Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca Pendula'

Helpful blog reader (aka Mum) went off and looked up the tree I referred to as "the weeping, umm, oh help, what is it?  Something pacifica."

I knew it had an ocean in it somewhere.

In her email, Mum also included the rest of the entry from the reference book: "Dirr describes it as "a weeping form with bluish foliage; the branches cascade like water over rocks; must be staked to develop a strong leader; truly a beautiful clone; have seen many in gardens and each is slightly different due to training, pruning, and staking in the early years.""

Is it just me, or is this not an urgent request to get out there and stake the damn thing?

OK, I am projecting a little bit, since we did have this conversation last March. "You know, you need to help it along if you want it to go taller. It needs to be trained - just pick a little branch and stake it upright."  And, later in the week, "I just found this little piece of wire.  I'm putting it in the tool shed with the other garden stuff, because it would be the perfect weight for training a leader branch on the cedar. You know, if and when you feel like doing that."

Sheesh.  Alright already!   Here we go.

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 Ten-shun!

Yuletide

Does it get any better than this?







Hell yeah!

(flash worked)

And....

(-click to see full detail-)

And then it was Christmas morn....

Polish garden cleanup

As I was getting ready to leave the house yesterday morning, I heard the trimmer's motor out front, and thought I'd spotted Andrew lurking in the shrubbery in front of the porch.  Oh-ho, thought I, perfect timing - I can write up his Christmas card and deliver it to him in person. Except when I went outside, it wasn't Andrew, it was yet another of his compatriots, an older man I'd not seen here before.  "Are you with Andrew?" I asked, stupidly, because why would anybody else waltz into my garden and start tidying? In broken English, he explained that Andrew had dropped him off here to do some cleaning, and would be back to pick him up later in the afternoon. "Wow," I laughed. "He's leaving you here for the whole day?!"

So I left the card for Andrew on the mailbox and went off to work, and forgot about it.

I got home after dark and went straight into the house, where I was met by a wide-eyed geek. "Some guy came and cut everything down!"  "Sure," says I, "that was Andrew's sidekick, come to do the garden cleanup." "But he cut everything down!"  

OK, this was really something.  For the geek to even notice that anything had changed in the jardin was highly unusual.  So I braced myself for the morning's revelations.

"Holy shit!  Where did it all go?"

 Wow!

 He really did cut everything down! I was gobsmacked - never seen anything like it!

It's actually really fascinating to see the bones of spaces so clearly. Here's the front border, with camera pointed right at where the goldenrod was in all its glory in October:

And here's the Christmassy yew, still all neatly trimmed from an earlier Polish cleanup:

(Bit blurry, light was getting low.)

Mum's spring training this year is going to be a very different experience from previous years, that's for sure.  Watch out, weeds, we can see you now!

Merry Christmas!

Anyone want a cat for Christmas?

I'll throw in the bow, too.

October photos

Yep, the asters say it loud and clear: "October!" The last of the warm, golden light and bare toes and brilliant, rich colours. And cats, of course, but they, like the seasons, are fleeting.  Or fleeing.  Or fleaing. Well, all of the above.  Or just going for a whiz, perhaps.

Soft jungle light on more asters and japanese maple:

Last of the snapdragons and another japanese maple:

OK, so you sort of have to know the snapdragons are there, just behind the ducky. Meanwhile, next to the driveway, the monkshood was stupendous...

...and the golden rod golden.  The new yew is looking alright too...

...as is the weeping, umm, oh help, what is it?  Something pacifica. With backdrop of Honorine Joubert.

Phlox, black-eyed susans, all holding steady:

And cats, now hungry:

"Done yet?"

Potatoes

Last August, I got up the courage to approach the guy who takes care of our neighbour's lawn and ask if he'd be willing to add us to his client list. He agreed! Andrew is Polish, and has very clear ideas about how garden maintenance should be done. When plants have finished blooming, they must be cut down so that they don't impede mowing, trimming, or leaf removal.  Grass clippings must go in their own compost bin, where, Andrew assures me, after a winter of rain they will transform into beautiful mulch.

This meant I needed to clear out one of the two compost bins, shifting all the partially-decomposed kitchen waste into the other bin.  And, lo and behold, when I did this, I discovered more beautiful potatoes.

So we got a nice tidy lawn and yummy boiled potatoes with salt and butter.

Note to self...

...for the next time I'm out there with my head down, yanking out all the spent, yucky, weedy mallow and I accidentally haul out the ONLY stalk of the gorgeous white hollyhock at the same time: this cloud has a silver lining. Hollyhocks will continue to bloom as cut flowers in water in a vase!

Clematis

Our  spring-blooming clematis is really a wonder (geek shot above). It's the one featured in my blog photo (up to the right), covering the arbor over the gate on the way into the back yard. The only year it didn't give us this mass of blooms in April was when I indulged in extreme, therapeutic pruning after Grandmama passed away in February of 2008. (Wrong season!) Although the blooms were sparse that year, since then it has rebounded with admirable vigor.

Here it was in April this year - look how high up the corner of the house it had climbed!

Actually, it was starting to freak me out. I've never really recovered from being assigned "Day of the Triffids" to read in junior high school, and it sure looked like this thing was trying to get into my attic. Truly creepy!

Here's what it looked like late on Friday afternoon...

...before I did this:

Ha!

After:

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Whole lotta snippin' goin' on! Some of what I hauled down was actually white, instead of green - proof that it was already exploring under the roof!

Of course, there's still the huge canopy on top of the arbor itself that I didn't quite get to. Yet. We have to duck our heads to get under it. Pretty in the afternoon light, though.

Campanula carpatica "Blaue Clips" and other stories

A year and a half ago, we planted some "Blue clips" campanula (common name "Carpathian Harebell" - I love it!) in one of the back beds by the deck.  Following the rule of three, we planted three of the little sweeties. This summer, one of the clumps has finally flourished!  Here it is, along with the indestructible "Lamb's Ear" (stachys byzantia) and another blue charmer, some sort of anemone (?), over to the left.

It's very handsome, and a welcome bit of rich colour as the rest of the garden gets a bit bleached out in the dog days of summer.

Just to the right of it, in the next photo, you can see the second campanula (marked with the little plastic tag), which is very dead.

And a little further to the right is the third one, which is doing its very best but is looking pretty pathetic. Now that I have remembered where it is, I will make more of an effort to keep other stuff away from it, and to give it some water.

Meanwhile, further back, to the right and in front of the pergola, is a little scene I'm proud of.

The low, handsome mound is some cranesbill (alpine geranium). These guys bloom in May and then get all floppy, so I hack them right back. This time, though, I noticed that some of the floppy stems had made their way up into the camellia bush behind . They were still blooming away merrily, and the glossy camellia leaves hid most of the bare stems, so I just left them.  And they're still blooming - very pretty all threaded through the camellia!

A little further back, the site of pulmonaria-under-seige-from-the-comfrey (I am still digging out that wretched stuff, and you can see some new bits coming up over to the left, below) is a wee plant that Mum rescued from the other side of the pergola last spring. Anyone know what this thing is called? I love the fringed "bottle-brush" blooms it is producing.

And one more little scene that is a nice contrast from all the pink and blue I've got going elsewhere: frou-frou shasta daisies and crocosmia, tucked in by the neighbour's fence, almost under the pergola.

As I am waltzing around, snapping these photos on a hazy, warm, late afternoon, Ozzie is curiously AWOL. Usually he's right there at this time of day, reminding me that the dining hour approacheth. Harriet had to fill in for him.

"Listen, could you just put the stuff in the dishes?"