All Out!

This morning my daughters left with their dad for a three day trip to Maryland where they will be attending a family wedding.

Mom and I (and of course Calie-the-wonderdoodle-dog) are here and going to go ALL OUT during the next few days.

We've got a garbage dumpster in the driveway with lots of space to fill. The basement and attic are in desperate need of a cleaning and thankfully it's not too hot or the attic would not be a good place to be. I'll still only be able to stay up there a short time and will remember to drink lots of water.

Sunday we are planning a huge garage sale to hopefully unload lots of these goodies before throwing them in the garbage (or if in good condition, donate them to a church).

Gail, you asked if our house will be sold. That is still up in the air and certainly a possibility but I sure would like to finish out the next two years of Emily's high school education here.

In between inside cleaning we will also be going ALL OUT in the garden! On Monday I will have the unbelievable pleasure of showing my garden to two very well known garden writers. This might be my last hurrah for a time and I plan on enjoying every moment.

Darrell Trout has been here before and besides his many great books, he has also written quite a nice piece about my garden for Newsday a few years ago. Traveling with Darrell will be Felder Rushing who is a writer I've hoped to meet for many years.

Needless to say we'll be weeding like lunatics here.

While I've got my fingers crossed that the daylilies will still be looking good on Monday, I know that many other perennials here will be strutting their stuff.

Both Darrell and Felder are into "Garden Junque" and I've got lots of that for them to see. Actually, many pieces here were rescues from Darrell's last garden on Shelter Island. I hope he likes what I've done with them.

Now I need to remember to plant those bowling shoes too...

If I don't post in the next few days you'll all know what I'm doing. Going ALL OUT!!!

Landscape scenes

Taking photos of individual blooms is easy. You look through the view finder, check the surroundings and shoot.

If I wanted this photo of the hardy Geranium 'Nimbus' and the Coreopsis 'Zagreb' to be perfect, I would have had to take a little pair of scissors first and clip the dead heads off the Coreopsis. Still, it only took a moment for me to set this photo up and take it.

Stepping back a little further, you can focus on a small planting area. Still, not too difficult although there's more to look at inside your frame. Taking this photo out near the street I had to crouch down slightly so you didn't see the blacktop just at the top of the photo. Of course, there's also photo shop to help you crop out some things.

The more plant material (subject) you mix into the photo, the more difficult it seems to be to get a pleasing shot. Yesterday I tried to shoot a few landscape shots in the garden. This spot looked lovely but the camera wasn't as kind as I had hoped (or was it the photographer?).

I like the way this one came out with the misty air showing. Again, if I wanted this to be better I would have pulled my car out of the driveway (can you see it?). There wasn't any sense though in doing this because there's also a big black garbage dumpster in the driveway but hopefully I hid it well with the plant material.

Of course landscape shots wouldn't be complete without one that includes my little bicycle. Now you can see it with the charming basket that Bonnie found for me.

The back bed around the pool is such a riot of color that I can't make myself leave that area. It should be at peak for another week or two. The main focus of this bed is daylilies, if I had the luxury of redesigning it now I'd add some more mid and late summer blooms so it continued to put on a show for the whole summer. I have very few early spring blooming plants here as I really want it to shine during swimming season.

Here's one of the views from the top of the pool patio looking down. Hmm, I wonder why there's only one single Liatris stalk there, must let that baby increase! The Platycodon (balloon flowers) have been wonderful this season, today I'll try to remember to deadhead these a bit. It only takes a few minutes and keeps them blooming for so much longer.

Hope you liked my landscape shots.
Melanie

Bird Food

Mid July into August is when the cone flowers really start to shine. The Echinacea (Purple cone flowers) are the first, they're going quite strong now. If I find the time to get out there and cut off some of the older blooms, they'll send out new blooms all the way until the end of summer.

If you only have room for one kind of cone flower, this is the one I'd recommend. It brings flocks of bright yellow goldfinch to the garden, an amazing sight and sound!


The Liatris are revving up too now. According to many gardening books their nickname is "Kansas gay feather" but I rarely hear them actually called that around here. I don't know why I didn't take a photo of one in full bloom, guess it's something to do today.

My garden used to be filled with purple Liatris but one day I had a white one seed into the garden and now it's seeded all over.

Isn't it beautiful! The gold finch love the Liatris too, they cling sideways on the stalks and pick out the seeds (you have to let them turn brown and go to seed first). On a warm sunny afternoon you can go out and find Liatris stalks covered with fat happy bumblebees. That's another picture I'd like to get one day this week. Not today though since we are getting some needed rain.


Tall plants are so cool, I have quite a few different varieties in the garden. This is Rudbeckia maxima, it's at least 6' (2 meters) tall. Birds try to land on it for the seed and it's quite comical to see them suddenly bow down under the weight of a tiny bird.

Here's a corner of the bed behind my swimming pool. Right now it's a riot of color, just my kind of garden! You can see the Rudbeckia maxima in the top left corner. The grass that's just coming into bloom is Molina 'Skyracer', another excellent tall plant accent, quite different from any other grasses here.

The other day I was in the pool just on the other side of this bed. As I was swimming laps I realized that there were goldfinch in the bed just feet away from me. I felt like a submarine as I slowly cruised back and forth with just my head sticking out of the water.

At first I thought that I should get my camera and keep it perched on the pool edge but then I thought maybe that might not be a good idea.

Somehow I can just invision Calie the wonder-doodle-dog kicking that camera into the pool. She just goes wild when somebody is swimming, she begs for us to splash her and then tries to catch the water droplets in the air. What a crazy dog!

Stay Tuned!

Nope, I didn't run off to the Caribbean or on a European jaunt. Just busy, busy, busy! We've got a dumpster in the driveway and are trying to remove 25 years worth of accumulated "treasures" from this old house.

This afternoon I will be at SUNY Farmingdale, hopefully enrolling in my new life as a college student! I'll be sure to bring my camera and I'll try to get some more wonderful photos. I'm in a photo taking mood today.

Till later,
Melanie

Final Days

Just a short post for today. We are winding down the sales season here at Old Country Gardens. Today we'll be open for business or even just for walking around. The colors in the garden are to-die-for, eye candy where ever you turn.

Next Sunday July 26th, will be our last sales day, it will be combined with a huge garage sale out by the curb. Our 15 year old Emily will be running the sale, all proceeds will go towards buying her a new laptop which she will need for her junior year at high school.

Thanks to so many of you I've learned so much this first year of garden sales and I'm filled with so many new ideas for the future!

With love,
Melanie

Picnic in a delightful garden

This past Tuesday I had the pleasure of joining the women from my local garden club at a picnic lunch. Over the past few years we've been changing the location of this luncheon, this year we met at the home of Betty & John in Cold Spring Harbor.

Betty is an extremely active member of our club. Her husband John could easily be nominated as the most helpful husband. He is always there with a pick-up truck to help us move things or more invaluable, he uses his incredible talent as a master carpenter to build all kinds of wonderful things.

John's talents are immediately visible as you pull up to their beautiful home, my eye was instantly caught by the clever plant stands placed around the garden.


Betty & John have deep shade and dappled light throughout their garden. Their choice of plant material is key, everything is so lush and restful. I admit I had to stop and drool over John's arbor, it's a garden accent that has been on my wish-list for many years.

If I had to chose one favorite accent piece though, it would be this bridge used to dress up a very shady corner (almost impossible to photograph). I was so happy to be able to see this garden, they had a plant combination here that I've never seen before and can't wait to copy!


The weather was absolutely perfect for a picnic, sunny and high 70's but not the best conditions for photography as the dappled sunlight created quite a few shadows. This photo does not do justice to the wonderful interplay between the Fallopia japonica and Lysamachia clethroides (Gooseneck loosestrife).

It was the second time in two days that I had fallen in love with a plant combination including Fallopia. This spurred an instant question...Why don't I grow that plant?


If you have problems with squirrels getting into your birdfeeder, just ask John how to stop them. He built a baffle, a shield with plexiglass all around the base of the feeder and the squirrels now have to wait on the ground for the spilled seed.


Another accent that has been on my wish list for years is a tool shed that looks like an outhouse. John's outhouse looks so realistic that Betty told me a worker one day asked if he could use it :-)

Not everything was built by John, as I wrote earlier, there were wonderful specimans of plant material. I liked the way this variegated hosta spilled down over this small boulder.

The dreaded Houttunia!!! But wait, it was growing delightfully through a skirt of pacysandra. how clever, I don't ever think I saw such a nice way to grow Houttunia.

To finish things off, here's a close-up of one of the beautiful Rudbeckia blooms in the front yard.

Many thanks to Betty & John for hosting us in such a regal manner this Tuesday.

Melanie

The Garden Blues

My favorite color is blue but it's a color that we rarely consider in our garden. So many plants that are billed as "blue" are really lavenders or purples.

An instant way to add blue to the garden is to add some magnificent containers. I took these photographs on Sunday but would not purchase these containers at the the store I saw them. The prices were totally ridiculous, running from $299 to $799 per container.

Perhaps those high prices were the reason that there was still so much stock in the container section of this nursery? Luckily I stopped at another nursery on the way home and found very similar containers for a fraction of the price. I plan on going back there and will try to remember to take some pictures.

I did see this blue container there, peeking out through a skirt of Hydrangeas. Lovely! Better yet is the tropical feeling Hosta planted in the container. Hosta make excellent container plants.

There definitely are some true blue perennials in the garden, I snap them up whenever I can. This is a Playtocodon, a balloon flower and it's a double variety.

Hardy Geranium 'Rozanne' is blue although my camera has changed the color to a lavender. It's been blooming for two months now and I'm extremely happy I finally bought it this spring.

Hydrangeas come in different colors. Many times you will buy one that is one color only to find it change color completely in your garden. I have one variety that was pink in the pot, turned chartreuse the next year and settled down as a deep blue.

The color of your Hydrangea blooms is dependent upon the type of soil you have. Here on Long Island we have acidic soil which tends to turn most Hydrangeas different shade of blue. Sometimes though if you plant your Hydrangeas close to the foundation of your house you can get them to stay pink, another trick is to add lime to the soil. As for me, I prefer the blue ones anyway so don't do anything special to change the color.

On Sunday I went to Plant Field Arboretum. I have to say I was a bit disappointed, most of the gardens were not at their best, either before bloom or in most cases after bloom. It was a whole different scenario here in my own garden which is just bursting with color right now.

This photo shows a Lace cap Hydrangea combined with Fallopia japonica. It was a stunning combination!

Here at Old Country Gardens a much simpler combination of Platycodon and Daylilies but still just as beautiful.

Do you have blue in your garden?

Daylily Show!

As predicted there were tons of daylily stars in the garden today. This is Tom Polstons 'Hawaiian Coral' which is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.

Sunday July 11th is the Long Island Daylily Society's annual flower show where you can see hundreds and hundreds of daylilies on display.

While I won't be entering individual daylily scapes, I am registered to enter in two design catagories. The first is a mass design with the theme "Monet". The second is a table setting and that theme is "Water Lilies", a theme that I find hard to be creative with. To me, daylilies and water lilies are such different creatures that my brain doesn't want to try to fit one into the other's catagory.


This is daylily 'Zip Boom Bah' and the color in this photo is quite accurate.

Most people don't realize how much work is involved in putting on any type of flower show. I have not had the spare time to devote to the daylily club in the past few years but I will be working at the show. From 8:30 to 10:30 am I will enter my designs and then work the classification table with my long time friend Gene. When the judges are on the show floor at 11:00, I'm free to leave. At that time I'll be heading over to Martin Viette's to take a peek and see what treasures I might find there.

Once I've scoured the sales areas at Martin Viette's it's back to Planting Fields for me. If I remember, I'll pack a picnic lunch and spend an hour or two walking the amazing grounds. The weather is supposed to be lovely by afternoon but I will wish for a few passing clouds so I can take lots and lots of photos.

Today was perfect picture weather. I took 150 photos in the garden and many of them are wonderful. As soon as I finish this post I'll put a few up on my othe blog Melanie's Perennials. This photo shows a double Platycodon (Balloon flower) that has been hard for me to grow but well worth the effort.

The flower show at Planting Fields is open to the public at 1:30 pm. Once you park in the main parking lot you'll have to walk to the Hort Center, it's a bit of a walk but a lovely one. Maybe I'll see you there!

Melanie

A Hummingbird in the garden!

Wednesday morning I was standing in the corner of my unfinished kitchen garden trying to take a photo of the incredibly tall Monarda and Echinaceas when I heard a strange sound. It was a vrrrmmmm noise and it passed so close to my ear that I thought my hair moved.


To my utter delight, I saw my first ever (in my own garden) hummingbird! It was the most magical moment and I just stood there forever watching it flit back and forth.

Thursday morning Don went out there with my camera. Sure enough, the hummingbird was back and this is as good a photo as anybody could hope for.

There are two new varieties of Monarda blooming in the front yard and I think they might actually not be red! Hooray!!! One is more pinkish and the other (not yet photographed) is lavender!

Hopefully lots of people will get to see them in their glory tomorrow. Today three delightful visitors came to see the daylilies, tomorrow the garden will be spectacular. It appears that I will be selling quite a few more plant material than I originally planned so stop by, you never know what kind of bargain you'll get.

Tonight I spent two hours walking the track at the highschool and never got to live-head the daylilies. That means I'll be out there super early tomorrow morning.

Melanie

The right angle

When taking photos of blooms in your gardens, there are many different angles from which you can shoot. The most common angle is head on, an "in your face" kind of shot.

This daylily is 'Lounge Lizard' by Curt Hanson of Ohio. I am just head over heels in love with this plant, it's got all the bells and whistles, great blooms, scapes and bud count. The silver edge is just icing on the cake.

The full frontal shot though can miss quite a few details. See here, taken from the side you will see the amazing curls of the sepals. This is so incredibly cool!

Most unusual for me is to zoom in so tight that I crop out parts of the flower but I was in the mood to experiment. I have to admit, I thought I'd hate this technique but instead, I'm crazy about it. I like this photo so much that I might try printing it out to put in a frame.

One last photo, this is a follow up to yesterday's post about the right light. This afternoon I just happened to notice the sun coming through the Begonia grandis (Hardy Begonia). Isn't it beautiful?

Tomorrow my Mom is coming in from Florida. She is the worlds best weeder and I just can't wait to see her whip my garden back into shape.

The right light

The past few days have been increasingly frustrating for me when it comes to taking photos in my garden. It prompted me to post about garden photography. I'm not by any means a professional photographer but my photos have been chosen to grace the front cover and inside of chapter of a gardening book a few years ago and they've been posted here for a few years now.

First of all, I use a simple point and shoot digital camera. It's not even a newer model but it has an excellent zoom lens which was my first criteria. So fair warning, my tips are not applicable to the super deluxe cameras that are out on the market.

Lighting is a big key factor in garden photography. The absolute best light is a good cloud cover. Full sun or early morning sun is very hard for me to work with.

The opening shot was taken in full late afternoon sun which can sometimes be used to your advantage. The flower is Campanula punctata which is just a pale creamy pink on the outside. What's cool about this shot is that the bloom is almost translucent and the spotting you see is actually on the inside of the bloom.

Here's the same flower taken on a cloudy day (see the sky?) and from underneath so you can see the spots. By the way, those power lines just totally ruin the photo. Never forget to look around inside your frame and make sure that there aren't other distractions in the background.


Working in the shade can bring another set of problems. I took quite a few photos of my Hydrangea blooms in hopes of getting one with enough clarity to crop and zoom. This isn't close to what I'd like to have but good enough to share.

Blues and sometimes magenta pinks are just impossible to capture. In the days of film, it was very hard to be able to capture the blues and I'm still having the same problem with digital cameras. In real life these blooms don't look like they have some terrible fungus growing on them. Yuck!

Here I was able to capture the color pretty well but unfortunately the strong dappled lighting coming through the trees creates shadows that distract you from the true beauty of these Hydrangeas.

By the way, forget the roses, give me Hydrangeas any day. My next garden is going to be chock full of these luscious, romantic blooms.

Last week I was complaining about the never ending rainy season we were having. One advantage though was the hundreds and hundreds of photos I was able to take.

So cross your fingers for me, I'd love just a half hour of cloud cover in the morning so I can take some more pictures to share with you.

Melanie