Luxury is for the birds

This spring we enjoyed a visit with my much-loved mother-in-law and my husband's darling sister.  They live on the northwestern coast of Washington so we treasure the rare opportunities of time spent together. 

They bought me the most amazing glass bowl I have ever seen; shaped like a flower, it is also painted with some sort of bright metalic finish that practically glows.  Knowing my love of plants and bright things, they gave me the perfect gift.

I enjoyed my bowl indoors for several weeks before I discovered its true purpose as a birdbath in my garden.   Now the birds enjoy a luxurious spa experience with "petal" perches and and relaxing bath on a traditional white pedestal, shaded by a majestic oak. 

I got an "F" in flower arranging

This past Friday, my Master Gardener friend, Brandon, gave our MG group an impromptu lesson in flower arranging using random items we brought from our gardens.  This is an artistic endeavor that leaves me completely baffled.  I find it almost impossible to walk out into my garden with a vision of how to bring elements from the garden indoors to decorate my home.

Brandon may not have intended to teach me how create arrangements using alliteration on the letter "F" but that is how it resonated with me. 

Framework:  Decide on the shape of the arrangement.  Use sticks or large greenery to create the overall shape and size.   In class,  we used a jar brought in by my friend, Karen, that she stuffed with wet florist foam.  We created a large, one-sided triangular shape using sticks from her sweet gum tree and some eucalyptus from my garden.

Focal pieces:  Choose a few things to be the eye-catchers in the arrangement.  An odd number is good but we actually used four dried hydrangea blooms and grouped them together to create one large focal point.

Filler:  Then, fill in the empty gaps in the arrangement using greenery, with the purpose of adding complementary color and texture.  We used seed heads from several perennials in my gardens.

When we were finished, we had a gorgeous fall arrangement blending shades of green and brown.  Karen added a large, black Halloween spider just to add an element of fun. 

I'm ready to start bringing more of my gardens indoors.  Learning how to do it was fabulous fun!

Best container awards 2016

Every year I tell myself I'm not going to create as many container gardens as I did the year before.  By August I am SO done with watering them almost every day.  However, the reality is that I imagine an interesting combination of color and texture and feel a compelling desire to try it.

Here are my two best creations for 2016. 

I cannot take full credit for my wheelbarrow garden.  While I planted the focal plants, the reseeded torenia from last year's effort filled in the gaps to produce a sense of overflowing color.  I added a broken stem from a repotted beefsteak begonia which created a surprising dramatic contrast to the smaller and brighter leaves of the other plants in the barrow. 

The other award for 2016 goes to a grouping of containers in my front yard.  I use containers in this area of my garden because our massive oak tree demands most of the moisture and nutrients, leaving very little for a traditional garden.  This year, I used white containers to brighten the shade under the tree.  Once again, the star of the planting turned out to be a random plant.  I needed something tall to elevate the grouping;  being too lazy to head to the garden center, I merely dug up a chunk of canna rhizome to drop into the back of the container.  The canna has been very happy in that pot; whenever a stalk began to grow too tall, I would cut it off at the soil line and the canna would produce a new stalk.

Both of these container gardens reflect my enjoyment of bright colors and contrasting textures.  But next year, I'm not going to plant so many containers . . .

Dog days

Normally, we think of the last sultry days of summer as the "dog days," the time of year when not much is blooming, the summer vegetable garden is finishing up, and its just too hot to get outdoors to play in the yard.

It seems like the entire summer has been a "dog day" summer.  For the entire month of July and now in August, the weather has been the same; morning lows in the mid 70s, afternoon highs in the mid 90s, humidity levels hovering around 90%, and those random afternoon showers that don't really water the garden but raise the humidity all the way to 100%. 

There has been enough rain in my backyard to prevent drought conditions but not enough to produce a bumper crop of flowers and veggies.  Even the plants seem to be waiting for fall.

Mordecai, the tortoise is the only family member who thinks this weather is perfect, but his native habitat is sub-Saharan Africa.

Interesting fun fact:  The term "dog days" does not refer to the fact that it is so miserably hot that even the dogs lay around.  The ancients believed that the rise of the Dog Star, Sirius caused the temperature to rise.  Of course, what they didn't know was that the stars appear at different times in different places in the world and that the placement of the stars doesn't affect the weather.  (When it is too hot to play outdoors, I have time to look up strange questions on the internet).  Stay cool, fall is coming.

Surprise!

We had a good, soaking rain this week so yesterday was a great morning to get all the weeding caught up while the soil was soft.

While I enjoy a morning stroll around my gardens each summer morning, weeding means that I slow down and see the little details that I sometimes miss during a walk through.

I was delightfully surprised to see a tall flower stalk with these large, pastel pink lilies gracing my garden border.  Last fall I stuck a bunch of inexpensive bulbs that I purchased from a discount retailer in a bulb border planting without any great expectations and promptly forgot them.  I know now why the common name for this plant is "Surprise lily."

Later, while pulling weeds in my woodland garden, I pulled back the  low-hanging branch of a shrub to discover this cute little turtle.  I don't know which of us was more surprised.  He is just a little smaller than our tortoise.  After quietly posing for his photograph, the little guy wandered off through the leaf litter.  I would have never seen him if I hadn't been down on the ground with the weeds.

Move me, please

Rose campion is a short lived perennial that that reseeds generously.  It likes dry, rocky soil and will tolerate our hot southern sun with just some partial shade in the afternoon.  I love its magenta flowers that contrast with its soft, gray-green foliage. 

I situated my pass-along rose campions in partial sun, backed by a trellis and tucked behind a rock border; a perfect place to show off its foliage and blooms, or so I thought. 

The plants were scrawny, rarely bloomed and would drop the few seeds they produced into the lawn rather than back into the flower bed.  My wonderful plan was not developing the way I had envisioned it.

Last spring, in a fit of disgust, I dug up my sad little plants and moved them about three feet to the south, on the edge of a larger flower bed.  I figured I had nothing to lose. 

The rose campion, however, are thrilled with their new home.  The plants are large and healthy, they are blooming with abandon, and in just one season, they have doubled their numbers. 

I have no earthly idea why the first spot displeased them so much or why a shift of three feet made them so happy.  But, if the rose campion are happy, so am I.

Yearning for a cahaba lily?

Cahaba lily

There isn't an avid gardener in central Alabama that doesn't yearn to grow the stunningly beautiful but rare (and protected) native Cahaba lily.  They only grow in a few streams that contain their very specific requirements of fast flowing, shallow water over rocky shoals.  People regularly make challenging pilgrimages to these obscure locations every May when word goes out that the Cahaba lilies are in bloom.

My white spider lily

There is an alternative for the wishful gardener; another lily that is similar to the Cahaba in appearance but not nearly as fussy about where it is willing to grow and bloom.  A good friend shared some white spider lily bulbs with me three years ago.  I planted them in partial shade and waited.

This week, my long wait for flowers has been rewarded;  my spider lilies are blooming.  They are smaller than Cahaba lilies and look slightly different but I don't have to make a pilgrimage to the Cahaba River to enjoy them.  They are growing right in my Alabama backyard.