… I end up sitting on a rainbow. Lack of planning, reliance on hindsight rather than foresight, failure to learn from one’s mistakes. Guilty, guilty, and guilty again. Perhaps on a frosty evening in January, or with the first inkling of Spring when the snowdrops are blooming, then we’ll delve into the commission of these…
Category: Flowering plants
Happy ‘Discovery of the Western Hemisphere by Europeans’ Day
It’s confusing to me to celebrate a day for a guy who didn’t do what your old grade school textbooks said he did. I hope all of Columbus’ relatives don’t get in a tizzy and write, but I’m feeling cheated for lack of recognition for deeds I didn’t do. I have forbidden the C word in my office…
The stinky smell of success
I feel confident in declaring that the struggle between man and deer has been won (at least for this year, in this garden). Five months of spraying stinky, but harmless, deer repellents has resulted in a garden undamaged, though frequently visited by deer. I still see plenty of tracks on the muddy margins of the dirt bottom…
Autumn colors – day two
I barely made it home today before the sun set, just in time to take a quick stroll through the back garden. The koi in the large swimming pond were in deep water, a sign that a predator has visited recently. They will usually swarm to the rocky edge expecting their evening meal, but today…
Autumn colors – early October
The days are shorter and noticeably cooler over the past weeks. Soon, I’ll depart for work and arrive home in the dark. I’ll miss the evening stroll through the garden (I suppose I can still stroll, but I it will be too dark to see). Overnight temperatures in the forties tell me that I’d better keep an…
Small wonders
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…
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…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 