Oh no, the weeds are sprouting

A little rain and some unseasonably warm temperatures have resulted in weeds germinating everywhere in my gardens.  Something needed to be done immediately.  My neighbors rushed to my rescue, although they didn't realize it.

Because the weather has been so pleasant, all my neighbors have been graciously raking up leaves, and piling bags on the curb for pick up.  For the last two days, I've been driving around the neighborhood, stuffing huge black bags of leaves into the trunk, back seat, and even the front passenger seat of my car and then hustling back home with my treasure.

Once home, some of the bags went into piles for future use while I ferried most of them in my wheelbarrow to my gardens. 

My gardens are now well watered, thanks to some good, rainy days and thoroughly mulched with a thick blanket of leaves to keep that moisture in and those pesky little weed seedlings from growing up into a wild, weed collection.  

Ready for Christmas

Decorating the outdoors for Christmas has been a little challenging this year.  First there was the drought, which meant the ground was as hard as concrete; there was no way I could pound the anchors into the ground.

Then it rained (for which I am VERY thankful) and while I'm a dedicated gardener, I didn't particularly want to get soaking wet.

The decorations are finally up.  All we need now, are some snow flakes to feel like Christmas is here.

I'm particularly proud of the horse head greenery that I displayed on the gate out at the barn.  I decided to staple dismantled fake garlands for the body, while still gluing on the pine needle main, and using a pine cone for the eye.  This means that when Christmas over all it will just take a few minutes to peel off the mane and forelock and it will be ready for storage until next year.

  

And we have rain

The beginning of December has been wet and gloomy and chilly . . . and I am SO happy!!  My gardens seem to be smiling, and I'm pretty sure I have heard the sound of singing in the rain too.

The long term consequences of the drought are yet to be seen.  One of my drought victims has been my topsy turvy echeveria. 

The birds in my backyard discovered that eating succulents was a terrific way to get a drink when all their usual sources of water dried up.  It looked like I was serving a buffet on my back deck. Had I a faster camera to capture these meals, the photos would have been hysterically funny. 

This is how a topsy turvy echeveria is supposed to look.

This is what my topsy turvy looks like following several months of feeding the song sparrows and cardinals.  I don't mind, this one will grow back next year.

 

Thankful for mercy

It has been a busy holiday weekend.  I've entertained, cooked, shopped, ridden my horse, checked on my daughter's pets while she was out of town, and made room for a Christmas tree in my living room. 

What I didn't do was pay any attention to the container plants on my decks.    In central Alabama, we make trial runs at cold weather during which we have a night or two of frost followed by a week or two of cool, but not dangerously cold nights.  I collect all my containers in flat trays for easy transport and keep them on the decks, ready to move indoors for a frosty night.  They have already been indoors for our first chilly weekend about a week ago but for Thanksgiving week, they have been comfortable outdoors. . .until last night.

As I said, it's been a busy weekend, so when the forecast predicted we would be near freezing last night, I knew I should bring them all inside.  BUT, it was a lovely day yesterday, in the upper 60s with a nice breeze.  Since I was tired and it seemed hard to imagine that it could possibly drop more than 30 degrees overnight, I just left them out there and went to bed.

Much to my horror, when I woke up at 4:45 this morning, my backyard thermometer read a heart-stopping 27.5 degrees!  As I anxiously awaited sunrise, the temperature dropped to 27.1.  I contemplated running out in my slippers and bathrobe to retrieve my pitiful babies but realized that the damage was already done and I might as well wait for the sun and warmer temperatures to assess the damage brought about by my laziness.

Today, I am thankful for God's mercy.  Not a single plant died and very few of them appear to have any leaf damage.  I promise to heed the next frost warning.

We've got RED

I read in the news that the fall colors are muted this year because of the drought.  While this may be true in other places, my red maple tree was not informed of this fact.  This tree in my backyard is putting on the best show of red I've ever seen in my backyard.  The leaves are a deep, true red, and are holding their even after dropping.  Every day I take new photos, thinking, "the color is peaking today" only to discover it looks even better the next day.  Here of some of my favorite photos . . . so far.

Finding delight during a drought

It is difficult for me to stroll through my gardens during these days of drought.  I'm fearful of what I will see and saddened when I discover shrubs and plants that have moved beyond wilting to total dryness and significant leaf drop. 

When I look beyond the obvious, however, I can still find beauty in my backyard.  There are still fountain grass plumes contrasting with the stark white of my mailbox.  A lone canna lily in a container decided to grace us with orange blossoms that rival the brightness of the pumpkin sitting at its feet.  The persimmon tree's fall plumage is so bright it almost demands sun glasses.

This all reminds me that during personal seasons of drought, I can be become focused on the hard times that I often miss the quiet blessings that result from a closer look.

Fleeting fall colors

The only gardening discussions in Alabama these days are concerning the ongoing drought.  In my backyard, we are beginning our third consecutive month without rainfall and there is no rain in the immediate forecast.

The lack of moisture has affected my gardens in many ways.  Most of what I am doing now involves not doing things that might aggravate the stress such as pruning or transplanting.  Mostly, I'm just waiting for rain and spring to see what survives.

Even our normal fall colors have been seriously affected by the drought.  The arborists tell us that a dry summer often produces the most spectacular fall shows but this year has been different.  Yes, the colors are brilliant, but the leaves quickly wilt and fall to the ground upon their color change.  Even fall is fleeting this year.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from my Alabama Backyard to yours.  Trick or treating has been rained out for the past two years here but there is no danger of that today.  I find myself wishing for a washout, but I can hold off my wish for another day so the children in our neighborhood can dress up, play outside after dark, and collects lots of candy.

Wishful thinking

Back in September, I discovered that my satsuma tree was blooming out of season.  The pollinators did a good job, considering that it wasn't even close to the correct season for orange blossoms.  We now have three small oranges trying hard to grow before winter arrives.  They are about the size of marbles.  Technically, mandarins can withstand temperatures as low as freezing but I'm not sure they will actually keep growing then.  The tree is in a large container so I'll be dragging it into the garage any time the temperature threatens to drop. 

It is all right to imagine oranges in February . . .

Doing the best we can

The drought in central Alabama continues.  It means that most of my gardens are going dormant much sooner than normal.  Most of my plants are tough, southern perennials so I know that they will survive this dry spell, but strolling through my backyard is rather depressing these days.

However, there are two plants in my backyard that are refusing to let the drought conditions hold them down.  The New England asters are blooming with abandon, although the blooms are a little smaller than when they are receive normal rainfall. 

The flamboyant naked ladies came up right on schedule regardless of the fact that they haven't been watered in over a month.  The stalks are a little shorter and like the asters, the bloom are a little smaller than normal. 

I'm proud of my little flowers that just keep on doing the best they can with what they have.

When everything seems dead

It is official--we are experiencing a drought.  A map of central Alabama shows that my backyard seems to be one of the areas suffering the severest lack of rainfall.  Of course, I didn't need an official proclamation or a map to tell me that my backyard is a dried up mess. 

Most of my plants are very hardy perennials so even though my gardens look miserable at the moment, spring (and rain) will come and they will grow green once again. 

I do water my perennial containers, however.  They are mainly tropicals that will come into the house or the cold frame for the winter. 

One of my bromelids bloomed this week.  Seeing its bright red flower stalk was like a drink of cool water in a desert.  I never know when the bromelids will bloom; God knew that I needed to smile during these dry, dusty days.

Finished eating

When I went to check on the gulf fritillary caterpillars, this is all I found.  They have successfully pruned every single leaf, flower, and bud in my backyard.  A casual search did not reveal any chrysalises, but there are still plenty of butterflies enjoying the last flowers of September.

Take two

Our satsuma tree had an extremely stressful year.  Last summer, white scale set up housekeeping, investing practically every leaf on the tree.  The professional advice I received was to destroy the tree and start over but I just couldn't bring myself to do that without trying to save it first. 

We had oranges on the tree so my first choices were natural attempts:  blasting the scale with the jet selection of my hose, hand washing the leaves with dish soap, and smashing them with gloved hands.  Nothing worked.

After harvesting our orange crop in November, I decided to try the chemical "big guns," three doses of malathion spray over the next three months. 

With spring's arrival this year, the scale seemed to be gone and our little tree burst into bloom.  However, whether it was because of the stress from the scale infestation or from the heavy doses of malathion or both, every immature orange dropped from the tree before mid-summer.

Last week, I noticed that our satsuma was putting on some new growth, and upon closer inspection, I discovered a few orange blossoms.  They appear to have pollinated as well.  Of course, these baby oranges will fall off when the cool evenings of autumn arrive but I am encouraged that our tough little satsuma has survived to produce sweet mandarin oranges once again.

Shhhh . . . the babies are eating

This is butterfly season in my backyard.  Because I have masses of purple passion flower vine in my garden, it is filled with gulf fritillary butterflies.  Every afternoon they float about the last of summer blooms and lay hundreds of eggs. 

Its a good thing that I have masses of passion flower vine because those ravenous baby caterpillars are devouring them.  This is all just fine with me because they are doing a fabulous job of pruning the vines for me.  If I am very quiet, I can literally hear them chomping away.

I've seen a few of the pupa hiding under the vines but since they look exactly like a dead passion flower leaf, they are difficult to spot.  I know they are there, however, because I keep seeing more butterflies. 

Native plants support native wildlife.
 

If root beer plant doesn't make you smile

If the flower of the root beer plant doesn't make you smile, then you definitely do not have a well-developed sense of humor.

The fuzzy white stalk in this photo IS the flower of the root beer plant.  Sometimes they are upright like this one and sometimes they curve down into white candy canes. 

A native of Mexico, the leaves of Piper auritum are used in traditional cooking, chopped into salads, and used as meat wraps.  They are supposed to add a mild root beer flavor to food.  The raw leaves taste bitter to me and I couldn't detect anything like root beer.  However, when I crushed a leaf in my hands, the fragrance of a cold bottle of Dad's Rootbeer filled the air around me. 

In my garden, the root beer plants grows as a perennial shrubs in the shade garden.  It propagates itself through its root system.  Whenever I feel a need to know that God smiles, I visit my root beer plants.

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.

We found Nessie

I have a fondness for using indoor decor outdoors in my backyard.  This week I found this adorable little creature at a yard sale.  After putting her in the garden, my family identified her as a baby Loch Ness Monster.  Little Nessie brings lots of smiles to my backyard.

Blueberries busting out all over

In the first weeks of harvesting, my blueberry crop was disappointing, the berries were small and slow to ripen.  The weather was dry and even though I was watering the shrubs, they just didn't seem to produce.

And then it rained! Last week, we received over two inches of rain over the course of 4 days. 

Suddenly, I have blueberries busting out all over.  The berries started to ripen, turning dark blue and swelling to twice the previous size.  Since the rain, I've picked more than 12 cups of berries and the bushes still have more than half their berries.

Of course, the birds may discover this bounty too . . .
 

What a difference a day makes

Rootbeer plant, yesterday

It has not been raining in my backyard.  We often hear rumbling thunder and see brightly flashing lightening but the rain always seems to fall in someone else's neighborhood.  It has been six weeks since we have had any significant rainfall and my garden is beginning to feel it

Rootbeer plant, today

Most of my garden is made up of perennials which can handle a dry spell because their root systems are deep and well-established.  The annuals have become completely dependent on my hose which I find time consuming and expensive. 

After this length of time, even the perennials are beginning to suffer.  I took photos yesterday of my sad, wilted backyard. 

Angel trumpet, yesterday

Angel trumpet, today

Turks cap, yesterday

All night long, we listened to thunder and watched lightening from afar and then, early this morning, it began to rain.  I think it was the prettiest rain I've ever seen and I'm pretty sure I heard the plants in my garden sighing with relief.  I took photos of the same plants that were wilted yesterday, they much happier this afternoon.  What a difference one day and one half an inch of rain make to my backyard. 

Turks cap, today