What's new here at Old Country Gardens? Well, I've got BIG NEWS!
Not only are my Egyptian onions sprouting, I've been working like crazy the last few days on my very own website.
It's hard for me to believe, I can be such a techno-dummy but on Thursday I bought the rights to a website and by that same night I had it up and running.
It's truly a work in progress, if you want to see my beginning efforts, simply go to www.melaniesperennials.com
There are hyperlinks on the first page of the site to both of my blogs. Lots of surprised planned for the near future too.
Tomorrow looks like a good day for photos, I can't wait!
So what's blooming in the garden today? Well, the biggest bloom by far is this one. What is it? It's a pumpkin and it's about to take over all of South Huntington!
Yellow is the predominant color in the late summer garden. The Ligularia 'Britt Marie Crawford' is just covered with bright yellow blooms today. If I have the time later, I will get tidy it up and remove one or two of the sunburned leaves.
People pooh-pooh the black eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida) plants but nothing beats them at this time of year. They've been blooming for at least 5 or 6 weeks now and show no sign of slowing down.
The solid green Liriope has sent up it's lavender colored spikes. I really like this plant as an edge to the garden bed.
Finally, not a bloom but how can you not fall in love with the amazing colors on the Coleus. The annuals are really starting to shine, it makes me wish I had planted more of them.
Late summer usually means a bumper crop of tomatoes. Here at Old Country Gardens I only have two tomato plants this year (shhh, don't tell everybody). I'm growing two heirloom varieties, one has yellow cherry tomatoes and the other are these red plum San Marzano Lampada tomatoes.
When the plum tomatoes first ripened I was a bit disappointed with their flavor. You see, I was cutting them up and putting them in my salads and they just didn't have the taste that I was looking for. Of course that means that they produced a gazillion tomatoes and now what was I supposed to do with them?
This weekend I decided to figure out a way to use my plum tomatoes. I know they're good for sauces because they're meaty with very little juice inside. Instead of sauce though I decided to use them in a tomato salad.
First I cut them into bite sized pieces. This is when you are happy they aren't juicy, they hardly make a mess when cutting them up.
Next I added basil that also came from the garden. When cutting my herbs, I simply stack a bunch of leaves and use a pair of kitchen scissors to cut small pieces.
Can you tell I like lots of basil? At this point you could also add some onions, or garlic if you would like.
Drizzle some good olive oil over the top, add salt and pepper to taste and stir all the ingredients. Let the tomatoes sit for a few hours for the best flavor. If I'm serving them outdoors I like them at room temperature but you can put them in the fridge to chill them too. Make them the day before a party to save yourself some work and don't forget to add a few basil leaves as garnish.
You could eat this with some plain italian bread. Or get a bit fancy, brush the bread slices with garlic flavored olive oil and grill them for a minutes.
Last night I made chicken salad, added these tomatoes to it and rolled them in soft tortilla shells for chicken & tomato wraps. Delicious!
A few weeks ago I bought a beautiful piece of artwork. I rarely buy anything that would be hung on the walls but saw a piece I just had to have!
Those of you who know me know that I love purple cone flowers. One of my rants though is that in my eye they are pink and the cone is orange, so where's the purple?
At the top here you can see the original water color I purchased from Kathleen McElwain. Kathleen is a wonderful artist who paints many of her watercolors while riding a bus in Austin Texas.
Now here's the kicker, Kathleen subscribes to my blogs and this lovely watercolor was based on one of my photos. How cool is that!!!
This is the actual photo that I had posted on one of my blogs, Kathleen subscribes to both of them so I don't know where it was originally.
By reading her blog, I see that you can also commission Kathleen to paint for you. What a great idea for holiday gifts.
You can see Kathleen's artwork at her Etsy site just by clicking "Buspaintings". I think I need to go through my photos and see if there's something else I'd like painted before I decide on a frame and location for the coneflower piece I already have.
Late summer is a difficult time for the garden. Many plants have finished blooming, others show signs of stress depending on what kind of summer has just passed.
Still, if you plan your garden well, there are all kinds of perennials that shine at this time. I have a few types of Eupatorium, this one is Eupatorium dubium 'Phantom' which was planted in the spring of 2008. The description states that it will only grow 4' tall but in it's second year now it's easily broken 5'. Then again, many perennials this year are taller than usual because of the extreme weather we've had.
One of the stars of the garden right now is this sweet little Sedum 'Lynda Windsor'. I've been a big fan of this Sedum from day one although very few people comment on it when they see it here. It has never reverted (that is, never lost it's dark purple foliage), stays small and compact and as you can see, the flower color is a perfect compliment to the foliage color. Combined with Origanum aureum (golden oregano) it's just stunning!
I don't remember planning this combination but I must say it's pretty fantastic. The extremely late daylily 'Royal Jestor' and the beginning blooms of Begonia grandis (hardy begonia). I'm in the mood to do a write up on this fantastic begonia and will post it today on my other blog, Melanie's Perennials. Just click on the blog name here if you want to visit there.
Here's a close-up of 'Royal Jestor'. A real beauty in my opinion.
The Ligularias are beginning to bloom, this one is 'Britt Marie Crawford'. At this time of year the foliage loses some of it's purple highlights but it still has quite a bit to offer as a showcase plant.
The Agastaches are still blooming. I think they might have been the "bloomingest" perennials in the garden this summer. I'm madly in love with them and will keep my eye on the perennial market in the future to find any new introductions.
Of course the Helenium 'Mardi Gras' is blooming like crazy. If I took the time to get out there and dead head it I would get an even longer season but right now any time I spend outside should be on weeding (check out the right edge of this photo...WEEDS!).
Hopefully I'll get some weeding done this weekend, unfortunately I tried to weed for a few hours yesterday but was almost immediately attacked by giant sized mosquitos. Might have to break down and use an insect repellant for now.
Off to post to my other blog and then outside in the garden (if the rains subside).
Heat and Humidity, it must be August. So what's a gardener to do when the mercury rises and all you want to do is stay by the pool?
Let's play with Herbs!
I grow a large number of herbs here at Old Country Gardens, some are perennials, others are purchased every spring. This summer though I learned a few new things about my herbs. First of all, they are just as happy (if not more happy) growing in pots.
In fact, as potted plants they are easy to maintain, rarely needing extra care. Just a simple pinch here and there and watering if we haven't had a recent rain. Better yet, put them in reach of your sprinkler system and you hardly have to do anything at all.
In this photo you are looking at a Thymus citriodorus (variegated lemon thyme), Mentha (basic garden mint that was here when we moved in) and Mentha suaveolens 'Variegata' (pineapple mint or also known as apple mint).
Just as an aside, I do not call them by their botanical names in the garden, I'm just including those here for readers in other countries that are looking for the same plants.
My mouth starts watering when I look at this photo. There are two different basils featured here (Ocimum basilicum in botanical terms) with the solid green leaf and the variegated Ocimum citriodorum 'Pesto Perpetuo' (let's just say citrus basil).
The citrus basil is a new variety and is patented so propagation is prohibited but what I've recently discovered is that most herbs have been around forever and of course, nobody holds a patent on them. This means that you can propigate most of your herbs till the cows come home and that's exactly what I'm going to do here.
It turns out that many herbs are quite easy to propigate with simple cuttings.
In this smaller pot are three plants, Cymbopogon (Lemongrass), Ocimum 'African Blue' (African Blue Basil) and Oreganum vulgare (true Oregano). Yum, all three are excellent for those fun summer dishes.
Here's a close up of the African Blue basil, a favorite of mine. I do admit that I let it go to flower as those blooms are just so lovely.
So tell me, what herbs are growing in your garden?
Heat and Humidity, that's August around here. Actually, this year the heat has been pretty mild but that darn humidity...
This time of year I find very little energy for the garden. Thank goodness for containers, they really start to steal the show now.
Not having huge funds to blow on container plants, I tried to use plants already available to me. Almost all of my containers have Hosta in them and I'm totally sold now on using them forever more as container plants. A single flat of Impatiens gave me enough fillers to add to all the containers and I still had enough left to plant a few in the front shade bed.
A single Hosta, one impatiens and a small slip of ivy is all it took to fill this upside down birdbath base. I love how the petals of the impatiens fall into the empty container resting below. Another good idea is to put a simple water feature underneath to catch the petals.
More simple containers, mostly with Hosta. The hosta in the garden have been inundated with slugs this year but the ones in the containers show pristine foliage.
Last week I left my camera at a friends house. It was like I lost my arm, I couldn't take photos for a week! We have perfect cloud cover today so hopefully I'll get to stop at a few places and take pictures of some of the great containers I've seen in my neighborhood.
From the title of today's post you might think I'm going to write about photography. Nope, not at all where my mind is right now. Instead, my mind is all over the place, way too many things going on and not enough brain cells to dedicate to a single task.
So, I have been trying to focus, focus on what is most important at this moment. Unfortunately, that focus does not include much creative genius for blogging. I know I've been slow here the last few weeks, hopefully once life settles down a bit I will get back to things full steam ahead.
Isn't this daylily just stunning? It's 'Blowing Bubbles' by Joel Thomas Polston of Dayton Ohio. I'm not usually a fan of the round ruffled daylilies but this one opens perfectly like this with every bloom.
We've had so much rain and humidity the past week. It was a surprise when the sun peeped out this evening for an hour or two. Almost immediately the butterflies came to the Buddlea (butterfly bush).
I might have to vote the Agastache as the bloomingest summer perennial. It has just been fantastic for so long now. Next year I need to make sure I get more of these beauties. What you can't tell from the photo is how delicious the foliage smells. Yum!
Ah ha, more my type of daylily here with the oldie but most beautiful 'Asiatic Pheasant' which is mid-late bloomer in my garden.
One more shot for you shade lovers. I don't remember planning this combination of white Stokesia (stokes aster) with the Brunera 'Jack Frost' but wowza! What a perfect pairing.
Ok, now I feel a bit better although this post isn't up to par with my usual prose.
On the right is Felder Rushing, on the left is Darrell Trout and in the center is my mom.
On Monday I had the wonderful pleasure of opening my garden to these two garden dignitaries. Unfortunately one thing I didn't do was take the time to shoot some decent photographs.
Both Felder and Darrell are garden writers. Darrell's been here before, he wrote a lovely article about my garden back in 2006.
As they arrived and drove down my driveway, I had to stop and stare at the truck Felder was driving. It was the most amazing truck I'd ever seen, a well worn Ford 150 complete with hood ornament and Hula girl affixed to the front dash. The most amazing part though was the garden in the back bed, I had never imagined anything like it.
There were wonderful twisty bottle trees, succulents galore, and all kind of lovely little doo-dads.
This is what a young sprout of a bottle tree looks like, pretty cool huh? I'm going to have to watch my garden carefully and see if any of these are sprouting around here.
Holding the succulents in one area was a little golf cart tire. Bet there's going to be a run on golf cart repair shops now, I want one of these!
Rather than post the whole thing here, I'm going to put the photos of what they saw in the garden on my other blog, Melanie's Perennials.
We're being socked here with high humidity, it makes it hard to want to get out there and do anything in the garden.
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!!!
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.
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!
What's new here at Old Country Gardens? Well, I've got BIG NEWS!
