Hard to Keep Up with Everything

  This week's stars are the PeeGee Hydrangea in front of the vegetable garden and the sedum clump in the west side garden.  They are coming into their best days, and give an important late boost to the declining garden.  Coneflowers are fading.  They still look very nice from a distance, and give alot of color to the yard, but when I  go out and try to find some nice fresh ones to pick  there really aren't any.  Wave petunias didn't do as well this year as usual.  Some combination of rabbits and maybe even too much rain was not the best for them. 

Speaking of rain, we haven't had any since the 4th, and it is really dry around the yard.  Hard to believe, but the grass is starting to brown out at the edges and over the rocks.  The creek is still pretty high, meaning that the groundwater situation is still fine.  But the gardens need some surface water. 

The Hibiscus that we bought at Ebert's in Ixonia has produced saucer sized blooms of a gorgeous dark red that are unbelievable.  Sure hope it survives the winter and blooms each year.  The bush cherry has its own little spot in the Northeast corner of the yard, but Bill has plans to turn that area into another bark bed. 

It is the time of year that I am starting to think about what was successful and what wasn't and planning for next year's plantings.  Sometimes I think that I really need to thin out the stuff in the first berm, but then I realize that even though it isn't perfectly manicured and elegant, it is always in bloom with something.  The area around the pond is not as nice this time of year as I wish it was.   But that is an opportunity to consider enlarging the pond and not worrying about what plants may be lost in the process.  Fall projects are starting to stack up.  

The robins have almost completely stripped the pagoda dogwood of its berries by now.  Our new cat, Grace, likes to sit in the bathroom window and watch them.  I think she'd like it better if she could leap out and catch them. 

Catch Up Week

Had the week off, and was able to get caught up on a lot of things, including the garden. Cut back some iris on the west border that seemed as though some animal had been sleeping in them. Throughout the week I was able to put in an hour or two of gardening each day, and then also catch up on filing, weeding cleaning and so forth inside. Also had a little time to be out and about. All in all, a good week.

Photos this week are of the garden stars. The Joe-Pye Weed in the late evening sun is lovely, and now that the Rudbeckias are blooming too, the purple and yellow are so great together.

The Mandeville in the pot on the deck is spectacular. Not a native, nor able to over-winter here, it is none the less one of the nicest tropicals for the deck. I have over-wintered them once or twice, but inevitably the white flies take over around March and all of the effort goes for nothing. I may try again though - it is so hard to see this beautiful plant die in the frost. If I do decide to try to bring it in, I will need to decide soon and begin to spray it with malathion to knock down the white flies as well as possible before late September. Have to do that for the Hibiscus anyway, so might as well.

The Casa Blanca lily in front is the first prize winner this week. It is as nice as it has ever been, and really stands out. So nice that a photo of it has become the wallpaper for my new iPhone - for now at least. I hope that it lasts at least until Thursday when the Torch Summer party is here.

And the forth photo is of the Barberry bushes that we planted several years ago on the West side of the garage. They are basically a pain in the neck to maintain, having very vicious thorns, and growing profusely every year. But even so, we cut them back to almost the ground each spring and they reward by giving us beautiful young growth each year, contrasting nicely with the blue stain on the cedar siding. Pretty high maintenance for a foundation shrub, but as long as we can handle them they are worth it.

Statewide Clear Skies but...

Driving home from Fort Atkinson today, the skies were mainly clear for as far as we could see. We took the back roads home from Ixonia, where we visited a garden center that may well be worth the 100 mile drive next spring. Called Eberts Greenhouse Village, it was amazing. Acres and acres of plant displays, greenhouses and landscape examples.

Ixonia is just far east enough that when we turned on the GPS to route us home it was sort of a toss up whether to go east to the interstate or west back to Hwy 26. Instead of following blindly, we decided to try to take some interesting back roads, and eventually realized that we would be skirting the Horicon Marsh, and could cut back to Hwy 151 on Hwy 49. We hadn't taken that route for many years, and it brought back memories of times we sat on a hillside with newborn Jed, watching the geese and the beautiful landscape.

Once through the lane of memories, we beat it for home, and noticed that there was a line of thunderheads moving from west to east about as far north as I imagined our house would be. Everywhere else was clear. Wouldn't it be funny, I thought, if the only place in the state it rained was right over our house? Ha, Ha.

We drove about 45 minutes, getting to the exit for home without a drop falling. But it did become clearer and clearer that the clouds were, indeed, just about over our house. As we pulled off on Hwy 00 a few drops fell on the car. By the time we got to the traffic light at Bluemond it was starting to really rain. And three blocks later, as we pulled into the driveway it was pouring so hard we couldn't believe it. Hail, and over half an inch in about 15 minutes.

Near as I can tell, there wasn't another rainstorm around except for that one.

More Rain. What a Year

So, last night we got another inch and three quarters, maybe two inches depending on which rain gauge you want to believe. There is a puddle under the willow, and many plants are leaning over. It came over the course of an hour or so overnight, along with plenty of wind and lightning. That's almost 4 inches in the last 3 days and now, this afternoon, another storm approaches and they say there will be severe storms overnight. I hate to complain - we are not getting the worst of it. South of here it is much worse. And so far it is doing mainly good things for the yard and gardens.

But now it is raining again, enough to be significant in just a few minutes.

I don't want to count on it, but....

But this year has been amazing with regard to the amount and timing of rain. Just when I start to think it is a little dry, it rains. And rains well. Yesterday I felt gypped. I left for work in the early morning as usual and it was setting up to be a hot and sunny day. At work, I spent the day, as usual, in the dark and moldy basement. I hardly knew what was happening in the real world. People said it was raining, and I could walk out an see that it was. And back in the network services "data center" as I was discussing the latest big project, the power blinked briefly, indicating to me and our network administrator that our investment in UPS devices for our servers was worthwhile. And I did take a look out through the atrium a couple of times, and noted that there was real rain falling. But that is the total awareness I had of the rain.

Then I got home, and it was beautifully sunny and warm and the road and driveway were dry, but I looked at he raingauge in the front yard and found that almost two inches of rain had fallen there. The roadside ditch was full of debris that had been washed out of the culvert. And all of the other rain gauges were showing over an inch - from 1 and 1/2 to over 2 inches, depending on location. I have no certainty of exactly how much fell, but it was enough to be significant, and enough to make all the plants happy for sure. And I didn't see it happen. <sigh>

Blooming for the first time since the last post: Cannas, Summersweet. We had the first tomato from the garden over a week ago, and now they are coming in strong. Gaga's favorite, Jetstar, produced a beautiful, large, ripe specimen for tonight's dinner. Ah..... The peppers are coming on, I have more cucumbers that I know what to do with, broccoli is abundant. The potato plants are beginning to decline a little bit, but it is too soon to dig them up. I'm not sure about the onions this year. They seemed to get blown down early and I hope they are still growing. The raspberries are about done. We had about 10 pints all together over the season I'd estimate. Today at the farmer's market downtown, raspberries were going for $4.50 a pint. I think we paid about 6 or 7 dollars for the plants we have - and we get 40 or 50 dollars worth of fruit a year from them. A good investment.