The hot July garden

Hot, hot, hot and no rain, not a bit. There's not a whole lot happening right now, but here's a look at what's in bloom.

A month on, here's what the pot on the steps looks like: dusty miller has vanished, wave petunia is crowded out by the purple sweet potato vine, which is covered with tiny holes because I did not drench it with Merit (though I'll do that today). Also, the coleus is a coarser variety than I had realized. Nevertheless, I still like this for the color scheme and its lushness.


Here's what it looked like in May, with lots more petunia blossoms in evidence:

The datura self-sows every season. I think my neighbors enjoy it more than I do, since it blooms around the corner in the sad side garden (see below). I think this came originally from Lee, several years ago. Notice the tiny spikes on the bloom, perhaps signalling its poisonous nature. According to Wikipedia,

Common names include jimson weed, Hell's Bells, Devil's weed, Devil's cucumber,
thorn-apple (from the spiny fruit), pricklyburr (similarly), and somewhat
paradoxically, both angel's trumpet and devil's trumpet (from their large trumpet-shaped
flowers), or as Nathaniel Hawthorne
refers to it in the the Scarlet Letter
apple-peru. The word Datura comes from Hindi dhatūrā (thorn apple);
record of this name dates back only to 1662 (OED).

And here's the sad side garden. Sad because it was meant to be a cutting garden, but then I planted the white gooseneck loosestrife (Lysimachia clethroides)and some lemon balm (Melissa officinalis). Anybody want some? They both spread like crazy. I'll get a grip on this garden some day, but not this year.

 
Here is Aunt Betsy's day lily blooming with the Russian sage (unknown Perovskia variety), which I remember falling in love with twenty years ago on a trip to California. I really need to either cut back or move the sage - it's totally crowded out by the daylilies. It does well in this hot, dry location, and I need to give it some room to grow.


The benefits of pruning - although I dissed this book a while ago, I did take her advice and cut back the foxglove just after it finished blooming. And now, six weeks or so later, a new (though small) flower stalk!

The hostas are all in bloom right now - the kind someone somewhere refers to as "the mundanes." But it's fun to watch the bees bumbling in and out of the flowers. Look really closely at the left-hand side of the right-hand flower...

NOT!

Shelley Meadows and I waited around for two hours for the crew to show up, but they never did. She finally called the office and discovered that the job was now scheduled for July 16th instead. I'm quite annoyed, but what can you do? I'll call to confirm before I wait around for them again. I'm trying to focus on the great result rather than the process of getting there...

New terrace

The new stone terrace, path, gate and trellis are due to get started this Friday, so I've moved some pots, the table and chairs, and a few plants in preparation. Here what we're starting with (note that the concrete slab was likely installed circa 1962, the same age as the house, or soon thereafter).
 
View from the back door


From the oak tree garden




Looking into the garden





Through the gate



The new plan will widen the gate, make a stone terrace where there is now straggly grass, add a stone path to the driveway, raise up the narrow bed by the house with a stone wall along it, and add an 8' x 8' trellis to screen the neighbors (that's where the climbing hydrangea comes in). Let's hope it turns out as well as the plan suggests.

Good gardening primer

Subtitled "41 Pick-and-Choose Projects for Planting Your Paradise Large or Small," this offers good tips for beginners and those of us who are not quite beginners but in need of advice. Some of her projects will be harder than she suggests, but the you-can-do-it-and-it-will-be-great attitude makes this fun to read.
I guess I should know who author Katherine Whiteside is - I can tell I've been out of the gardening loop for the past five years - since she apparently has written widely. At any rate, I picked up a couple good tips here, one being a simple plan for a compost pile (I need to get a better grip than this, I'm embarrassed to post the photo!), and a recipe for sorrel soup that I will pull out next spring. As a bonus, this is illustrated with charming watercolors by Peter Gergely.

Gardening in Bethlehem

An emergency visit to Bethlehem that ended well included a visit to Judy's garden, once my parents' domain. They gardened full-time for twenty years after retirement, so it's a bit much for one person with children at home and a job. But Judy makes it look beautiful still. Here's the woodland border with cimicifuga, Japanese painted ferns, azalea, and climbing hydrangea in the very back of the photo, reaching to the sky.

And here's another picture of the climbing hydrangea going up a tree.

The vegetable garden is lush, and Judy has planted big-leaved things like this zucchini.
 
Here are the raspberry bushes with the shed in the background. They were bearing beautifully this weekend and we ate them every day.

Nasturtium as it should be.
 
Monarda in the perennial border
 
Judy, with a winsome smile, cutting flowers for the house.

Judy's dining room table

Tropical beauties

I've been away the last few weekends and will be away this weekend, too. But here are a few pix of what's in bloom. First, my experiment with Mandevilla, which everyone in the world already has but I have just added this year.

I chose a white one because that's what Mom had and I had some faint hope that once I found one I could bring it up to Pennsylvania for her, but that's not very likely. Anyway, here it is, and the blossoms are almost as creamy white as Datura.

Aunt Betsy's double day lilies are in bloom in all their wild glory. If the day lilies are in bloom it must be close to the Fourth of July.

I saw Bonnie Trahan at the Giant this afternoon, and she reminded me that the blackberry lilies she gave me last summer should bloom around the Fourth. I'll look for them next week.

Oddities

Two odd things appeared on the lawn this last week. First, an abandoned bird's nest:

that rested gently on the ground in the back yard. I can only think that the babies had flown away and it was no longer needed.

Next, despite our ongoing drought, an enormous fungus appeared in the side lawn:

This fungus pops up from time to time during the summer. I really need to look it up and figure out what's going on.