We've been enjoying several days of rain - unusual for late July in Kansas, and much appreciated since it's kept us from having to water the trees we planted this winter. Yesterday, we sat out on the front porch for half an hour watching a gentle rain fall and listening to the natural "fountain" Ken made.
He found this great "holey" rock in his Grandpa's pasture in the Smoky Hills near Salina. He brought it home and sunk it in the ground just outside the front door under the downspout. (It's a HUGE rock - a sort of iceberg, since it's mostly underground.) Now, every time it rains, the water splashes from the downspout onto the rock, dances in and out of the holes and provides a great water show for free.
Rain, rain. . .keep coming
Coleus in a Strawberry Pot
I have loved Coleus ever since I saw it growing on a window sill in a friend's New York apartment three decades ago. This strawberry pot full of several varieties of Coleus started out looking pretty sparse, but now, at the end of July, the colorful leaves have almost buried the pot. Best of all, every so often I'll snap off a nice size cutting, let it root in water in the kitchen window, and I have the start of a whole new pot. I planted some little flowerpots with coleus starts last fall and brought them inside when the nights started getting cool. They provided nice spots of color in a sunny window all winter long. I should have taken them outside this spring though because they finally withered and faded. But not before I saved cuttings from those plants for my summer pots. It's a nice "vicious" circle. I did learn the hard way, though, that Coleus doesn't like the cold. Also, even though the plant does develop spikes of tiny lavender flowers, if I pinch the spikes off as soon as they appear, the plant gets bushier and does better.
The Coneflowers Show Up...Finally
It's July 15 - our two-year anniversary of moving into this house and beginning to plan the gardens. We've been waiting for the coneflowers that were in our wildflower mix to show up, since we've been seeing them in profusion in other gardens for several weeks now. We don't have many, but we're encouraged they are finally showing up. Hopefully there will be more next summer.
I Promised You a Rose Garden
A reader commented a few days ago that we were missing roses in our garden and I promised to share. Well, we don't have a lot, but we do have an arbor we're trying to train two rose bushes to climb. The rose on one side is a gorgeous peachy yellow color with a multi-layered bloom. I think it's some sort of floribunda variety. The rose on the other side of the arbor is a beautiful deep pink, but it sort of gets lost among the prairie rose bushes along the back of the garage.
We've been delighted with the Carefree Delight Roses, a prairie native we bought at a plant sale last spring at our local arboretum. These prairie roses bloom constantly spring through fall, never have to be deadheaded, and grow so fast we can almost watch them spread. So, there you have our offering of roses.
July Transitions. . .
I've been out of state for almost a week and came home to a changed garden! Before I left, we pulled out most of the Bachelor Buttons since they were pretty much spent. We also cut back quite a few of the Black-eyed Susans that were looking a little ratty. That left some empty spots, but now other things are springing up in their place - especially the prairie grasses.
Ken got some great photos of the grasses in bloom. Above is Sideoats Grama and at right is Switchgrass. As much as I like these grasses in the summer, they are even more beautiful in the autumn.
Our Favorite "Firecracker" this Fourth
Fameflower Rock Rose has become a favorite as it spreads and blooms in profusion in front of the boulder. The blossoms look so delicate waving above the frilly foliage on wiry stems, but they've proven to be hardy little flowers and we can enjoy the bright splashes of their magenta blooms even from as far away as the living room window. Prettier than any fireworks this 4th of July!
The Magical Light of the Sun
The gardens look completely different depending on light and shadows. Usually an overcast day captures the colors more vividly for the camera's lens, but the sun does magical things to the blossoms, too. This photo is looking down the fence just north of the Rock Wall Garden (hidden by the profusion of flowers).
An Evening of Surprises!
We make a circle around the gardens almost every evening, and often in the morning, too. We almost always discover a new bloom or a butterfly or something new - it's one of the joys of a garden. But tonight we hit the jackpot! Three all new kinds of plants in bloom. The yellow coneflowers, and the elegant Wild Bergamot above were in the original wildflower mix we planted from Prairie Frontier, but this is the first year they've come up.
The plant pictured below is a mystery plant to us. It has fern-like leaves and a pale greenish yellow pod-like bloom. If anyone knows what it is, please post a comment and let us know. We won't even be disappointed if you tell us it is a weed...a lot of the flowers in prairie gardens are "traditionally" thought of as weeds. ; ) Oh, and the Crepe Myrtle is blooming at the side of the garage. A banner evening!
UPDATE: The plant below is Canada Milk Vetch. Those "pods" will bloom into creamy yellow flowers. This, too, is one of the plants in the mix we planted last year from Prairie Frontier. (There's a link to their site at right.)
It's June and the cacti are in bloom!
The buds on these barrel cacti remind me of baby birds in a nest. The flowers are absolutely gorgeous when they open in the afternoon sun.
The Garden Looks Best . . .
. . . freshly mowed and with the sprinklers running. Or like this morning, with a gentle rain falling on leaves and petals. We joke that we must really be getting old to get our thrills sitting around watching the sprinklers run. : )
Late June, 2007
Late June, 2007A Pretty Corner of Boulder Hill
With Fameflower Rock Rose in full bloom, Prairie Dropseed filling out, and Columbine fighting its way through the tallgrasses, Boulder Hill is dressed for summer - maybe overdressed. Last summer we had to fight to keep the boulder peeking out from the tangle of plants - mostly weeds. This year the grasses and wildflowers are winning and we're pulling far fewer weeds. It helps that we're getting some low-growing plants established in front of the boulder.
Moss Garden
We took a corner that was constantly soggy and turned it into a pretty little moss garden. We started by "depositing" a potted plant there last summer, figuring it wouldn't survive, but might as well try. The combination of Creeping Jenny, Gaura, Creeping Wirevine and a couple other plants, came back like gangbusters. So we added some rocks from Grandpa's pastures, some moss we got from our daughter in Missouri and the Japanese Honeysuckle, which has snuck through the fence from a side flowerbed. It's become a favorite spot in the garden for us.
Mid-June 2007
If you look closely, you can just see the circle of grass where we took out the bald cypress (in the middle of the "football field" according to Ken.)
The gardens along the fence are lined with sandstone rocks from Grandpa Turner's pastureland in the Smoky Hills of Ellsworth County.
Front Entry transformation
These Pink Neon Dianthus were here when we moved in and are just stunning in the spring and provided some nice gray-green color in the flowerbed once they finished blooming early summer. But they were getting a little ragged and Ken wanted to add some stone pavers and more of Grandpa's lichen-covered sandstone, so this summer, 2007, he dug out all the Dianthus. (It was too nice to throw away, so we invited all the neighbors over and they came with wagons and buckets and tubs and we found homes for all of it, plus kept some to restart in the backyard gardens.) The new flower bed looks nice, but it has some filling in to do. And I'm going to have to remember to buy red instead of pink for my pots next summer.
What to do with a broken pot . . .
I enjoyed this little pot from Hobby Lobby for a summer, but left it sitting out over the winter, and it broke. We tucked the separate halves into each side of Rock Wall Garden and planted them with Creeping Jenny. I loved the way they looked, but they only lasted a season before crumbling. Still, better than throwing away a perfectly good broken pot . . . and the Creeping Jenny still looks great.
The Back Deck
When we bought the house, the hot tub was a "cold tub" and we really didn't want to spend the money to get it fixed. Friends of ours were in the market for a hot tub, so we said, "It's yours if you'll come and get it." They've now built a beautiful covered deck around it in their back yard, Ken built a wonderful potting bench from the lumber that surrounded the tub (see inset, top of this page) and we're both very happy with the results. Win/win!
June 2005
June 2006
June 2007The frugal potter
Although quite a few of our potted plants on the deck and front porch are annuals, we've started to think more frugally, and fill our pots with perennials that can be planted in the gardens later. We enjoyed this Japanese Honeysuckle in a pot all summer 2006. It never had more than two or three blooms, but in the fall we planted it outside the fence on the southeast side of the yard. It's rewarded us by climbing up (and inside) the fence, scenting the air with multiple blooms and making a lush green backdrop for the other things planted there. We've considered planting Honeysuckle beside the garden shed and letting it cover the shed like ivy, but we've heard it can become invasive, so still thinking on that.
Six cats in the yard May 2007
A sweet stray calico cat showed up at our house last winter and hung around so long that we finally took her in. She returned the favor by presenting us with four beautiful kittens at the end of March. We enjoyed every minute of the nine or ten weeks we had them here. Our daughter and I shed a few tears as each one went to its new home. Then, the week before the vet appointment to have Mama spayed, we started to suspect she was pregnant again. It's true. So I guess we'll have kittens in the yard yet again later this summer. But Ken says this will be the last time!
Textures for Tiny Toes
From smooth stone, to prickly mulch to tickley grass, the garden offers a wealth of textures for the tiny bare toes of our little grandson.
A Pretty Pot For Nothing
We put this pretty pot full of Hen & Chicks together by collecting slips from those we have in various spots in the garden. The red in the middle is Sedum that we dug up from Rock Hill Garden.
Rock Hill Garden Early Spring 2007
Rock Hill Garden, just as things are beginning to bloom - Columbine in two different colors, with a backdrop of Yarrow not yet in bloom. The Speedwell and all the Sedums are beginning to fill in, and the prairie grasses are just emerging.
Sandstone border for the gardens
We collected this beautiful sandstone from the pastureland of Ken's 97-year-old grandfather and made a border all along the back fence, encompassing the three native prairie gardens. Besides looking nice and tying all the flowerbeds together, we hope the stone will serve as a barrier to keep the wild things out of the lawn and the weeds out of everything. We pulled a LOT of weeds last year, the first real year of growth in the garden, but we're pleased with how much the native grasses and wildflowers have overtaken the weeds this year. Of course some people might think a lot of what we have growing is weeds! We've taken the attitude that if it's pretty, we leave it until it isn't pretty any more, or until it takes over something we like better. I had to fight to keep my husband from pulling out the snow-on-the-mountain that's coming up. We let three grow last year and they got huge with deep, deep taproots. But oh, they were pretty! I'm hoping he'll let a few stay this year, too.
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