August 2010 Archives

Sunday was a relatively cool day in mid-Missouri. I spent a little time working in the garden before fixing a salad for lunch.

Humidity was low so I also let the cats on the fenced-in deck and turned to the refrigerator for a glass of lemonade.

When I turned back to the center island where I left the salad, a cat was depositing a very live frog IN my plate. I did think about grabbing the camera first but the frog wasn't staying put, and neither was the cat!

Later that afternoon, I went on deck "frog" patrol to make sure the coast was clear to let the cats back out. Hmm, this little southern leopard frog looks vaguely familiar.

We grew up in South America near the Equator. The closest we ever came to even the concept of snow was ice crystal build-up in the freezer. Seeing anything that resembles snow is still a bit of a wonder.

Queen Anne's Lace, one of the first Missouri wildflowers I came across after moving here, still reminds me of  summer snow.

A neighbor also referred to this Missouri wildflower as bird's nest plant, something it does resemble as flowers fade.

Another one of my perennial Missouri wildflower favorites is pink phlox.

Although pink phlox don't last long as a cut flower, I can't imagine my garden without these tall plants scattered throughout Missouri's late spring and summer season.

The flowers are small with a faint scent and last for weeks.

As flowers age, they fade into a light lavender.

I used to try to keep the almost 4-foot high plants with flowers the size of a dime in back of flower beds but now I welcome their enthusiasm.

When they first start blooming in May at the front of flower beds, where they seem to prefer to grow - they form a curtain one walks through to get into various parts of the garden.

After blooms fade, I cut the ones in front back, which gives the garden bed an instant change and encourages shorter plants to re-bloom.

If you buy phlox hybrids, you'll find they'll eventually revert to this basic color.

I try to keep pink phlox around as long as I can because of all the visitors pink phlox attracts, including hummingbirds, hummingbird moths, butterflies and one of my favorite garden gymnasts, carpenter bees.

And for the record, not one of them buzzed or tried to bite me. My zoom lens is getting repaired so I've been getting very close with my 50 mm.Charlotte

Charlotte

Gardening to Distraction on a MO Hil

Years ago, I started quite a debate between two experienced gardeners when I happened to mention I have double orange daylilies in my garden.

"There's no such thing, it must be an exotic hybrid" one said.

No, I said, they look pretty much like Missouri's common ditch lilies, which many people assume are weeds or wildflowers - only double.

They must have cross-pollinated with an exotic, the other gardener said. "They're a mutant."

"If they're a mutant, someone must have deliberately altered something," the other gardener said and they both stared at me.

Considering I didn't have anything more exotic than daffodils and a few wild violets in my garden at the time, I was pretty excited about having a "mutant hybrid" daylily. This was before Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles days and after Mrs. Williams had given me a clump of "wayward" daylilies out of her garden off Highway 72.

Well, "wayward" suggests a plant that just took a wrong turn whereas "mutant" sounds - deliberate!?

If there's one wildflower that means Missouri summers to me, it's one of Missouri's hardiest wildflowers, Black-eyed Susans.

Even in this punishing, record-breaking heat, these almost 3-feet tall perennials were covered in long-blooming, hardy yellow flowers, one of the last flowers to show any wilt.

Now I can't blame my neighbor for thinking the center of my Black-eyed Susans were frilly because more often than not, these flowers have visitors.

This next photo makes me chuckle every time I see it. I prefer to not alter my photography but for this next shot, the background was washed out. As I was playing with tweaking the shot, all of a sudden these two big blue eyes were staring at me...
 

Black-eyed Susans are easy to grow from seed. It may take them a year to settle in but once they're happy, they'll bloom almost continuously from mid-summer until frost.

Between bumble bees and fritillaria butterflies, Black-eyed Susans are definitely wonderful bug magnets!

Gardens have a life of their own, especially when it comes to pollination. Earlier this spring, I found ajugas in different colors and now it looks like daylilies may be developing a new variation.

I don't have fancy daylily hybrids;  mine are either gifts or purchases from local gardeners or stashes of Missouri's orange ditch lilies.