leder legends

It's September.  The forecast is for a warmer than normal fall which means we might be gardening well into October. The yard is looking pretty spectacular at the moment.  There are daylilies in bloom,  hosta with gorgeous flower scapes, cleome blooms feeding the bees, phlox, turtle plant, black eyed susan and obedient plants with massive blooms. Everything is bursting out of their designated flowerbed. It will be a good year to thin it all out.

Buying new trees is very stressful for me because   I don't like to pay big money for anything without thinking about it for a long while.  The best shade tree in our backyard, that the hostas do well under, is half dead and that dead part is threatening to fall and destroy a good part of the hosta beds AND the hous e.   Although something needs to be done, I keep telling myself that it can wait until fall when the plants are dormant and I have planted a couple of replacement trees. Unfortunately, I've been telling myself that for a few years. It is now time. This fall it will get taken down before it hits the house (so I'm praying that no big wind storms come through) and new trees will be planted. Yesterday I bought two new trees!  I actually BOUGHT them.  A local store had them marked down by 40% and actually still had two things I really wanted.  Only one will be a shade tree   but I'll keep looking for deals! I have my eye on a free dogwood...

  In my area there is no place to drop off old can of latex paint for recycling. I have a lot of old cans of paint in the basement. This is paint that was kept for touch-ups ... you know- everyone does this, right?  After many years of sitting on the shelves in the basement, the paint is still wet and in all likelihood still usable if mixed well.  Not going to be happening on my watch.  If there is no where to recycle it, what do I with this stuff?  In order to put it in the trash legally it has to be dry. Do you know how long it takes for a gallon of paint to dry out naturally?   Much too long!!!  The alternative, as found in a google search, is to mix the paint with a drying agent like kitty litter or sawdust in plastic lined box and let it dry.  I was able to get some sawdust, a big box and a plastic bag and started mixing 6 gallons of old paint. It was kind of fun! Once it’s mixed, it still needs to dry but that goes much faster.  My firs...

August is occasionally called the doldrums of the garden. While it is cloudy this morning there still is an abundance of color. .. especially the black eyed susan and the cleome. But there are still 14 daylilies in bloom. A few opened their last flower of the year but some still have lots of buds.  There are also 8 more plants with buds and no flowers today.  So 22 of the 45 are happily August rather than July daylilies. 

 (Please feel free to skip this post. It is my continued rant about the deer...it's a personal vent and only posted here for my records) Deer and their appetites! What do they eat?? Our neighbors and I have basically eliminated their desired banquet by fencing in the flowerbeds and the backyards and moving plants out of their reach! The deer still roam our neighborhood,!  The big question is — What do they eat? They find every morsel and every tiny leaf of things they like.  I had a few hosta and a stela d’oro daylily that were not worth moving and some bushes that they continue to chew on so there is some attraction.   And they are still hungry of course...we all need to eat ! I think what the deer in our neighborhood are discovering is that when you are desperate anything will do!   Plants that were never on the menu before are being eaten-chameleon plant, fennel (which used to be huge), cleome, crocosmia, bee balm, bleeding heart, gooseneck loosestrife- all o...

July is daylily month.  In a way I'm sad that it is almost over. The daylilies are slowly finishing up.  The show has been spectacular this year. There are few that wait until the very end and keep me in suspense because I can't remember what they will look like.  In the meantime the side yard finally got some attention. This is the garden on the east side of the house. The lucifer crocosmias were bent over due the heavy blooms but they were so pretty, I let them be until a few days ago. I tied them up revealing the hostas that had flourished under the shade they had provided.  Phlox The phlox are doing great and so are the black-eyed Susans. This one isn't a very  large plant yet but did provide a few beautiful flowers. Early in July This is called El Dorado I think.  This is the last flower of SO many. Tiger lily finally opened. So different from the daylilies. One late bloomer opened this morning and there are two to go.