A Frog's Life

This frog is taking it easy on a hot day.   He almost blends in with the background since
 the lilies have faded a bit because of the hot weather.

A Very Rambling Rose

This is a pretty single very rambling rose that I got from my mother who got it from some one else who got it from another neighbor.  It climbs twenty feet high in the nearby trees.  I corralled the bottom by making a circle of hog wire (has big spaces) that I found somewhere.  It needs to be cut back a good bit each year.

Hanging Tomatoes

This is a homemade way to do hanging tomatoes.  Find two old hanging baskets that match.  The hanging wire holes must match too.  The hole in the bottom must be large enough to accommodate a good-sized tomato stem.  To keep the little tomato from falling through, cut a small piece of styrofoam to cover the hole.  Make a slit in the styrofoam to slide in the stem of the small tomato, allowing the tomato to be firmly held so that it will not fall through. The hole in the styrofoam can be quite small.  Fill with planting mix. Fasten the top basket in place.  These containers have just been planted and need to stay in the shade a few days.  Then the tomatoes should be placed on a sturdy holder since they will be heavy.  Then they will need some sun.  Keep watered, but not to excess.

 As you can see from last year's example, the plant prospers in the home-made container.

Seven Sisters Rose ( I think)

I found this pretty really fragrant rose on Cherry Street on the east side of town about four years  ago.  The house where I found it belonged to a pair of school teachers who died many years ago. The rose probably dates back at least 60 years.  Their niece told me it was all right to get a few stems, which were easy to root.  The family called it Seven Sisters because it seemed to form groups of seven buds.   The blossoms start out this color and fade to a paler pink.

This bush is a bit past its blooming prime.  It grows fast and is very sturdy.

Lamium

I have gotten tired of buying annuals every year for the cement planters at the entrance to my front door.  I decided to try the very hardy yellow lamium, which is a trailing vine with attractive yellow blossoms in the spring.  Its foliage is as atttractive as its flowers.  It requires little care and will return next year with no pampering.

If it gets too energetic, the overhanging ends can be trimmed.  This pair have been planted only about a month.

Plant Sale

We are very tired this week.  Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of last week was our tenth or so annual plant sale.  I basically sell perennials from my yard along with a few flowering shrubs.  Throughout the year I put extra bits of flowers in pots and put them in the edge of my woods, where they pretty much take care of themselves.  The weekend after Mother's Day is sale time. Many repeat customers appear each year.  Every year I say this will be the last one, but I forget the misery of work and remember all the nice people who come.

At sale time I dig stray flowers from my yard, put them in plastic bags and sell them for a dollar.  Only a couple of items were as much as five dollars.  A few more were four dollars.  Most items were a dollar or two or even fifty cents.  I made $924 in two and a half days--not reaching  my goal of a thousand dollars, which is what I made last year.



A Beautiful But Demanding Flower

Nothing is more beautiful in the late summer than a night-blooming cereus covered with blossoms.  The blooms are large and white and fragrant. A friend once had 53 blossoms on one cereus plant.  But the only problem is that blossoms only last one night--and as the name suggests one  has to miss some sleep to admire the display.  The flowers are fully open by 11:00 and they wilt when the day becomes bright.  Separate blossoms may take a few days to finish up.   What a disappointment to discover a wilted flower when you didn't realize it was the night for blossoms!

 The other problem is that the plant can't stand even a touch of frost.  In western North Carolina, they have to be put in a basement or greenhouse in the winter.  Since I don't have a large basement, these huge plants can be overwhelming.  You can see by their size why my husband does not look forward to moving them. And considering how big they are, not many people are willing to adopt them.

 When spring comes, they like a sheltered space with a bit of sun like my lower deck.  Ordinary plant food and watering will do.  If you break off a stem, just stick it down in the pot and it probably will root if it has a bit of moisture.  I got this flower from my mother who got it from a neighbor who got it from a friend and so on.  No need to go out and buy plants.

A Very Unfriendly Plant



The best way to deal with a prickly pear is to
stay away from it.  It may be pretty, but it has
big mean prickly stickers, therefore its name. 

These pretty blossoms make a gardener forget how painful a sticker can be.  It doesn't matter--leather gloves or not. Incidentally, the best way to ruin a good pair of leather gloves is to touch this vicious plant.  The next time you put on the gloves, you discover the sharp little pests are still in your gloves, never to be removed and sure to stick your fingers again.

 The second part of the name comes from the pear-like fruits that appear after the blossoms are gone.  I don't have a picture of these. These persistent plants grow very large if no one disturbs them.

                                                                                                                                             

Annoying Roots

As spring comes again I am annoyed again.  I went to a lot of troubles several years ago to install some flower beds to cover the ugly space beneath my maple trees.  I (or rather more so my husband) installed landscape logs and rather large rocks and filled behind them with potting soil and rich woods dirt.

Then I planted hostas, ferns, other perennials, and bulbs.  They were happy that summer, but by fall those ugly little hidden maple roots were wreaking havoc in that soft rich soil.  Even the hardiest plant had to fight for its life.  The next summer I thought I would outdo the roots by digging out the roots and putting down old plastic mulch bags and recovering them with soil and replanting the flowers.  No way.  The roots were tough enough to come back in a few months.  They are mostly in control now.  Digging holes in  the soil and sinking potted plants works somewhat.  But the roots slip through the bottom and invade the pot.  The only thing worse than these maple roots is the Bartlett pear tree we got annoyed with and cut down. We built a flower bed to cover the beheaded trunk.  For two years the departed tree destroyed our new bed with invading roots.  It is even now still trying.