some Brunnera macrophylla flowers, False Forget-me-not).
Now, some bad news. The rabbits have returned, if indeed they ever left. They have eaten quite a bit of spinach and a few pea vines. I don't like those rabbits. They are vermin.
And some good news/bad news. The good news is that the Limemound Spirea (Spiraea japonica 'Limemound') that I cut down to the ground earlier this spring are all coming back!
The bad news is now I can't just cut out the roots, I have to try to transplant these to some other spot. I think I'm going to give some of them to my neighber. I know based on comments I got on the post about removing them that it would not be good to let them grow back where I initially mis-planted them! Poor design on my part.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I'm declaring it Hosta Sunday, because I plan to dig up and replant my hostas and make room for my giant passalong hosta. Then on Monday, when everyone else goes back to work, I'll be going to garden centers!

Firsts

The first daisy of the season bloomed today. Just one bloom, but soon there will be many more. I've lost track of what kind of daisy it is but it self sows in "a nice way" and I think it is one I started from seed. I'll have to go through my old seed lists to see if I can figure it out.

"Self-sowing in a nice way" means you get some seedlings popping up here and there, but not everywhere. You have enough to fill in some blank spots and still give some away.

This daisy will produce a lot of blooms in the next few weeks, and then the rest of the summer it will bloom here and there if I deadhead it promptly.

And here are my first flats of annuals.

I bought these from a co-worker who belongs to an organization that sells them as a fund raiser. I could have bought more, but I had to place the order waaaayyyy back in March, and I didn't know what I wanted at the time. I'm not sure why I bought all shade loving annuals because I don't really have that much shade. And the shade I do have is being hogged up by the hostas!

And this is the first evening of Gardening Vacation 2007. I have many thoughts and ideas about what I want to do this coming week, as many ideas as there are snow-in-summer (Cerastium tomentosum) flowers now.

I'm going to need a plan...

In My Defense...

What kind of plant shopper are you?

Do you make a list of exactly what you want, including quantities and specific varieties, before you go to the garden center?

Do you have a "sort of" idea of what you want and then go to the garden center and see what they have?

Do you just show up at the garden center to buy plants and buy whatever plants catch your eye?

Do you go to the garden center for something other than plants, and end up buying a plant anyway?

I had one of those $10 project starter cards from Lowes that expired on Sunday, those cards they send you in the mail to buy $25 or more and get $10 off. I decided that I would use it to buy 25 bags of top soil to have on hand for Gardening Vacation 2007, which by the way starts in less than 24 hours, actually it starts in about 20 hours, but who's counting?

Anyway, I figured I'd use the card to buy 25 bags at about $1.19 a bag, and I would end up paying about $20 for those bags, which is a pretty good deal around here. With this specific goal in mind, I made my way to the garden center and got in line to pay for the top soil. I didn't allow myself to browse around (much) and look at plants because I knew I was not yet ready to buy them. (I'll be ready in a few days). However, while I was waiting in line, I did admire a great big fern that the customer behind me had. She said they were just taking the ferns off the truck and setting them up. I'm telling you, it was a beautiful hanging fern. I started to sweat a little.

I finally got to the front of the line and there I saw the neon colored paper sign. One day special on top soil, 89 cents a bag. A sale! I hadn't counted on that. I was going to be short of spending $25 to get $10 off. My truck's limit is 25 bags (1,000 pounds) so I couldn't get more top soil. I needed to buy something else for about three dollars. I got out of line.

I went around the tables with the three dollar perennials, but none of the plants seemed quite right. They weren't big hanging ferns. I made my way to the ferns. Many of them were still in their protective wrapping. The staff had not had a chance to mis-handle them or not water them for days on end. I succumbed. I bought one.In my defense... do I really need a defense? I'm sure you all understand and have been in a similar situation and would have done the same thing.

When I shop for plants, I have an idea of what I want and then go and see what the garden centers have. Occasionally, I go to a garden center with no intention of buying plants, but end up with a plant anyway. When I want something specific, I mail order it or start it from seed.

What kind of a plant shopper are you?

Unplanting

Sometimes in the spring there is as much "unplanting" as planting going on. The weeds are just as excited about spring as any other plant and have taken off. They want to get firmly established and if possible bloom and set seed before I find them. They're in a big hurry because they "know" when I find them, I will be unplanting them!

Can you spot the weed in the picture above? Bonus points if you can also identify it for me because I've forgotten the name of it, but I know it is a weed and it came up out of nowhere. I believe it was not there yesterday, but grew out of nothing overnight. Hint, the two plants that are "keepers" in the picture are a gold foliage Spiderwort (Tradescantia 'Blue and Gold') and a tall phlox (Phlox paniculata), which looks a little anemic.

When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. ~Author Unknown

I'll have to keep this advice in mind as I get down to some serious weeding soon.

I'll also be doing some serious shrub removal in the next few days. Remember my forsythia (Forsythia x media 'Arnold Dwarf') that hadn't bloomed in nearly 10 years? This is what they look like now.

They suffered mightily in the winter of April '07, and I'm going to finish them off soon. When they look so bad, I don't mind yanking them out and clearing out those weeds. Can you believe those weeds that I've let grow in there? You all might think I'm a lazy gardener after seeing that mess. And sometimes I am lazy, aren't you?

But one plant I won't be pulling out is this double columbine, Aquilegia vulgaris 'Tower Pink'. The "brother" plant is 'Tower Blue' which you can see over on the right. I started both from seed in 2001, and they've come back reliably every year. They get to stay as long as they want!

Happy May Day

Happy May Day.

Good things happen in the garden and life in May.

The strawberries are blooming! I should have some late May or early June berries to eat from my strawberry patch, which I planted last year.

I won a book! The ladies of Garden Rant had a little contest about garden obsession and competitive gardening and I won a copy of Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening by Aurelia Scott after they saw my post on the Ritual of the First Tomato or maybe it is because I have more hoes than anyone else I know. They also thought a few therapy sessions might be a good idea. I think getting a new garden related book and spending some time out in the garden will be all the therapy I need.

I got the grass cut before the storms rolled in! The skies are overcast and they are predicting 'strong storms' so I rushed home from work and cut the lawn before it got bad. It still isn't raining, so I also had time to pick some more lettuce and take some pictures. Did you know it is the 8th time I've cut the grass this year and the 4th year in a row that I cut the grass on the 1st of May? And that in 2005, we had frost on this date? How's that for useful information from my garden journal?

I am on vacation next week to garden! I've started checking the 10 day weather forecast to see how the weather is going to turn out. If you have any control over my weather, please make it in the low 70's and sunny during the day next week, with maybe a few puffy clouds in the sky. It can rain gently at night, but only between 11:00 PM and 3:00 AM. That would make me very happy.

And the rabbits haven't eaten my peas (so far)! Maybe it is because of my new kitty cat friend?

Jake first came to visit me the weekend before last. He just showed up in my backyard with his all white fur and steely blue eyes. I was outside playing with him while talking to my mom on the phone and she said if he was hungry I had to feed him and think about keeping him. I could hear my sister in the background asking if she needed to bring over some cat food! I assured them both that this cat was just visting, he was too well groomed and too fat to be a stray.

And I was right. He belongs to the neighbor two doors down. So he is the best kind of cat for me, a visitor, and a hunter, eagerly stalking down his prey, which is hopefully rabbits. As long as he does that, he can come over and stay as long as he wants, even if his owners want him sent home right away.

Jake, Jake, come over today,
Chase those darn rabbits far, far away.

Good things do happen in May.

Happy May Day from May Dreams Gardens!