I love this time of year in the garden. The grasses are all full, topped with fuzzies, and home to many noisy grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets.
Several years ago I planted a small bed of Celosia 'Flamingo Feather' from seed. I had only known the short "plume" form of Celosia, so was intrigued by the tall, "wheat"-like blooms of this variety. (At this point I didn't know that Celosia came in several forms: "crested" which looks like a brain, "plumed" which I believe is the most common, and "wheat").
Yesterday I showed you the bamboo rhizome that traveled along inside the rotted tree root. Today I have a couple more rhizome examples, but on a smaller scale. First, take a look at this photo:
I've been growing running bamboo for four years now, which isn't really that long. But since plants are usually quite predictable (much more so than pets or people), you pretty much know what to expect, even with a plant like bamboo.
Like many of you reading this, I grow a lot of plants in temporary pots. I'm talking about utilitarian black (or green, or brown -- sometimes even white) plastic nursery pots. Maybe they contain seedlings, or divisions of bamboo, or plants I bought small and am letting grow up a bit before I put them into the ground. These plants need tags or markers in them, or I'd never, ever remember what they were.
If you looked at photos of my yard from about 20 years ago (which you can do here) you'd see a lot of black locust trees. If you look at photos from 10 years ago (which you can do here) you'd see less of them, but still quite a few. Some of them were quite large, but others were relatively small, younger trees, with trunk diameters of around 5" (12 cm). Those trees are pretty much all gone now, but in a couple of cases they're lingering: there are some stumps in my yard.
One of the highlights of my garden in September is the Liatris aspera, or rough blazing star. It's the end of the season counterpart to the June-blooming and more common Liatris spicata, or gayfeather.
This week I was in downtown Chicago for business, and had some time one evening to walk over to Millennium Park. I have wanted to see this park since it was opened in 2004, and even though I get up to Chicago a couple of times every year to visit relative, it never happened.
I haven't had much time to do anything in the garden this week, nor have I had much time to put together an informative post.
Last weekend I took another trip to my friend Mike's garden. If you've been reading for a while, you know what happens when I go to Mikes: I dig up a bunch of plants, usually bamboo. Well I did get more plants, but they aren't bamboo.
A few days ago I noticed that there was a rabbit in my much-neglected fenced veggie garden. This didn't bother me, as there's really nothing in there that I'd care about him eating. Maybe the kale. Tomatoes? Rabbits don't eat those. There's some poison ivy growing in there that I keep forgetting about... maybe he'll eat that.
The garlic chives have been blooming for a week or so now, and every pollinator in the area knows it. Well, not every pollinator, but a lot of them. The butterflies and honeybees may get all of the press, but there are a lot of other critters involved too.
Yesterday I showed you a quick fix to a problem a potted bamboo had. As it happens that wasn't the only problem that particular plant had. In fact, it might not have even been the most serious issue it's been dealing with.
With our day-long rain recently, I got a reminder of some of the problems in my garden. Not major things for the most part, but things that either I've been meaning to do but didn't really see the immediate need, or things I had forgotten about.
After at least six weeks of no significant rainfall in my yard -- possibly much longer but I'm afraid to research -- we finally got rain! It started early in the morning with thunderstorms, then it rained steadily pretty much the entire day.
Actually, I'm not in the trenches, but I am digging some. It finally cooled off enough that I can start the work to help contain some of my more troublesome running bamboos.
You know the Datura inoxia plant that is growing in a crack in my driveway? Do you know who loves the blooms? Bees.
I've been pretty lazy this summer when it comes to the moles. Or maybe you'd just call it "tolerant". In previous years I'd be out there catching moles as quickly as I'd see them, but this year...
Way back in July I planted some Plumeria cuttings. If you remember, these were my second attempt at growing this plant -- my first two from the previous year did not survive the winter in my garage. They both rotted even though they received no water for at least 5 months.
A couple of weeks ago I got some new tropicals on clearance and potted them up. Did you see that post? Since all of the plants were water lovers, I used a pot with very slow drainage. It turns out that the drainage was too slow.
One of the things I love about this time of year is the garden centers all start having clearance sales. That pricey new cultivar I've been eyeing all summer was easy to pass up at $14, but for $7 I'll give it a shot! I'm being really good this year with restraint -- since I already have too many plants than I know what to do with, I'm being pretty selective. Keeping the impulse buys to a minimum is important, but I've also learned that it's important to make a quick decision on the sale plants. If you wait a day to decide the plants will be gone when you return. (I know about that from experience.)
When I added a couple of new hummingbird feeders earlier this summer in an effort to get the hummers to settle down a little and share, I made more work for myself. You see, hummingbird feeders get filled with sugar water, and there are lots of critters that like sugar water. Hummingbirds, yes, but also woodpeckers, wasps, and ants. Don't forget raccoons too. There's only one creature from that list that is a real problem in my yard though.
With cool weather finally hitting the St. Louis area this weekend, I was busy, busy, busy in the garden. All of the little things that I would have been doing over the last month or so if only it wasn't so hot, well, they piled up. Finally I get to do them, and can get my yard back under control.
The black swallowtail caterpillars that I hastily rescued as I was going out of town two weeks ago and then pupated in the jar have hatched!
A few weeks ago I got a couple of tropical cannas on clearance, and potted them up. They're both doing well, but one of them is doing a little better than the other, and has put up its first new flower stalk. (I expect the other one to do the same as I can see several developing, but they're not quite there yet.)
Last weekend when I visited Mike's garden, there was more to my visit than just taking photos of his sumacs. Mike needed some help moving some large bamboo divisions we had dug a month or so ago, and wanted to dig another one. Although he can manage it on his own, those types of projects are so much easier with a helper. As compensation for my help he offered me a division of his Arundinaria gigantea -- the "river cane" or "giant cane" bamboo that is native to the southeastern part of the US, including the southern part of Missouri.
In my garden it's peak butterfly time, which means it's peak butterfly photo time on this blog. Besides, we're having a late-season heatwave and it's just too hot to do other stuff in the yard -- unless you like reading posts about watering? That would actually be an easy post: "I turned on the hose and walked around for an hour or more, depending on the time of day and when I last watered."
Last weekend I visited my friend Mike's garden again, to help him with some bamboo digging and to see how things have changed since the last time I was there.
Earlier this year I posted about an ambush bug that I discovered in my veggie garden. Before that post I had never heard of ambush bugs, and I was really fascinated by this "new" critter. Guess what I found the other day?
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