Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day: October

I really expected most of my October color to be provided in the form of foliage. I swear that by this time last year, my 'Halcyon" hostas were beginning a very punk, acid yellow phase and the tips of my 'Rotstrahlbusch' switchgrasses were a dark, brooding red. Both plants are still looking rather attached to their summer blues and greens right now, however, while a surprisingly large number of other plants are still in bloom.

Not only do I have a lot in bloom... but many of the flowers showing off right now are, of all colors, white! The wonderfully scented tobacco, nicotiana sylvestris. The white brushtips of chocolate eupatorium. A stray white Japanese anemone that snuck in amongst the pinks somehow.

I think I have mentioned before that I dislike white blooms and the way they age--picture the browning mush at the end of a branch of white petunia here--and that white flowers seem a little harsh to me through the summer months.

I am discovering that I really enjoy white flowers in the fall, however. Maybe it's because my fall whites tend to be small and dainty, like these blooms on the toadlily 'Lightning Strike.' Maybe it's because the slants of fall sunlight seem to illuminate the flowers instead of bouncing off of them flatly like they do when the sun is more directly overhead.

Or maybe they're just a relief to my eyes after the smoldering colors of September. Something to clean the palate, so to speak, before autumnal colors begin to dazzle. Probably all of the above.

The other big contributors to flower color right now are the herbs. Here you see the lovely light blue of 'Huntington Carpet' rosemary in bloom. I grow other rosemaries for taste so I don't know if it has much culinary value, but it certainly cascades nicely through a huge lemongrass.

I haven't been able to stop my cinnamon and lemon basils from blooming all summer, but now an unnamed dark purple variety (a cutting from a friend) is joining the show. My melon sage is covered in warm red blooms, and my golden pineapple sage is flowering in a true fire-engine-red hue. Common oregano is blooming, too, for the first time this year. Just as it was preparing to bloom earlier this summer, I cut it back to harvest the leaves for cooking.

Following is a list of all of my October blooms, with N=New, R=rebloom, F=Fading:

'Ozark' alpine strawberries (R)
echinacea purpureas: 'Merlot' (R) and 'White Swan' (F)
Chocolate Eupatorium (N)
'Sioux Blue' sorgahstrum nutens (F)
hakonechloa macra 'Aureola'
'Whiskey' wax begonias
'Lightnight Strike' tricyrtis
'Samurai' tricyrtis
'Hillside Black Beauty' actaea (nee cimicifuga) F
variegated liriope
common oregano
ceratostigma plumbaginoides
'Caradonna' salvia
'Hopi Red Dye' amaranth
melon sage
'Golden Delicious' pineapple sage (N)
yellow lantana
basils: lemon, cinnamon, dark purple leaf unnamed
unnamed toad lily (possibly 'Taipei silk'?)
'Othello' ligularia (ugh--flowers will be removed)
cannas: 'Wyoming,' 'Red King Humbert,' 'Red Dazzler'
'Huntington Carpet' rosemary
'Yubi Red' portulaca
'Rotstrahlbusch' panicum virgatum
Miscanthus 'Zebrinus'
bronze fennel
achillea 'Paprika' (R)
various coleus (oops)
fuchsia 'Koralle'
dark red new guinea impatiens
zauschneria latifolia v. etteri
Japanese anemones: 'Party Dress,' 'Robustissima' and unnamed white
'Walker's Low' catmint
perovskia atriplicifolia
'Matrona' sedum
red snapdragons
silene maritima 'Compacta'
'Hameln' pennisetum
sedum sieboldii (F)
sedum cauticola 'Lidakense' (F)
salvia lyrata 'Purple Knockout'
nicotiana sylvestris
northern sea oats
'Petite Bleu' caryopteris

*edited to add:
orange cosmos
little bluestem

Blog Action Day: Why I Signed Up

I do my best to live as consciously as I can, and my interest in nature began at a very young age. Science was a favorite subject in school, and I spent my first year of college convinced that environmental engineering would be my life's calling. I garden organically and am working on eliminating my lawn.

With all that said, you may wonder why the enviro- movement has somewhat "lost" me along the way... well, I'll tell you: I detest the superior attitude of some of those who have "found Green," so to speak, and find some of their elitist attitudes to be incredibly counterproductive. I'm sure I'm not the only one who keenly feels her inadequacy when studied with the judgemental eye of the Eco-saint. I can't be the only who hangs her head and thinks, Eeyore-like, "Little old me. What difference did I think I could make, really? Why should I bother?"

And that leads me to why I signed up to do a post on Blog Action Day. Call me Pollyanna, but I signed up because ultimately, I believe that the little things matter. The point of Blog Action Day is not to get a million people to change the bulbs in every light fixture they own--or some other equally grand gesture. No, the point is for each blogger to relate the environment to his or her usual subject matter and illuminate the issue in many small but personal ways. It may eventually create a light just as bright.

So what am I going to talk about on Monday? I really don't know. But I can tell you that you won't be getting any fire-and-brimstone or pep-rally attitude here. I don't feel very comfortable rabble-rousing or getting up on a soapbox, and I am definitely not fit to cast the proverbial first stone.

No, I'd rather be here at ground level, digging around in the dirt for inspiration.. appreciating the little things and the many shades of Green, and sharing whatever delightful things I find.

Tomato Harvest in October?

I haven't blogged about my tomatoes yet this summer for a very good reason. Other than the garden snackers--er, cherry tomatoes--most of them have not yet ripened. How can this be? Well, I am too embarrassed to tell you exactly when I finally got them into the ground, but suffice it to say that it was a lot later than I should have!

Memorial Day is usually my tomato planting time, but this year they went into the ground closer to the next big summer holiday. *gulp* Since I knew I was planting very late I stuck with already established plants and strictly planted paste style tomatoes since they ripen fairly early and keep well.

The picture here shows what the vines looked like this morning: loaded with fruit, all still sporting a shade of yellowish green and nary a speck of orange, even, in sight. Today's high will be 86 and tomorrow's high will be 88, but then the highs drop back down into the 70s.

So... expert tomato growers, what do you think? Is there any chance that I still may get ripe tomatoes this year? Should I instead cut the vines and hang them upside down inside to see what they do?

I actually have some grasses and shrubs on standby, waiting to be planted in these spots, so any thoughts that anyone might have would be much appreciated. I don't mind being patient if there's still a chance that I may see enough ripe tomatoes for one big batch of freezer sauce... but if the situation is hopeless I will instead serve up some fried green tomatoes, yank them out and plan to get next year's crop in the ground in a more timely manner!

Meeting and Mingling

Although it wasn't a huge meeting of Texas-like proportions, I just have to boast anyway: I got to meet a fellow garden blogger this morning! (And if that alone wasn't cool enough, she's a fellow Blackswamp Girl, too!)

Kylee from Our Little Acre came up to Cleveland yesterday along with her Mom and another Master Gardener from Van Wert. The Van Wert MG's were in town to receive a much-deserved environmental award for their new Smiley Park Children's Garden.

Due to their time/travel constraints and some events going on at my house--namely, fencing lessons being given in my driveway--we decided to meet up at Petitti's Garden Center in Strongsville. I had instructed Kylee and her Mom to visit their Avon store the last time she was in town and they loved it so much that they wanted to see Strongsville as well. Avon is newer, but the Strongsville store bowled me over when it first opened. It was loosely based on large garden centers in Europe, and included a cafe that sold coffee/espresso and real gelato!

I was pretty sure that I would recognize Kylee immediately when I saw her, and I did--but it took her a second to realize who I was. (I apparently "sound older" on my blog... what a wonderful compliment!) Once we got the identification part out of the way, we slipped quickly into comfortable familiarity. It really was like meeting an old friend.

Kylee and I quickly headed off to do some shopping for ourselves while the other two ladies looked around for items suited to the Children's Garden. (And for themselves, I'm sure--it's hard to be a gardener and resist buying for yourself at a place like Petitti's!)

The next hour and a half or so passed by in a blur as we looked through plants and chatted about their performance. Kylee picked up a pot of the lovely hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' and since I was partially responsible for convincing her to buy it, I hope it does well for her!

She also picked up a fuchsia that is supposed to be hardy to Zone 5... it will be interesting to see how that overwinters for her in Zone 5b. (One of the guys who works there said that he planted one in the spring and is similarly hopeful that it is as hardy as reported!)

My haul? Well, I picked up another caryopteris, this one a bit taller than 'Petite Bleu' and meant to be planted behind the 'PB' I bought this week and the one I plan to pick up tomorrow. I also bought some fancy hens-and-chicks (I am extremely susceptible to both colorful foliage and succulents,) a 'Hadspen Blood' astrantia, and (3) 'Blue Ice' amsonia hybrids. It's so hard to find amsonia at all in local garden centers that I couldn't resist 'Blue Ice'... its leaves are a bit wider than those of the taller, more feathery a. hubrechtii that I have coveted, but it's still supposed to have great fall color.

As much fun as we had shopping, though, Kylee and I both agreed that the next visit has to be in one of our own gardens! (Frankly, I'm dying to see her garden--the pictures on her blog are so lovely.) And maybe I'll have some pictures to show for that meeting... but since today's didn't turn out, you're stuck with a shot of the hakonechloa macroa 'Aureola' that I raved about to Kylee, and two pics that I love of some mingling in my own garden. And with that, I bid you a very tired goodnight!

This Week's Finds

Coming home from running errands on Tuesday night, I passed an interesting-looking pile of trash. My car slowed down and pulled into a driveway several doors down in spite of the little voice in my head saying, "Come on. That's not really a leaded glass window! Who would throw that out? It's probably just one of those interior bifold doors where the plexiglass is doctored to look like it's leaded."

"I knew it!" My boyfriend laughed, "As soon as I saw this, I knew you'd turn back to look."

Well, good thing I did. It's not quite a leaded glass window-- but it is an oak cabinet door with leaded glass! Many of the old houses around here were built with these cabinets surrounding a large dining room window. I can't see where the knob used to be on the "good" side, but on the interior you can see the telltale holes from the hinge hardware.

Why would someone throw out anything this cool? Good question. Apparently they were annoyed by these two little cracks in the glass... even though I couldn't push any glass pieces out when I tried. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it when I first brought it home... but upon measuring I discovered that it happens to be 5ft tall. My own large picture window happens to be 5ft wide. So even though its panes are hexagonal and my own leaded glass windows have oval designs I think it will look lovely hanging at the top of my dining room window.

When we picked up the leaded glass, we found these interesting Asian screen panels stacked up underneath it. There are four of them, with these carvings on the front and a simple line-drawing-style carving (brown lines on a black background) on the reverse. The feet of each panel are brass, but they must have hung from something as well because there is an eyebolt at the top of each panel.

One panel looks like a fist went through the line-drawing side and cracked a bit of the ornate side. I don't particularly like the soft colors but I like the cranes and leaves... so I'm going to fill in the crack and repaint the panels to liven it up and hide my fix at the same time. Not sure where they're going quite yet, but the repair will be a winter project so I have time to think about it.

These last finds actually did lighten my wallet--but thanks to end-of-season sales, it didn't take out a huge chunk. (Less than $30 including tax, so not too bad at all.)

Here you see (4) 1-gallon euphorbia 'Efanthia,' (3) 1-gallon 'Purple Volcano' savlia lyrata, (2) pints of hens-and-chicks, and (1) 5-gallon 'Petit Bleu' caryopteris. All are destined for my front garden, where I hope that they will happily reside near the likes of culinary sage, oakleaf hydrangea, and 'Golden Sword' yucca.

The giant pile to the left of the shrub and salvia consists of euphorbia flowerstalks. They had become so unwieldy and top-heavy that I'm sure many people didn't even know what kind of plant was under all of that stuff as they perused the clearance aisles. I was amazed at the amount of detritus produced so I included it in the picture.

By the way, the half-eaten chewy on the lower left is my Assistant Gardener's contribution to this composition. Apparently it's not enough that she steals garden produce--now she feels she has to have a say in my blog posts, too! Next thing you know she'll be telling me what to plant against my new fence... :)