You can’t miss them! Sunflowers, that is. From across the garden, or across the highway, sunflowers (Helianthus, below), annual or perennial, make a bold statement in the early Fall. Big and bright, even the compact growing varieties grab your eye with masses of golden yellow blooms. Subtle, they are not. In stark contrast, Toad lilies (Tricyrtis) are…
Month: September 2009
Hitched without a glitch
For those who followed this journal in past weeks you might recall that our eldest son was to be married on Sunday. Not in our garden, but we were expecting out-of-town visitors to drop by the house, and if you drop by you’re probably going to tour the garden. I discovered midway through the rehearsal dinner that…
Autumn Encore
Bravo! The end of the blooming season is near, and quite a year it has been. Spring started slow, but once flowers appeared cool temperatures kept them going longer. Though the late Summer was dry in the mid-Atlantic, we rarely experienced extreme heat, and the late season blooming crapemyrtles, hydrangeas, and perennials performed well. A superb year…
Love me not
Every unfortunate soul professing to be a gardener has experienced a disastrous error or two, and perhaps more than they care to recall. I know I have. Today we’ll delve into a comedy of errors, some of the spectacular failures from my more than thirty years in the garden, and end on a more positive…
A September wedding …..
thank goodness it’s not in our garden. Our eldest son is to be married this weekend in the garden of the Airlie Conference Center in Warrenton, a fine old formal garden considerably more appropriate for a wedding than my jungle. Since our home is only a few miles away, I’m certain that we’ll have out-of-town guests drop by,…
Ask the Garden Guru
The Garden Guru is an occasional series featuring seasonal questions selected through a rigorous, time honored journalistic tradition in which the Guru makes up the questions, then answers them. If you wish to ask your own questions, feel free to submit them and the Guru will pick the ones he knows and include them in…
September blooms
The light morning rain yesterday was a welcome relief. Two weeks with relatively low humidity and no rainfall, following a three week hot, humid, dry stretch, has sapped ground moisture and stressed the Spring blooming perennials so they look ready to jump into dormancy. All will be fine next year, but they’re a bit haggard now. Tuesday’s rain…
Good vibrations
Try as I might, I’ve had a hard time conjuring up bad vibes this late Summer. Several dry weeks in late July and early August fried the non-irrigated lawn, but I’d just as soon rip all the grass out anyway, so that’s not a bother. One after the other through July and August I’ve had trees, shrubs,…
Catching up in late August
In recent weeks this journal has devoted much space to bees and bugs, and given scant notice to all but a few plants in the garden. Despite August’s stifling heat and humidity, there is much in bloom and more to catch up on. As the calendar turns to September there are flowering trees (Franklinia, Seven…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 