A Working Vacation

I closed up my office late Monday afternoon, with the rest of the week free and two weeks worth of loooong days at work behind me. The laundry, the garden, the house, the dog, the boyfriend... all had been relatively neglected during our big summer event, and all needed some attention.

On Tuesday, I slept in, had a nice breakfast, took the dog for a very long walk, and then got out into the garden to enjoy all of the beautiful sunshine. First destination: The back yard, where some veggies are still in need of planting out and the weeds have been allowed to run rampant.

Romaine lettuce, skirted by woolly thyme, with a blueberry and 'Rotstrahlbusch' switchgrass

Looking across the bed closest to the house, I notice the absence of canna foliage. I was too busy to plant up the cannas this spring, and now that it's too late to buy more, my tubers are all shriveled or rotten. Too bad--this bed could have used their bold texture:


Maybe once the eggplants really take off, they will offer a little relief from the fine texture of the Russian sage and grasses. On the bright side, the clay tile planters are looking great again this year. I love the funky feel they add to this space:


And the way that they combine with the red of the Japanese bloodgrass to make a line of warm color through the cool blues, greens and purples:


Here's a close-up of the first tile planter--unfortunately, it's too early in the morning for the portulaca flowers to be showing off yet:

'Desert Sunset' lantana, a portulaca that was supposed to be 'Yubi Red' but isn't--the flower petals are "broken" in red and gold instead of being all red--and a coleus whose tag I will have to find to give you a proper ID.

And you can see that I've repeated the portulaca and orange-y coleus combination in the second tile, too:

'Sedona' coleus, 'Yubi Red' portulaca, and 'Angelface Blue' angelonia.
Surrounding cast: 'The Blues' little bluestem, 'Black Lace' elderberry, rhododendron, zebra grass, and 'Fuldaglut' sedum

If last year is any indication, the portulaca will eventually cascade all the way down to the ground. I love how it falls flat against the tile, so it still shows off the squareness of the planter. I also love the way the purplish stems and leaf centers of the 'Sedona' coleus pick up the deep color of the angelonia blooms:


Take a look back across this bed, over the second tile planter toward the first (and toward the driveway)... this is what I see from the corner of the main veggie area:


Continuing the orange-y theme, as you walk around the bed, these tile planters line up to lead your eye right to the native honeysuckle, lonicera sempervirens, growing along the fence. From far away, you can see that it adds height to the "back" of the bed:


Closer, you can see the pretty blooms on the honeysuckle as it towers above a stand of 'Hopi Red Dye' amaranth:


Coco likes this corner of the garden, for a few reasons: 1) It's usually cool there. 2) The neighbors on this side have a chocolate lab named "Hugs" (whose siblings are named "Kisses," "Hershey," etc.!) who likes to meet her for a sniff here. 3) There's a knothole in the front panel that gives her a great view of what's going on in the street.

I like that she tramples the sweet woodruff there, and keeps it in check:


I'm taking a new approach to my self-sowing annuals this year. They each will have their own area of the garden--the bronze fennel gets the front driveway area, the ruby mountain spinach gets the back area by the grape arbor, and the 'Hopi Red Dye' amaranth gets to add some pizazz, height and color here to Coco's corner:

'All Gold' hakonechloa, 'Hopi Red Dye' amaranth, hellebores, sweet woodruff, goatsbeard, and 'Hillside Black Beauty' cimicifuga/actaea.

There's still a little work to do in this bed. I didn't really wade in to weed, and there's lots of clover growing--along with many little 'Othello' ligularia babies, which have convinced me that deadheading this plant is the way to go in spite of how pretty the dead flower stalks look. Check out all of the little 'Othellos' at the feet of the nearby bugbane:


The ligularia seedlings aren't very useful, but many of my reseeders do double duty when pulled. The 'Ruby Orach' mountain spinach can be eaten like regular spinach. As I weed out some errant amaranth seedlings, I cut the ends and throw them into a vase for an arrangement that will pretty up the dining room table:


I'll probably throw in some lady's mantle blooms, and possibly some baptisia foliage, before I bring the vase inside. Here you see the lady's mantle flowers picking up the shades of yellow in a variegated sedum that, oddly enough, hates being in full sun but glows in this semi-shade area:


It might be nice to add in some of the orange butterfly weed (asclepias tuberosa) flowers, or the drumstick alliums, too:


But enough of that. There's still a LOT to do in the backyard today, from weeding to planting veggies to moving a few things that have gotten crowded along the way, like this poor fern:

This is one of those compositions that probably "shouldn't" work, but really does--for me, at least! 'Jack Frost' brunnera, carex platyphylla, and Scaly Buckler Fern surrounded by golden creeping jenny.

Somebody better whip my gardening assistant into shape before I need her help today, though. After just an hour of "hard labor" (supervising, mostly, but also eating raspberries and peas) in the garden yesterday, she disappeared. This is where I found her:


What a lightweight!!! LOL. We have two more gorgeous days of sunshine and great gardening weather ahead of us--and probably a mulch delivery, too--so there's still lots of work to be done. Time to get out there, and get busy... I hope that everyone else is enjoying the wonderful gardening weather that I'm getting this week!