Back in the garden again!

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.

High temperatures around 85ºF (29ºC) with lower than normal humidity have given me the will to spend some time working outside. With a long list of tasks to tackle -- some of them being quite labor intensive -- I just jumped in with the first thing I saw: Milkweed.

New sculptures

I've been working on some new garden sculpture designs, sticking to my current focus of mixing wooden cubes with metal rods.

This is a variation on the earlier work, and I call this one "Quad Cubes Z".

What the deer can't resist

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.

As I watched the deer nosed into my raised bed, seemingly eyeing my solitary remaining purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). I waited, knuckles close to the window ready to knock if it looked as if it would bite the last bloom.

Too big - pachypodium

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...

...at my Pachypodium lamerei. That big, spiky beast that is a focal point of the front garden. Wait, where is it?!

Castor Bean: July

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.

If they behave as they did last year they will reach 10' (3m) or more tall by the end of the summer, but right now they're far from that.

Bananas

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...

...but there's still plenty of time left for them to become truly huge and awesome. It's nice to snapshot what they look like at different times during the year.

It's baby raccoon season

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?

The first clue was my trash can being covered by muddy little footprints this morning.

Another surprise

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:

The area takes a little while to get going, but is starting to look good now. The "surprise" item is a plant...

The best surprise

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.

This year (after its makeover) it still seems to be settling in, with greener water than I'd like, but lots of oxygenator plants. Those are the key to today's post, the anacharis and hornwort.

Some light

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.

(I took these a couple of weeks ago, but I have seen a variation of it every day since. )