Summer winding down....!
By this time of year I start looking forward to the cooler weather of September, and the garden feels more than a little messy and overgrown :-) And too weedy too but I lack the energy and motivation to do a thorough weeding and clean-up - 'tinkering at the edges' periodically is all that's gets done! We had some very hot and humid weeks for mid-August. The past week or so had been a very welcome cool one but heat is supposed to be back by the weekend :-( It's been dry too - August here is either very dry (~2" rain for the month) or quite wet (4-6") This is the third summer in a row that we've had a dry August. The Viburnum opulus at the front corner of the garage has been suffering from a very bad attack of what I assume must be viburnum beetle. The leaves are brown, crisp, and virtually skeletonized - looks pathetic at the moment! I wonder if it will survive.... The lawn in the back is looking a bit patchy again as we've got lazy about watering - I hope it survives to next spring better than it did last year! The hibiscuses are still blooming - and the pink ones along the driveway that have been blooming for about a month now are littering the ground with faded flowers, although they are still producing lots of new ones each day.
Some pictures from this morning:
looking up the driveway - I'd like to have the bed on the left extend to the road, but the lot line runs at an angle so the neighbour's property line is just inches from the end of our driveway. So the bed ends where the available space becomes too narrow to be practical to do much planting - especially since it's on a steep slope (although you can't really tell that from the picture). I do intend to plant a matching hosta on the left side of the driveway next spring as that will fall within the Town's easement strip.
The two pots closest to the house on the left side have a red and a bronze Mammoth Mum that overwintered in the garage. One (I'm not sure if it is the red or the bronze! the colors are similar...) is just starting to bloom but the other is still in bud:
There is a 'Midnight Marvel' hibiscus just getting ready to put out a flower or two by the ninebark - I always think ninebark needs big red showy flowers rather than the rather wimpy small, pale ones it actually has! However, I think I need to water the hibiscus (not going to happen!) in order to get a more and better show of flowers! There are actually more buds than just the one starting to open in this picture:
From the road at this point of the season, it's hard to see the structure of the beds that is visible when the plants are shorter. At the the moment it mostly looks to be a sea of hibiscuses and coneflowers, although there is lots more going on- but you need to be up close to see the other things. The anemones in the 'moat bed' along the ditch are just starting to bloom now and will be showier soon. We need to build up the soil (and add grass) in front of the anemones - the ditch is sunken there and I'm not sure why.
A picture just for T2D :-) - the heptacodium tree should be in bloom in a week or so - I hope this will be a better year for monarch butterflies than the past few years have been....
In the backyard things are their usual quiet green - lawn still a bit wimpy(!) but at least it is more-or-less green :-) Looking SW from the patio:
One thing I'm pleased about is the return of Jack Frost from seeds that survived the past two brutal winters that killed the mother plants! The silver notes near the shed from JF were an important part of the look of the garden. Interestingly, some of the seedlings have enormous leaves! I love them! Cole acting as a scale figure here....
Comments (11)
11 years agolast modified: 11 years ago- 11 years ago
Deb - thanks re the house - we like it too :-) This is what it looked like in March 1999 when we bought it. We did a complete renovation and added on to it:
DH snowblows the driveway - by the end of winter the beds along the driveway are covered by 2-4' of (salty!) snow. Surprisingly perhaps, it has never bothered anything we've planted there.
The heptacodium was planted in 2003. It was a small shrub in a 2 gal. pot. It had three main stems so I cut off two of them to make it a tree-form. I'm not good at estimating heights but I'd guess it is now ~ 15' tall. Because of the old white cedar behind it, it grows rather one-sided as it can't grow into the cedar. It is now tall enough that it is beginning to spread back a bit at the top where the cedar narrows. I'm not sure whether there is wilt around here or not but the heptacodium seems quite tough - the past two brutal winters didn't bother it a bit - no winter-kill at all.
Related Professionals
Lawrenceburg Landscape Architects & Landscape Designers · Enfield Landscape Architects & Landscape Designers · Fall River Landscape Architects & Landscape Designers · Phoenix Landscape Architects & Landscape Designers · Jonesboro Landscape Contractors · Wenatchee Landscape Contractors · Savannah Home Builders · Charlotte Home Builders · Springfield Home Builders · Elmira Home Builders · Phoenix Home Builders · Chico Home Builders · Temecula Home Builders · Saint George Home Builders · Coos Bay Home Builders- 11 years ago
- 11 years ago
11 years ago- 11 years ago
Woody, I really love the way you have two very distinct gardens between the front and the back. The front is colorful with so much eye candy, and the back is so restful where you really have to pause to take in all the plants.
Your heptacodium looks very happy! Mine is covered with bees right now and the hummingbirds have been enjoying it. We used to get tons of monarchs but haven't for years. If we see one or two we're lucky. Sad.
Here's a picture of mine from today. A bit more "shrubby" than yours (there are also shrubs under it). It's hard to make it out in the picture, but there are very visible trunks to it.
- 11 years agolast modified: 11 years ago
- 11 years ago
- 11 years agolast modified: 11 years ago
arlene - I agree that the'right' yellows together can be wonderful but mixing the more 'transparent' clear yellows with the more 'opaque' golden ones can be iffy! The picture below is one I've posted here several times before. It's from a garden on the local garden tour at least 6 years ago. Seeing this combination was 'a lightbulb moment' for me :-) that convinced me that one of the best ways to use yellow is with other similar yellows. I've been hankering to create a 'yellow garden' area ever since! I tried to make a golden (yellow) path in one area of the backyard - where a path leads under the pines near the shed. It didn't work out unfortunately since the main thing I was using to tie everything together was the golden forestgrass like the one in this picture, but it turned out that Cole, our poodle, considers it dog candy! Not a blade of it remains.... Plus the growing conditions in the area are difficult and some of the other things died or do not thrive there. Maybe I'll try again in a different area someday.
- 11 years ago
mnwsgal