A little more color

I've been enjoying the fall color this year, trying to take photos as soon as I notice something that is really nice -- the one problem I have with autumn is the colorful days are just over too quickly!

A tree can go from "nice" to "WOW!" to "blah" (or worse yet: barren) in just a couple of days, so I've learned not to delay with the camera. Today, just a few of the better bursts of color in my garden.

Read more »

Read more...

Four Surprises

When walking around the garden the other day trying to decide what tasks needed doing most urgently, I saw a few things that surprised me. First up is my venus flytrap:

It seems strange to me that a harvestman (or "daddy longlegs" as we call them around here) would climb up this plant, then lower its body into the "trap", but apparently that's what happened. I never would have guessed this was possible!

Read more »

Read more...

How much winter sun?

As you may know, this summer I finally got my cactus beds planted and even made them look better with a dry-stacked stone wall. I'm so happy to have these in the ground now, as last year they spent the winter on my deck in pots.

I had a few problems with pads rotting at the end of winter, but only those that were in contact with the soil -- the "child" pads up in the air were all fine. I expect that the soil in the pots just got too wet, something I'm hoping to avoid this year.

Read more »

Read more...

Tiny new garden

Last weekend when I was planting the sale plants that I had just bought, I noticed that one of the Clematis had a few extra plants in the pot.

Not the typical weeds either -- these were healthy mosses and liverworts!

Read more »

Read more...

More results of freeze

I started looking at the results of our recent first freeze in yesterday's post, showing the beauty in the big leaves now dead.

Today it's less pretty, showing some of the more interesting observations of a post-freezing night.

Read more »

Read more...

Beauty, from first freeze

We had our first freeze in the St. Louis area a few nights ago, which means that lots of tender plants get turned instantly ugly.

That's upon first glance. When you look more closely there's actually quite a bit of beauty, especially in the large, freshly-killed leaves of bananas, cannas, and Colocasia.

Read more »

Read more...

Fall is for planting!

At least that's what the local garden centers all remind you, as most casual gardeners plant in spring and that's it for the year -- or that's how I perceive it. Of course fall is a great time to plant perennials, shrubs, trees, and bamboo, with the ground staying relatively warm for a while still, cooler temperatures and more rainfall (in theory).

Although I pretty much plant new stuff during spring and summer too, I've been spending some time recently getting plants into the ground. Some of them have been growing from seed all summer, but others are brand-new plants picked up on sale as nurseries try to reduce inventory for the winter.

Read more »

Read more...

It's color time!

Although the fall color has not yet peaked here, most of the trees are starting to do their thing, turning those amazing colors for a day or two or more if we're lucky and weather conditions are right.

Still, a sunny weekend gave me lots of opportunity to see these colors, and I just had to get started on the autumn photos. Above the dark ninebark contrasts nicely with the yellowing background right now.

Read more »

Read more...

Bountiful harvest, unwanted

This was a pretty poor year for most harvests in my garden. Early spring harvests were fantastic with kale and swiss chard that had overwintered, and the tomato production was acceptable -- everything else was a disappointment to me.

Some things though have no trouble producing lots of "fruits". I don't want these though!

Read more »

Read more...