I don’t write often about the garden’s ponds because nothing particularly exciting happens from month to month. Typically, there are a few dozen new hatchling fish in spring, irises and pickerel weeds that appear and begin to spread by late spring, and then sometime in autumn the ponds must be covered with nets so they…
Month: October 2015
Sadness and late October flowers
This is a sad day. For several years I’ve anticipated the demise of the Franklin tree (Franklinia alatamaha, below), and finally this treasure has been cut down and chopped into pieces to be burned along with twigs and branches that have accumulated in piles through the year. The cause for the death is uncertain, though…
28 degrees
Damage from frost was slight in this garden. Caladiums and heliotrope shriveled in the cold (as the gardener should expect when these are left outdoors), but there was little injury to flowers of azaleas and hydrangeas. The freeze the next night was a different matter. Flowers of Encore azaleas wilted, and blue hydrangeas (above) turned…
Frost and freeze
Gardening would be so much easier if the complications of everyday life did not intervene. Cold temperatures often come suddenly in autumn. Occasionally, I am surprised by a forecast of frost, and hours are spent one chilly evening lugging dirt covered pots of elephant ears and agaves into the basement. Not this year. The forecast…
Finally, a final update
I suspect that family and friends (and readers?) possibly grow weary as this impassioned gardener prattles on about one plant collection or another. Certainly, others cannot be expected to share this enthusiasm, but with the garden moving into autumn, with frost soon approaching, the gardener is compelled to offer one final update on his assemblage…
Yes, flowers in October
Well, of course there are flowers in the garden in October, though not a single mum. Also, no pansies, though I take no pride in their exclusion since the flowers are often marvelous. There are abundant choices to satisfy the most demanding gardener, despite a snobbish bias that they are too common. There is only…
Too much of a good thing?
No doubt, there can be too much of a good thing, but following a late summer drought the gardener is unlikely to complain that he has not seen the sun for a week. Several times through the weekend I looked out the kitchen window, hoping for the next wave of dark clouds to bring more…
Finally, yellow flowered toad lilies
Often ignoring his better judgment and good sense, the gardener too frequently opts for fussy plants, or ones that have only a slight chance for survival in his heat or cold. He forces shade lovers into the scorching sun, and otherwise tortures those he professes to love. He strives against reality, and then is immensely…
‘Chocolate’ in early autumn
I don’t recall if the clump of ‘Chocolate’ Joe Pye weed (Ageratina altissima ‘Chocolate’, formerly Eupatorium rugosum, below) just off the driveway is the original or a seedling. Long ago a single plant was added, somewhere in the garden, and after many seedlings have come and gone only this one remains. Most sprouted in inappropriate…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 