MY BAD

Fall is coming. I can feel it in the air in the early mornings and late evening. When I get into bed I find myself pulling the comforter up for the first time since late spring. The crickets that have been chirping so lustily on my windowsill each evening are beginning to sound like electronic toys whose batteries are dying down.
The birds are flocking. They're flying from field to field and bush to bush, gleaning all the seeds and insects they can find to get ready to migrate. And my wimpy little Amur Maple needs tree wrap to survive the upcoming winter.

When I had a huge overgrown upright juniper removed in the spring I really wanted to replace it with a tree that would sport bright red leaves to complement all the evergreens in the neighborhood. All I could find was this little Flame Maple, a Charlie Brown tree if I ever saw one. It's needed lots of support to even stay upright but I have high hopes for it. So I want to make sure it makes it through the winter. I swung by WalMart to get some tree wrap for it and also to see if they had any "Croc"-type shoes to wear in the garden. My gardening shoes of choice, flip-flops, are so slick on the bottom after a couple of years of wear that standing on a wet patio is like trying to stay upright on glaze ice. Well they didn't have any Crocs but I did find six other pairs of shoes.

These are my favorites. None of them will do for the garden but I can wear them to work and I spend more waking hours there anyway. So $1.87 for tree wrap turned into a slightly larger dent on the debit card, but hey, we're talking WalMart here. I'm still going to look for Crocs, and I bet if I wear them with a pair of socks I can even go outside in the middle of a blizzard-y night and knock the snow off my Charlie Brown tree without falling on my butt.
And when I'm snuggled back under my comforter, I can dream that my tree will look like this in a few years.

Million year old garden

Somewhere in those layers of shale and sandstone were some pretty amazing bog plants at one time. I never really understand these geologic cuts, I guess because I can't conceive of layers of rock that were once flat on the ground being tilted on their side. Yeah, I know, uplift and mountain building and all that, but I think interpretive signs were meant for people like me who can't visualize it otherwise. And how about these fossilized ripples in the sand that were once the beach for an ancient sea that stretched from Colorado to Missouri?

This site is on the hogback ridge west of Denver, which would have been the edge of the seaway. You can walk right up to some dinosaur tracks along here too. I love the tenacity of plants that insist on growing in cracks in the rock face. These are asters and sages. They remind me of the volunteers that spring up in the cracks in my driveway, though that's usually a malva plant that doesn't want to stay in its crowded bed.
This photo is a shot of the surrounding scenery today, lots of red sandstone which also is what the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre is carved out of, which is just around the bend. It's a favorite venue for every band that ever played there, but back in the day the Brontosaurus made the area rock.

HONEY, TOO MANY PODS

These are pods from a Honey Locust tree outside my kitchen window. This is known as a bumper crop, highly undesirable (to me) when it comes to pods. I guess I should count myself lucky that this isn't a native variety which has wicked thorns as an added bonus. An arborist told me 20 years ago that this tree was dying. I think he was wrong about that though it did develop a huge gall at the base of the trunk which just gives the squirrels a leg up. I've read that Honey Locust are short-lived trees, only attaining an age of about 125 years. Maybe that's what the tree-man was talking about.

At over 60 feet tall and about 50 years old, it has good years and bad years for pods. A good year being one with no pods. There was an article in the paper the other day explaining why it varies from year to year, something about perfect seeds and imperfect seeds. I read it three times and still didn't understand it. But the bottom line is these pods are going to turn brown and crispy and fall off the tree. They start coming down in autumn and they continue all winter. During high winds they'll strike my skylight like little kamikaze bombers until it sounds like I'm under attack. Good thing I'm not fanatical about a tidy yard or I'd drive myself crazy cleaning up after this tree.


Not to mention the miniscule leaves. Here's the promo on those: "In autumn, the small leaflets filter into the grass as they fall, requiring little raking." Right, unless you have a 20 x 20 foot concrete patio a few feet away, and where the first September snow makes them stick like glue. But they're a nice fern-type shape, and a million years from now they'll have made great leaf fossil imprints.

OVERRUN BY OVERSEEDING

See all these baby seedlings? (Ignore the dead bush.) I didn't plant them, but I'm responsible for them. Every year I rhapsodize over a Nicotiana Sylvestris I planted several years ago. Its heady fragrance in the evening, its startling size, its huge sprays of white trumpet-like flowers. People would stop and ask me what it was. And every fall I would sprinkle the dried seed heads from it over the rest of the beds hoping for new plants. Nada. Zilch.

Except for this spring. Suddenly they were everywhere. About a hundred of them. Bemused by this sudden explosion of nicotiana, I let them grow. And grow. Now I am overrun by tobacco plants and I can't even smoke them. Some of them are still babies, others grew into teenagers and young adulthood, grew tall and flowered like their parent. I haven't seen the small junipers I planted for about 6 weeks now. The miniature roses are hidden under giant nicotiana leaves. The Canada Goose decoys look like humpback whales cresting a sea of green, and the Japanese anemones are vying for air space to unfurl their blossoms.

I transplanted some to the back yard, the side yard, and next to the pond. I sent some back home with my brother-in-law when he came to visit. I'm getting ready to pot them up and leave them on the neighbors' doorsteps like babies in a basket. When fall comes, there's going to be a lot of digging-up going on around here. Hope I'm up to the task or Nicotiana Sylvestris will become my new nemesis of the garden. And I won't be doing any overseeding this fall. In fact I think I'll collect the seedheads carefully and seal them in plastic bags on their way to the garbage bin lest any stray seed fall on this suddenly fertile ground!

RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING

Yesterday afternoon we had a great rain. It started out as a gentle drizzle and turned into a veritable downpour. Let's see, Saturday afternoon, it's raining, can't garden, what better thing to do than to lay back on the sofa, read a book and doze to the sound of raindrops on the roof? It was great and I slept for awhile but woke up to find the raindrops had fallen not just on the roof but right through it. The skylight in the kitchen has leaked off and on forever but frankly, with as little rain as we've had in the last few years, I'd forgotten about this minor problem. Mopping up wasn't too bad (wish I'd cleared the kitchen table of all the papers and mail and junk that accumulates there) but the thing that worried me was all the little Post-its with the ink washed right off. Hope those notes weren't important. I'll be darned if I can remember what any of them said. Details.
There was a nice rainbow afterwards. Looking around the yard today at what plants the rain beat down reminds me that it's about time to do some serious cutting back. The mailman still hasn't forgiven me for the Nicotiana Sylvestris that he has to push back to get to the mailbox on the porch, and on the other side is a Graham Thomas rose that prefers to reach out and touch someone. The Russian Sage is practically sprawling on the ground, and has been helped along by the House Finches that like to land on the long wands and peck away at the purple flowers. Anyway, I won't have to water again anytime soon, and the birdbaths all got a fresh refill which helped along my lazy Saturday afternoon. Oh, I finished the book, "The Lost Van Gogh" by A.J. Zerries. Nazi-looted art turns up in the U.S., long convoluted plot. Interesting read, no gardening in it though.

GREY WATER AND GREEN GRASS

I always find garden blogger talk about using barrels to capture rain water an interesting concept, and one unknown here in Colorado. State law requires that precipitation that falls to the ground runs off and into the rivershed where it fell, without any intervention by water users. Mean, huh? Well, we've been in a drought for a long time and on water rationing for ages. Water in the west is liquid gold. Re-using grey water is a no-no, too. You can't capture your shower water before it runs down the drain (not that I'd want to do that) or throw your dishwater on the lawn (not that I'd want to do dishes).

So how to keep 1/3 of an acre of Kentucky bluegrass green? Normally I don't. But this year we had way above average snowpack in the mountains which meant more runoff for us and restrictions were lifted. Hooray, a green lawn for the first time in years! Of course I had to pay dearly for it. My water bill for the first couple of months made me cringe but I found if I didn't eat or buy any clothes I could pay it.
Then we had an unusually wet July which made me cheer. We had so much rain the mushrooms sprouted like dandelions. I mow the lawn once a week on the highest setting of the lawnmower which makes it look like I need to mow again immediately, but the height of the grass keeps the roots cooler and less likely to dry out. It's not a manicured look, which I don't care about anyway, but I like this method of conserving water better than this sage advice from the Water Board: "Try catching water that comes out before the shower water warms up and then use this water to flush toilets or rinse the shower." Geez, I can hardly get to work on time as it is.

JAM-PACKED

This little triangular bed next to the street has more flowers in it than it should but they all do well and there's no room for weeds to grow. Because my back yard is mostly in the shade I tend to cram lots of sun lovers into the smaller beds out front where the sun shines all day. The rose next to the street is Dainty Bess, with some pink lavatera and dark rose-colored valerian in front of it. The Blue Mist spirea is in full bloom and you can't see the purple asters behind them that think it's September. I can't remember the name of the pink rose in the foreground, shown in the close-up. Sometime this fall I'll grub around in the dirt and see if I can find the metal tag that is probably buried near the graft.

Also in this bed but not in the picture is a faux Gloire de Dijon rose. I was about ready to order one when I saw an unnamed variety at Home Depot a few years ago and it looked all the world like Gloire de Dijon and was twenty bucks cheaper. I'm happy and it's happy with a Comtesse de Bouchard clematis twining up the iron pillar frame around it. I think I was in my "pastel palette" phase when I planted this bed. Now I like lots of vibrant colors too. Here's my favorite Firebird penstemon that's in a bed farther back toward the house. It doesn't look as red in this picture as it really is. I love looking at these. Makes me feel like Georgia O'Keeffe.

SO MUCH FOR THAT BIRDBATH

Several times a week for years the raccoons knock the top off this birdbath. I guess they're washing whatever they found in my yard, though God knows what that might be. Usually the bowl lands harmlessly in the ivy below but a couple of times it has cracked clear across. I've glued it back together a few times in the 15 years or so that I've had it, but it happened again a couple of nights ago and this time I think it's a goner. So I had a pedestal with nothing on it and after a little thought I plunked a clear blue glass ball on the top of it.

The rest of the afternoon I watched finches fly down to the spot where the birdbath was and do a quick backpedal as they almost landed on the globe. We aren't the only ones that are creatures of habit.

Footnote: Last night the raccoons knocked over a different birdbath, one they've never paid any attention to before. So apparently they need to do that as part of their nightly ritual in my yard.

WHAT DEAD LIMBS?

These are actually "approach branches". The birds that come to my feeders prefer to scope things out first and bare branches are the perfect perch. The Silver Maple in the center is suffering from several years of drought and the bare limbs are a typical reaction. Yeah, I should get it trimmed, that'll be the first thing I do when I have an extra $400 for the tree man. The bare branches from the Honey Locust on the right are intentionally left on the tree, otherwise I'd need a skyhook about 15 feet long to hang the feeders. So no matter how it looks, it's a perfect set-up for our feathered friends. They can check out whether they have a clear shot at the feeder or if they have to wait till the squirrels are done gorging themselves. If the coast is clear the House finches and Black-capped Chickadees will perch on the sunflower seed feeder until the squirrel or a bunch of bullying Grackles dislodge them.

The peanut feeder is an old nesting shelf with a missing roof meant for the Robins but it's gotten more use as a hangout for the "big guys", mostly bluejays and magpies, than it ever did as a nursery The robins preferred the downspouts. Magpies, affectionately known to some as "scavengers in tuxedos", are making a comeback in the Rockies after their numbers were decimated by West Nile Virus a few years ago. There are those who don't like jays and magpies because of their nest-robbing tendencies but I subscribe to the "nature, red in tooth and claw" sentiment put forth by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. A far cry from the anthropomorphic "Old Mother West Wind" stories I devoured as a kid. But occasionally in the late evening I swear I see Reddy Fox slinking around the backyard heading for the Old Briar Patch, with Hooty the Owl eyeing him from an approach branch high above.

AMBIVALENT ABOUT ABUTILON

I've put a lot of sweat equity into this Flowering Maple since I've owned it the last several years. Mainly hauling it in and out of the house each spring and fall in its heavy clay pot. And for what? A few bell-shaped flowers that hide under the leaves and are barely visible. Every spring I add another support post and it now looks like it's lashed to the stake awaiting a flaming torch. Why do I keep this plant? There's nothing really wrong with it, it's just so understated for such a big tree-looking thing. Now I hear I'm supposed to pinch the tip of each branch back 2 inches to give it more of a "hanging plant" structure. This is something lazy gardeners really don't want to know.
Its other name, Chinese lantern, sounds like something I have strung across my patio. I bought these at a garage sale last year for about 50 cents and wondered why they should be such a great deal since they came from Crate & Barrel and were unused. Once I put them together, I "got" it. Each requires 2 AA batteries which according to the instructions, will last in the lanterns for approximately 6 hours. Six hours! Let's see, that's about $5.19 for three lanterns for a couple of evenings. But I shouldn't worry because the unreplaceable made-in-China lightbulbs will only last 3 hours. So each evening I flick them on and off for a couple of seconds just to tease the moths drawn to the light. Or maybe I SHOULD torch the abutilon and then I'd have a real Chinese lantern.

WHAT'S LEFT FOR NEXT MONTH?

Thanks to a really hot June, a lot of plants are out of whack here and they think it's mid-August already. The Russian Sage is in full bloom, and the asters aren't far behind. Blue Mist spirea can't wait either. I predict I'll be at the garden center in August buying leggy petunias to fill in the bare spots. The good thing is I've been eating Roma tomatoes for a couple of weeks now and didn't have to wait till summer is practically over to see some ripe ones. Oh, a lost opportunity the other day: I was sitting on the back porch caning a chair and kept hearing a "ticking" sound. I knew there was a Black-capped chickadee flying back and forth to the sunflower seed so I didn't think anything about it. When I finally looked up from my weaving there was a Broad-tailed hummingbird buzzing the empty sugar-water feeder. I'd taken the feeder out of the garage that morning and set it on the bench thinking I'd fill it later on. I zipped into the house and quickly made up some sugar water but of course the hummer didn't come back. The darn bird is punishing me, I'm sure.

Here's a double-flowering pink althea (Rose of Sharon) that's in full bloom in the front yard. When I planted this several years ago, it was a twig and unfortunately, having no vision of the future, I planted a Butterfly bush about two feet away from it. (It's behind the Rose of Sharon in this photo). Both bushes grow to about 7 to 8 feet tall each year and they're a little too firmly ensconced to think about transplanting either one so it's always a race to see who can grow faster and get more space for itself. The Rose of Sharon won this year. The only time the buddleia hogged the whole area was the summer after a huge snowstorm mashed the althea flat and I had to chop it back to the ground. The Butterfly bush had some beautiful racemes that year, and the butterflies didn't need to play hide-and-seek with the Rose of Sharon to get to the goodies.

MUSHROOM FARM

So, after our week of rain every day, my neighbors and I feel like we're running mushroom farms. They're everywhere, in every conceivable shape and size, some areas looking like they were colonized by Martians. This is an older neighborhood, so there are plenty of underground tree roots for the fungi to spring from. Okay, the red ones are not real, this is a picture I used to sell them on eBay a couple of years ago (heavy bidding). We have giant platter mushrooms, button mushrooms, um...anatomically correct mushrooms, and everything in between. I went out one morning to find a wee forest of some darling miniature mushrooms about an inch tall shaped just like ones in a fairy tale book. They'd sprung up through the new sod I got at Home Depot. If I owned a paint set, I would have painted little red dots on them to complete the effect. But they were gone by the time I got home that afternoon. The work of elves, I say.

SOGGY

This is a semi-arid climate, we aren't supposed to have moss growing on our trees. And so much rain on the pfitzers that it looks like frost. We've had rain for seven days in a row, and not just a gentle mist. Bucketsful! It reminds me of a vacation in the Yucatan where it rained so hard we thought all the water in the Caribbean Sea was going to be transferred to the grounds of our hotel.

If the weather gods had seen fit to spread this rain out over seven weeks instead of seven days we'd have been set for the summer. But we'll be heading back into the 90's tomorrow and the plants will be gasping as usual. It was interesting while it lasted. I can put my pots and pans back in the cupboard instead of under my leaking skylight in the kitchen. And the mailman will be happier if I cut back the floppy canes on the rose which used to be Bibi Maizoon before it died back to rootstock.
The renegade canes are now arching gracefully under the weight of all the water ready to shower the unsuspecting guy as he shoves his way past them. He only brings me bills anyway.

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.

FOURTH OF JULY FIRECRACKER

"The bombs bursting in air...." or rather, the Monarda bursting in the garden on Independence Day. This sure looks like the fireworks I saw the other night. Good thing we went to a Sunday night show since the rain tonight put a damper on a lot of fireworks displays. This is "Marshall's Delight" in its third year in my garden. After languishing on spindly stalks for the past two summers and fighting off powdery mildew, this year the Monarda has reinforced the old adage about perennials and vines, "The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap."
And according to many gardeners they will leap all over the garden given half a chance. These are in an enclosed bed and if they want to crowd out the phlox that have turned a washed-out lavender they're welcome to it. Actually I think the phlox was a washed-out lavender when I received it from a co-worker who was thinning out her flower beds several years ago. That's the trouble with planting something that you can't see in bloom at the garden center, you never know what you're going to get. It was free but I'd rather have beautiful.

ONE OF THE BOURBONS

I'd rather have a beer but when it comes to roses, I can do a Bourbon, in this case Zephirine Drouhin. The photo at the left is the one growing on an arbor outside my back door. This is how they look grown in semi-shade. The photo below (from the Web) is presumably how they look when grown in full sun as any rose prefers. Hey, I'm happy with what I have. I really get a kick out of the fact that there are no thorns on Zephirine, which is the only reason to grow it on an arbor I pass through 20 times a day.



I also like that Agatha Christie had Hercule Poirot solve one of his mysteries because of the clue of the thornless rose (the suspect couldn't have gotten a scratch from the rose as he claimed.)
I can't remember the title of that one. But I do remember "How does your garden grow?" on TV which opens with Poirot at the Chelsea Flower Show where a new rose is being named after him. An old woman slips a packet of seeds containing a cryptic note into Poirot's pocket, which eventually leads him to grubbing around in her garden for clues to her subsequent death. I do like to see gardens prominently featured in films. It's kind of a bonus in case the film isn't any good. What the heck, some movies I see just for the lush settings and background, who cares about the storyline? Obviously, I didn't pay $9 to see them either. Check your local library for the latest DVDs, free.

A MILLION BELLS AND ONE PIG

Calibrachoa is not as easy to say, but that's what it is. I'm pretty much enamored of these prolific bloomers. I found them in several colors at the garden center and this salmon one looks good in a pig planter I bought at a garage-sale. When I first planted these I thought I was going to spend a huge chunk of time deadheading them but that doesn't seem to be necessary. When a bloom fades and closes up you can't tell because there's still 999,999 in bloom. Here's another one in a coral red, planted with pot marigolds, red petunias and blue lobelia. These are on a terrace next to my back porch. I call it my Southwest/Mexican garden. It's not far away from a Buddha and some japanese lanterns which I call the Japanese garden. And then there's the main garden which I call the Cottage garden which also encompasses a large patio which holds my Tropical garden in containers. I hate to limit myself.


Last night the insane raccoons came back as usual. I didn't hear a thing which is just as well. I'd have freaked if I'd heard the gnawing and gnashing of teeth in the middle of the night as they chewed on a plastic garden table. When they were done with that they played tiddlywinks with some colored glass stones that are normally piled in a pot holding a small gazing globe. I'm a little disappointed. I grew up reading Thornton W. Burgess's "Old Mother West Wind" stories and Bobby Coon never acted like this. Sure he got in a few fights with Sammy Jay but he was no gangster.

"HEAVEN-SCENT"

This rose has no fancy pedigree but of all the roses I've grown and killed over the years Color Magic is the one I wait for every summer. The color, the scent! I love it. The petals start out a pale pink and like "magic" change to darker shades of pink and almost red over a few days. This kind of reminds me of those paint books we used to get as kids. They looked like a regular coloring book but you took a wet brush and swiped over the picture and the colors would appear.

Roses are not a good choice for a lazy gardener like me so some years I only get a bloom or two, but it looks like this year I got lucky. This is the first one to open, with many buds following. Sometimes I just pick one and put it face up in a bowl of water in the kitchen so I can watch the color change up close. If it's out in the garden I might miss the show. Or some insect might eat it before the show's over.

It also stands nice and tall. It's really pointless for me to plant short fragrant plants. I'm past the stage where I can gracefully stoop down to get the full benefit of the scent. Or rather, I could do that, but I can't get up again. Anyway, I've seen descriptions of Color Magic that mention a "slight fragrance" and I'm at a loss to understand that as the opposite is true. It's growing next to my front porch so i can sit on the rocker and stop and smell the roses Actually I don't really have time for that but I like the idea.

SOME CREATURES I LIKE AND SOME I DON'T

These red-shafted flickers are definitely in the "like" category. There are four coming to the suet feeder each day. Two of them are juveniles. You can tell by the way they harrass their parents with begging, calling, and obnoxious behavior. I'm very fond of these birds. This photo is not very good because I had to push the zoom all the way to get it, and I was in a hurry to leave for work.

On the other hand there are the raccoons who trespass by night and visit the pond looking for fish. They bite their heads off and then discard them on the ground for me to find in the morning. I've had enough of buying canapes for the 'coons, so no fish this year. When the raccoons don't find fish they go on a destructive binge like juvenile delinquents. They throw the pond plants around, knock over a bird sculpture (the same one every night), muddy the birdbath, and generally carry on. I usually sleep through all this, but sometimes I hear their wild chatter in the trees. I like hearing night creatures but what with whistling, shrieking, clicking their teeth and growling, these guys sound insane.

THEY LIE ABOUT THE COLORS

So this is my definitely-needs-staking delphinium that I've had in the garden for several years. But what's with that color? It's supposed to be Pacific Giants in a "range of rich colors." This is that washed-out pinky-mauvy color that so many plants revert to after a number of years, but it's been this color since day one. Every year I watch the buds form and wait with bated breath for a range of rich colors, but I guess that's not going to happen. No wonder I don't stake the damn thing.