Things I ignore....

There are parts of my garden I never pay any attention to. I might give them a glance now and then and think, "I ought to do something about that" but I never actually do. This first tangled mess is off to the side of my front porch. The ground slopes away here and nothing I like ever grows successfully in this spot. So the volunteer morning glories have taken over, backed by the obnoxious 4 o'clocks. The morning glories are not Heavenly Blue so I despise them. I'm not sure what those tall spikes are in back but I do remember planting a Mock Orange here once. Surely that's not it, my nose would know.

Then there's a bed of Snow in Summer, or is it Snow on the Mountain? I'm never sure till I look it up, but I don't really care either. It's also called Bishop's Weed. Which fits in perfectly with the theme, since that's Yellow Archangel in the back. One of those plants you wish you'd never laid eyes on one time and thought it might be a good idea. It's not. At least both these culprits are confined in this bed and any seedlings that escape promptly get mowed. In keeping with the religious theme this is also the final resting place for a succession of gerbils, pet rabbits, and cats over the years. I guess this is actually the burial bed - no wonder I ignore it.

Okay, this is a little embarrassing and I swear I'm going to cut this volunteer hollyhock down soon. It's starting to swat at my car as I drive into the garage.

I could pretend this corner looks pretty good at times, but that wouldn't be true. There seem to be volunteer bushes growing here, though the huge pussywillow in the back was planned. I have to admit I never thought that stick of a plant would get so big. I used to plant tomatoes in a couple of wooden barrels that you can barely see but I kept forgetting to water them so I quit.

Here's my biggest disappointment of the year and much as I'd like to ignore them they're front and center and I see them every day. My gauras - Whirling Butterfly. Remember how pretty they were a couple of years ago? Age hasn't improved them and nary a bloom in sight this summer or last. They'll be history in the fall.

In the back yard I have this 12 foot square that used to be a sandbox for Dear Son. He's 30 years old now. Nature has taken over. She apparently thought that Russian Olives would look nice here and also a huge weed that gets about 6 feet tall and has sticky burrs and woe to anyone who brushes up against them. I felt really bad for this phone company guy who had to get his ladder in there the other day. Well, I didn't know he was coming, did I? Hope he didn't trip over a rotted wooden post with a martin house on top that I know fell over in there a couple of years ago.

One day last spring The Dubious Gardener sent over a tree man to trim some limbs and while he was at it "tear that ivy off the house". I might have been more upset about that except I accidentally tore part of it down last year and then the rest of it started falling down. I hardly ever walk around to this side of the house and when I did the other day I was surprised to see Virginia Creeper taking over. It's not ivy and I'll soon be yanking it off the overhead phone lines but I might ignore that too. Wonder if the phone company man can?

Shooting stars and a savage garden

I missed the fireworks tonight but I have my own starburst display in the front yard. The Whirling Butterflies (gaura) are shooting out right and left, reminding me of those cool starburst fireworks that rain down from Fourth of July skies.

The slightest breeze sets the blossoms fluttering on their long, wand-like stems, imitating a cloud of white butterflies flitting across my yard. This guara is called Geyser White.

What do you do with a day off in the middle of the week, with two days of work behind you, and two more to come? A holiday in the middle of the week doesn’t lend itself to serious pursuits like heavy-duty gardening chores. No, much better to fritter the day away, which I did, with this book.

A Savage Garden? How can that be? Finding the answer was a pleasant summer read - a delicious trip through a mysterious 15th century garden (which is much more than it appears to be) in the heart of Tuscany. Complete with a 400 year old mystery, a World War II murder, and a young scholar trying to unravel numerous threads; it was like reading The Da Vinci Code, only without the religion, and with a garden as the main character. I liked it.

Occasionally I got up and wandered around and pulled a weed or two, and petted a neighbor’s cat that prefers my back porch during the day. I was treated to the sight of four fighter jets flying in formation overhead, and later the deep boom of fireworks. I can no longer see them from my back porch as well as I could 30 years ago before the trees got bigger. Just a hint of shooting stars overhead.

MY NEW FAVORITE PLANT

So I have this friend the neophyte gardener. Two years ago she walked into my back yard, pointed to a lavender plant and said "what's that?" Since then she's bought a house (actually a garden with a house attached), and spent the next two years reading all the gardening books she could get her hands on. She now rivals Hortus Third for gardening information. She happened on to a plant she called Whirling Butterflies which I'd never heard of - turns out to be a gaura. Now, a few years back I'd tried a Siskiyou Pink gaura and in my usual fashion, tried to fit it in where I needed it to grow, rather than where IT needed to grow. Disastrous results as usual. So I never gave another thought to gaura until the aforementioned neophyte kept telling me how impressed she was with her Whirling Butterflies. When I saw it for myself I was hooked. And I happened to have a spot where gaura would like to grow.
I couldn't find Whirling Butterflies on the day I just had to have it so settled for Geyser White gaura from Lowe's. The flowers DO look like butterflies perched on the end of long wand-like stalks. I know this is so because while putting together a last minute bouquet for a co-worker I added some gaura as an afterthought and the co-worker said, "These flowers look like butterflies!" Well I was pretty darn pleased.

Geyser White, despite its name, has a pinkish base to each white flower, and the leaves inexplicably have some purple spotting on them. This is not a new rust disease in my garden, but is common to gaura apparently. Now if I could just spot a butterfly alighting on my butterflies.