May 2013 Foliage Follow-Up

I love my front yard garden.  I know that it's not good for house resale to have so much garden, and I also know that when we do finally move the person who buys the house will likely get rid of most if not all of the plants here.  But when I come home, seeing this garden makes me happy:

(Excuse the slant. I clearly had trouble standing up straight and taking a picture on this day!)

With this front yard garden, I was aiming for 3 things:

1. Year-round interest through texture, form and color contrasts.
2. A drought tolerant, low-maintenance garden.
3. Taking advantage of the backlighting that I would get every evening as the sun set.

I am very happy to say that I mostly managed to hit on all three counts.  Here are some detail shots:

Japanese maple. Its fiery burn eludes the camera, unfortunately.

Mexican feathergrass and sea kale is a favorite frothy combo.
I like to think that the oakleaf hydrangea grounds them a little.

Grandma's variegated iris, brown carex, 'Bressignham Ruby' bergenia, heucheras, sage and grasses.

The view as I exit my car.

The front yard isn't the only place with good foliage interest, though. Here are a few shots from the backyard:

Heucheras might be my favorite plant to view backlit.
I thought the little-leaf-shadow inside the blazing bigger leaf was cool here..

Another heuchera, this one nestled at the foot of a just-emerged chocolate eupatorium.

My newly planted urn, featuring a softleaf yucca in the center. (You can see it hanging down from the top of the frame.)
Ivy geraniums, heucheras (dug up from the garden), and white licorice plant ring the outside.

 That's probably enough for this month's foliage post! For more foliage links, visit Pam's May Foliage Follow Up post and check out the comments.  :-)

Better Late Than Never? GBBD May 2013

Aaaarrrrgh. :-( I just logged in to write a late May GBBD post and realized that there were 12 legitimate comments waiting to be approved--and even more good comments sitting on my April post with no response from me. (There was also a bunch of pending comments that needed to be sent to spam, which explains my reason for having a time limit on comments.)

I suck. Please accept the "bouquet" of pretty purple alliums above as an apology.

Moving on, I'll try to be better about watching out for comments. (Maybe even about posting, too--but no promises there.)  Here are some actual photos that I took on May 15th to showcase the blooms on this month's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day:

From top to bottom, you see a clump of NOID crimson tulips in my front yard, one of the dozen or so 'Black Hero' tulips that wave in the wind (hence the blurry pic) above my lamium and carex bed, my deep red (newly planted) ivy geraniums, and the dangling bells of a fuchsia hanging basket.

Also blooming this week are my brunnera ('Looking Glass' and 'Jack Frost'), bergenia, 2 kinds of lamium, my hoya, alpine strawberries and a random lipstick plant.  I really should take a picture of the last, because it's comical.  The diminutive little thing is in a 3 inch pot and has 3 small strands of leaves that each might measure 3/4 of an inch at the longest.  And yet, it has this ridiculously large--no exaggeration, it might be as big as the pot!--bright pink flower that looks completely out of place!

While you're waiting for that pic, please go check out blooms from around the world, courtesy of the May 2013 Garden Bloggers Bloom Day post over at May Dreams Gardens.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - April 2013

The snow drops have come and gone, but all the hellebores have started their show - along with the little Fox's Grape frittilary, and very earliest of the species tulips!

And the hellebores are certainly putting on a show. I didn't get great pictures of the Lenten Roses that are in the backyard, because they're so shaded in the evenings, but you can still tell that this single plant is covered in blooms:

Inside the house, the last flower stalk on Miltassia Charles M Fitch 'Izumi' is just finishing its show. I brought it outside for a photo op in the fading evening sun, to show off its last blooms:

Unfortunately, the only other things in bloom around here are the weeds! But I have a couple of cool foliage pics from the cleaned-up areas of the front yard for tomorrow, so stay tuned for those tomorrow.

And to check out what else is blooming all over the world, as always... visit Carol's April 2013 GBBD Post at May Dreams Gardens!

March Foliage Follow Up: Monstrous Monstera

A few years back, in the summer of 2009, I was working part-time at a local garden center when a fun surprise came in our tropical order from Florida: 8 inch pots of variegated monstera deliciosa! In the 3-1/2 years I've had this plant, it's grown to the point that I'm not sure where I'm going to overwinter it next year.

Mind you, I KNEW how big these guys eventually would get. There are a couple in the rainforest biome at the garden center, and at least one of them has climbed up into the 2nd story canopy. Still, I couldn't resist. In the photo below, I included the couch arm and 3ft wide bookshelf as a reference... and then realized that two of the biggest leaves were cut out of the picture on the right!

On the smaller end of the foliage scale, one of my favorite succulents is Drunkard's Dream, hatiora salicornioides. At certain times of the year, its segments look like beer bottles, and it also shows off sweet little yellow flowers. Mine seems to be more upright than most, but there's still a lot of foliage spilling over the side of my broken birdbath. And it looks cool when backlit:

Last but not least, here's the real reason that I couldn't resist buying oncidium mendenhall 'Hildos' at the orchid sale:  It has cool leaves that are mottled with deep red!

And, like most colorful foliage, they look awesome backlit, too:

And those are the foliage highlights from around these parts today. To see more foliage from around the blogosphere, check out the comments on Pam's March Foliage Follow-Up post!

March GBBD 2012: Orchids and Snowdrops Edition

Since I've been more than challenged in terms of posting ANYTHING this year, I hope that you'll forgive me for this uncharacteristically brief Garden Bloggers Bloom Day post.  At least it's a post--and on the 15th, even!

First, An orchid I picked up at the botanical garden's post-show plant sale: Oncidium Mendenhall 'Hildos':

I like that these flowers seem otherworldly, but the foliage is the real reason I bought it. And it doesn't hurt that it looks like a botanical transformer badass in close ups:

Another orchid from the same sale, this is Miltassia Charles M Fitch 'Izumi' which came with two blooming stalks and a third stalk full of promising buds:

My third and last purchase from the show was an orchid that I've killed once already, but couldn't resist trying again. This is the last fading bloom on the "Coconut Pie Orchid," Maxillaria tenuifolia:

Other indoor blooms include Steve's poinsettia (a gift from his old office complex about 4 years ago), which I affectionately refer to as Charlie Brown:

I zoomed way in to make it look good...
but this IS the Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree of old poinsettias!

And this crazy purple heart, which has been blooming intermittently in a dark corner of the bathroom:

Outside, I can see the hellebores again now that the snow is gone. This one, with its dark petals and light, sanded-looking edges, is my current fave:

While I'm not a fan of white flowers, this one gets extra props for being in bloom in early January. The long bloom time and snowy winter is the reason for the wear and tear you can see in on the flowers in the background:

And my lone little clump of snowdrops, which live under the peach tree. I left the pits from last summer's fallen fruit in the picture so you could get a size comparison:

And that's all I've got to show off this month in terms of blooms.  For more of what's blooming around the country - and even around the world - check out Carol's post at May Dreams Gardens!  

(And check back tomorrow, too.  I managed to get a Foliage Follow Up post into the queue this month, too!)