Large bamboo division

Yesterday I posted about taking several small divisions of bamboo and potting them up. Today it's one division of bamboo only, but it's a large one. It's about the biggest that I can handle myself, and it came from my friend Michael's garden.

He's decided to reduce the number of bamboo species he has, giving more space to those that are doing the best and are most rewarding for him. That means more free plants for me, in exchange for helping him do a bunch of tough digging.

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Digging small bamboo divisions

The first of my projects this past weekend was to dig some small divisions from one of my in-ground bamboos: Phyllostachys glauca 'Yunzhu'. I've written about large bamboo divisions I've dug before, mainly from my friend Michael's garden, but today will be a little different. Instead of taking huge chunks of a mature bamboo, I'll be taking pretty small culms but trying to get as long a rhizome with them as possible.

There's the plant. It's getting to be quite attractive, and I think next year it will really start taking off. You'll notice that I let the sun shine directly into the lens, which resulted in some pretty lens flares. I normally wouldn't do this, but it seemed to work on this shot. (I've been watching the latest Star Trek movie lately and I think that J.J. Abrams has been wearing off on me.)

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Caryopteris

One of the best late-season bloomers in my garden has always been Caryopteris, or "Blue Mist Spirea". I planted it five or six years ago, probably as an impulse buy during a trip to the nursery around this time of year.

What I didn't realize at the time is that flowering shrubs will often produce seed, resulting in even more plants over time.

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More butterflies

I've been keeping an eye on the butterflies moving through the yard, in the hopes of seeing something unique, or not as common. I'm grateful for every butterfly that appears, but there are some that are more exciting than others. Not that anything in my yard is very rare, but if it's not something I regularly see (or some species I haven't been seeing for weeks already), I grab the camera!

Then it's usually a lot of snapping and deleting of photos, since butterflies don't typically like to sit still -- some species seem to, but most pretty much just want to dart around. That is unless you catch them early enough in the day that they're still getting warmed by the sun, so they're more sluggish and will sit still a little bit longer. Plus they will open their wings more to provide more surface area for the sunlight to heat.

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Morning blooms

As I promised, to help balance out all of the "creepy" posts about insects and spiders I've been doing lately, here's a look at some of the late summer flowers that are in bloom in my garden. It's really important to make sure you have plants that make the end of summer and start of autumn interesting. Although it's great having flowers all over the place in May and June, it's also pretty easy as most plants seem to want to bloom then. It's a little trickier to ensure you're looking at blooms now (in early September), but it's really worth the effort.

It really just comes down to having some plants around that flower late. In the spring when you're shopping for plants (most people get the majority of their plants in the spring -- only those really addicted to gardening will visit the nurseries all season long, right?) these late bloomers are the really boring ones, as they don't have any blooms or even buds to entice you to buy. They're all foliage and promises.

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Yeah, that's creepy.

I haven't been out in the yard taking photos the last few days, and I'm not sure of the reason. Yes, it's been cloudy and wet recently, but today it was clear, cool, and beautiful -- so weather isn't the excuse. I guess I just wasn't in the mood. Unfortunately that leaves me with nothing to talk about in this post... or so I thought. As I went outside to mow the lawn this evening, I noticed this "bug" was still in the same spot that I had seen it earlier in the day, and yesterday too if I remember right.

Since it's right at the edge of the door frame, it's hard to miss, but I didn't really scrutinize it before. Because of the way it was sitting and the way its legs were positioned I thought it might be another assassin bug of some sort, but this evening I took a closer look for the first time. It's not an insect -- it's a spider.

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Finally, some cool clouds again!

Summers in St. Louis usually bring a dozen good, strong thunderstorms or more. Strong winds, thunder, lots of lightning, and dramatic, cool clouds. This summer has been really quiet. There was that one big storm a while back, but that's about it. I was actually thinking about using some photos from last summer's storms in a post, but then things changed.

This evening a line of storms moved in, bringing cooler air, lightning, and some great clouds. Unfortunately I was out and only had my phone camera, but I think the photos turned out ok.

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A new flower and an old foe

I've made a couple of interesting discoveries lately. One is a nice one, and the other is not so nice. I'll start with the nice one: my black stem taro (Elephant Ears) is flowering! I didn't even know they produced flowers, but there it is.

It's quite a large bloom. I can't say that it's the most impressive flower I've ever seen, but it was totally unexpected and therefore exciting. Maybe it's only exciting to a gardener.

Maybe it's only exciting to me.

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Planter box build: day 2

Yesterday I wrote about the planter box I helped a friend build for his bamboo. We didn't quite finish, so today we'll finish the box and plant the bamboo.

We started the day with a trip to the community compost pile, where we loaded up the truck with free compost. I wish the park where this compost pile is located was closer to my house, but it's too long of a drive to make it practical for me. Maybe that's a good thing, otherwise I'd be picking up compost every weekend.

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