Photos of spring in the garden 10 April 2009

[Started on 4 April, when these photos were taken]

Unfortunately the weather and the luminescent petals have not lent the spring-blooming colchicum to excellent photos.  This is the best one I’ve taken so far (alas):

Spring-blooming colchicum with chives (upper right), pansies (upper left/center), and, fall-blooming crocus leaves (right)

Pansies

More pansies; the one on the right is the kind (I've mentioned before) that starts out in darker colors and fades to lighter ones as it ages (an old bloom is pictured here). It is very windy (yet again) today and they were flapping in the wind, as was much of the rest of the garden.

Pansy patch with many other things, such as leaves of bearded iris, tansy, euphorbia, and crocus.

Oriental poppy foliage coming up

Spring-blooming crocuses (& a few other bulbs) coming up: One of the odd things about having a garden that varies so dramatically in light from season to season is that my snow crocuses have been the last to come up in the neighborhood!

White creeping thyme, recently planted: It is so named because it is the type of creeping thyme whose flowers are white.

Lemon thyme, creeping variety, recently planted

Euphorbia

Alumroot (native Heuchera americana, AKA "American alumroot"), dwarf cranesbill (Geranium), and other things.

Plants, waiting to be planted: Two each of parsley, borage, and dill; potted shallots; oregano; golden oregano; one more thyme; more pansies and violas

Front garden, from the side: Those are the hardy lavenders waving in the wind (sort of in the foreground). That's a large patch of violas in front of them.

A few photos 11 June 2008

Here are some photos from Monday (the 9th), partway through the heat wave –

Part of the front border:

The yellow trumpet in the center of the shot is the first salpiglossis (aka painted tongue) to bloom this year.  A second one is opening in this shot (on a different plant).  Last year the salpiglossis seedlings I bought were heavy on the red trumpets with yellow markings.  This year so far (as of today too) all the ones to bloom have been yellow.  In this shot there are also blooms of pansies, violas, sweet alyssum, stock, blue-on-blue felicia/kingfisher daisy (Felicia heterophylla), marigolds (both French [large red/orange blooms] and signet [smaller orange blooms on ferny foliage]), Marguerite daisies, and California poppies.

Here’s the same area from a slightly different angle:

The tall deep green stalk rising behind the salpiglossis bloom is one of the parsleys.  It started to bolt several days ago (before the heat wave even started) but has yet to actually bloom.  The other one, planted in a different, less windy area of the garden, is still producing leaves.  My initial conclusion from my parsley experiment is that windy weather tends to make parsley bolt faster.

California poppy and dianthus blooms:

I believe the dianthus/pink that’s currently blooming is ‘Inchmery’ (I planted it last year, but it didn’t bloom, like so many other things in their first year in the windy, hot front garden).  I planted two of them last year and they are prolifically blooming right now.  ‘Inchmery’ is an antique pink, but like with so many antique pinks, the breeding stock has been diluted to the point where it’s honestly difficult to tell for sure if what you’re being sold and/or are growing in your garden is actually the original stock from the olden days of gardening or is a plant of a similar description.  I don’t believe it’s usually intentional on the part of sellers; I think it’s honestly just really hard to be sure, since there were no photos then, not very many color drawings have survived, and written descriptions from the time period oftentimes fit most or all of the plants now being sold as the cultivar.  Regardless, whether it’s ‘Inchmery’ or not, it’s a beautiful pink, very floriferous, whitish-pink, and carrying a lovely fragrance.  I got my stock of it from Select Seeds.

The Small’s penstemon (Penstemon smallii) is blooming in the middle of the left of the shot (a pale purplish color on the outside of the tubular blooms).  There’s an orange gazania just below it, and pansies and violas below that.  On the lower right are a felicia and a signet marigold.  Behind the poppy and the dianthus blooms are a blooming lavender (Lavandula angustifolia cultivar ‘Lady’, one of the ones I got at the first farmers’ market), a euphorbia (chartreuse bracts), and salvia (Salvia coccinea) ‘Brenthurst’ (coral blooms partially visible behind the euphorbia).

Another shot of the front border:

I thought this one might give a good sense of how tall the sundial lupine’s blooms are, as well as iris ‘Mme. Chereau’.  (‘Mme. Chereau’ and fellow iris ‘Quaker Lady’ [the latter not pictured here] have faded fast in the heat wave; most blooms lasted less than a day, and there are no current open blooms.)  You can also see the full plant of the bolting parsley in this shot.  The tall silver plant is the rose campion, still budded.

Plants still waiting to be planted in the front garden:

Amongst them are two six-packs from last week’s farmers’ market (the rudbeckia ‘Toto Mix’ and the lisianthus), the baptisia/false indigo from last week’s market, sweet marjoram, winter savory, sage, a Salvia greggii that blooms in a creamy yellowish color, curly chives/German garlic/ornamental onion (Allium spirale AKA Allium senescens), lavender cotton, French tarragon, and a second rosemary, ‘Tuscan Blue’, which is a richer green color of leaf and more upright-growing than the one I already planted, ‘Arp’, and than many other rosemaries.  It’s been ages since I grew curly chives, and I was psyched to see that the nursery had added it to their herb section.  What can I say, I just love growing alliums of all kinds.

The heat wave finally broke today.  It was our longest heat wave since 2002, when it was very hot and very humid for eight days straight.  It is still fairly hot, and mostly sunny, but it is no longer humid; now the air temperature accurately reflects what the air feels like, instead of having to factor in high humidity to create a heat index. I took many more photos this morning and hope to make a post with some of them later.

Skipping ahead 24 May 2008

I hope to write some longer posts about things that have been going on the past week-plus in the garden (bits of it summarized in the post before this one) but for now I’m going to talk about today.

The Carolina lupine/false lupine (Thermopsis villosa) has been blooming for several days.  Here’s what it looks like as of today:

The sundial lupine (Lupinus perennis) has been budded for at least a few days.  Here’s its biggest bud as it looks today:

The pansies have been doing better in this mild weather with sporadic clouds and drenching sometimes-rain. Here are the pastel ones with so many other things.

Creeping snapdragons (in pink and yellow) in front of the pansies; African daisy (orange) and perennial candytuft (white) and felicia (budded by the candytuft) directly behind them; the edge of the perennial sweet alyssum (bright yellow) and bacopa (light lavender) to their left (with a seedling).

Here’s a closeup from the same section, some of the pansies with one of the creeping snapdragon blooms

So cheerful that maybe it should be illegal, isn’t it?  I’m so glad the slugs have finally stopped eating all the blue-and-yellow pansy blooms.

More pansies, this time with violas and sweet alyssum:

The sometimes red, sometimes yellow, sometimes both viola is that new(ish) one ‘Tiger Eye’ or Tiger Eyes’.  Interesting, the color seems to vary depending on how much sun vs. shade it gets.  From what I can  tell so far, the more sun the bloom gets, the yellower it is. The more shade, the redder.   Additionally, see how well the sweet alyssum has filled in?  I’m glad I planted it spaced instead of all crammed together.

The focus of this shot is euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’, that I talked about here around the time I got it. I wanted to take a photo to illustrate the airy look I was talking about.  It is that airy green plant with white-with-green-centers flowers in the middle of this shot.

Blurry in the foreground are lamb’s ears ‘Silver Carpet’, dianthus ‘Beatrix’ (blooming earlier than it naturally would because I ordered another one from Select Seeds this year in case the two I grew last year had winterkilled, as it was my best-performing dianthus last year, blooming in flushes sporadically all summer and a bit into autumn; I am guessing it has some border carnation heritage), and California poppy foliage. In the background is echinacea foliage and bearded iris foliage, amongst other things.

The agastache I got this week at the nursery

Rose campion ‘Gardener’s World’ (center, silver stalks/leaves) looks like it’s going to bloom soon:

I planted this last year, but it didn’t bloom, just formed a rosette that survived until an ice storm coated the garden in early December.  In the foreground are dianthus bloomstalks with buds, a pansy, one of the two Small’s penstemons I planted this year (reddish leaves), and the variegated catmint I planted this year (at the foot of the rose campion). Directly behind it is one of the lavenders that survived the winter.

This is one of the two creeping bellflowers I planted last year:

It survived the winter more robustly than the other one, though you may be able to see that it hasn’t crept as far as last year (a little bit of its remnants from last year are still visible).  It looks like it’s formed a couple buds.  I can’t remember which species of creeping bellflower it is so I’m not positive when it’s supposed to start blooming.  This one is planted near the sweet alyssums, close to the retaining wall’s edge and in the windiest section of the garden.  The other one is planted towards the other side of the bed (also close to the wall’s edge) and only within the past week or two did its leaves get big enough to become recognizable.

Stock, still blooming

The single-flowered ones are getting much leggier much faster this year than the doubles.  I don’t know why.

One of the new-this-year euphorbias (the purplish-red leafed one) has been blooming its heart away. I planted salvia ‘Brenthurst’ next to it this year.

It’s not a color choice I would choose for the long-term, but the fact that the euphorbia is going to go out of bloom led me to do such a risky color pairing.  I grew salvia ‘Brenthurst’ (tender here) last year next to the tender foliage plant quicksilver, which has very silver, very fuzzy, very large leaves on reddish stalks.  I decided to do the same again, but for now quicksilver is getting its footing, like it did last year.  (It needs a period of adjustment to my garden’s dry, windy, hot conditions and then it will flourish.)  So for now I have the quicksilver leaning against the stock clump for support, and the salvia with the chartreuse euphorbia “blooms” (I imagine they’re really bracts, like they tend to be on euphorbias). Last year ‘Brenthurst’ took some time to adjust to the wind conditions in the garden, but it seems to be doing better this year with them (and have we ever had some very windy days, for here, since it was planted). I think it might be because this year’s plant has more stems and is less leggy than last year’s initially was, but I’m not positive.

The perennial candytuft has been doing great. Here it is with a small insect on one of the blooms.

In the background in the above shot is what’s in focus in the below shot, a white-flowering heliotrope,  drooping.

Heliotrope is like quicksilver – it needs some time to adjust to this garden’s conditions.  This year I mulched it with compost, hoping that would help, but it seems to not be making much of a difference so far.  For heliotrope, it needs a little time to develop a taproot.  I know of heliotrope’s taproot (which I haven’t seen mentioned in any references, though perhaps I just haven’t read the right source) because I once kept one in a pot and was so pleased at how well it was flourishing, and then went to move it – and realized it was doing so well because its taproot had gone out a hole in the bottom of the pot and rooted into nearby soil.  This white bloomer is much less common than varying shades of purple.   Heliotrope blooms smell like vanilla.  Newer cultivars don’t always have as much of a scent as the parent species and older cultivars, so if you’re buying it in a nursery, sniff ones with open blooms to see.

I got a tip this morning that the big-box grocery store, of all places, had decent-quality geraniums on sale at around $1.75 each.  Apparently word had been spreading on the steal of a price, and the tipster warned me that they might be sold out by now.  I went down there this morning – geraniums are enough of a weakness for me that I overwinter them – and bought six in interesting colorations.  I’ll pot them up soon (meant to do it today, but the day has gotten away from me).

More another time.

Planting 10 May 2008

Yesterday, in the front garden, I planted the American Alumroot, the Prickly Pear Cactus, the two Small’s Penstemons, and the Sundrops, all mail-ordered from Toadshade. It was sporadically raining when I was planting, and rained a lot more after I finished.  I still had more to plant in front (I planted half of the ten plants from Toadshade that are going in front), but I prioritized the ones that are supposed to bloom sooner (though we’ll see if they actually do, since as I’ve said, many plants react to being planted in the unhospitable site by at first marshaling their energy into getting established), and I’ve got so much to plant in back that it’s ridiculous, but I worry less about the back because plants can survive longer in pots in the cooler, shadier back yard and because it’s less traumatizing to plant them into such a situation when it’s warmer out than to plant into the hot, sun-drenched, wind-tossed front garden during summertime.

Today I went to the nursery and, it being around our average last frost day, stocked up on stuff I’d not yet bought this year, all things that did decent or well for me last year:  Two Tall Verbena (Verbena bonariensis), two creeping purple-flowering verbena (hybrid cultivar “Lapel Blue”), a six-pack of gazania “Talent Mix”, one Angelonia (Angelonia angustifolia), one Hawaiian Blue Eyes (Evolvulus glomeratus), and one Licorice Plant (Helichrysum petiolare).  I also got one plant that is new to my gardening sphere and, as far as I remember (which may be wrong), also new to the nursery, Euphorbia “Diamond Frost”. This afternoon, I planted all of them. I’ve had such amazing germination rates of the seeds I’ve sowed in the front garden that it’s gotten difficult to find spots to plant things!  I usually have to transplant seedlings to be able to fit new plants in.  Well, there could certainly be worse garden problems!

Here’s more on each of today’s purchases:

• Tall Verbena:  I love this airy plant, and bees love it just as much as I do (butterflies have in past gardens, too, and I’m sure they would still if not for that pesky wind).  In Europe it is popular to mass it, either in a clump or in a line that’s a break between two other more robust plants (since it’s so incredibly airy, it’s much easier to see through than most tall plants, making it an ideal visual between-plant break). It’s annual here, but perennial in USDA cold zones 7 and up.  When it’s happy, it will self-seed around the parent plant and perpetuate itself in the garden in following years.
• Creeping verbena hybrid “Lapel Blue”:  This ferny-leaved verbena (much more ferny-leaved than most verbenas) forms more of a mat than most verbenas, and I found it a great softener for the concrete retaining wall.  Planted in front of taller, leggy plants, getting dappled sun most of the day, it did excellently, blooming – in purple, not the cultivar name’s alleged blue – non-stop from spring till the end of summer, at which point I decided it looked slightly straggly and cut it back, which resulted in it not blooming for a month (I don’t think I will do that again this year).  Two or three planted together will form a mat at least eight inches deep by at least a foot and a half wide.  In my experiences so far, most  other verbenas like a richer, moister soil than what the front garden provides, and more sunshine than what the back one provides.
• Gazania “Talent Mix”: This mixed-color gazania has got foliage similar to Dusty Miller (Senecio cineraria), which looks wonderful with the bold coloration of gazanias’ flowers.  I first became enchanted with this mix at the farmers’ market some years ago, but the farm that sold them stopped coming to markets after 2005, so now I have to buy them from the nursery instead. I find them to be worthy of taking the time to seek them out. (This is a gazania mix that can also be grown from seed.)
• Angelonia:  This plant is also known as Summer Snapdragon, because its flowers look similar to snaps’ flowers (and I believe it is a relative) but it has less of a propensity to die in hot and humid weather. (My creeping snapdragons, by the way, lasted all last year, till killed by frost.  It even turns out that one of them seems to have survived the winter [we’ll see for sure when the sprout blooms], the only time I’ve ever had a snap survive here.  If you have sucky soil, a generally sucky site, and/or hot and humid summers, perhaps creeping snaps are your way to having summer-long snaps.) I grew some angelonias  last year in the front garden, and found that they did the best being partially shaded by other plants, towards the bottom of the slope so that they got more water than many of their compatriots.  The ones I planted later in the season did much worse than the ones that I planted early on.
• Hawaiian Blue Eyes: Last year was my first attempt at growing this morning glory family member. Its flowers are a bright lightish blue with a distinctive white eye, and its fuzzy foliage is also fairly striking. I first planted it in full sun as the tag recommended, and it did not do well at all.  I replanted it beside the arch of Aster ericoides prostratus “Snow Flurry” and it recovered and went on to prosper, winding in and out amongst other plants, sometimes giving the impression that other plants were blooming a crystal blue as its flowers poked out from beneath them.  It’s another tender perennial that’s generally grown as an annual in cold-winter climes such as mine.
• Licorice Plant: This plant’s commonness in no way diminishes its prettiness, in my opinion. This is a foliage annual, like Dusty Miller or Quicksilver. It has soft silvery-grey leaves and it trails or winds its way here and there. I planted it at the base of the slope in front last year and it thrived by the concrete wall, winding its way rapidly through other plants, twisting and turning this way and that, bringing silver to the bottom of the slope to go with the silvery-leaved fuzzy plants higher up the slope. Yes, generally silver-leaved and fuzzy plants both do better in conditions like the front garden’s than the average plant does, since both silver leaves and fuzz help plants to cope with heat and drought. Besides, silvery fuzzy leaves are just plain fun to touch!  Licorice plant is also a host plant for the Painted Lady butterfly here in North America.  (The also silvery-leaved and groundcover-behaving – but both native and perennial for me – Pussytoes genus [Antennaria] is host to the Painted Lady’s cousin, the American Lady.) Be careful if you are in a much hotter zone than I am; while licorice plant is well-behaved for me, I have read that it can grow to monstrous proportions when planted in the ground in truly hot zones.
• Euphorbia “Diamond Frost”: I have literally not read one bad comment about this plant – an annual here – so far (I looked it up before buying it when I saw my nursery had started carrying it this year), so I am curious to see how it does in my garden.  It’s supposed to bloom non-stop all season and is supposed to laugh at things like drought and heat.  So far it’s an airy cloud of tiny white flowers and little green leaves.  (It definitely does not look like what I personally picture a euphorbia to be, though I know that Euphorbia is a huge genus.)

Chinese chives, African daisies, pansies/violas, and other things 26 April 2008

More shots from earlier this week.

African daisy

Pansies in the foreground; California poppy foliage in the background

I bought a second African daisy with the general idea to plant it by the first one for contrast. However, when I went to plant it, I felt like it didn’t really look right there. So instead I planted it behind the lavender, which is just refoliating below the top (as seen in the foreground in the below shot), to draw the eye and to provide contrast with the silvery foliage of the lavender. Remember, the taller plant doesn’t always have to go behind the shorter one, especially if the taller one is loose or thin, and/or the shorter one is bushy and robust.

Behind the African daisy, Dianthus ‘Rainbow Loveliness’ is sprouting (the low green foliage to its right). Most of the other lavenders should have survived the winter too, but it seems they were killed by the trampling of the garden over the winter. Still, just in case they’re only playing dead, I’m leaving the plants standing for a few more weeks.

Chinese chives/garlic chives/Chinese leek (Allium tuberosum) and parsley

I got my Chinese chives from a division of a clump from someone I know. Here’s a link to information on Chinese chives and here is a link to culinary information on them and another.

Pansies and violas

… with dianthus foliage, autumn-blooming crocus foliage, etc.

Hyssop ‘Blue Fortune’ is continuing to grow since being planted earlier this month:

Pansies and violas

The yellow, black, and sometimes maroon viola is ‘Tiger Eyes’ (sometimes ‘Tiger Eye’). Its prettiness caught my eye and I thought it a good match for the darker pansies and violas in this section of the garden, but I did not realize that it’s apparently new and apparently pretty difficult to find until I did a web search just now to try to find a link about it for you all. Sometimes the blooms are just black and yellowy-gold in the front and sometimes they have splotches of maroon as well; it’s really unique. It’s also been a great performer, one of the most consistent bloomers of the ten cultivars of pansy and viola I planted this spring.

In this next shot you can better see the coloration of the two pansies I’ve planted as well as (hopefully) a better view of the other viola in this clump besides ‘Tiger Eyes’ (its name unfortunately currently escapes me), a pretty unusual thing with purple and shimmery copper.

Like the hyssop, the red-leaved euphorbia has been settling in well. It’s budded since being planted and looks like it will bloom soon.

Salpiglossis seedlings in the foreground.

Some photos 19 April 2008

Euphorbia

Other euphorbia

I found a book, Gardening with Colour, at a used books store recently and have been thumbing through it when I have a few spare moments. Thanks to it, I planted this red and purplish-black euphorbia (on right) next to rose campion (silver rosette on left). A California poppy is in the foreground.

Here is one of the sets of pansy/viola:

The base of the stock is in the back. Some of the sweet alyssum is in the foreground. They’re spaced that way because they will grow to meet each other.

Here is one of the other sets of pansy, with the beautiful African daisy:

Lots of other stuff in this one – the hen and chicks, thyme, another California poppy, chives, etc.

Iris leaves (two bearded irises in center, Siberian iris on right next to them) with borage (near top) and hardy mum sprouts (center left).

Mulched planted peas/etc. at top with tags.

Stock with pansies/violas and sweet alyssum

Trees blooming in the area earlier this week

Sundry

Midmorning Friday

Today is another gorgeous day – sunny with temperatures already in the 50s F and forecast to go higher if the cool sea breeze doesn’t reach these few miles inland. This is the essence of spring to me.

Today I am planning to swing by the nursery again (today the garden section’s manager will be working, and she often has ideas for me; she wasn’t working on my last trip), which will give me a nice walk in the beautiful weather and time spent amongst pretty flowers regardless of whether I buy anything, do fresh cleanup (more leaves have blown into the garden since my last cleanup and there are other odds and ends I need to do) and finish planting. Since I hadn’t grown nemesia in a few years at least (if ever), I did not remember until I’d already bought it that it’s not very frost-hardy. Our average last frost date is the second week of May, so I’ve been going back and forth in my head since getting it about whether to actually plant it or to keep it inside till it’s a bit warmer, like I did last April when W. and I went to the annual herb sale at one of the estates run by the Historical Society and I kept my basil, Cape mallow ‘Elegant Lady’ (that was where I found it, which I thought was a little odd – and that’s why I have no idea where to get a new one this year, since it isn’t hardy and didn’t last the winter), etc. indoors like houseplants till the weather warmed up some more.

Yesterday I went to the hardware store, which always sells seeds and bare roots in spring. I was disappointed to see that they had fewer bare roots than in past years (and the garden store has none this year), concentrating mostly on gladiola and dahlia bulbs. I don’t like modern glads much, preferring the beautiful old ones sold by Old House Gardens, and while I adore dahlias, they did pathetically last year in my back garden, and they generally like rich soil and some moisture so I have made the assumption that they would look even more pathetic in the sunnier front garden. (I may try growing a few dahlias in pots so that I can move them around, though; I have a few tubers saved from last year.) I got a bareroot hosta and a bareroot Siberian iris (‘Caesar’s Brother’), two of the few non-bulb/corm/tuber things they were selling this year.

I also got some seeds I hadn’t seen elsewhere, including fenugreek, Sweet Annie (Artemesia annua), and calendula ‘Zeolights’, which is certainly not an old strain of calendula but whose sunset-colored changing-colors orangey-pink blooms (if the illustration on the seed pack is to be believed) should fit well with some of the other annuals I’ve planted. Here is a link to a page on ‘Zeolights’ at the seed company’s website. I grow calendula (I’d already planted seeds of a couple other cultivars) not just because they’re beautiful, not even just because they’re edible and brighten up salads, but also because calendula has great medicinal properties and can be made into salves or simply crushed and rubbed over the skin. Sweet Annie is widely grown by garden-crafters but for me, I just like the look and scent of its lovely foliage, and if I happen to harvest it later on it will just be a nice bonus to me rather than the whole point of growing it. Not surprisingly since it’s an Artemesia, it is not very frost-hardy and while I sowed the calendula and fenugreek yesterday, I’ve reserved its seeds to sow in mid-May. Fenugreek, by contrast, should’ve been planted before now, like the poppies and love-in-a-mist that I belatedly recently sowed.

…

Saturday

If I could bottle this string of days, I would do it without hesitation: They are the essence of spring, sunny and dry air and blueblueblue sky – the color of aquamarine in shadow – and temperatures in the 50s to 70 F, daffodils blooming away cheerily. I would save the bottles for midsummer, when the humidity is like a boulder weighing down everything, soot coating the plants and smog choking the air, making it difficult to see a block ahead.

Silly me for thinking I could go to the nursery on a beautiful day without being tempted into buying anything. Yesterday, after consulting with the nursery manager, I ended up getting two euphorbias. two saxifrages, and another plant (whose name I’m currently forgetting) on her recommendation, as well as two seedling packs of sweet alyssum (they’d added it since my last visit), Corydalis ‘Purple Leaf’, borage, and comfrey. Borage and comfrey are both considered herbs by the nursery and thus are cheaper than they would otherwise be. (To better explain what I mean, lavenders are considered perennials instead of herbs at the nursery so they are sold at perennial prices rather than herb prices and placed with the other perennials instead of with the shelves of herbs.)

Last year I grew borage from seed and it did surprisingly well in the crappy conditions of the front garden, and though it definitely did not ever attain the heights it did in my old garden with its richer soil and shelter from the wind, it bloomed nearly nonstop from midsummer till killed by frost, and attracted bees and other pollinators galore. Since it was near my bean plants, that was an especially happy thing. This year I decided to just go ahead and get a plant that was already doing pretty well. It’s got three rosettes; I think mine only had one last year.

Anyway, comfrey is a plant I love so much I can’t even begin to tell you. I grew a large species – not the standard herb – in my old garden in a humus-rich, moist to boggy soil with partial sun and it grew to tremendous heights, some of the leaves two to three feet long and the bloom stalks reaching for the sky. In addition to comfrey being a medicinal herb, it is said to improve the soil around it and its leaves are said to speed up the process of compost-making. Plus, being a member of the borage family (it often started to bloom in my old garden as the strikingly similar blooms of its cousins, Virginia bluebells and lungwort, were fading), it’s a bee favorite. Grow comfrey!

I don’t know why I’ve never grown euphorbia till this year. It’ll be an interesting experiment. Yesterday I planted the two euphorbias – an upright one with leaves in varying shades of blackish-purple and deep red, that according to its tag blooms in late spring and early summer – and one that is far more common, at least here, the floppy one with obviously succulent blue-green leaves that has chartreuse flowers in spring and is, in fact, blooming right now. I also planted the sweet alyssum, the borage, and the little alpine-ish plant whose name I just can’t recall at present, a dainty relative of the cranesbills/hardy geraniums.

I do know why I’ve never grown saxifrage, though.  For some reason they intimidate me.  They are tiny plants with tiny mounding succulent leaves and though that would make you – or at least me – think that they prefer sunny, dry conditions, they seem to be fussier than all that. So I got instructions to plant them on the slope in the back garden, with partial shade, particularly during midday. Apparently they have a tendency to go dormant when it gets too hot and sunny, so partial shade should help with that. We’ll see how they do. For now they are lovely charming mounds of various shades of green, one of them with heaps of ruby red buds sticking up on bloom stalks that are taller than the mound of leaves. If they adjust well (I’m planning to plant them today) within the next few weeks, I might buy a couple more in time for them to bloom (all the ones at the nursery bloom in spring; it’s just exactly when that varies). I try to do the majority of my hard-labor gardening in spring and autumn; it’s better for both the plants and me.

I’ve been writing this post for over a day.  It’s time to post it and perhaps I will write more later.