Back in the first week of May I planted some Plumeria cuttings, and I thought today would be a good time to let you see how they're doing. This is what they looked like back in May:
Yesterday I rhizome pruned a couple of my in-ground Phyllostachys bamboos, and ended that post with a comment about having at least 6 more to do. I decided to tackle a couple of more today. The first one went fine, and I didn't find any escaped rhizomes. That could be because it's the bamboo that escaped last year and put up some shoots in my lawn this year (which I recently dug out and potted up). So I've been keeping a closer eye on that plant.
If you grow running bamboo as I do, controlling its spread is important. This type of bamboo spreads by rhizomes (which are like underground stems) and stopping the spread of rhizomes is the way to keep the bamboo from taking over your yard -- and your neighbor's.
Yesterday I took a step back and showed you some photos of my backyard garden. I was hoping to give you a better sense of how everything was arranged: what plants were where, how things looked together. Today I'll give you an even better look -- well, it's still not the whole garden at once, but it will help.
I've been spending so much time focusing on "details" of the garden in recent posts that I feel like I haven't given you a good sense of the garden as a whole. I've shown you specific plants, and small parts of certain beds, and potted up some plants, etc. but it isn't the individual plants that are important.
Last Sunday my planned bamboo dig over at Michael's garden was rained out. Today it did not rain, so the dig was on! The plan was to help Mike divide and pot up some of his smaller bamboos, both to control their spread and so he could sell some divisions.
So what do you suppose this is? I've been posting about mushrooms lately, so is it a mushroom? That would be a good guess, but wrong.
This is supposed to be a hummingbird feeder. You know what those are, right? Usually red, holds sugar water for the hummingbirds to eat. This year I've got one of my feeders hanging from my climbing rose trellis, so it's right outside the kitchen window. I see it dozens of times a day without even trying.
It is one of those mornings where the sun is barely up and just lifting the camera causes me to break out in a sweat. Warm, still, and humid. Very humid. Not nice. So I'll just do a couple of easy projects involving twine -- not much work, so less chance of soaking my shirt, right?
Guess what? It rained again today, and although I haven't checked for any new mushrooms, I've got several more cool mushroom photos I've been saving from the last couple of years.
We've had rain the last few days in a row, and that means mushrooms! I love taking photos of mushrooms and other fungi, as I think they're fascinating:
So apparently my post about clouds the other day has sort of jinxed us, as another strong band of storms came through again today, following up yesterday's dramatic weather.
As I mentioned at the end of yesterday's post, this morning I'd be going to Mike's to help him dig and pot some more bamboo. It was a cloudy morning so I checked the weather websites and they said "hot and humid with thunderstorms mainly after 1 PM". Hmmm. A look at the radar showed a line of heavy storms moving toward us, but according to the forecast it wouldn't be getting here for several hours. Seemed wrong but I believed it, loaded up the truck, and started driving.
I spent the hot morning today making potting mix and mulching some more bamboos with compost. I got pretty overheated and exhausted, so maybe I'm seeing things, but what the heck is this?
As a Midwest gardener I need to keep up with the weather. Do I need to water today? Do I need to stake up some plants because they're likely to blow over shortly? Should I quickly take a bunch of photos before the hailstorm shreds all of the lovely large leaves?
I've got several questions for you today. Question 1: How do you feel about bees? If you're like me, you love them! The garden would be so lifeless without them, wouldn't it? Question 2: When you think of a flower that bees like, what do you think of first? I first think of a daisy or Black-eyed Susan, or something similar -- a big, bold target for the bees to find.
This morning was hot. Way too hot and humid to do anything in the garden except walk around looking at everything. Even that wasn't too much fun, as the sweat was soon getting in my eyes making it difficult to use the camera.
The other day my neighbor said to me: "The Japanese Beetles haven't been much of a problem this year, have they?" Well, let's see... this is the "bucket of death" -- soapy water that we use to catch the beetles as they fall in their attempts to escape:
It's no secret that I love bamboo. I have at least 40 different species and varieties in my garden, many smaller plants growing in pots. I just find it to be a very exciting, rewarding plant to grow. What's more exciting than bamboo that's growing in your own garden?
My woodpile area is in sad shape right now. It's so weedy and overgrown that I can't even bear to use a current photo of it here.
I've mentioned it before, but I love walking around the garden first thing in the morning. Sun is barely up, the human noise in the neighborhood is minimal, the air is fresh, and there are sights to see!
Here's another garden bed that I've let get way out of hand. It's got a few plants that I want to keep, but some that need to go.
The little planting bed surrounding our mailbox has always been a trouble spot. It's next to the street but that's not really a problem (except maybe in winter because of the snow that gets piled there and the salt that gets applied to the road). The main problem is that it's also next to a large Ash tree which sucks the moisture out of the ground and shades the area for most of the day.
When I see an interesting insect or spider in the garden, I like to take photos of it. I've said it before, but I'm always amazed at the variety of insects that I can find in my own yard. Usually all you have to do is stop wherever you are in the garden and take a close look.
I've seen a lot of little grasshoppers lately, as well as several other interesting "bugs", so let's see what I've found.
When the kittens were smaller I was posting weekly updates. It's been at least a month since my last update, so it's time for another look at them. They're 12 weeks old now, although these photos were taken when they were about 10 and 1/2 weeks old.
We've got three flagstone areas in our yard: the patio under the deck, the landing on the main stairway down to the patio, and the patio. All of them originally had a form of crushed limestone filling all of the cracks between the stones, but I've been slowly replacing that gritty, messy material with green.
Every year some sunflower seeds that fall from the birdfeeder over the driveway escape detection from the birds, squirrels, chipmunks, deer, and whatever else eats seeds, and grows in the cracks of my driveway.
Usually when you think of beauty in a garden, you think of flowers. Big, beautiful blooms painting the planting beds with color. I love flowers too as we saw yesterday, but the main problem with flowers is they don't always last too long. Some blooms last only a single day, and some plants bloom just for a week or two and that's it for the year.
I've been so focused on digging lately: digging up weedy beds, planting in the refreshed beds, wondering what animal has been digging up my pots and beds. Today no posts about digging.
(That title only really works if you say it as if you're the Papa Bear from Goldilocks)
This morning I noticed some digging in one of my new banana plant pots. I assumed it was just raccoons so put the soil back into place and watered the plant. Raccoons have curious hands, and they often mess up the soil of potted plants, pull smooth rocks out of pots, and other tactile things. So I wasn't concerned. Then I noticed another pot that had been dug in, and thought "that's a raccoon that sure loves to dig".
This morning I decided to finish up the planting project I started a few days ago when I cleared this weedy bed out.
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