Still here 8 August 2009

Cup Plant blooms, sunlit on 27 July

I’m still here.  As those of you that personally know me already know, personal issues have kept me busy of late.  Today was the first day in a while that I got to spend much time in the garden.  The nursery lost so much business in our extremely cold, rainy June that they’ve already brought out their “buy one get one free” sale on all but the largest perennials, so I recently bought some more plants there, and today I planted most of them.  One was the relatively new echinacea, ‘Fragrant Angel,’ which is a creamy color somewhere between soft cream and lemon yellow, and while it is a bit fragrant, it is not as fragrant as its name might lead you to believe.  (Here is one of many pages about it on the web, which also notes the lack of strong fragrance, which many gardeners find important to note as many catalogs make it sound like it’s ridiculously fragrant.)  It was originally quite expensive, about twice the price of their regular perennials (maybe even a bit more), but I got it at regular perennial price in their sale, which quite pleased me, and to be honest, was the biggest reason I bought it instead of buying one of the other echinaceas in the sale.  Though I did also like its off-white color to provide some contrast to my three pure white echinaceas.  Even though I didn’t have any more space near them after planting the several more smaller-potted echinaceas I already got earlier this summer, and thus it is off by itself, though with its more daisy-like appearance than other echinaceas’ lowered petals (also noted at the link), perhaps it is best it’s closer to the shasta daisy than to the rest of its clan.

Anyhow, I also planted another hyssop (much larger in size than the three already in the garden, and blooming, unlike them), two more perennial salvias (Salvia nemerosa to be specific; ‘Blue Hill’ and a deep rose one which is a nice complement to all the mauve and pale pink flowers in the garden, as I have a tendency to pick those latter two shades of pink), another agastache, another rock cress, another pineapple sage, and…I think something else.  I also transplanted a mountain mint and the lemon verbena.  It’s been so windy this summer that the tall plants near the ‘wind tunnel’ are pretty much permanently on severe tilt (some at ninety degree angles or more!), and thus are shading the lemon verbena more than it otherwise would have been, so I hope its new home is sunnier.   I also finally FINALLY planted the poor front-garden dahlias (3 ‘Winsome,’ which is probably my favorite glad, as well as 1 each of ‘Thomas Edison,’ ‘Juanita,’ ‘Prince Noir,’ ‘Jersey’s Beauty,’ and ‘Kidd’s Climax,’ all from Old House Gardens)  – all of them are more heat-tolerant than most dahlias, which typically prefer the warm-but-not-hot days and cool nights of their originating land), and at the bottom of the box I’d been storing them in, discovered a gladiola that had been unwittingly buried beneath them (‘Atom,’ also from OHG, as are my other glads) and so planted it with the other short glads.  The glads have been growing quite vigorously in the warmer weather and the sporadic deep rains and with the manure mulch, but they haven’t budded yet.  Many other gardens have blooming glads now, though, although I imagine they planted theirs before I did.  I see more gardens with glads every year here and I am happy to see them coming somewhat back into fashion after decades out of style in gardens.  I also see the gorgeous huge blooms for sale at the farmers’ market every year now, which makes me happy too.   Anyway, I then used the last of the manure to mulch the dahlias and glad ‘Atom.’  I’ve still got the rest of the dahlias to plant in the back garden, which is often 10 degrees F colder (sometimes more) than the front garden on summer days.

In addition to ‘Atom,’ the glads I’m growing are:  ‘Apricot Lustre,’ ‘Bibi,’ ‘Elvira,’ ‘Fidelio,’ ‘Friendship,’ ‘Lucky Star,’ ‘Melodie,’ ‘Spic and Span,’ ‘Violet Queen,’ and ‘White Friendship’ (the last one isn’t on OHG’s website any more, but I suppose the name is pretty self-explanatory – it’s a white version of ‘Friendship’).  That sounds like a lot, but like with the dahlias, with several of them, I only planted one corm.  Also like the dahlias, I planted them in clumps with two to four types in each clump.  (I also tend to do this with hardy bulbs, though in those cases, they aren’t always the same species.)  I base my clumpings loosely on color, height/size, and bloom time.

One of my mums and one of my asters are already blooming, as has been common in other gardens in recent weeks.  I don’t know if it was the gloomy weather or the cold weather, or a combination of both, that triggered their early bloom.  (Some people posit that it’s short day length that triggers the fall-blooming flowers; others posit that it’s colder temperatures.  As far as I know, nobody has yet proven which is true, or whether for some plants it is a combination of both.)  Both of my blooming ones typically bloom in September here, sometimes into October, and some asters start blooming in October.  I’ve noted that most of my other asters and some of my other mums, as well as some of my goldenrods, are also already budded up.  In some gardens literally all of the mums or asters are already blooming; in many cases they began by mid-July.  It is odd to see so many of them blooming now here, and I find it sad that the autumn flower display, normally so gorgeous here in New England, will be somewhat less than normal.

My scarlet runner beans have grown rampantly this summer – many of the vines are eight feet now – and then this week they abruptly finally started to bloom.  So far the species (Scarlet Runner Bean) and cultivar ‘Painted Lady’ are blooming.  I suppose it is not surprising to hear that scarlet runner bean has scarlet flowers.  ‘Painted Lady’ has flowers that are half a bit of a softer red and half white.  They are climbing tall poles together (though not tall enough for them, but really, who would want to get out a ladder and harvest beans at nine feet anyway?) and look quite pretty blooming together.  My other runner beans are not as rampant (though in fairness, they are not supposed to be) though they have been growing strongly as well; they have yet to bloom.  Many of my other beans (garden beans, not runner beans) are blooming now as well; the purple ones are still blooming in shades of purple, and have been joined by other bean flowers in shades of yellow, white, and cream.   The peas died in the heat wave we recently had, but astonishingly to me, some of the fava/broad beans survived and have begun putting out new flowers now that it is comparably cooler (mid-70s today, but low 80s in recent days) and sunny again.  This is by far the longest they have ever lived for me in this climate.  My tomatoes have grown a lot (finally!) but still haven’t flowered.  The cucumber dropped its second cucumber as well, but has two more cucumbers forming (they formed before it dropped the second one).  As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never grown a cucumber before.  It seems to dislike wildly inconsistent temperatures/weather.  Unfortunately we’ve had those a lot here this year.  Probably more than usual.  A high of 60 F was not uncommon for us earlier this summer, though that would have been quite uncommon in past years!