Not to me! Although I wouldn't blame you for jumping to that conclusion based on the frequency (low) at which I've been posting lately. No, I mean say goodbye...
Something simple...
My overwintering strategy involves moving many potted plants into the garage and basement each fall, but I wait until absolutely necessary. Some of the agaves can take temperatures down to 25ºF (-3ºF) or so, and those I will leave outdoors the longest. When the first sub-freezing night approaches, you'll usually find me standing in the garden poring over Google because I can't remember which species can take those few more degrees of cold.
You know I love my bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) tree, right? Well I was looking at it yesterday...
My veggie garden has been sadly neglected for two years (or more?) now. Severely neglected. Completely ignored actually. So it was a big surprise to me recently when I discovered...
Relieved of its heavy coat of netted leaves that is! I recently talked about how easy it was to protect the pond this year due to its being smaller.
The leaves have mostly all fallen now, but a week or two ago there were some great splashes of color in my garden. In fact, it seemed to me that the entire St. Louis area was more colorful this fall than it has been for a while. Very nice while it lasted.
If you've read my blog for a while you know that deer (and other animals) visit my garden regularly. (In fact, deer probably spend more time in my garden than I do.) A couple of years ago I spotted this guy:
When I worked on the pond this spring to fix some leaks, it got quite a bit smaller. I knew this would help once fall came, as keeping the leaves out of the water had been so difficult in past years (and my failure to do so last year led to the pond's death, which prompted the remake).
With a night or two of freezes recently (before returning to 80ºF/26ºC temps) I had to move several potted succulents into the garage.
In the previous post I showed you the "easy" bamboo planting. It was "easy" because it was something I could do myself. Sure it took three hours, but that's garden time so it's fun, right?
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With the site cleared of the old bamboo, it was ready to plant the "new" one. This wasn't a case of grabbing the black nursery pot that contained the new plant though.
Back near the end of September I posted about my bamboo removal project, how I had hired a neighbor kid with a strong workout ethic to dig out three of my disappointing bamboos.
My bananas (Musa basjoo) did pretty well this year, even though they got little water. We had a mostly rain-free summer, and I don't remember watering these more than one time... if I did at all.
After many hours of effort, much downloading, re-downloading, checking and double-checking, some headaches and discoveries...
This is just a test post, please ignore.
We left off in the last post at Florissant Fossil Quarry at about 5:30 PM with a little over three hours of driving to go before our destination for the night: Capulin, New Mexico. What's in Capulin you ask?
Making our way home from Colorado involved three days of driving. I didn't want it to just be a rush home though with nothing to look forward to (as if being home wasn't enough) so I planned a few interesting stops. A hint:
Our August RV trip continued, as we spent a luxurious (for this trip) second day at a campsite. No driving meant time for biking and hiking and relaxing. If you remember from the last post, we were at the North Fork Campground in Colorado. We did get down to the river (White river) again this second day (August 24), but the photos look just like those from yesterday's post.
August 23 we arrived at the only spot we'd be at for two nights: North Fork Campground near Meeker Colorado. This was the view from our campsite looking south:
Continuing with August's RV trip, we left off in the last post at Green River Campground in Dinosaur National Monument. We only spent a single night there, but it was a great one as the stresses of driving and difficult deadlines were pretty much over for a while.
After our short time at the Dinosaur Quarry building in Dinosaur National Monument, we made the short drive to the campground. Although there are several campgrounds in DNM, I chose the one closest to the quarry purely for convenience. From the map and satellite view I was afraid that it might be too close to the road to be as private as I'd like.
I left off yesterday with a view of the hills around Dinosaur National Monument, where we'd be spending the fourth night of our August RV trip. Today we start with the dinosaurs...
In yesterday's post I condensed a couple of days worth of travel into a lot of words and few photos. That will eventually change today, as we made our way to eastern Utah and we saw things like this along the way:
Back in mid-August my wife and I took our second RV trip out west. The first was in 2014 and was really fun -- and a lot of driving. This year's trip would be shorter but would also involve much driving: our goal was Colorado. (Since we live in the St. Louis area it takes a few days to get to Colorado unless you're a mindless driving machine.)
My garden -- like yours I have to assume -- is full of good and bad this year. Here's an example of good and bad in the same view:
As I've mentioned several times this summer, I've ignored the garden for the most part. Somehow things have snapped into place though, and this part of the garden (made up of the driveway and beds closest to the house) is looking quite nice.
I grow a lot of bamboo, as regular readers know. Most of them are quite cold-hardy for St. Louis, but there are a few of them that are marginal. This means that they don't do well in our winters, and after a few years I've given up on them.
Just a tidbit, a morsel or two to let you know that I'm still here, and still planning on posting more regularly. (I have a big backlog of images to edit from the RV trip and more...)
I've had very little to post about this summer, and little time to seek out the details of the garden to even post about those. Last week though we took our second RV trip out west...
So you may have noticed that the images on most of the posts here (except for a few recent ones) have been replaced with Photobucket's "broken link" image. So annoying. I'd say that "it bugs me"...
Ah, I bet you think I'm talking about something in my garden -- will it survive the heat, or drought, or whatever. Alas, I wish I were talking about a plant.
You know I like to build things for my garden. You may also know that I like to upcycle, repurpose, reuse. Well the slightly cooler weather had me in project mode on Monday...
I've had a decent (too big for my climate?) Agave collection for a few years, ever since several were gifted to me by a downsizing gardener. This is the first year that I've really been blown away by one though.
As you probably have noticed, I've been going long stretches this summer without posting -- sometimes only one post a week (or less)! Mainly this is due to a busy schedule that leaves little time for gardening, but it's also due to the weather, as it's just been a very hot summer. Until now that is.
I've been working on some new garden sculpture designs, sticking to my current focus of mixing wooden cubes with metal rods.
Looking out of the kitchen window a week or two ago (the days seem to be flying by this year!) I watched a deer browsing near one of my garden beds, eating violets or something else in the lawn.
We had a storm come through last night. I didn't hear it, but knew it this morning as I looked out the front window...
Another quick "snapshot" post, just to see where things are as of early July. Unlike yesterday's bananas which are already impressive, today's subject are the castor beans.
With July's heat here, I thought it was about time to take a look at a few of the more impressive plants in my garden. I'll start today with the bananas (Musa basjoo). It's late enough in the season for them to be a focus...
No, I haven't seen a baby raccoon (yet) this year. How then do I know it's time for them to start venturing out and exploring the neighborhood?
Yesterday's post was about my biggest surprise of the year (baby fish). Today I will share a smaller one, found in the front walkway garden:
If your garden doesn't surprise you at least a few times a year, I'd say that there's something wrong with it. One of my biggest sources of surprise -- both good and bad -- has been the pond. Almost six years old and different every year.
The evening sun backlights the plants of the front garden so nicely, sometimes I just have to go outside and get a closer look! Even the plants that are in shade now benefit (photographically) from the light reflected off the front of the house.
This is my driveway behind the house, as seen from the bedroom window. It's the messiest part of the space because it's where plants are being repotted, things are waiting to be relocated, etc. Just a general working area.
No, I didn't finally get around to cleaning the leaves out of the cactus bed -- it's the Opuntia that was being attacked, not doing the attacking! The attackers looked like this:
It's fawn season, so I'm not too surprised when I spot one in the garden or in a neighbor's yard.
For some strange reason, the mantis egg cases that I keep in the refrigerator all winter almost always hatch on Father's Day. I'd say at least 80% of the years that's when it happens.
Well, it has taken a little while, but the "cube" series of garden sculptures that I've been working on are finally available...
Something I've been working on lately. You may have seen these if you follow me on Instagram (hint, hint).
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