Begonia Mailbox

Earlier this year I showed you a very inelegant recycled mailbox with  a couple of begonia stems.

Here is the progress it has made.

It will have to go inside in October to escape the frost.

Night-blooming Cereus

Our night-blooming cereus has just bloomed.  It had fewer blossoms this year.

 Probably being a cactus, it did not enjoy all the rain we have had.

 It is impossible to miss its bloom time since it smells very good and its scent comes in the second- floor bedroom window.

 Notice the graceful bud.  It bloomed the next night.

Tomato Disaster

You may remember the tomatoes that were doing so well upside down.  

They produced some early tomatoes and then one morning we made a disheartening discovery.

That ugly green thing on top of the tomatoes is a tomato hornworm.  Not only did it eat the leaves, it destroyed these beautiful green tomatoes.




Notice that it also brought a friend.
These are Manduca quinquemaculata.

We were surprised to discover that this ugly thing turns into a hummingbird moth, something we had admired and taken pictures of. This rather heavy-bodied moth has other names in different parts of the country.

Eggs are deposited on the upper and lower surfaces of leaves in the spring.  Our hummingbird moths love our butterfly bush.




These two fellows will not become moths.  If they brought along the family, they could decimate a tomato row in one night.

Golden Rain Tree

The Golden Rain Tree is an example of a long-range passalong plant.  I had to check to be sure not to confuse it with the Golden Chain tree, which has rounded leaves.

My friend JoAnn gave this to me a good many years ago.

 In double-checking information about it, I discovered  that supposedly this tree was first grown in America by Thomas Jefferson--I am a bit unsure since I  have not seen it at Monticello myself.

Some sources say it is invasive, but it has produced very few offspring in my yard.





I have let it get too tall, but at least I can see it from my porch.

Gold Finch and Bell

This little gold finch is not too sure he wants to ring the bell, but it is a little hard to fly away

Day Lilies

My gardener friend on the other end of our street was commenting today about her regrets about crowding her garden.

The main culprit is over-zealous, overtall, spreading day lilies.

We arrived at the same conclusion: Smaller, interesting, long-blooming lilies are best.

My favorite is this double, ruffled apricot day lily.

Smoke Tree

This smoke tree "Young Lady" is one of the prettiest bushes I have.

It is labeled a tree "cotinus coggryia," but it is 7 years old and still modest in size.

The leaves are shiny green, but the pretty part is called the inflorescences, the smoke.


Here it is next to Harry Lauterer's walking stick.

My smoke bush can be seen in an earlier post.  Some also label it a smoke tree, but they are very different.

Chocolate Vine

I forgive this pretty chocolate vine "Akebia quinata"  for not blooming in its second year in my yard.

Its beautiful delicate leaves and its delicate twining nature are pretty enough.

It is supposed to have purple-mauve drooping flowers in late spring and sausage-shaped edible fruits in the fall.

To produce fruit it must have another vine nearby.  But no blooms yet.  Maybe next year.

Meanwhile it will cover both sides of my trellis and overpower the jasmine on the other side.

Oak-Leaf Hydrangea

The name of the oak-leaf hydrangea is easy to understand.  The huge leaves look like super-size oak leaves.


 This is a large shrub, overpowering the flower bed.  My daughter-in-law planted a smaller version she bought at the garden store, probably a wise choice considering how big mine is.


Margie, a friend of my mother, gave it to me some years ago.

Sun Drops

One thing a little chilly spell in early May can do is make the sun drops bloom much later.

They are among my favorite blossoms.  Their name is very appropriate--just little yellow drops of sunshine.

Actually this year they are a bit larger than usual.  Also they seem to have sent out more runners and multiplied a lot.

This is another plant that came from my mother's house.

Foxglove

This has been a great year for foxglove, or digitalis.  Sometimes a relatively small number (perhaps twenty) appear.  Not only are there more this year, the ones that showed up are tall and healthy.

 Each year's crop comes from the seeds of previous years. Sometimes they don't bloom until the second year.  The foxglove is not a true perennial, more a biennial. It relies on seeds for permanence.

Sometimes people say their foxgloves didn't return.  When I ask if they use much mulch, they say, of course.  Generally thick mulch keeps the seeds from reaching the soil.

What color are my foxgloves?  Whatever color they want to be, mostly white, lavender, or pink.  I bought a dark red one last year.  It died, and I had no red blooms this year.  But when I looked where the red foxglove had died, I found a couple of dozen little plants.  They should bloom next year.

Perhaps everyone has heard of the traditional use of digitalis as a heart medication.  My passalong foxglove may have seen that use through the years.

Violas

Most people would choose pansies over violas. They are in the garden center in the fall about the same time.

 I bought these last fall for 25 cents per six-pack.  They bloomed all winter and are still going strong in June.  They probably will last until August.

 They are more compact and graceful than pansies.

Deutzia

The deutzia appears in gardens that have been around for a hundred years or longer.

Old houses, some no longer occupied, have these beautiful flowering shrubs.


Many are twenty feet tall or more.  Mostly they were passed along from generation to generation or from neighbor to neighbor.



The white one, deutzia scabra, is more likely to be a passalong plant.

I found the pink one, deutzia gracilis, in a nursery. Last year we cut the pink one back drastically, but it is a very fast grower and is as tall as ever.

Dwarf Irises

I have previously shown a blue dwarf crested iris that grows as an edge-of-the-woods plant.

 I knew I had a white one, and I  finally located it. It spreads but not as much as the blue one.

 It also likes a somewhat shady corner of the flower beds.

Hummingbird Bush, Summersweet

Last summer I put pictures on this blog of a bush my friend gave me.  She called it a hummingbird bush, but the hummingbird bushes in my plant reference did not resemble it--especially since most were red.

It has pretty white blossoms that appear fairly late in the summer.  It has shiny green leaves that sometimes stay through the winter.  This year they didn't appear till May, and I was beginning to think it had died.

To get to the point of this blog, I was reading my new Birds and Blooms magazine today and found a bush called summersweet, or Clethra alnifolia,  The description and picture match my flowering shrub.

The bush was fully covered with these seeds in the  winter.   I didn't get a  picture of the full display of the seeds since the green was beginning to come  out.  They are brown, not purple as it appears in the picture.

Cucumbers

These early cucumbers needed a little shelter.

 A discarded squirrel  "discourager" provides a bit of protection for the first week or so.

Cucumbers did  great last year in this hanging basket.

Maple Trees

I looked in my tree reference to try to learn what kind of maple tree this is.

A friend gave me the little tree 15-20 years ago. It is a small, with leaves tending to a pale, yellowish green in the summer.

It has multiple small trunks.

Hen and Chickens II

My yard has hen and chicks all around.

Some are in pots meant for the purpose and others are in whatever is lying around.

This plant requires little attention and will grow and multiply most anywhere.

It is a little inclined to disintegrate if watered too much in a pot.

It does well and multiplies in the corner of a flower bed.







Each year about this time I have a large plant sale.  One of my most popular potted plants is the hen and chicks.  I recycle household items as containers and use left-over pots.

Hen and Chickens

Hen and Chickens is a hardy passalong succulent that can be persuaded to grow in all sorts of odd places.   Mine are just the old-fashioned passalong ones, but they come in different colors and shapes.

The good thing about them is that they can be put in all sorts of containers or in a corner of a flower bed, be it sun or shade.  They stay outside all winter with no attention.


My efforts to plant them in tall strawberry jars from the garden center have not been very successful.

 Actually one of the jars broke in two. I used the bottom for a shallow hen and chicken holder.

 The bottomless top I buried and filled with hens and chicks.  They prosper more when buried a bit.   They will soon be totally full.

This is a good example of my lack of success with hens and chicks in a strawberry jar.

This ajuga just dropped in and I let it grow. There is a small fern growing on the other side.

Begonia Container

 

My husband was disposing of  our old mailbox when I decided to rescue it.

I had torn a stem from the pot of begonias when I was moving it from the basement.  It had plenty of roots, but the stem had been pushed out by overcrowding.  It needed a new home. 

It fit fine in the mailbox and will hold firm with the help of a few rocks in the bottom.  

It looks a little rough now, but it will settle in the flower bed just fine later this summer. I'll try to surround the lower part with pine needles or rocks.

Below is how the  mother  begonia looked last summer.

Money Plant

The money plant certainly travels a lot.  Its seeds move everywhere, even down into our woods.  The rain water washes them away down the hill.  This purplish flower can be seen at a distance.

I have looked for a picture of what it looks like in the fall--evidently lost somewhere in Picassa.  The silvery seedpods look just like coins, a bit translucent, and they remain most of the winter before breaking apart and spreading seeds everywhere. Mine came from my mother's house, but if your neighbors have these flowers, one might just wander into your yard.

Yellow Lamium

Last year I got tired of replacing the annuals, usually salvia, that I put in the cement planters on my front steps.

 I decided to use yellow lamium, which is a very sturdy perennial vine and a passalong plant. It did great through most of the summer,even after it quit blooming.  The foliage looks great.

This spring it is really flourishing and looks better than the salvia ever did.

 The best thing about it is the absence of work and expense. Pink lamium is also pretty, but a bit more fragile than the yellow.

Lamb's Ear

My lamb's ear looks much better in the spring than later in the summer.

The  fuzzy texture is especially appealing.

It spreads well and I potted several little lamb's ears that wandered into the grass.

 The primroses are equally pretty, but they don't last as long.

Alpine Lady's Mantle

This is one of my favorite passalong plants for several reasons.  It blooms early and is not bothered by frost.  It has pretty shiny green foliage all year long.

It tends to spread a bit, but it is not offensively invasive.  If you don't like its traveling, it is easy to pull out.  Its most noticeable quality is the long-lasting green blossoms.

It can easily be shared with friends and neighbors.  I got mine perhaps twenty years ago from my mother's neighbor.  I am sure some nurseries must carry it, but it doesn't seem readily available. It was the only thing at my plant sale that a real plant expert found that she didn't already have.

Poinsettia

This poinsettia left over from last year did not turn red for Christmas.



 It probably likes the long hours of darkness in the green house during the winter months.