Spring Surprises

As I was walking around the yard the other day, a few surprises caught my eye.

Why was there fuzz in the garden?

On closer inspection this is what I saw!

As best as I could tell, there were 4 babies snuggled in the nest

The next day I went to show my husband…Gone!

The Dead Man’s Fingers were back (Dead Man’s Fingers) although in a new spot. I’m not sure why they showed up in a new location and what they might be growing on. But, still as oddly interesting as before.

We had a bit of a mushroom farm going after a nice spring rain.

I love looking up close at mushrooms… I thought they were all the same, but on closer inspection actually quite different.

These tulips are some of the oldest flowers in my garden. Most tulips here are considered annuals because of cold or rodents, but these keep coming back year after year. Sometimes better than others, too. This year they are stunning!

And lastly, while I was out on a recent walk with a friend we came across a beautiful yellow magnolia. In an area with an abundance of the usual, but of course striking pink magnolias, this was quite a surprise.

We loved the assortment of spring flowers underneath. What a beautiful spring garden. I may need to plant one of those trees…

Have you had any spring garden surprises?

Spring in Virginia

We had the chance to go to Virginia last weekend to make one last visit to two colleges before the May 1 deadline requires my twins to make a decision as to their plans next year. Aside from the great admitted student tours, it was a real treat to leap ahead a couple of weeks into full blown spring. We’ve had a few nice days here and there in Chicago and some spring flowers are starting to bloom, but not anywhere near peak yet.

All the trees were in full bloom! Pink and white everywhere.

This one was puzzling since it was white and pink??

The bees were out already hard at work!

Brightly colored tulips and daffodils were everywhere. (Even the yews looked healthy and green, unlike many of mine.)

What beautiful splashes of color!

Crepe Myrtles are everywhere. They bloom in the summer, but their bark is also so interesting I thought I’d add them to the post. We can’t grow them here, but back in NJ my favorite plant in my garden was a dwarf crepe myrtlette. I hated leaving it behind when we moved.

Now that I’m back home, I’ll get to see the second round of spring come alive very soon. Our Redbud, Crabtree and Judd Viburnum are just starting to bud and the daffodils just bloomed in the last couple of days. Spring is here!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2015! As many of you have noticed, I had to take a little break this fall. Sometimes, life just gets busy and something needs to give. I’ve been taking lots of pictures and notes, so I’m looking forward to catching up over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here’s a look back at some of my most popular posts of 2014!

1. Painting Garden Rock Garden Markers: A fun project to jazz up the garden.

2. Girls Weekend in Asheville: A wonderful weekend away in a great city!

3. Angel Wings in the Snow: Fascinating tracks in the snow.

4. Creeping Thyme Problems: Trying to salvage a mess in the garden.

5. Peggy’s Snowflakes: Every snowflake is truly different.

6. Gardening: All in the Family: From grandparents to great-granchildren, gardening is a family tradition.

7. Homemade Suet Cakes: Giving homemade suet a try. The birds loved it!

8. Visiting the Glass Pumpkin Patch 2014: I love seeing all the different creations the artists bring every year.

9. Yarn Wrapped Bottles: A fun and easy craft project to decorate for the holidays, a party, a wedding, or for whatever you have that needs some color.

10. My New Raised Bed: Construction: I needed more garden space so we built two new raised bed gardens.

Seniors, School Boards and Sunflowers

Well that title certainly should catch your attention. What could they possibly have to do with one another? Nothing much except the first two has been needing my attention a lot lately, keeping me out of the garden.

The “seniors” refer to my twin boys who are seniors in high school this year. With that comes the college adventure; trips, research and then applications. We’ve been all around looking at schools for them this summer and fall.

Read everything under the sun to hopefully find just the right matches, and now it’s time to buckle down and get those applications out.

“School Board” refers to what happens when you get a low turn out for a local election during a teacher contract year. Long story short, there was a lot of friction between the board and teachers, leading to a potential teacher strike threatening to derail my kids’ senior year, college application process and XC running season. Needless to say, I have spent a lot of time writing emails and attending school board meetings. Looks like we have a solution, still crossing my fingers unit the contracts are signed.

Sunflowers, well, they just make me happy and they’ve been a fun addition to my garden this year.

I thought I was going to be able to save some heads for some winter bird treats after the bees and butterflies were done with them.

But a couple of weeks ago, the seed-heavy heads just started disappearing.

In only a few days they were all gone. Cleanly cut as though they’d been harvested with shears. I would love to know where they went, since earlier in the summer if one was taken down, whatever the critter was tended to set it next to the garden and shred it to pieces. These were hauled away for winter storage no doubt.

So, after looking at the headless stalks for far too long (see reasons above), I figured I’d better cut them down. I hadn’t realized how thick giant sunflower stems are. I needed to head to the shed to get some bigger clippers.

And a bigger shovel.

The sunflowers are done for the year. I’m looking forward to them again next year. Are you starting to remove things from the garden yet?

August Sunflowers

In the back of my new raised beds, I planted a row of sunflower seeds. They have grown like gangbusters.

I love looking out the kitchen window and seeing these cheerful flowers lining the view behind the zinnias and marigolds. The summer vegetables are hidden in between.

Not sure why, but over the last couple of weeks many have tipped over. Maybe not enough fertilizer to help grow strong roots, too close together, too windy or stormy?

But no matter, the flower heads keep facing the sun, despite the odd positions they find themselves in.

I staked some of them up so they didn’t lay on the ground.

At at least 10 ft tall, I had to get creative with this giant one. It was too tall for any of my stakes, so I got it nice and tangled in the tree branches.

While the birds, chipmunks and squirrels have enjoyed the summer treat, I hope I have some heads left to put out this winter.

Summer Gladiolus

One of my favorite flowers of summer are gladiolus. The are so majestic and intensely colored, I just love having them in the house. The flower stand at the local farmer’s market didn’t return this year, but I’ve been able to find almost as beautiful bunches at the grocery stores. This week’s selection is a gorgeous, deep purple.

In case you missed my post last summer on how to care for gladiolus last August, I’ve reprinted it here. (Gladiolus from the Farmers Market).

Gladiolus are one of my favorite flowers to have around the house. They are just so dramatic, colorful and cheerful. With so many colors to choose from, it’s usually hard to decide. If you’ve ever seen a field of gladiolus, it’s quite a sight!

My local farmers market has a wonderful local fresh flower vendor. While maybe a little more expensive than the grocery store florists, the flowers are always super fresh and last longer in the vase. They also give wonderful flower care advice. This is this week’s purchase and some of their advice.

The flower vendor always offers to make a fresh cut with a super sharp chopper — The flower vendor always offers to make a fresh cut with a super sharp guillotine type cutter

Buy the bunch that seems to have the most color peeping out from the buds. If there's color, it'll bloom. Closed up tight, it'll never bloom! — Buy the bunch that seems to have the most color peeping out from the buds. If there’s color, it’ll bloom. Closed up tight, it’ll never bloom!

Pinch off all the tips where the buds are closed up tight. No sense making the stem waste energy on bids that won;t bloom. — Pinch off all the tips where the buds are closed up tight. No sense making the stem waste energy on bids that won’t bloom.

Taking off the tips makes the bouquet look a lot neater.

Beautiful, stunning display. A few years ago, I finally invested in just the right sized vase to hold these flowers.

Do you have a favorite gladiolus color?

August Garden Surprises

I took a walk around the yard today just checking everything out. It must have been a while I’d done that, since I had quite a few, luckily mostly pleasant, surprises.

This Rose Of Sharon has always grown in the shadow of surrounding trees which are no longer there. I never understood why it was planted there and remained quite a runt and hardly flowered. We left it since it was back in a corner and not hurting anything. Not this year! With all the new sun and space, it has flourished and has been blooming like gangbusters.

Next to the big Rose of Sharon is a small one I bought on clearance. It was in even more shade and really never grew much. It was pretty much overrun by hosts and ferns. All of a sudden this year, it started blooming. It’s flowers are the more traditional hibiscus looking type.

Then there’s this white Rose of Sharon that just appeared from nowhere. I thought it was a weed growing up next to the fence. Kept cutting it back, but it was quite persistent. After apparently not weeding for while, it unexpectedly flowered!! My persistent weed was a very pretty white Rose of Sharon. It actually picked a pretty spot to grow, so this one is staying put. I also finally know what all those persistent weeds/baby trees in less desirable locations around the yard are. I am a bit puzzled though where this one came from. It must be a traveller from a neighbor’s yard since all the Rose of Sharons in my yard are purple.

I apparently really haven’t weeded very much lately and this huge thistle has grown about 6 ft tall behind the white David phlox. I would have pulled it out, except that it is was being visited by some lovely bumblebees and goldfinches. I think it’ll stay for the summer.

Last fall, I had moved some plants around so this spring, when things were coming up, I wasn’t entirely sure what and where things were. Early on, I saw these little grass like leaves that I couldn’t decide if they were weeds or flowers. I let them be since they weren’t too obnoxious. Just this week, they finally put out a single daylily bloom. Seems that some Happy Returns day lilies had found a new home. Reminds me that, “When in doubt, don’t pull it out!”.

I have 2 Knock Out Roses that are a few years old. They’ve struggled with Japanese Beetle attacks, and then this past winter really did a job on them. They looked pretty haggard, but I left them alone to see what would happen. Finally, one is putting out a few blooms. I’m going to trim off the dead stems and be extra vigilant about the Japanese Beetles. Hopefully the plant will be strong enough to come back healthier next year.

I”m not quite sure why my 1 year old Wine and Roses Weigela is blooming a second time this season. In any case, it’s healthy and looking great in this spot.

While I don’t have any pictures, I am excited to have seen a few hummingbirds in the yard recently. They haven’t come to the feeder, so either they don’t like my food selection or there’s enough natural food for them.

Last, but not least in my opinion, are these French Favorite Marigolds from Botanical Interests that I grew from seeds. I have never had such beautiful marigolds grow in the spot (and for as long as we’ve lived here, this has been my marigold garden).

Have you had any pleasant garden surprises this year?

Curled Leaves on the Bushes

Earlier in the spring, I began to notice that many, but not all, of my bushes in the front yard (Dwarf Korean Lilacs, Judd Viburnum, Boxwoods, Burning Bushes, Annabelle Hydrangea) were looking a bit unhealthy. Their leaves were oddly curling and looking dry, even though we’d had plenty of rain. The worst was one of the Burning Bushes and large sections of the lilacs.

Not knowing what to do, I called my tree and shrub caretaker to come and take a look. He diagnosed it as mealy bugs and mites, although I had trouble seeing what he saw. Looking into it some more, it seems it could have also been related to any number of other pests, or even incorrect watering or fertilizing. No matter the reason, it was clear from the symptoms that something was literally sucking the life out of the leaves and they needed to be treated or the shrubs could die. He recommended spraying with a pesticide/fungicide combo to cover all the bases. I don’t usually like spraying nonspecifically, but whatever the problem was it was affecting a number of specimen shrubs in my front yard that were already stressed from the harsh winter. I had already lost one large burning bush to mites a couple of years back and I didn’t want to chance losing all these bushes this year, so went ahead with the sprays.

Just recently, I finally started to finally see some new healthy growth on the shrubs and no further damage. Some of the curled leaves uncurled, others remained curled, but stayed green and didn’t appear to be any further damaged. Crisis averted for this year.

Have you ever seen anything like this? Any suggestions as to the cause?

Summer Sunflowers

Normally this time of year, I would be commenting on how the summer heat has been taking its toll on the garden. Not this year, though. The gardens have responded to these cooler than normal July temperatures by being one explosion of color after another. Right now it’s the sunflower’s turn to show off.

While we were enjoying the beauty of the sunflowers, others were enjoying them in other ways…

Considering how far these were dragged, I assume the squirrels feasted on these two heads.

And the birds have been frequent visitors to this “bird feeder”!

Photo credits: All but the last 2 photo were taken by my husband, Steve!

July Meadow Wildflowers

We were out on a bike ride over the weekend enjoying the meadow wildflowers that were in bloom (or prairie wildflowers as we call them here in Illinois). I tried to take some pictures, but between the camera lens being dirty, the mosquitos being so ferocious we needed to keep moving, and taking moving shots of flowers don’t work so well, no good shots. Luckily, my mom Peggy was out hiking in a meadow near her house in Michigan and saw many of the same flowers. Here’s some great shots of what she saw.

If I had been able to show my pictures, I would have added Wild Bergamot, Tall Bellflower, Red Clover and Yellow Coneflowers. It was also a day for interesting birds in the bike path. We scared off Robins (of course), a Catbird, a Brown Thrasher and Red-Winged Blackbirds. Maybe next time I’ll get some prairie pictures! In case you’re wondering what mine turned out like…

Next bike ride, I’ll clean my lens and bring bug spray !

Category: Flowers