Morning Glories

Pick-Up Sticks

During times when my back yard doesn't look like the backdrop for a scene from the Grapes of Wrath, it bears a striking resemblance to a game of pick-up sticks ready & waiting to be played. The massive silver maple that dominates the back yard is a very messy tree, and by the end of winter the yard looks like a tornado might have passed through. This means multiple rounds of picking up sticks and branches before the yard can be mowed. So while I'm feeling a little ahead of where I usually am at this time of year with the front yard, I'm running a little behind in the back. I need to get out and play a few games of pick-up sticks....

 

 

Now We're Getting Somewhere

... in the garden at least. Today featured the combined blessings of a day off and a nice weather day. In fact, it is a beautiful weather day. I was able to clean up the front yard and gardens and do the first mow of the season. It was an absolute joy to be outside. (Of course, the thrill level of the mowing experience will be all downhill from here.)

I'm wondering -- am I the only one who thinks seeing the perennials return is like greeting old friends? Welcome back, catmint and yarrow! Come right in, mountain pinks and day lilies! Make yourself at home, rose campion and dianthus!

The only problem with all this outdoor excitement is that I haven't been able to share it on this blog because I'm having trouble creating posts. For the past while, everytime I try to edit a post after I've loaded the photos into it, the screen freezes and I have to control-alt-delete my way out, losing everything I've done. Morning Glories has always been photo-intensive, so it's been very frustrating. I've had three rounds of spring photos that I haven't been able to share.  And I'm not getting anywhere in resolving the problem.

For now I'm going to try to include a basic layout of some photos from March (top to bottom: hens & chicks, bleeding heart, yarrow, lilac, rose campion) in the spirit of a belated "Happy Spring!"

 

 

 

 

The Old Bait & Switch

In the Plant Swap with my sister last year, one of my favorite acquisitions was caryopteris. (At the time it was known as the "mystery purple shrub" but it was later properly identified.) I planted it in the front right border and it grew throughout the season. However, it never turned out the beautiful purplish-blue blooms that I expected, and I was puzzled. But I still had faith.

This year, the plant grew taller and was yellow once again. I began to grow skeptical, particularly when I noticed waves of a suspiciously similar looking plant in the roadside wilds on my morning run.

The impossibility of this actually being caryopteris was confirmed when I discussed the mystery with both of my sisters recently. One had researched the plant and found it is a shrub and therefore you can't divide from cuttings or portions of the plant.

So here stands the mystery plant, which I now consider a weedy intruder in an unfortunate (but unintentional) case of "the old bait and switch" -- and it won't remain here much longer!

Surviving the Squirrels

Last year I received some Lily of the Valley in a plant swap with my sister and put it in a container at the far end of my (small) back yard. Throughout the season, I struggled to outsmart the squirrels that were fond of digging in the container. By September, the smaller of the two plants had disappeared completely, and the other featured a single drooping leaf. Knowing Lily of the Valley's reputation for hardiness, I wondered if it might come back this year. A few checks of the pot in the past few weeks yielded no news.

But this week, a careful examination....

resulted in a joyful exclamation....

SURVIVAL!

And so the the tough-as-nails Lily of the Valley plants (and I) live to face another season of battling with the pesky critters!

Warning: Not Beautiful! (Part 1)

In looking back at the spring and summer gardening seasons, I want to acknowledge and learn from the things that didn't work out. It's not going to pretty, but it has to be done.

The clematis 'Freckles' was expensive but I wanted something lovely to grace the trellis in the rose garden. Its dramatic bloom would have fit into the pink/white/green color scheme beautifully. I planted it eagerly, and it quickly grew enough to begin twining around the trellis:

April 28, 2007

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It made its way to the top of the trellis but remained spindly. The growth seemed slow for a twining vine, and I realized I had no hope of seeing blooms this year. But it obediently followed my "training" to begin growing across the trellis horizontally:

July 2, 2007

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In August, despite faithful and appropriate watering throughout the season, the vine and leaves gradually turned brown and eventually became brittle. When I knew the plant had reached the point of no return, I cut it down. (No, I don't have a photo of the dead clematis. Who wants to look at photos of dead plants?  But I need to get tougher about documenting the failures. For a complete garden photo journal, they need to be included.) Alas, the clematis was no more:

August 27, 2007

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This is the second time I've tried to gow clematis, and I don't think I'll try again. The 'Freckles' clematis is a perennial plant and perhaps it'll come back next year and do better. But I do have an alternative in mind. I've been wanting to add morning glories to my garden -- after all, that's the name of the blog -- and maybe I'll put them here next year. I'm determined to make full use of this lovely trellis!

 

Introducing "The Beast"

I've got a lot of beauties in my yard and garden, and one big beast -- a poisonous something-or-other (oak or sumac?) at the back of the property. Here's a shot of it after a lethal dose of weedkiller:

It's in an untamed corner behind a rhododendron bush. In the spring, some of its stems stretched out towards the shrub. Not knowing what it was, I attempted to cut away the branches without touching them. I clearly didn't succeed, because I ended up with a rash similar to poison ivy but much more severe, involving a trip to the doctor, steroids and a lot of unpleasantness before it went away. At this point I'm waiting for the courage (and cooler weather so I can bundle up from head to toe) to pull or dig it out by the roots and banish it completely.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There are also some less virulent offendors on the premises. Here's a patch of poison ivy that had infiltrated the good ivy at the base of the giant backyard tree before losing a major battle with weedkiller:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

An attempted tree takeover:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A fresh little patch that got zapped immediately:

There's also some poison ivy in the neighbor's hedge that I try to steer clear of. But it's an ongoing war. And the reason for #4 in the Seven Random Things About Me post.

To learn more, visit:
Poison Ivy, Poison Oak, Poison Sumac at About.com

A Word of Encouragement

Everyone has problem spots.... even Longwood Gardens:

So if there's an area of your garden
that isn't meeting expectations,
that you're giving a bit more time to turn around,
that mysteriously went south in a hurry,
or that just won't do anything right....
You are not alone.
The pros face those situations too!

To view some of Longwood's non-problem spots, visit:
Small Flowers, Big Impact
Stunning Sights at Longwood Gardens
Colorful Coleus at Longwood Gardens
Color Theme Borders (and More) at Longwood Gardens
Longwood Gardens - Pure Inspiration
Longwood Gardens Wish List

"Grapes of Wrath" Take One - Action!

Although this looks a bit like a scene depicting the Dust Bowl, unfortunately it's a scene depicting a problem area in my back yard.

The main cause of this hard-scrabble landscape is a humongous tree that dominates the back yard, from its bumpy roots underfoot to a canopy of leaves that virtually obliterates the sky overhead. It's impossible to get a photograph that captures its size, so I'll leave that to your imagination. Suffice it to say that removal of the tree is high on the list of big-ticket outdoor improvement projects. Once the yard gets some healthy sunlight, the next step will be to put in garden beds and grass up the bare patches. The monster tree -- and the shade it creates -- is the reason why all the gardens (thus far) are on the front and sides of the house!

Morning Glory Comes to Call, Part 2 ("Uh-oh" Edition)

It looks so sweet and innocent, doesn't it?

I was so excited to report in my Morning Glory Comes to Call post that this flower, which jumped from my neighbor's hedge onto and around a wash-line pole in my yard, appeared to be a morning glory. But my happiness was short-lived. My blogging friend Connie of Notes from a Cottage Garden kindly warned me in a post comment that, based on the leaves, the plant looked like bindweed.

I did some online research and found that the flower and leaves do match bindweed, which is a highly invasive type of wild morning glory. What I read in this excerpt from an article by Dennis Hinkamp on the Utah State University Extension website made the hair stand up on the back of my neck:

Field bindweed is a strong-willed perennial, Goodspeed says. It grows from rhizomes, which are technically underground stems. This gives the plant the ability to move great distances under the ground without being detected. These rhizomes can produce a "new" plant at each node on the stem.

“In layman terms, this means the plant has the ability to send up 1,000 new plants right where you are trying to establish a flower bed or garden,” he says. “As if this were not evil enough, this noxious weed also has the ability to produce thousands of seeds. To top it off, these seeds can lay dormant in the soil for up to 50 years before germinating.”

So I'll wait and grow some of the good morning glories from seed next year. And bring out the weedkiller immediately to get rid of its evil twin.

A Hydrangea Mystery

This year, my hydrangea blossoms seem to be nestled in among the greenery like never before.

I don't know if this is the result of exceptional foliage growth...

...or inferior blossom production.

Either way, I'm not sure I have any control over it.

But I will say, it makes quite a coquettish display!