Fall Happenings

9/27/15

back yard garden

     The leaves on the trees are just starting to turn here.  We have twelve hours of daylight now, and night temps are in the low 50's.  The back yard garden is so lush and full now with the fall plants flowering.  I know in six weeks it will all be gone.  Here are photos of  what is blooming in the back yard garden.

Japanese anemones

hardy begonias

raspberry lemonade zinnias

vinca

I bought some pansies to put in bare spots now that we have cooler weather.

I replaced some tired plants in my deck railing pot with ornamental peppers.

I also added pansies in another deck railing pot.

In the side yard garden, the goldenrod fireworks bush is in full bloom.

The bees were all over the goldenrod bush.

Out in the back yard the black walnut tree has been dropping its walnuts encased in green balls for about a month now.

The squirrels have been busy cracking the walnuts open revealing their black interior.

Most of the follicles on the milkweed plants have split open.

The wind has been carrying the seeds with their white, silky filament hairs all over the yard, making the yard look like it has cotton balls spread all over it.

The only thing I have seen on the plants are milkweed beetles.  There was not a single monarch caterpillar on these plants, their most preferred food.

     We will be moving in about a month to a smaller house and yard on the other end of town.  We have been looking for something smaller several months, and it is such a coincidence that our old house which we built and lived in for years came on the market.  We quickly bought it.  The yard and gardens have not been kept in good shape, so I have my work cut out for me.  It is always exciting putting in new gardens!

Last of Summer Blooms

8/17/14

crepe myrtle

   



 While we were gone on vacation, there was a lot of activity in the garden and yard. The crepe myrtle tree bloomed just as we left.  The side and back yard gardens are lush with blooms.  Here are photos of blooms in the side garden.

black-eyed susan

     The rudbeckia, or black-eyed susan flowers, are doing well despite being eaten after emerging.

butterfly bush

     The butterfly bush has filled out nicely after suffering severe winter damage.

zinnias

     The zinnias, one of my favorite flowers, are gorgeous.  I plant seeds every year so I can have fresh cut flowers in the house.

cosmos

     In the back garden, the cosmos that reseeded have taken over about a quarter of the garden.

vinca

     Some vinca from last summer that also reseeded showed up in a few places.

loriope

     Some of my loriope plants have started to flower.

impatiens

     I couldn't resist showing another photo of the beautiful standard impatiens in one of my patio pots.


     The Yoshino cherry trees all over the neighborhood have lost more than half their leaves.  Isn't it a little early for that?  The acorns started dropping off the oaks a week ago.  There is a hint of fall in the weather.  We have had temps in the 50's at night and 70's and low 80's during the day for the last two weeks.  And it is only mid-August. The local meteorologist said our temps have been below average 45% of the time this summer.  I hope this doesn't mean we are going to have a bitterly cold winter like last year. 

Garden Memories

7/23/12

part of my desert garden

     For the past few days a depressive mood has settled upon me in part because of the cloudy, rainy, cool weather.  On Saturday, our high temperature was 68 F, the lowest high temperature for that date ever!  But I also miss my huge flower gardens I had in the past.  When I moved to the desert, I missed my former Virginia garden.  Now that I have moved back to Virginia, I am missing my desert garden.







zinnia


     I think when gardeners invest energy and time to create and design gardens using color, height, fragrance and shape, we want to hang onto them for the delight they bring us.

vinca

     Since we are renting, I can't dig up swaths of grass and put in gardens.  Even if I could, I wouldn"t want to put in the effort and money for gardens, only to leave them behind in a few months. 











celosia


     I decided to look at the photos of my former desert garden, and it immediately brightened my mood.  All these  photos are of the beautiful flowers I grew in the desert.

pansies and petunias

 white petunias

garden angel among the petunias

Mr. Lincon roses

blue cup

gazania

     This garden will be tucked away in memory for the joy it brought me.  I"ll remember gardens past and dream of future gardens.  Do you remember and cherish gardens in your past?

Midsummer in the Garden

Zinnias

7/30/11
     It seems like it has been longer, but we are just halfway through our 120 days of over 100 degrees F (38C).  The vegetable garden with its lettuce, carrots, radishes, and spinach stopped producing two months ago.  I have a few chard plants straining to put forth a few small leaves.  I'll keep watering them in hopes they kick into normal production in the fall.  My pepper and two tomato plants never did recover from being wind burned.  They struggled but were unable to produce flowers before the real heat set in which did them in.

     The flower garden is blooming, but without a lot of plants it started out with.  As I posted before, all the cosmos died when it hit 118 F (48C).  The marigolds finally gave up this week.  And the two petunias I kept watering and watering said, "Enough" and quit flowering.  All the strawflowers died, and the weak blue cup,

zinnia flower

Marguerite daisy, blue dianthus and gazania are laboring to produce a flower or two.  They are shadows of their former bloom state and are essentially done for the summer.  The zinnias are the stars of the garden right now and are blooming profusely.   They have filled in a lot of the bare spots left from plants that died.  The celosia and vinca, two workhorse plants that bloom through the summer heat, are doing well in another part of the garden.

Celosia and Vinca

red celosia

white vinca

     Out in the yard, the oranges and grapefruits continue to slowly grow bigger.  We look forward to the fall harvest.  The lime tree produced no fruit this year, but since it lost half its leaves in the freeze last winter, it has grown new leaves on all the bare branches.  Maybe next year.  The flowering bushes (bougainvillea, yellow bells and oleander) are doing well, and going through bloom cycles as are the lantana scattered throughout the yard.  Many trees and plants don't struggle in the intense heat and sun here because of adaptations they have developed..  I'll talk about some of these adaptations in my next post.

grapefruit

lime tree this summer



lime tree after freeze







The Heat Is On

Bougainvillea Bush

6/11/11
     Well, our brief "cool spell" of mid to upper 90's is gone.  Triple-digit heat will now be with us everyday for the next 120 days. Yes, that's one thing I did not know before our move here.  On average it is over 100 degrees F for 120 days.  The heat can climb to 120 degrees, but most of the time it is 108 to 115 degrees F.  There are several other things I did not know about living in the desert.  The merchants put pot holders on their door handles because they get so hot you can't touch them.  Ditto for steering wheels.  We cover our car seats with towels because the leather/vinyl is scorching hot.  There is no such thing as a cold shower in the summer here.  Water heaters are turned off because the temperature of the water coming out of the cold faucet is 105 degrees F unless you spend a thousand for a chiller.  We use a lot of ice.  Neighborhoods are like ghost towns in the summer because no one goes outside.  You can go for months without seeing your neighbors.  In the middle of summer it never goes below 90 degrees F at night, so forget about exercising out doors.  The thing I dislike the most is keeping all the blinds closed all summer to keep out the heat so the A/C bill is not $600 a month.  You come to hate the sun, and wake up thinking, "Oh, no.  Not another sunny day!"

Bougainvillea Blossom

     But despite the heat, some flowers will bloom all summer here.  I went to Lowe's today and bought celosia and vinca, two reliable through-the-summer bloomers.  I pulled out all my dead pansies and scraggly petunias and will start planting tomorrow.  We do have several bougainvillea bushes trellised against our backyard walls that blossom all summer, as well as the lantana plants scattered throughout the yard.  I am told that lisianthus will also bloom all summer.  I am waiting to see how long my zinnias and cosmos hold up.  The colors of my dwarf zinnias seem to be fading in the sun.  A lot of things get bleached in the strong sunlight here.

Celosia

White Vinca

Crickets in the Garden, Scorpions in the House

Diatomaceous earth

5/13/11
     The crickets have been chirping away in the flower garden for about six weeks now.  I don't mind the chirping.  It is a sound of summer to me.  But we live in a known scorpion area, and crickets are the favorite food of scorpions.  So the scorpions come running to my flower garden for their next meal.  And then they wander into my house.  I don't want them in either place.  We had two scorpions in the house last year, and one already this year.  I'm really fearful of them.  They frighten me. They can make themselves thinner than a credit card and slip through tiny cracks.  They can crawl into the house on plumbing pipe, or out of A/C vents.  

     The crickets had to go.  My husband dragged out the bag of diatomaceous earth and spread it in the garden to kill the crickets.  Diatomaceous earth, which looks like talcum powder, is the microscopic, fossilized remains of diatoms, a type of algae that has sharp edges that cut any crawling insect body, causing loss of body fluids and dehydration.  It is supposed to work on roaches, ants. silverfish and other crawling insects.  It is organic and non-toxic to humans and animals, but you shouldn't breathe the dust or get it into your eyes.  It is said to work on scorpions, but in reality, it doesn't work for me.  We put it down at all the doors, but that doesn't stop them from getting in the house in so many other ways that you can't cover with diatomaceous earth.  They say chickens eat scorpions.  A lot of the nearby farms have chickens.  Maybe that's why they congregate in our yard.

Dwarf (?) Zinnia

     On a more cheerful note, the cosmos, dwarf zinnia and marigold seeds I planted have all come up and are blooming.  The dwarf zinnia are only supposed to be six inches high, but mine are almost eleven inches.   The vinca I planted last summer apparently made it through the freezes and has returned. 

     I was walking through the garden section at Lowe's two weeks ago just looking, getting ideas for what to plant in my garden for summer.  Of course, I ended up walking out with a plant.  I bought a beautiful Blue Marguerite daisy which I have never grown before.  I don't know whether it will bloom all summer in our triple digit heat, but I thought I could use some more blue in the garden.  We'll see.








Boy O' Boy Marigolds

Vinca



Blue Marguerite Daisy