Procrastination & Finishing Touches

It's well after midnight, and I have ads to submit to a couple of different publications first thing tomorrow.  I should be working feverishly on ad design, or maybe going to sleep with a plan (admittedly, an unrealistic one--I'm not a morning person) to get up and finish them bright and early.  So instead, I'm going to post a few photos of my brugmansia urn.

The brugmansia overwintered pretty well in the basement, and is just starting to really leaf out again, now that it's warm and sunny outside:

The iresine and the bronze sweet potato vine overwintered in the container along with the brugmansia, but the 'Vancouver Centennial' geranium--and, of course, the petunia--from last year's urn combo did not.  The iresine can be seen at the back left sprouting new leaf buds, and the SPV looks better than most of the pots I see in local garden centers.  I finished off this year's urn with a variety of coleus, eucalyptus, and 'Walkabout Sunset' lysimachia congestiflora:

I love these colors against the deep purple-green of the bronze fennel behind.  When the brugmansia fully leafs out, there should be enough shade for most of the shade lovers, and hopefully enough sun for the eucalyptus--although I'm considering moving that plant already.

One "finishing touch" tip for those who are fairly frugal gardeners, like me:  Instead of adding enough plants to this urn to make it look full right away, I took some of the groundcover sedum that I have in a few different places and used it in the urn.  It creates a sort of living mulch that also adds a bit of green to the ensemble and makes the reds and yellows really pop.  It's easy, cheap, and gives it a little bit more of a "finished" look... I'm going to have to remember this, myself, for future container plantings.

Okay, I've procrastinated enough for one evening--er, morning.  Time to get back to the graphic design work... but please feel free to leave some inspiring frugal gardening tips of your own here for me to check out tomorrow.  I'm going to need something to look forward to after my long night tonight!

The Backyard, October 10

Today had all the makings of a gorgeous fall day:  Sunshine.  Crisp, clear air.  The crunch of fall leaves underfoot.  That level of cool where you're comfy enough in a fleece but going inside every now and then feels good--and getting into a car that's been sitting in the sun brings an instant flush of warmth to the tips of your fingers.

As you can see on the tree peony above, the leaves are beginning to flush, too, with fall color.  I noticed its reddening leaves as I quickly took stock of the backyard this evening.  Amazingly, there are still a lot of things yet to harvest there!  Some, like these 'Hungarian Hot Wax' peppers and 'Ichiban' eggplants, have been simply waiting for me to get to them:

Others, like these 'Pineapple' tomatoes, got a late start and are racing the clock to ripen before a frost does them in:

And then there are my 'Sundance' apples, which are never quite ready until mid-October.  They're worth the wait, though--as the Gurney's website promised, they have a very unique sweet-tart flavor, and there's a hint of lemony flavor in their firm flesh:

Not all of the fruit set in the garden is edibles, of course--unless you are a bird.  These pyracantha berries are the last thing to get eaten in the spring, and I'm not complaining. That means I get to enjoy them longer:

Also sporting orange are these seedpods (I assume?) on my native honeysuckle, lonicera sempervirens:

By the way, I would not hesitate to recommend this vine to anyone--and might be planting a few more of them along my fenceline.  It pretty much flowers throughout the summer, and the blue-green foliage is fantastic, too. 

Speaking of impressive foliage, it's hard to believe that this 'Black Beauty' elderberry has gorgeous dark leaves through the growing season, bears fruit (a 'Black Lace' nearby pollinates it) AND gives fall color, too.  But here you see the bottom sets of leaves (near the still-blooming 'Grosso' lavender) starting to turn a pretty wine-red:

See, autumn isn't ONLY about the fiery reds and oranges!  Other cool combos that are just coming into their own finally in the October garden include Little Bluestem and purple heart:

And the darkened, spent flowerheads of 'Hab Gray' sedum above the fine-textured, tiny foliage of sedum hispanicum:

Most of the garden IS turning red or yellow, though.  The acid-yellow foliage colors of the milkweed and hosta are should be outstanding in another week.  And the otherwise-yellow foliage of hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' is starting to look downright tropical with its fall streaks of crimson:

But it's not completely over quite yet--there's still a lot of shouting going on, in a few corners of the garden.  Like here, where the jewel-like tones of 'Sedona' coleus, angelonia, 'Black Lace' sambucus, and portulaca foliage can almost trick you into thinking it's still summer:

Bright lantana blooms add their voice to the garden chorus, too, while Japanese bloodgrass sways in the background:

Maybe the lantana is actually singing a rather surprised cover of Elton John's "I'm Still Standing?"  Because the fact that the Russian sage is blooming right next door--and providing a nice, cool foil for this definitely overgrown lantana--is a sign that it really can't be too long before the garden needs to be put to bed for the winter:

That and all of the "berries" on the branches below the lantana flowerhead, which mean that I have long since given up doing any upkeep on the "throwaway annuals" that I replace each year.


I might be adding more things than I had planned to the "throwaway" list, by the way.  There will be pockets of frost tonight and tomorrow night throughout my area, but I didn't get everything pulled, dug and put away today... and tomorrow will be another long day of work, with no real chance to play in the yard.  So we'll see how things shake out once we get through this first real cold spell.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Signs that Autumn is Just Around the Corner: Critters, Sedums & Locks

A turtle made of found objects soldered together by a friend; my cracked pot of hens & chicks seemed the perfect thing to slip into the wheel to complete his shell. See the orange pyracantha berries--already!--in sprays behind him?

I love autumn; it's my favorite season of the year, from the rich smells of decaying, earthy leaves and acrid, smoky bonfires to the glorious last blazes of color in the garden. Once the calendar hits August, I usually start thinking fall. I look forward to pulling out sweaters for brisk walks, plan for a visit down to the local apple orchard, and vigorously rid the house of summer's whirlwind mess the way that most people do spring cleaning months earlier.

But this year... well this year, I'm just not ready yet for fall! Maybe that's because I've been so busy (I made only 19 posts in all of 2009 so far? Yikes!) or maybe it has more to do with the fact that summer seems to have forgotten us this year. Either way, the signs of an impending autumn are undeniable... and I'm not particularly happy about finding a lot of them in my garden this weekend.

A ladybug by the same friend, made out of an old pipe cap and some other spare parts. I am seeing less ladybugs, and many more grasshoppers and other "late summer" bugs, in the garden these days.

For one thing, the 'Matrona' sedum that I love in every other stage but bloom... is blooming. I know that many people have asked in the comments about why I don't keep it from blooming, or replace it with something else. Two reasons: 1) I love the dried flowerheads. 2) The bees love the blooms!

I tried to count the bees on one of my two 'Matrona' plants today, and I was up in the 30s before I lost track of the number!

My summer-flowering sedums, like 'Fuldaglut,' 'Red Dragon,' and 'Voodoo' are all spent. Some are coloring up nicely, and still look full, but the ones that get a bit of shade--like the one below--start to look scraggly at this time of the year:

A couple of sedums are still in bud, though. Here's a variegated (unnamed, bought at a plant sale, but probably sedum alboroseum) one that prefers a bit of shade:

Sedum alboroseum (I think) nestled in with horehound at the base of sorghastrum nutens 'Sioux Blue'

And here's the sedum that I showed in my bloom day post, still nestled up against the warm brown of the nearby rock:

Sedum cauticola 'Lidakense'

By the way, if I ever do get rid of 'Matrona' it will be to replace them with more of this wonderful sedum that I bought last year from Plant Delights as 'Hab Gray' sedum telephium:

Sedum telephium (bought as 'Hab Gray') with a 'Sky Pencil' Japanese holly, red cabbage and blue fescue in the background

I'm kind of convinced that I have something different, though, because Tony Avent's notes on 'Hab Gray' say that you can expect "clusters of pink flowers"... and these are more of a yellow flower. That's perfect for me, so I'm not complaining! Also notice in the photo above how the flower buds continue all the way down the stems--very nice.

And as if that wasn't quite enough, check this out:

'Maybe Hab Gray' (as I think of it) sprouting up amongst the cutback stalks of drumstick allium

Awww... it's a little baby! In fact, I have at least 6 of these little guys sprouting up within 3-4 feet of my 'Hab Gray,' and that's fine with me. I'll be transplanting a few of them to various spots around the Lock Garden next spring, assuming they overwinter okay. (They're so little, and none of them will hurt anything where they are now, that I'm leaving them alone until spring.)

Speaking of the Lock Garden, I finally got it weeded, mulched and cleaned up. That's another sign that autumn is just around the corner--I always save this area for last, since very few edibles are grown here and the plants that do reside in "the locks" are tough cookies. Some areas are filling in very nicely already:

Sedum sieboldii, 'Metallica Crispa' ajuga, silene, 3 kinds of thyme, a self-seeded blue fescue and some random baptisia foliage in the lock garden.

A close-up of the sedum, silene, ajuga, and thyme--which is the beautiful 'Clear Gold' from Mulberry Creek--meshing together underneath one of the metal industrial shelves that serve as "bridges."

A few of the plants, like this lavender thyme, were a little too happy and needed to be cut wayyyy back. You can probably tell by the way his branches are draped that I chopped about half of the plant out toward the bottom of the lock:


Cutting back thyme (and other herbs) is always an enjoyable job, but this garden will need some "real" work within the next year, though. Where the clumpier sedums reside, the sides of the locks have caved in a bit, burying some of the stone that I culled (with permission) from work) to line the lock. Their roots aren't vigorous enough to hold the soil in place the way the roots of the thyme and creeping sedums do:


And I still have some framing and pebbling (technical term... ;) to do under the shelves that are either fully or partly resting on the ground. Here's one of the frames--made from cedar, and filled in with pebbles and a small sedum album that I love and let wander a bit--that I built last year:


That frame is a simple one, so the 2-3 identical ones that I need to make for the land part of the pathway should be easy. The shelves that partly hover above the ground will not be so easy. I will have to artfully construct two separate boxes--one for each end--for shelves like these:

Two of the "bridges" over locks in the Lock Garden that will need box ends to support them. The bridge in the foreground is over the sedum/silene/thyme/ajuga combo shown above. That's part of my asparagus bed (which is beneath a small 'Himrod White' grape arbor) falling onto the pathway on the left, and self-seeded blue fescues on the right. The second bridge goes over two different types of blue-leaf sedums.

I imagine that I will either need to shore up the end of the frame that abuts the plants in the lock with stone (or maybe a full plank of cedar?) before I can pebble them, to make sure that the pebbles stay where I want. It will definitely be an engineering job, but once the frames and pebbles are in place they will stay there for a long time... only the blue shelves get lifted off of the frames and stored in the garage for the winter.

I'm trying not to panic just thinking about how much I still want to get done in the garden this year--not to mention the need to finish my fence painting, too! And I don't have very much time.... after all, autumn appears to be just around the corner. :(