The "new" crocosmia garden

In its previous incarnation as a shade garden, the only plants that seemed to thrive among the matted root system of the silver maple tree were the crocosmias.  They balanced their bulbs on the roots and managed to send tendrils through the mats but their bloom stalks tended to fall over when they were fully blooming.  I left them in place after the tree was cut down last summer but wondered how they would do in the new full-sun garden.

The wondering is over.  I am proud to report that the crocosmias love their new sun garden!  They are already thicker, are standing completely upright, and are covered in orange-red blooms that remind me of fireworks.

It's a jungle out there

For the past several years, whenever I acquired a new plant for which I didn't have a planned location, I would plant it along the back fence line.  The fence line is my most recent cultivation so it always seems like the right place for any plant.

With the loss of the silver maple tree, the sun hours for the fence line garden have increased significantly, changing the growing dynamics proportionately.  Add to that, the near tropical nature of this summer's weather patterns and suddenly it feels like a jungle out there.

While very little is blooming at the moment, the plants are bursting with energy and the cream peas I planted in the "empty" spaces are over running their trellis poles and crawling onto the shrubs and taller perennials.  It will soon be a challenge to navigate the pathway.  Who knew I would have jungle in July?

When God has other plans

After several years without experiencing any significant severe weather, my backyard was slammed with two major wind events on two consecutive days.  The weather station at the airport registered 35 mph gusts but in our neighborhood the winds were much, much stronger. 

The wind filled our backyard with debris, pruned a multitude of branches from a dead tree on our neighbor's property, and a huge branch high in the canopy of our sweet gum tree crashed through the canopy of the nearby southern long leaf pine, creating a major disaster in the middle of our yard.  Unlike some of our neighbors, we were fortunate that none of the branches fell on our home.

Saturday was clean up day in our backyard.  My sweet husband purchased a small chain saw and we spent the bulk of a hot, summer day, sawing up branches and dragging them to the curb.

The garden that was buried under the debris looks very sad today, but nothing was completely destroyed.  Amazingly, not a single branch landed on our garden bench, and not a single container was damaged.  We will just have a little more sunshine in the shade garden.

As we worked on our backyard yesterday, I was reminded that we often have expectations for our gardens that change in moment because of unforeseen changes in the weather, events that we can't anticipate or change.  Life is often the same way.  We plan and have expectations that change in a moment because of events that we cannot control.  We have to depend on our heavenly Father who knows what is coming, and who will make the journey with us.

One of the truths from the Bible that I keep in mind is written in Proverbs:  Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (3:5-6)

Wild about wild petunias

Some of my favorite flowers come from ditches.  When I walk or ride (car or horse) down small roads and streets, I always pay attention to what is growing in the ditches.  Amid the weeds, grass, and trash there are always wildflowers thriving in the mess. 

Much to the embarrassment of my husband and friends, I will stop to rescue a wildflower specimen for my garden.  Those ditch flowers are extremely hardy, exactly the characteristic I am looking for.

Many years ago, I introduced wild petunias to my front garden.  I chose to plant mine in the filtered shade because that is the environment from which I rescued it.  While it has reseeded and spread gently throughout the garden, it has definitely migrated over to the sunnier side of the flower bed, interspersing itself in the liriope border. 


I hope to capture some seeds in order to transfer it to my sunnier gardens in the backyard.  I love observing the way the garden naturally redesigns itself.

Gardens are my heritage

Some of my earliest memories are from my Grandma's garden.  My grandparents were so poor that they still didn't have plumbing in their home and electricity was a new addition to their home.  In spite of her challenging existence, my grandma created beauty in her home and in her gardens with lovely flowers.  While I'm sure she grew others, the flowers I remember as a preschooler were the snap dragons into which I would poke my fingers to be "bitten" by the dragon mouths, and the gladiolas which towered above my tiny stature.

Snap dragons are a winter flower in Alabama and even then I don't have much success growing them.  However the gladiola bulbs from my grandmother's last garden have thrived in Alabama and cross polinated with the other varieties I've purchased.  They have spread themselves across the sunny spots in my backyard.

Of course, now that I'm grown, they no longer tower over my head, but they remind me of the glad days of my gardening heritage in my grandmother's backyard.

A hot mess

One of the solutions for a wet place in a landscape is to create a rain garden.  The idea is that you should embrace the low place, dig it out a little deeper and introduce plants that thrive in a feast or famine environment. 

It seemed like a good idea for the low place in my side yard so I started planting the area with natives that I literally dug from road sides and pass-a-longs from other gardeners. 

At first it was a huge mess because I had to keep it weeded since I couldn't really mulch the area that I wanted to spread and/or reseed. 

Then it became even messier because the plants wouldn't reseed according to my vision of swaths of bright colors.  They continued to insist on reseeding and spreading in random directions all through the bed.

After nearly 10 years the plants have happily spread randomly all through the rain garden according to their own plan.  I've decided to embrace the idea of a brightly colored hot mess.   The color pallet changes almost daily.  Sadly, the photos do not do it justice.

Pink is also a flavor

Roses should be a basic element in every southern garden.  I wish I could say that I have really tried to grow them but the truth is I am a careless gardener.  My roses get mulched and pruned once a year and then they are on their own.  My rosarian friends will tell you that my roses look exactly like I should expect from this consistent neglect. 

This time of year, though, my roses look very pretty with their fresh new green leaves and the first flush of blooms.  I'm particularly proud of this pretty posy that I picked this afternoon.

Roses blossoms are also considered a food source for my sulcata tortoise.  I often present him with spent blooms for "dessert" after a hearty meal of weeds and grass.  I noticed that he seemed to like the flavor of some roses better than others so I decided to conduct an experiment to see if I was right about his preferences.

I lined up perfect blooms from all four of my rose bushes: white Sir Thomas Lipton, deep red Don Juan, pastel pink Mutabulis, and my nameless red heritage rose.  Without a moments hesitation, Mordecai hastened to the Mutabulis and chomped all the petals in short order.  He only checked out the Don Juan petals after he had cruised the entire kitchen floor for food scraps.

According to Mordecai, pink is also a fabulous flavor.