Yellow

Back to the garden... Everything that's not brown or red is yellow right now - shades of spring. Every time I think the balloon flowers are not worth it (they spread and I'm too weak-willed to pull them out, their beautiful flowers always face backwards, they're too tall for the place they're growing), I see them in the fall and fall in love again.

 

I should really plant some of these next to the physostegia, blooming at the same time.

The maple tree is not one of those knock-your-socks-off maples, but it shows shades from pale cream to apricot to red. Here it is being yellow.

 

The fothergilla had a brief episode of some kind of blight, but I basically ignored it and it happily went away. Now I don't know which I like more, its yellow color or its leaf shape - oval? ovoid?

 

Next is this pairing. The aucuba, which has been here since I moved in, just goes placidly on, glowing in the part shade along the fence line. At Merrifield a few weeks ago I happened upon a hypericum, which I've been thinking about since the garden tour last spring. This one is a golden variety, 'Brigadoon,' meant to echo the yellow leaf of the aucuba. If I like it - and if it likes the site - I'll get a few more and let them spread.

 

In pointed contrast to all of this is the white oak, which has dropped a ton of acorns this fall and is redder than I ever remember.

 

The Moon of the Bulbs

October is, if you're provident, a good time to plant bulbs, although you should really wait till November to plant tulips here. This year I was on the early side with my orders, and have planted the following to date:
96 chionodoxa (deep blue) in the corner garden among the oakleaf hydrangeas. No, it won't look quite like this picture, but my hope is that the corner will eventually be a sea of blue in early spring
6 fringed yellow tulips under the aucuba (golden echoes)
8 dozen more Tommy crocuses under the maple tree
2 dozen more English bluebells (hyancinthoides non-scripta) under the oak tree
4 dozen Scilla Siberica in the walkway garden

Still to be planted are General de Wet tulips (fragrant, orange, probably under the butterfly bush), and a mixture for the front door pot that I lifted from one of Emma T's columns (it's the In the Still of the Night collection). It is supposed to be a mysterious, elegant mix of black, cream and mauve tulips and hyacinths. We'll see.

Also planted are two flats of pansies and a flat of spinach in the raised bed.

Because of the impending Paris trip, I called Brent and Becky and asked them to ship the order right away. With any luck, I'll be able to get them all in the ground next weekend.

A riot of color and what's in bloom

Note to self: the first flurry of color in the garden is yellow: winter aconite, forsythia, kerria, daffodils, crocus, all blooming from March into April. The next flurry (happening now, the third week in April) edges into pink, red, blue and white: azaleas, tulips, bleeding hearts, bluebells, columbine, tiarella. The baptisia and amsonia are just barely starting to come out.

Another note to self: the front garden is much more successful this year, thanks to the miniature daffodils and species tulips (speaking of yellow).

What's in bloom on April 19:
columbine
bluebells (hyancinthoides non-scripta)
tiarella
sweet woodruff
star of Bethlehem
mertensia (just going by)
azaleas (pink and white)
tulips
Solomon's seal
shasta viburnum
fothergilla (just going by)
ajuga (bugleweed)
lily of the valley
epimedium niveum
hellebore (still)
mazus reptans (thanks, Martha!)

Odds and ends

Today is sunny and chilly, a perfect March day, just right for doing a little of this and a little of that. Of course, the most exciting thing about gardening this time of year is seeing the barely visible growth that indicates successful wintering over. Sighted today, if you look closely, are epimedium, baptisia, Solomon's seal and hosta. The amsonia appears dead, but I doubt it. Buds just starting on the hydrangeas.

Planted peas (Sugar Ann, "Still the best, extra early, short-vined snap pea. Sweet, crisp, 2 1/2" pods for picking well ahead of Sugar Snap. The 2' vines do not need support"). Sawed up (yes, with a saw!) a huge dead branch that fell from my neighbor's oak tree in the high winds a week or so ago.

 

Off to the dump with the remains tomorrow.

 

Everything is yellow now - daffodils, kerria, forsythia - cheerful and pretty.

Yellow

This is a long overdue post celebrating the fall color this year. The yellows were the most intense of all, surpassing the reds that were so stellar last year. Here's a sampling: balloonflower, amsonia, chrysanthemum, hickory...

 

 

 

 

 

What I've learned about dahlias

1. They are beautiful on their own or as cut flowers, and definitely worth growing. Maybe try them in the cutting garden, too.

2. They need to be staked.

3. Although they make a great show together (see earlier posting from Scotland), I think I might prefer them mixed in the border.

4. You can't always trust the stated color to be what you get - either that, or the dahlias I got were mislabeled. Here's the pale pink 'Good Earth' in my garden this month - yowza!

 

Purple

The dwarf aster 'Purple Dome' I planted last fall is filled with intense purple blooms. I didn't realize that it would bloom at the same time as the false dragonhead, which has pale purple spiky blooms. Actually, my notes show the latter bloomed in August last year, so maybe it's late this year? At any rate, I love the echo of these two shades of purple on either side of the garden. This not very good picture gives a hint of this serendipitous pairing. Don't look too closely at the untrimmed, untidy mid-section.

 

Columbines

The columbines self-sow every year. Most of them are blue, like this one being visited by the bees, but I had more white ones this year and even a reddish purple one.

Container Gardening

I'm never satisfied with my containers, so this year I decided to steal from the ideas in the new White Flower Farm catalog. They show several containers for shade that appealed to me, so I made my list and went out seeking their recommendations locally. I admire some caladiums but have trouble making them work for me. The WFF container with caladiums, though, had a restrained green, white and pink palate and, more to the point, I was able to find the varieties they recommended.




Here is the result. I like the way the caladium leaves wave in the wind. And they show to advantage on the new steps (a saga there for another post).

Here's another attempt, using pink, green and purple. Not so sure this one works but will give it time.

Late Summer Colors

 

Blue potatoes from Cub Creek Farm were the inspiration for a red, white and blue potato salad for Labor Day. Here they are in the pot, ready to boil.

 

I got this dahlia at Roxbury Mills on a whim, finally took it out of the bag and planted it, and it's blooming despite my neglect (I should have staked it long since, for example). Martha is trying to persuade me that dahlias are not the artificial dinner plates I suspect them of being, and this dahlia (wish I had recorded the variety) may just do it! I love the dark red color and the precision of its petals.

 

Digging around in the back yard (planted the sweetspire and mulched some beds-to-be), I found this purple acorn. The little green ones are starting to shower down on the terrace with a startling bang when they hit the metal table. The maple leaf is from the tree in the front of the house. Though it doesn't have the brilliant color of a sugar maple, it does offer pale yellow, citron green and red.