Our wood chip pathway has gotten totally overrun with them.
The six inches of rain we got in September has turned our backyard into a terrifying fungal lab experiment. If only they were edible! “Do you like your lasagna? We harvested the mushrooms from under the Sedum ‘Autumn Joy.’ The mushrooms in the salad came from the walkway.” Ick.
I picked up a Begonia luxurians at the end of summer at Cistus for a few dollars, knowing it wouldn’t get to spend much time outside before it had to come in for the winter.
Greg discovered that the smaller desiccated leaves look like spiders and he thought it would be hilarious to leave one on the floor, call me into the room, then point it out.
Guys, if Alfred Hitchcock had been in the room with me he would’ve offered me a contract on the spot. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed like that before. I’m tempted to leave one on Greg’s pillow but I know that I’ll see it, forget what it is, and scare myself all over again.
The upshot is that I had to give a big presentation at work the next morning and I had not a drop of adrenaline left in my body to make me nervous. But still, revenge must happen. Ideas?
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| Mike the ceramic squirrel makes these guys feel like they’re still outside |
Thank goodness we don’t have kids or cats. Danger, danger everywhere. Happy fall, y’all!
I bought this giant chain fern (Woodwardia fimbrata) last year at the HPSO Hortlandia sale. I wasn’t sure how it would like the rain garden. I knew it would like the winter wet but I didn’t know if it would be able to take the dryness in summer, not to mention the midday sun.
Well, this guy has behaved like a champ. It gets the carwash treatment in summer instead of a proper slow soak and yet it never showed signs of wilting or browning. I suspect I got lucky but I’ll take it.
Better yet, it reproduced.
I hope it will continue to reproduce because I would love for this area to be covered in giant ferns. In the wild these ferns can get to 10′ tall. Whoa.
The stats (source: Encyclopedia of Northwest Native Plants for Gardens and Landscapes):
His name is Louie. I looooove him.
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| Pinus strobus ‘Louie’ |
I went with Scott to the Salem Hardy Plant Society sale two weekends ago, which was GREAT. It was smaller, very well curated, and not super crowded. We were able to go to each and every booth, really look at what they had, then circle back and buy stuff. You paid the vendors directly so there were no mega lines to deal with, either.
Scott and I were making the rounds and he said, “Oh, Heather, look over there . . .” and I RAN to Louie and started running my hands all over the needles. I looked like an idiot and I promptly got a rash all over my arms. I’m the coolest!
I’d just gotten paid the day before so I was feeling like I needed to make up for the fact that I missed the Fall HPSO sale because I was broke. I’ve been in love with Louie ever since I saw him in Carolyn Kolb’s garden.
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| Photo by Loree Bohl. Source |
I always see Pinus contorta ‘Chief Joseph’ at spring plant sales and I die a little when I see that it costs more than my mortgage to buy a tiny six inch seedling.
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| Pinus contorta ‘Chief Joseph’. Image source: WSU |
Chief Joseph has a superior color in winter but it fades to green come spring. Louie remains a golden beacon all year long. I swear the photos are leaving him so much less golden than he appears in real life!
I’ve taken to storing my newest acquisitions on the back deck so I can make googoo eyes at them from bed. It’s gotten a little tight out there. The other adoption that I’m so excited about?
Helwingia chinensis. This is a plant I heard about in Dan Hinkley’s “Foliage First” talk at the Yard Garden & Patio show. Those flowers are fused to the leaf and eventually they’ll form a fruit:
It’s evergreen and it’s got that pretty purple veining. It’s hardy down to 0 and it’s available at Dancing Oaks.
Except, wait. I bought the male form. Does that mean no fruit? Do I need to buy a lady version now? Shit, the Internet says yes. Who wants to take a road trip to Dancing Oaks?
I got this Himalayan honeysuckle from Ricki at a plant exchange. I’ve come to realize that if Ricki tells you you need a plant, you listen.
The flowers are fairly unremarkable and I detect no fragrance on mine, though others report it has one. Reports also vary on its hardiness: Davesgarden reports 4a-9b while Annie’s Annuals says 9-11. Has anyone below 8b grown this one? Where it doesn’t die back to the ground in winter it can be cut back hard in the spring to keep its size in check. Mature size sounds to be 6-8′ tall and wide.
Reports also vary about where it should be sited. Mine is in part sun and gets regular water. It seems content so far. I’m so glad I found a spot for it.
My favorite plant in the garden this week is hosted by Loree at Danger Garden. Be sure to check out what she’s liking this week!
I was deadheading yesterday and I noticed that I had some agave pups that I could relocate. When I looked closer, one agave had a petticoat of pups that you could barely see, they were so smashed underneath. I actually had to dig Mama Duggar up, unwind all the pups, and put her back in the ground.
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| Mama Duggar this winter, plotting her fecundity |
All but one of these came from this agave.
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| NOID Agave americana? |
I thought it only right to give them names.
Edited to add: if any of you are unfamiliar with the Duggars, they’re an obnoxious family that had their own show on TLC because they had 19 kids, all of whom were named with J names. She was going to keep having babies “as long as the lord wanted her to.” Now they lobby Congress to outlaw birth control. Ick.
Now take it easy, lady. You’ve given me something to take to the next plant exchange! Your work here is done.
How’s your agave crop this year?
I feel a little silly naming this week’s favorite plant. It’s like admitting that you find holding chubby, adorable babies who don’t cry much to be awesome. Who doesn’t like those things? It’s easy.
And yet my favorite plant this week in my garden is my Colocasia esculenta ‘Black Coral’. It’s big and beautiful and easy to grow (it just wants lots of water). The biggest leaf is almost 2′ long.
The inky purple coloring is fantastic, too. The stats, per Plant Delights:
Hardy zones 7b-10
Sun or part-sun
42″ max height.
I was skeptical about this one when I planted in May because it looked so sad. Luckily it got down to business once the weather warmed.
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| May: newly planted and cat-proofed |
My Colocasia ‘Coffee Cups’ isn’t so bad either.
My Favorite Plant in the Garden this Week is hosted by Loree at Danger Garden. Be sure to check out her pick this week: Hedychium coccineum ‘Tara’.
Scott recently turned me on to Carol Klein’s wonderful BBC series Life in a Cottage Garden. BBC gardening shows are completely unlike the gardening shows we have in the U.S. They feature actual gardeners instead of landscape architects who are more concerned with your hardscaping and where to place your lavender plants.
Carol Klein is wonderfully goofy, exclaiming over discoveries in her garden, lamenting dead plants, then immediately and unapologetically finding a replacement. It’s so wonderful to see her running around in January in a ratty motorcycle jacket, dirty fingernails digging through her compost (pronounced COMpawst) heap. She would never get on American TV, which is a shame. She’s muddy and a little bit crazy, like most gardeners.
I learned so much about plant propagation just from the first episode. She inspired me to try propagating some of my plants, like my Echium candicans ‘Star of Madeira’ and my ‘Little Honey’ Oakleaf Hydrangea.
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| Hydrangea quercifolia ‘Little Honey’ |
I took two different approaches with the hydrangea: layering (which I learned about from Ricki) and cuttings tucked into “some nice gritty COMpawst.” Hopefully they’ll all take and I’ll have some to share and some to tuck into the beds. It’s such a small bright thing, why not make more? They don’t look super great right now, what with our heavy rain and humidity. I’m hoping they rebound.
I’m not sure the echium cuttings will take but there’s no harm in trying. I love that Carol takes cuttings of her tender plantings to her greenhouse, just in case the mother plant doesn’t make it through the winter. So smart!
This spring was my first real foray into seed starting and I had mixed results. The Amsonia hubrichtii seeds from Nan Ondra sprouted and I’ve potted them up in the hope that they’ll be transplanting size next spring. I had one lone Rudbeckia maxima seedling that I coddled and babied until I realized it was a weed. I felt so dumb.
When I started gardening I’d read gardening blogs and despair at the unending list of things those gardeners were doing: mulching, pinching back, deadheading, weeding, fertilizing (with what sounded like a different one for every plant!), pruning, thinning, collecting seeds, weeding, propagating . . . I thought I’d never have a nice garden because I didn’t have time for all that. Every year I manage to add something new to my routine; this year I started deadheading things and it doesn’t take much time or energy. And if I forget it’s okay, too. Everything builds from year to year and you get to the point where you don’t feel so much like you’re behind the eight ball. I mean, spring will always be crazy and my garden will always have things needing doing, but I actually fertilized my bamboo (and that weed I thought was Rudbeckia) this year! Go me.
Are there any other wonderful gardening shows I’m missing out on? I’m looking forward to spending time this winter tucked under a blanket, watching them.
