I can’t recall the last time that I suffered a bee sting, until a few days ago. Over the past few years I’ve made a habit of sticking my nose (and camera) too close to blooms with bees buzzing about, and though I’m certain that I’ve been a terrible nuisance, I haven’t been stung. I…
Month: June 2011
Hydrangeas to beat the heat
What a marvelous weekend! A bit cloudy, but a pleasant break from the recent heat. I summoned enough energy Saturday to plant a few hydrangeas that had been waiting patiently on the driveway, and a few odds and ends were transplanted Sunday to make room so that the large agaves that are overwintered indoors could…
The mad pruner is missing
Through the spring my wife has been occupied with her studies so that she seldom ventures out into the garden. This is both good and bad. She is the one obstacle I have to an unfettered planting budget. Now, I’ve been able to plant without interference, though I suspect that her opinion (that there are…
The coreopsis are missing
I hadn’t thought about it until a few days ago, but ‘Moonbeam’ coreopsis is gone without a trace. Vanished, as if it was never planted, which is just as well. I believe that I’ve seen Moonbeam coreopsis (Coreopsis verticillata “Moonbeam’, below) listed as a “can’t fail” perennials, and now I’ve killed it twice through the…
Don’t miss a bloom
Occasionally I hear complaints that such and such did not bloom this year, and could I please explain why? Of course there are times when a plant is sited improperly so that it doesn’t get sufficient sunlight, or a tree is over fertilized so that it grows an abundance of foliage at the expense of…
Too hot to bother?
Once the dogwoods and cherries, azaleas, and camellias are past bloom, what else is there? Summer is too hot, so why bother with the garden. Nothing will bloom in this infernal heat. Right? Well, the white Natchez crapemyrtle is just beginning to bloom, and in several weeks it will be joined by five or six…
Visiting nurseries in Oregon
Touring nurseries and buying plants becomes a bit ho-hum after you have seen the same hollies and azaleas for thirty years. Not actually the same plants, of course, but squared off blocks of hundreds and often thousands of the same plant, one row after another for hundreds of acres. A field of a hundred thousand…
Turning the heat on
The sudden extreme heat this past week has wreaked havoc with many of the perennials newly planted this spring. I don’t believe that the damage is irreparable, but a campanula and two corydalis are hanging by a thread, and several others are hardly better. All will require close attention through the summer, and I don’t know…
The cat’s away
I’m in Oregon for the week, twenty-seven hundred miles from home, and while I’m away there’s no one to tend the garden. Just before I left the steering went out on the lawn tractor, so I couldn’t cut the grass the day before. It will be a foot tall when I get back. And the…
Planting along the pond’s edge
I see too many ponds surrounded only by a naked border of stone. While a mix of boulders, smaller stones, and river washed gravel can be arranged to mimic the edge of a mountain stream, without plants the pond looks sterile and man-made. I have planted along the borders of the garden’s five ponds so…
Wilting in the heat
After a cool and relatively rainy spring the garden is lush with growth, but after the first bout of intense heat this week more than few plants are drooping at midday. For most plants this isn’t a concern, and many bigleaf hydrangeas wilt in the afternoon sun almost every day from now until September. Still,…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 