In  spring 2011, you may recall, I received a shipment of mums from Faribault Growers in MN. This nursery grows and sells Mums that are not only much more  interesting in form and color than the  annual- for decoration only- mums sold around here in the fall, they are truly perennial.

After a full season in the garden it is time to see who is performing well, who is not, who will stay, and who will go to make room for others.

The absolute keeper of the bunch is ‘Centerpiece’. That baby has been in full bloom since early July and showing not even one sign of slowing down. It did not mind heat, drought, or being moved…it has actually already been divided!….and the flowers are very cool, don’t you agree?

Another interesting flower is the  aptly named ‘Matchstick’. It is just coming into bloom now, and looks great paired with the gallardia ‘Mesa Yellow’ out front.

I planted ‘Ruby Mound”  in  3 locations locations in the Dog Garden ,it is also a keeper. It made it happily through the winter, has obviously survived  corgi mayhem, and is now throwing out these wonderful saturated maroon color flowers.

Another that came into bloom and had been struggling to stay in bloom all summer is ‘Betty Lou’. Unfortunately it has been fighting some sort of mildew . I trimmed it back, dug out around it and gave it new soil to no avail. In the spring I will move pieces if it and see if another location does the trick.

Into  the loser column go ‘Red Daisy’and  ‘Autumn Sun’ which completely dissapeared and ‘Doileete” which survived (barely) and is doing a whole bunch of nothing.

A little botany lesson here– in a struggle to stay relevant and  keep publishing papers so they won’t lose their plum job on the university staff, botanists have been changing plant names at a record pace ( this is actually due to genetics not job security but it bugs me ). Therefore, many plants we fondly call chrysanthemum and its  nostalgic nickname , mum, were reclassified as  dendranthema.  Ick. In a move to thwart such affronts to our lovingly named plants, not to mention our slippery grasp on the whole latin/greek plant naming game, most gardeners are refusing to call a mum anything but a mum. GO GARDENERS!  BUT the saga continues as many of them are being re-re-classified as Chrysnathemum! I know you will stay glued to your seat waiting for the final outcome. 😉

Also I will revisit the heartbreak of fall….the mum plants sold at your local nursery/ walmart/streetcorner market are not hardy here in New England . The reasons vary according to which specific plant they are offering,  some are just not zone hardy, but with many the issue is the lack of time they are given to settle in before our winter.  With mums spring planting is the only  way to go to ensure overwintering , but since they don’t bloom in the spring no cash savvy bricks and mortar  nursery will carry them  as “color” sells. You mostly have to score them online or from catalogues like I did.

lesson over, back to the mums.

This season I also planted some new mums from Lazy S Farm Nursery which carries all sorts of interesting plants and is a go-to plant source for me.Chrysanthemum pacifica is  a hardy mum with yellow flowers and cool silver edged foliage. It is doing very well in the garden , no blooms yet though.

I also added Chrysanthemum X rubellum “Will’s Wonderful” can you guess why?  I don’t often call my Wil wonderful, but he kinda is. Will ( the mum) is related to the Sheffield Pinks I already grow that are super-hardy and bloom  late October until Thanksgiving in the right year. Wil ( the guy) is awesome all year round  and never gets powdery mildew on his lower leaves.

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Last of the  new ones is my favorite so far. It is a Bailey Nurseries introduction called ‘Mammoth Lavendar Daisy’. Even if it does not make the winter I will grateful to have had it in bloom here since early September and brightening up the entire garden in which it lives.

In addition to Sheffield Pink and a mum called ‘Copper Penny’ , Chrysanthemum Nipponicum, or Nippon Daisy or Mauntauk Daisy also have a permanent place here. This mum is more woody than most and has beautiful glossy leaves in addition to the purty daisy like flowers atop its stems in late fall. I am glad to see recently that this has become more readily available in local nurseries as it is certainly a garden worthy plant.

Why so many mums? Why not! We here in New England with our cold snowy gray long winters should enjoy our gardens for as long as we can. I think the golden rule for garden planning  this area ( or any similar ones) should be to plant solely for fall. Spring , in my mind takes care of itself with all the blooming shrubs and trees that are in every-one’s yard., not to mention the iris, daffodils, etc that accompany them. Summer is also pretty easy for the average homeowner/gardener to pull off. It is in late August to November when the savvy gardener can strut their stuff and show off a garden full of color until the first snowflakes fly. Mum’s the word!

Having waxed on repeatedly and ad nauseum about my dislike for houseplants, the time has come to change my tune, or really rather, to change what  plants I think of  as  houseplants.

In an exercise of self awareness I have been trying to figure out why a gal who lives and breathes all things horticultural for  8 months a year  shuts off that part of herself for the other 4.  I think I may have stumbled upon the answer….it was the plants.

I am not a huge fan of highly structural plants , especially pointy ones, which means houseplant offerings like agave, sansevaeria, aloe and many other succulent plants are out of the question. Also, not a fan a tropical looking plants , anything that looks like a palm , or plants with thick fuzzy leaves.  Crassula, african voilet,aspidistra,spider plant, dracaena, ferns, even prayer plant,and  wandering jew, all fit somewhere in these categories in my view. So , if you are following traditional houseplant selections,  I am down to very few choices.

After bringing in many plants to overwinter here ( because, Bill Monroe, I have no greenhouse) I have discovered that many plants I DO like  to grow in my garden, work just fine as houseplants.

Topping the list  are the scented geraniums. I do so enjoy walking by and rubbing a leave or two to inhale the wonderful scent of lemon fizz, citrus, apple, rose attar, or ‘old spice’. All of these live in my windows and as a bonus the rose  one blooms all winter long.

Then comes the lemon tree. Flowers constantly, scent to die for, AND lemons. Need I say more?

Then came the vines. I was reading about the Japanese tradition of growing morning glories ,or Asagao, and got to thinking about how that would translate to my window sill. I planted seeds in early August in a pot, placed it  in the picture window ,and lo and behold, the thing is blooming it’s head off, loving life, and making me smile every time I am sitting in the family room. I have to pinch back the vine almost daily so it won’t take over the room, but that is a small effort and in the winter when there will be no outside gardening to do, I will look forward to the chore.

I am also starting black eyed susan vine  thunbergia alata from seed, and brought inside  cuttings of the purple bell flower vine rhodochiton astrosanguineum that I had  growing outside  .

In a further effort to recreate “outside” inside, I potted up my firesticks cactus with a compatable aeonium in a large red pot . Outside when conatiner gardening I always combine plants and think about the pot, but inside have settled for whatever , until now!

I am also going to bring in a ptilotus called’ little joey’, my rosemary topiary,a clematis or 2,  some thyme and sage plants start some moon flower seeds ,and and and…..the potential list seems endless!

This houseplant thing isn’t so bad, my only worry now is where I can store all the furniture for the winter while I garden indoors!

In as wordless of a post as you may ever get from me, I went outside  on a twofold mission…….1.) take a photo of anything I could find blooming in the yard  and 2.) try not to get stung by anything while doing so ( I am newly allergic to bee/wasp stings yikes!) . Mission accomplished, and the photos …ALL   134 of them! are in the gallery. There are no multiples of anything ( for instance I have more sedum that blooms this time of year than I care to admit, so I took a photo of one to represent the group) and the photos are unlabelled and unedited which was part of the spontanaeity of the mission. You will see dahlias, butterfly bushes, roses, clematis , annuals, hydrangeas, trees,rudbeckias, mums, etc

OOgle more late summer blooms over at Garden Bloggers Bloom Day hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens

I really love my September garden! Hope you are enjoying yours as well!

This summer has been very very busy. I could add about 6 more “very”s to that sentence to make it more accurately reflect my feelings, but you would be bored reading it and I think   you get my drift with just  the two.

I started the summer with a getting ready for a big garden tour, and that is how I am ending it as well. In between there was worrying about the rabbit damage, weeding , deadheading, and watering ( boy was there ever watering!).We did lots of day trips, and a few overnight beachy things , we visited lots of people and attended cookouts and pool parties. All in all it was pretty fun. Somehow, someway, in amidst all the chaos, there were flowers. Lots. A bounty you might say.

And how do I know this? The flower presses are groaning with the weight of layer upon layer of the pressed blooms and the heavy books that help weight them down before they go to the big press in the cellar.

Even on the busiest of days I have to stop here and there in the garden to grab a few leaves, blossoms or seedheads to get in the presses or I won’t have enough material for all the Pressed Flower Workshops I have coming up starting in September and going right through next May. They are stacked up from the very latest mums on the top all the way down to the spring blooming clematis on the bottom.

They are a real treasure , and one that I will now get to enjoy workshop by workshop , as I go through them to decide what to bring when.

Often , when I open a folded sheet of tissue paper and see what lies in between it’s folds, I  actually sort of squeal out loud ( just a little) when I see what lies there. It is like going back in time through the year of my garden, and often it is the only time I really got to enjoy whatever floral material is peeking out at me.

Dianthus? I remember you! You lit up the pink garden for weeks while I was spreading compost and mulch. Pretty geranium flowers?  You carried on through  the back 40 for the whole of spring while I was out caging clematis plants off from the bunnies, and you will make  a new layer in the fall section after the re-bloom you are so graciously giving me now.

Queen Annes Lace,  we picked you after Erin’s first driving lesson from the sides of the parking lot she was circling, and then the girls and I  spent a pleasurable afternoon setting up cups filled with food coloring and watching you drink  up  the colored water and transform before our eyes.

And on and on it goes, paper by paper book by book, a virtual time capsule of the blooming year here in and around the Burrow.

For those of you who will be attending a workshop in the coming year, now is a great time to press from your garden. Cosmos, roses, dahlias, black eyed susans,ornamental grass plumes and blades, artemesia, fall colored leaves, the list goes on and on. As we get closer to a frost (gasp!) you will also feel far less guilty about picking the perfect bloom to press ,it’s time in the garden is limited anyway.

For quick tutorial on pressing methods click here and get started on your own garden time capsule.

I have been on more garden tours than I can count over the past 20 or so years. I have seen contemporary gardens, country gardens, cottage gardens, shade gardens galore, ponds, fountains, every kind of plant and planting scheme imaginable. I am always struck by two very different things. First, no matter the style or plant material, I love them all. A garden is such a great place for exercise, creative expression, nourishment for body and soul and the optimal place for decompression. Everyone should have some sort of outside space that they can enjoy . Which leads me to the second thing……..there are never enough chairs.

I have walked around garden after garden that have  brought  me down path after path. Plants can be arranged beautifully, artwork is there for  enjoying ,or the view out into the countryside is stunning, but you have to stand. This always strikes me as so absolutely contrary to the whole point of creating such a special place. Why would anyone just stroll out past border after border (especially in the larger gardens) and not think,”Hey, wouldn’t a bench here be splendid?”

I don’t get it. Gardens are meant to be enjoyed , both from a distance and close up. Sitting outside watching the antics of birds or the grace of a  butterfly is better than Valium ( but not alcohol……..  sitting in the garden goes GREAT with alcohol).

You can plant your backside in a lot of locations here in the Burrow. Two of my favorites are the little deck off the kitchen for birdwatching and taking pictures and the front porch for coffee in the morning and  drinks and conversation in the evening. But even beyond the structures near the house, there is available seating in every garden you walk through.

The rock garden has a bench and chairs placed on either side of the path for chit-chatting. There are two Adirondacks in the back placed under a maple tree for a nice rest with great view.

Under the back arbor is a cement bench that is highly uncomfortable but will do if you need a quick rest after weeding , which you are welcome to do here at any time.

Two more Adirondacks flank the shed, and a longer bench under another maple rounds out the back.

In the dogs garden there are several small benches , and this larger one looks back toward the house.

There is also a comfy swing that we often sit on to coverse with the girls when they get home from school.

One more bench under yet another maple looks into the front garden and is now backed by a lilac hedge planted last weekend.

Most of the benches and  seats were bought at yard sales or flea markets , for very small sums, but they don’t feel like the cheap seats ( I couldn’t resist) when you  sit a spell and take in some scenery.

None of this is entertainment seating, that is all found inside the fence that goes around the pool  on a deck , in a gazebo and under a shade structure. It is all very choppy space under there and I wish I had planned it so large groups could gather in one place instead of 3 smaller areas, but it still works OK. Someday I would love to take down the deck and hardscape the whole area, but not until Bill forgets how much he spent on the new railings I begged for a few years  ago.

Take a good look at your outdoor space, and add a seat or two here and there. I know I would l be grateful to have one offered to me if I was touring your garden!

So very many puzzling things happen when you try to take a little piece of land and make a garden. Most of the time , if you observe long enough , you can figure out what is going on, but sometimes no matter how hard you look , the answer remains hidden.

So here is the puzzle of the week . Two containers, exact matches for one another, planted with some annuals. Each started with the same potting mix into which was planted 2 coleus plants in the center (from the same 6 pack) and 4 impatiens , one placed in each corner (also from the same flat). They were placed right next to each other in the garden and get the same amount of filtered sun and water .

So then why  did the coleus in one container take off running , filling out and now shadowing and crowding out the impatiens, and yet in the other the coleus remains small and it is the impatiens that have grown large and are definitely in charge .

Can’t figure it out. Makes no sense AND it offends my need for symetry and order . Now the question is…do I leave them planted  as they are and be happy they are  full and healthy …OR do I take then apart and try again for my matching bookends for the garden space in which they sit?

and the answer is…drum roll please……I have waaaaaay too much work to do around here to mess with anything that is doing well, so they will stay as is , I may just find a new home for them where their assymetry will be an asset and not a flaw.

Within the next few weeks, I have several plants that need to be replaced due to health issues , lots that needs cutting back, the remains of 3 yards of loam I am using to refresh some beds and augment  a new bed  that will soon be home to  be a new lilac hedge, weeding, deadheading, and so very much more. Anything that  looks good  will be left alone.

My favorite time of the year in what we refer to as the Dogs Grden, is just begining.

In bloom are the rose of sharons,……………………………

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…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..the limelight hydrangeas, .

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…………………………………the heavenly scented summersweet, (this is one called ‘Ruby Spice’ ) .

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the red knockout roses, the late daylily’ franz hal’,sunflowers, dhalias, potentillas in yellow and pale pink, and the ‘heirloom’ raspberries are about to errupt into full August fruit.

This garden is down near the front of our property and is the view from the porch where we often have breakfast lounging in oversize comfy wicker chairs, and sit to watch storms or enjoy a cool evening on the secluded couch near the back shielded from the street by a veil of sweet autumn clematis.

The garden has lots of issues up close, as it is the dogs playground and plants are constantly trampled, chewed and broken, but seen from the porch it looks wonderful, and as a bonus in August the drift of the summersweet scent makes any evening spent out there a true joy.

Here comes Pumpkin up the path to join us!

July is the most two faced decietful underhanded double dealing month of the year. Every June 30th, I am in a good gardening place, usually quite pleased with the way things are going here. After all, the roses and peony  are in bloom, the clematis is at the height of the early bloom cycle, foliage is generally clean and whole and gardening feels like the relaxing hobby I romanticize it to be.

Then the calendar page flips….and so does my mood.

First the bugs descend; sawflies on the roses, ants everywhere tunneling and spreading weed seeds, beetles of very description attacking ornamentals and edibles without nary a thought given to the gardener who would like to enjoy them and may I add PLANTED them to begin with. Horn worms, caterpillars, leaf miners, you name it, they are here munching away.

My early mornings and evenings are spent circling the garden with what I refer to as my “Slug Cup of Death” which is a red plastic cup full of soapy water to drown the japanese beetles and slugs I handpick off the plants.

The bunnies are up to their tricks again as new litters crop up everywhere in this cruel month ( and cruel it will be to them as well if we find their burrows….we are over the cuteness ….we have seen the destruction… we will cull as needed to keep the population explosion in check.)  The skunks arrive digging for bugs , flinging plants out willy nilly as they forage and root around the garden beds.

Just to add to the feeling of despair, the wasps are out in full force. In this full-of-flowers garden the pollinators outnumber the humans about a billion to 1 and we all seem to live in harmony until the wasps move in. They are building nests in the patio furniture, behind the downspouts, in the empty birdhouses. The ground dwellers and diggers ( great black wasps and golden diggger wasps) have dug large holes in the entire front bed and walkway,  and there is hardly a place I can walk by without being warned by the sentries of the ground hornets to back off. July always brings the first of what will be many stings, but this year the first sting resulted in an unfortunate reaction that leaves me now needing an epi-pen so the next sting will not be my last. I have always let the wasps that were generally out of the way of traffic do as they please, especially the diggers  because they feed the grasshoppers ( yet another plague) to their young. But this year their numbers are very large and now I am allergic so I need to erradicate nests that are too close for comfort and I am not happy about it.

Moving on to the plants, the cold wet  extended spring started an avalanche of fungal spores , and plants that were just recovering from that  are now facing the effects of the very hot very dry weather that followed. Crunchy is the word of the day in these parts. Even with all the hand watering I did many things are still suffering.

Then , just when my days feel like one endless garden catstrophe after the next, we get a few rainstorms and things start to perk up, the beetles finish up their eating/mating frenzy and dissapear, the late summer bloomers start to shine, and I walk around here with a smile on my face and a song in my heart as I watch the butterflies and hummingbirds frolic amoung the blosssoms…..no, wait…that’s  not me…that was a TV commercial or a Disney movie flashback. Who am I kidding? I walk around here with maybe a hopeful glimpse at a beautiful flower, but knowing full well  there is a slug on it somewhere and that even though it feels much  better in The Burrow today than it did yesterday, nature is not done with me yet.

( July in photos…click to enlarge )

It has been so very hot and dry in these parts for the last few weeks that most of my time has been taken up with watering. I feel like the hose may actually become a permanant appendage it has been sitting in my hand for so many hours. Of course , after I water , the cursed weeds spring right up  and have to be pulled lest they take the precious water from the desired plants. In an effort save some of my sanity, I have also been transplanting things that needs lots of water to beds right near water sources , which in effect has made me loose more of it  as I try to keep the transplants watered until they settle in.

Needless to say, there has not been alot of picture taking or garden enjoyment here in the Burrow, but last night I got the chance to visit a wonderful garden in Quincy,MA tended to by fellow Master Gardener Paul Cook. He and his spouse John own a 1930’s era home on just a quarter acre that is absolutely packed with trees shrubs, perennials, tropicals, containers, bulbs, and the cutest two King Charles spaniels as a bonus.

They have done an incredible job carving many intimate spaces and cozy nooks all literally brimming with interesting plant material. I have to scoot back outside to move the hose again, so will leave you with pictures I took as the light was fading and myself and about 30 other MGs were enjoying a little piece of paradise.

After you look at what was blooming at Paul’s…head over to May Dreams Gardens to see what othe garden bloggers have in their July gardens.

As always thanks to Carol for hosting!