Ready to leave

The second brood of house finches nesting in my front porch are just about ready to leave the nest. I missed their younger chick days probably because they stayed hunkered down in their really tall nest, but now that they're bigger they're standing up in the nest all of the time.

That's probably due to the unseasonably hot weather we've had for a couple of weeks -- 95ºF (35ºC) or so every day, which is 10ºF above normal. They're trying to stay cool!

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Cicada damage

I'm pretty sure the 13-year cicada emergence in St. Louis has pretty much ended -- at least the emergence part. The incessant calling, flying around, and mating is still going strong. (Read my previous posts about the cicadas here, here, and here with videos.) Mating cicadas means egg-laying cicadas, which means plant damage.

The cicadas aren't dangerous for plants, until the females start laying eggs that is. Then things can get touchy for almost every tree and shrub in the area.

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New bamboo tie-up

I've had to support floppy bamboos before, mainly because they were still young and hadn't produced the thicker culms (canes) that are able to stand tall and straight most of the time. Today I have to support a bamboo that produced some nice thick culms this year, but they're leaning too much for my liking.

This is my Phyllostachys glauca 'Yunzhu' bamboo, and although it's difficult to see in a photo, there are culms sticking out all over the place, not staying upright as I'd like them to.

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My worst planting bed refreshed

Each year I seem to have a new plant obsession. This year it is elephant ears and sempervivum. A few years ago it was thymes, and I prepared a then-new planting bed that I imagined blanketed in soft, fragrant thymes. Their different colors, textures, and growing habits would create a beautiful, low-growing bed -- a small lawn of thymes that required very little maintenance once the plants were established and had "choked out" all of the weeds.

That was the plan, and it seemed like a decent one. The soil was prepared, the thymes went in, and they grew quickly -- the result was really beautiful that first year. The second year reality set in, and it sort of went downhill from there.

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Not what I paid for.

I'm a bit disappointed today. A plant I purchased turned out to be mislabeled. If this were a potted plant that I purchased just recently, I'd most likely return it to the nursery or garden center for a refund or replacement.

Of course it couldn't be that easy, as I bought this a couple of months ago as a bagged, bareroot plant from a big-box store. What makes it more disappointing is that I thought I had been a smart shopper and gotten the best plant available.

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Almost blooms

Although I'm eager to jump into the garden and get started on some projects, I decided to enjoy the early morning quiet and soak everything in. I noticed that the coneflowers are starting to bloom, then I noticed that the Agastache is too -- in fact, there are lots of plants in either the early stages of flowering, or just about to be.

So today's post is what I saw. I refrained from taking photos of cicadas, even though they're everywhere and are quite photogenic I think -- although I did capture images of a couple other creatures this morning. Enjoy.

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Failure: plumeria

Last year one of the new plants I tried was plumeria. I bought a couple of cuttings (which looked like fat sticks), planted them in pots and waited. They eventually woke up and formed nice little plants.

The overwintering process was not kind to them though, and it appears that neither of them survived the winter.

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Garden drama, in miniature

If you've been reading my blog for a while you probably know that I love the drama that large plants add to the garden: bamboo, elephant ears, castor bean, large grasses, gunnera -- all plants that make an impact even from across the yard. You probably also know that I love the other end of the scale too, taking a close look at the plants and creatures that inhabit my garden.

Yesterday morning I came across another example of the small-scale drama that must be happening hundreds of times a day throughout the garden if you take the time to look for them. A tiny spider had built a web in my flowering cilantro, and I watched for several minutes.

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Dirty steps clean

I spent too much time last year paying attention to plants and not enough time to other components of my garden: my "stream", the pergolas, the deck. I'd like to think that these things being made of sturdier stuff than plants such as wood and stone don't need much care. Unfortunately my year off has left some of them looking rather bad.

For instance, my deck stairs. They're quite dirty, stained with tannins from decaying leaves, and have pretty decent patches of algae and mildew. Not attractive. Time to do something about it.

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