Picture Day

Every day is picture day in my garden. At least once a day I wander around with my camera in hand. Mostly the dogs ignore my efforts, sometimes they find their way into the background of my garden pictures. I usually keep my eye out for that in an attempt to avoid butt and bathroom shots.

The other day, Judy's little lime hosta caught my eye while I had camera in hand. I didn't notice until I was looking at the images on my computer that it caught Maggie's attention to. Usually, if they are the close when I am taking pictures, the dogs are trying to knock me over. Apparently, she just wanted to see what was so interesting.

Pincushion Flower in Red

This Knautia was here when we moved in. The pincushion flowers are lovely and the first flush is gorgeous, reaching its peak when the plant itself is a compact little mound. But that is the best of it and athough it probably last longer than I would admit, it is very short-lived when compared to the rest of the gardening season when I have to deal with a plant that is a complete disaster.

It is weedy and can get really leggy. It can be cut back and will produce a second flush but it is pitiful to see. By fall, it will be flat and sprawling. To top that all off, it self-seeds voraciously and the seedlings are splayed out and squat.

It is resilient. I will give it that. It will grow anywhere and stretch to reach the sun. In the nursery, it blooms as high as the delphinium. Of course, if I ever weeded the nursery, all thse blooms would come tumbling down!

I've yet to find the permanent spot where I can tolerate it but I keep moving it every year, still looking. This means that I now have Knautia everywhere .

The Dragonfly and the Frog

This story starts with mosquitoes. In late spring, our yard was full of them. I think I went through a whole can of Deep Woods Off in one week. Then, much to my delight, I woke up one morning in early summer to find the yard full of dragonfly. I really mean full. They were everywhere. I couldn't move without a cloud of them moving in front of me. We can sit at the fire today and watch clouds of them fly above us. The mosquitoes mostly stopped being a problem.

A couple weeks later, a massive amount of frogs showed up in the yard. They too, were everywhere. Hiding in the garden, the lawn and even in the gravel of the sideyard and drive. One day I stood in one spot and was able to turn around in a circle and take pictures of 9 different frogs around me and frogs are good at hiding! They are entertaining and come in at least 4 colour patterns that I have seen. Some are small, some are huge. All of them panic when people or dogs are on the move. After a day or two, the dogs knew we did not want them to hunt the frogs and most of them were resisting the urge.

I was as delighted with the frogs as I was with the dragonfly. Until last week. I was standing at the raspberry patch, eating berries when a frog came summersaulting out of the nursery and landed on his feet in the drive right at my feet. My firtst thought was, WOW, that little guy can jump high! Then I looked down and saw the dragonfly sticking out of his mouth. Not very much of the dragonfly either. Not sure why I didn't make the connection before I saw it but I have it now.

It is officially open season on frogs in our yard. I have released the 4-legged frog hunters, who are not normally allowed to hunt in the garden, in hope of giving the dragonfly a fighting chance. And so I don't see the mosquito population double overnight.

A flurry of unexpected p!nk

When I first started gardening, pink was my colour. Everything I bought and planted was pink. Then I fell in love with something orange and everything changed. Although yellow was the last colour I came around to, today you can find every colour bloom in my garden except coral, or salmon, whichever you prefer to call it. To me it is one colour. That odd colour that in pale or dark shades, looks good with no other colour. I admit, I have often thought of planting a single colour border in those shades because what gardener wants to be missing a colour? lol.

Recently, a flurry of unexpected pink has arrived in my garden. I was certain my Acapulco lily was lost, yet here it is blooming up a storm! There are 2 pink daylily, neither of which was expected. 1 was given to me as yellow and while it has yellow, it is very pink from a distance. The other I have still not been able to figure out what it is or where it came from. My map is either incomplete or wrong. Hazzards of rushing to get everything in before snow. Every summer, I come to regret my lack of recordkeeping in the fall.

This rush of pink has renewed my appreciation for pink flowers and had me doodling pink patches into the map that I might want to add.

Anyone seen my spade?

I have several spades. Several shovels, hand diggers and rakes. Our yard is big. I don't want to have to walk a block to grab a spade when I need to dig a small hole. I leave the spades upright and either leaning on something or stuck in the dirt and standing. It usually makes them easier to find.

Clearly, I have not been digging enough in the front if the Virginia Creeper had time to overtake my spade leaning on the tree. This kind of thing happens more often than you would think. For instance, I have at least 7 hand diggers and for over a month now, I have not been able to find one! I think most of them are out there somewhere under the plants but it is possible one dog or another has dragged a couple away into the fields. Not likely, but possible. Our dogs usually drag things into the yard, not out.

The corner of the boardwalk

The Boardwalk Garden has always had its' challenges. When we moved in, it was totally shade from trees overhead. Slowly, we have opened it up a bit but the reality is that we are not willing to remove the trees from around the house. They are what keeps the house protected from the weather and, importantly, cool in the summer! So it still remains, largely a full shade garden.

They don't actually mean full shade when they label plants full shade. Because to a plant, and consequently to a gardener, full shade really means 'not much sun'. There is an expectation that there will always be some sun. Its like blue meaning purple in flower talk. You can't overthink it or it will drive you nuts. Finding plants that will grow in this garden has been a long journey full of dead plants.

The second challenge is our pets. Both cats and dogs alike love this garden. The cats love it for the large patch of catmint just off the deck. They roll in it a lot. The patch always seems to survive them but some years, it is a pretty flat patch in the middle. The dogs love it for the shade. There are lots of places to lay with the sideyard adjacent to the garden and the boardwalk on the other side but they love laying in the cool earth. Or should I say, laying in the hole they have dug in the cool earth. There are parts of this garden I have surrendered to the dogs. Not bothering to plant there anymore.

Another difficulty is that dogs always take the shortest path to the target and when they lay in the shady sideyard and a vehicle pulls in, the shortest path is directly through this garden. I have still not decided if I will continue to leave this path unplanted or if I am going to try and build some sort of tall-ish barrier to discourage them. I will probably follow their cue and take the path of least resistance. The path is likely here to stay, I do not want a dog with a broken leg and that is always the danger with a tall-ish barrier - you run the risk they try to jump.

Hosta, Lady Slipper and of course, Lamium, do well here. Last year I tried Columbine. This year they are the saddest looking Columbine I have ever seen. I will move them. Add hosta in spots and try something else. Coral Bells did not work either but I have been trying to persist with one specimen. This is the year, though, that I take pity on her and give her a happier home. Not sure where I will move her to yet but her bags are packed and she is just waiting for me to find her a little bit more sun and maybe a little less damp.

Which brings me to the final challenge in this garden. It is always damp. It never dries out completely. It is a raised bed garden that was built by the previous owner and filled with garden soil, surrounded by rock in a full shade setting. It wicks up water and hangs onto it forever... and a day. It is why the dogs like to dig sleeping holes in it. Summer afternoons, you can count on at least two of them sleeping here.

Karma Candy One

Karma Candies are my thing. I like to look for them, notice them, savour and enjoy them. Then I like to share them. A Karma Candy is when everything in the universe comes together in an unexpected way all for the benefit of you (or in my case, me)! I got not one, but two Karma Candies in my garden this year, all from the kindness of a friend.

Last year, Heike gave me two daylily divisions (well, actually, she let me dig up her garden) one of which was 'red' and one of which was 'yellow'. That was the totality of the description. Red sounded good to me. Never met a red daylily I didn't like. Yellow had me seeing bright, dark, golden yellow and feeling a little worried. I am not overly fond of yellow and really dislike a lot of yellow shades. I always think that if I don't like the flower, I will get rid of the plant but when you have a lot of space, you never really get rid of anything. The Knautia here is a good case in point. If I bring it home, I am usually stuck with it. But I am always willing to take a chance on a flower so I jumped at the chance to take them both.

Last week, I stepped into the garden and immediately noticed her. Heike's Daylily, 'Little Rainbow'. Isn't she stunning? In fact, when I saw her I thought now who are you and where did you come from? I got a load of plants at an end of season sale that were not all blooming last year so I went to my garden journal to figure out the puzzle. She was unexpected.

As I stood in the garden with my camera and journal sketch that passes for a garden map here, it really looked like the daylily in this spot should be Heike's yellow. Clicking away trying to get every angle, I kept thinking my map had to be wrong. Surely she would not have described THIS as yellow!

So I start texting pictures and peppering her with questions. Does your 'yellow' daylily have any pink in it? Is this it ? Then came the answer. Yep, this is it. But she is soooooo much more than 'yellow'. She is a rock star. My new favourite. 'Little Rainbow'. Even her name rocks.

Karma Candy number one. Number two will be in a following post (as soon as it opens and I can get a photo).

Showing Off Daylilies - Yellow

This isn't all of my yellow daylilies, but it's some of my favourites...

daylily So Lovely

daylily Atlanta Full House

daylily Delicate Design

daylily Jersey Spider