October Yard Photos

One of the things I love best about my yard in the fall is the grapes that grow all over the back porch. They are very yummy and they smell absolutely divine.

Although our veggie garden is still going strong, most of the flowers in the front yard (except for our faithful roses) have slowed down or stopped.


There are a few exceptions: Aster, Dahlias, & Marigolds are still looking nice.

In the back yard I've got mostly yellows now, with Fireworks goldenrod, sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale)and ligularia blooming:

I've got a couple spots that are still showing other colors (last remaining pinks of my hollyhock, some purple butterfly bush and phlox) Soon though I'll begin to get the deep reds from my burning bush, Virginia creeper and the Japanese maple tree.

I definitely want to plant a few new things next year that will give me more variety this time of year. Perhaps I'll put in some mums? But for now, it's all I can do to keep up with squash, tomatoes and cucumbers that are still producing with profusion.

I've heard it's supposed to turn off cold by the end of next week... before you know it will get a freeze and then it will be time to put the garden to bed. I'm ready.

LILIES

Some random shots of lilies from my garden...

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I haven't posted any pictures of my garden for a while. It's doing really well. Of course, when we went away to Michigan the spinach and cilantro both bolted. But the squash and the cucumbers are producing like gang busters, we've had lots of lettuce for salads and tomatoes are putting on lots of fat fruit just waiting to grow ripe. I love having lots of fresh produce, both to eat and to share with neighbors and friends. My mouth is just watering for that first BLT.

Here Comes The Sun

FINALLY - after a long, cold, rainy spring the SUN has come out for summer solstice. On the longest day of the year it got up to 87 degrees in Boise. It is supposed to hit the 90's tomorrow. I say BRING IT ON.

My flowers are POPPING in the heat...what were just petal balls and buds yesterday are now full blooms and the garden is growing like gangbusters.

My peonies went from THIS:



TO THIS:







The Foxglove is fully open now:



The baskets are looking great and the vegetables in the raised beds are growing so fast you can almost watch them get bigger:



I've picked radishes, spinach and cilantro. My mouth is watering for my first fresh tomatoes...but those are still months away.

Still... SUMMER is here. At any eclipse or solstice my friend Sylvana says its time to go do the naked jiggly dance in the moonlight. Um, no. Not for me. But I will very much enjoy watching my flowerbeds transform to their summer splendor.
I was sad to see all the spring colors go when the tulips and azaleas faded, but this reminds me all over again that every season has its own beauty.

I dread the high water bills and pulling weeds in the 90+ days is not always fun. But I'm really happy to watch the seasons unfold.

Nomad flowers

We had a BBQ in our back yard last night - had 50 people over (mostly friends from church or around the neighborhood) enjoying good food, visiting, and walks through the garden. It was a nice night. Several people asked me whether my flowers had all been here when we bought the place or if I had put them in. Some of both...but a lot of the flowers that were here before me were not where they are now.

I've done A LOT of transplanting from place to place.

For example:



Delphiniums / Larkspur

When we first bought our place there were two huge sections of these growing in areas of deep shade. Of course they never bloomed there. I dug them up and moved to a place where they would get some sun and now they are absolutely stunning.



The foxglove / digitalis came from some my across the fence neighbors in back started from seed. It's doing well here, but I'm thinking I may move it to where the delphiniums used to be. Foxglove can thrive in part shade and my sun spots are few and far between, so I'd rather reserve this area for those plants that can't manage anyplace else.

While I like this white one, I'm looking to add to this one with some starts of some others in pinks and lavenders. Since they tend to be short lived biennials I want to plant different ones for a couple years so they can alternate blooming and then reseed themselvs when the originals wear out.



These astilbe htm have been moved FOUR TIMES in the year we've lived here. I think I've finally found a spot where they are very happy and seem to be thriving so I think this is probably where they will stay. I have not yet gotten the big showy plumes of blooms I've seen in photos...we'll see what they do now that they are done moving from place to place.



The petunias I planted in the pot out front were just so-so for a while and the geranium I had growing in the middle never really thrived there. The Morning Glory I planted along with this just up and died. So I yanked the geranium and added one more petunia (the purple) to give the contrasting color the morning glory was supposed to have offered.

Someone at our gathering asked if I considered my yard "done" now that our major projects are finished.

DONE?? Not hardly. I suspect I'll keep moving, shifting, adjusting things from place to place. I'll try new specimens from time to time, giving away some of what I now have. My yard will probably always be in transition.



These Lupine are not mine - I took the picture during my walk along the river. However, I do have three tiny baby lupines I planted out front that were salvaged from a neighbor's seed spill sprouts.

Flowers here, flowers there...I just keep moving them as seems appropriate.
I can't imagine ever really being "done".

Stacy's Garden

Columbine - June 17

Ready, Shoot, Aim!

Today I got the camera that I ordered off e-bay. I got a steal of a deal on a Canon XTi 400D with a 28-90 lens. I don't know the first thing about photography so I have a rather steep learning curve ahead of me, but I'm excited to explore with it and see what it will do. My sister, Sharon, has been a committed photographer for many years and does some exceptional work. Her advise is to simply shoot everything and then only show people the pretty ones. Works for me!

Bloom Report

I just got back from vacation - had a fantastic trip to Utah which I have chronicled in words and pictures over on my Facebook page...I may upload a few things here over the next couple days. Stunning mountains, great visits with family, and enough time away to fully decompress and relax. (It always takes me a couple days away before I stop thinking about work, so a weekend just doesn't cut it.)

We especially enjoyed the trip down to Arches National Park. Amazing place!

Then when we returned I found SO many things in bloom and many of the tiny starts of plants I left have now grown leaps and bounds....especially the ferns. Once things get started it doesn't take long. Also, the gold finches have arrived in hordes.
As much as I enjoyed the time away it felt awfully good to come back to my gardens.

There's lots that need trimming, weeds that need pulling, a few things I plan on moving - so I have my work cut out for me. Still, this is a kind of work I'll take any day of the week...I'm seldom happier than when I'm diggin' in the dirt!

It's DONE!

After WEEKS of hard work and perhaps a few more dollars than we had initially planned to spend, the front yard project to re-vamp the landscaping is FINALLY done.



I love the raised beds for my veggies (tomatoes, squash, Swiss chard, spinach, okra, radish, carrots and cucumber) - ESPECIALLY because the drip hoses are all set up on a timer so the garden will water itself.



Then just for fun my sweet husband added a nice water feature - you can't really see them in the picture but there are an undisclosed number of turtles of various sizes and composition scattered around the catch basin of the fountain. It has been fun to challenge friends to a game of "Count The Turtles". I had planned it for little kids but there are two that have stumped more than one grown up.


I am excited to see how it will look when my flowers get going. In my big red pot I've got pink wave petunias, meezo (little red flowers),white bacopa calibachoa (ultra purple) with a Dahlia in the middle for height.

In the corner flowerbed where the light post is we have 3 roses, 3 cone flowers and an ornamental grass and some chunky rocks. Then in the flower barrel out there I've got more wave petunias and a biddy (yellow flowers)with geranium in the middle. I had tried some morning glories I had started inside but they don't look too happy. I thought they would look pretty going up the post but I may just replace that with something else.

Anyway...it was a lot of work. I'm glad we got it finished before it got really hot. Moving grass and shoveling rock about wore me out! I am SOOOO appreciative of my sweet husband for all the work he put into this project. There is no way I would ever have anything this nice without him.

Tomorrow afternoon we are having a BBQ here for the students in my class. It will be fun to have them see it.

I've loved my back yard since the day we moved here. Now my front yard is every bit as pretty in its own way. I love being surrounded by beauty! Then to be able to grow some yummy fresh veggies for our table makes it that much better.

New Plants

Today I went to the annual fundraiser plant sale at the Boise Botanical gardens. We were moving rock in the the front yard most of the early part of the day so I didn't get to the sale till just shortly before they closed. Part of that was deliberate, figuring I didn't need the temptation of all the fine specimen plants they probably had to offer early on. As much a I can I try to avoid buying new plants all together...I trade starts of stuff I have with other gardeners who have things to share, saving us both some cash and making some new friends in the process. But I figured a few new babies to support the sale could not hurt.

I got a black hollyhock that I am very excited about and a really pretty bachelor button called "Amethyst Dream" that has rich purple flowers. Then I let one of the volunteers talk me in to one that I wasn't crazy about, but she said it would do well in nearly full shade and since I have so much shade to cover I thought I'd go ahead and give it a try.

This one is a lungwort, or pulmonaria. I was not at all familiar with it so I looked it up to add it to my inventory of plants. This is what I learned:
"Apart from being a pretty garden flower, old-fashioned common lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis) was a favorite medicinal herb in the Middle Ages. It got both its common and Latin names from the curious belief, expressed in the 16th century by a Swiss alchemist in the Doctrine of Signatures, that god made herbs to treat human illnesses and each herb’s physical appearance actually indicated how it should be used. Because the leaves of some lungwort species are oval-shaped with white spots, apothecaries concluded the plant was a sure cure for spotted lungs, i.e. “pulmonary” diseases like pleurisy, tuberculosis or pneumonia. What seems like crazy superstition to us dominated medical thinking in Europe in the 16th and the 17th centuries. Common lungwort has silver-spotted foliage and sprays of mauve buds that open into small blue flowers. It grows about 12 inches (30 cm) high and spreads aggressively by underground runners, making it a good groundcover for wildish, shady places under shrubs or trees." (By Janet Davis at BeutifulBotony.com)

The plant I got is a bit leggy, but we got it planted back in the shady spot in the back corner of the yard and we'll see how it does.

Ready for Hummers

I put up three of my hummingbird feeders this morning. I have a few others that I'll wait on until I see my small friends appear.

Here are some great links for Hummingbird information, some specific to Idaho:

Tracking arrival date by county HERE

Basic Information

Migration Info

Banding Programs

So the watch begins. I'm looking forward to that first sighting. Even though they can be aggressive little bullies, I can't help but love these diminutive birds.

BLOOM REPORT

Here is some of what I have blooming in my yard right now:


Bleeding heart




Tulips (along with some Basket of Gold - and while not blooming that rhubarb you see on the left behind the row of tulips is looking mighty fine.)














I think violets are so cheerful - and the lilies and allium coming up give promise of more pretty blooms yet to come.


Ornamental Plum Tree





Siberian Bugloss (false Forget-me-Not)
















The deadnettle along the pathway has gone absolutely nuts. This is just one of the several different species of lamium we have.

I particularly like this one:



There's lots more - way more than I have the patience to photograph or upload. LOTS of things are just beginning to emerge. Every couple of days something new blooms. I love Boise in the spring time. What a blessing it is to have this garden~!