More of the back garden

A couple of days ago I showed you the garden around the patio area, how it's been growing like crazy this summer with very little attention from me. I'll show you more of the back yard now, focusing on the area to the south of the patio.

The house and deck are to the left, and this wall of foliage hides the pergola and patio. There's a lot going on here, and this may not be the best view of it.

Back garden going gangbusters!

We've had a good amount of rain in August here in St. Louis -- not too much, but a bit more than is normal -- and the garden is thriving for it. It's been a month since I showed you the back garden in the patio area, but it's really time for another look.

This is from the driveway looking through the "tropicals bed" -- no longer a good description as I've got tropicals all over now.

Another view of the mantis

I thought the mantis that lived on the Pachypodium all summer was gone. Turns out he was still in the area...

...and yesterday gave me a good look at him from a different view: on the window.

Wednesday Vignette: Texture

One of the things that gardening and spending more time observing Nature up close has done for me is make me appreciate textures and patterns and colors. Not just those found in the garden, but those found everywhere.

Here are a collection of some that I've found over the past few months that are mainly from places other than the garden. For more Wednesday Vignettes visit Anna at Flutter and Hum -- her vignettes are a lot more meaningful than mine ever are!

Another Amphibian Adventure

For the last few years the pond has been the center of amphibian activity in my garden, toads and frogs visible or audible almost from March to September. Then the army of toadlings around the garden... This year although I've heard toads out there every time it rained, no tadpoles or toadlings that I could see. Maybe the low water level took away all of the good spawning zones? This year though, a new development...

...and it involves the water barrel in the front walkway garden.

Magnificent!

I don't like to use words like "magnificent" in reference to my own garden, but sometimes other descriptions just don't fit. Yesterday I had one of those moments where I thought "wow, this is really pretty!".

Perhaps it was the delightfully cool and sunny weather, or the fact that we had just gotten back from a great little hike around a local conservation area and I was in a particularly good mood, but seeing the backlit papyrus and everything else in the front garden, well...

Laziness provides opportunity

You saw yesterday how lazy I had been with the walkway, but that's nothing when compared to my approach to mowing the lawn this year. A dry July meant little lawn growth so no need to mow, but then the rains came so frequently we rarely had good mowing conditions. Then it was too long to easily mow, turtles could be hiding anywhere!

The end result is that the back lawn hasn't been mowed for at least 6 weeks, possibly longer. My bright green garden hose is back here, and you can't see even an inch of it -- it's right in front of you!

It's about time!

For weeks the front walkway has been a problem. Rains and vigorous growth had made this more of an obstacle course than a place to walk. The last straw was seeing the FedEx guy stop and walk across the lawn instead of using the pathway -- that's what I had been doing the last few days too!

So with temperatures reasonable (85ºF/29ºC) today, I finally did something about it.

Just playing around: new lens

I got a "new" camera lens yesterday. As you might remember I use a few vintage camera lenses, and this one fits under that same description. My stepson found it and another lens in a dumpster at work, so it was a freebie.

I was eager to see how it works with my camera and compares to my other lenses, so I spent some time just screwing around taking photos of the front garden. Some are through the window and some are after I stepped out onto the porch. Still, there's no real theme to what I photographed so just remember "lazy lens test" as you view them.

Impulse buy, no guilt

I was at Lowe's yesterday when I decided to take a look around the garden center. Nothing really caught my eye until I saw the big succulents display:

Okay, I don't really need more plants that need to be overwintered indoors, but I couldn't resist looking, especially when...

Monday Miscellany

It's hot and dry in some parts of the country, but here in St. Louis the heat is gone and it's cooler than normal -- very wet too!

I haven't done anything substantial in the garden for weeks it seems, so today just another random collection of photos and observations. I never got around to planting the tradescantia around like I was going to, so it's just in a single tiny pot. How is it doing so well?

Mantis

I scatter dozens of mantis babies every year in my garden, and one of my joys is when they stay put and I get to watch them grow up over the summer.

This one has chosen a great place to squat as it's both seemingly well protected and also easy for me to view every day. I'm not quite sure how it's finding food, but it must be.

Vintage gardening wisdom

As I leave the bakery each morning I drop off our organic waste and recycling. The recycling dumpsters are sometimes filled to the top, spilling cardboard (usually) onto the ground. Last week though they were not overflowing yet there was still something on the ground -- a book turned face down. Maybe not too surprising as there is a book store that shares these dumpsters, but still, one single book -- I've never seen books here before.

Upon picking it up I saw that it was surely intended for me to find, some cosmic force or another guiding me to this place at this time. Yes, an old Sunset Gardening book!

A view from indoors

As I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast -- Monday is the only day of the week that I can do this -- I realized that the view out of the front window from the kitchen is quite nice.

So I decided to show it and the other views of my garden from indoors.

Rudbeckia triloba adds color

One of the natives that makes mid-to-late summer so colorful in my garden is Rudbeckia triloba. I believe this is also called "brown-eyed Susan" but common names are so fickle.

This is a banner year for R. triloba in my garden, surprisingly. This plant reseeds readily and seedlings pop up in every bed it seems, but the deer really love eating this. So every spring I let more of these plants grow than I should, knowing that many will be eaten.

Surprise Lilies and FIsh

A couple of surprises down by the pond recently.

As terrible as the water has been and the fact that the level is so low due to the critter-created tears, lots of rain recently has rejuvenated it somewhat.

A little weeding

Not much time for gardening lately, and I have a pretty high tolerance for weeds, but there comes a point when even I say "enough" and have to spend a few minutes pulling.

So here are a few quick before/after photos showing the stream area, which is now so densely planted the weeds are difficult to pick out -- until they're not if you know what I mean. Actually, the stream itself is difficult to pick out...

Monday Miscellany

So many random things happen and fill up the phone storage, sometimes it's fun to just go back through and take a look at what I've forgotten to share.

Like this combo of trees in my stepson's yard. They're technically the neighbor's trees, but what a visual delight (taken in late June when it felt like early August already).