GardenArtist Posted September 2015
Gardening as therapy.
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Glad your burning bushes survived the winds!
Sharyn: 120 irises? I am in a serious state of iris envy! Names, colors, please....let me dream vicariously!
Crepe myrtle isn't meant for my zone, but it is so pretty I'd still like to try it. Guess I'll have to wait until I get my Victorian conservatory built so I have a place to over winter it!
Can anyone imagine having that kind of greenhouse attached to one's Victorian mansion? That must have been a gardener's lifelong dream come true.
Anyone grow elephant ears (colocasia or alocasia?) If you're in a Northern climate, how do you overwinter them? I generally lose everything I try to overwinter in the basement b/c of the high humidity.
Glad, I've seen the much smaller bulb planters that look like a trowel but have a curved, more roundish blade. I'm wondering if what you have is a "dibble"? It can be short like the bulb planters I've seen or it can be as you describe - looking something like a pogo stick.
I think that's quite a find. Some gardeners I know make their own, but one from the 1950's is a real treasure.
As to those broken things...are any of them clay pots? If you want a creative project, you can make your own stepping stones and embed broken clay in them to create your own designs. Are you familiar with hypertufa? It can be hazardous to your health though if you don't wear proper respiratory protection.
Pfontes, I just remembered that the slogan of a long time gardener I met on another forum is something to the effect that the sign of a good gardener isn't a green thumb; it's brown knees. I would add sore back and legs, stiff hands...but of course it's all for a good cause.
I think I've missed responding to some posts so please don't think your contributions have been ignored. I need to set aside some time to go back and reread what I might have missed.
So much stuff missing and broken!
Good news on the burning bushes....was out right before it got dark when the wind was (finally) starting to die down....they are in tact and have almost completely turned that magnificent cherry red. Kinda glad they are "late bloomers" because you are so right about most of the other leaves being almost totally gone now.....so, at least I still have some lovely late color. Thanks for thinking of me and my bushes!
I like the chicken analogy, but now I'm getting a hankering for chicken and it's too late to start cooking one. Umm....chicken with dressing complemented by freshly picked home grown sage and red onions, white and sweet potatoes just freshly harvested from the rapidly growing colder earth, eggs from perhaps a neighbor who raises his or her own, salad of romaine, spinach and parsley just freshly picked before the November winds render the garden bare and ready for its winter nap. And of course pumpkin pie from the smaller pie pumpkins...or maybe pumpkin cheesecake. yummmm.
And you know you can use the feathers in wreaths? Add a few pine cones, sprigs of arborvitae or juniper, a few berries from yews, perhaps some oregano flower heads, and you have a nice fall to winter wreath.
I do have those days - but as my British friend used to say: "sometimes chicken....sometimes feathers." - I try to take a deep breath and plan how I'm gonna fry it up when I get a chicken day!
I'm going to PM some links to beautiful sites that I find so relaxing, especially when the upkeep for them is more than I could ever handle. It's kind of nice to enjoy such elaborate gardens when someone else is doing all the work.
But please, no husband's body fertilizing the tomato patch! Compost works great instead!
And honestly, I don't know how you manage to do all you do.
Alas, the good lord failed to gift me with a green thumb. I can't even keep an air plant alive.
But I do make use of a form of garden therapy! When I have one of those rough days when I come home from my stressful 9 hour work day, find that my dear father has cranked the furnace to a tropical 78 degrees in the house, discover that Dad's companion dog has left a little "oopsie" inside the toe of my best leather high heels sometime this afternoon, burn the meatloaf I planned to feed us for 2 meals because I was trying to unload the dishwasher & load the clothes washer at the same time, realize that in my haste to get my afternoon cup of coffee that I failed to actually turn the coffeemaker on 45 minutes ago, my youngest daughter texts me with a request that I crochet another baby gift for her to take to a shower (only in 4 days, Mom),,,,AND THEN my sweet & wonderful better half skips through the door and asks why dinner isn't ready.......
......I lean back, close my eyes and envision a large and lushly green 5x7 tomato patch in my back yard that my husband's body is busily fertilizing from 6 feet underneath.
It's a garden and it's therapy, right?
LOL - thank goodness every day isn't as charming as the one I've described above.
"All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray"....
I've noticed that the trees were really battered by winds today; some of them are almost bare. By the time the wind and rain are through tomorrow, I don't think there will be much left.
Too bad it's dark now - you could run out and cover your bushes with something to protect at least some of the lovely color. I think the system tomorrow is really going to strip a lot of the trees and leaves of color and it will really look like November before it even arrives.
Dear Vincent,
I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over.. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.
Love, Papa
A few days later he received a letter from his son.
Dear Pop,
Don’t dig up that garden. That’s where the bodies are buried.
Love,
Vinnie
At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.
Dear Pop,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love you,
Vinnie....
I will plant a specialty butterfly plant (a weed) in May. Or maybe just a hummingbird plant like the neighbors have, the one butterfly we did have liked that red flower.
When I was younger, much younger, I used to gather leaves raked to the street by neighbors for pickup. Timing that effort once, I realized I spent an average of 18 hours every fall collecting leaves for mulch! Now I'm trying to plan for more leaf dropping trees and shrubs in my yard as it's a lot safer and at least there isn't as much auto exhaust settling on the leaf piles in the street.
Why would you consider yourself "gardening ignorant", or was that meant to apply to your husband in his approach to mulching?
I can't provide grass and flowers for your meadows, but I'm P'M'ing you some links of meadows to view. (If I post here, the ".com" portion will cause the link to be deleted.)
The weather reports scaring people about El Nino conditions have been false in our area, but the nights have just now started to drop to 50° at night. Quite a change for us, as daytime this week will be in the 80's.
Somebody should have said about the meadows-none with green grass and flowers this time of year in SoCal. Where's my therapy? Guess there is no help for the gardening-ignorant.
The Japanese Forest Grasses are especially beautiful; there are some lovely varieties of New Zealand Flax (including a stunning dark purple one), and even a new Yucca that would fare well in a long border. Pampas grasses would provide much more height as well as movement on windy days.
Daylilies are a great suggestion; there are literally hundreds of varieties blooming from early through late season, as well as doubles and some rebloomers. They require basically no maintenance except for raking the spent bloom stalks, and they don't even need to be mowed down at the end of the year.
I was also thinking of peonies, which are beautiful and graceful, but their bloom time is short in my area. In addition, they're more expensive compared to other perennials.
I loved the tricolor sage - it was just beautiful. Coneflowers are as well, and are available in a wide range of hybrids and colors. Mints have to my chagrin never been as invasive as I expected. I've wanted more of them to start making lotions. Yarrow also wasn't very invasive, but I think a lot depends on our own individual microclimates. Windy's wife could also use yarrow to make fall and winter wreaths if she's so inclined.
Over the years I've also planted bellflowers (beautiful and dainty), foxglove, hollyhocks and delphiniums (not much success), all of which could blend easily into a grassy area such as Windy has.
Asiatic and Oriental as well as trumpet lilies would produce longer lived flowers and can blend well in between plants with more foliage. Irises - just love them and had dozens at one point. There are also the smaller Dutch irises.
Windy could also add a variety of mums along the inner border for color late into the season.
I'm running out of thoughts so it behooves me now to get some gardening magazines and spend more time with them so I can offer more suggestions.
Thanks for helping Windy; I really seemed to have gotten in a rut. Maybe it's thinking about all that fussing which I freely admit that I do!