Siskiyou Primrose - The Good, the Amazing, and the Bad

 Remember the pink primrose that I thought was a weed? It continues to be really beautiful. It's almost always covered with those big pink flowers. This is today. Even after all the hard rain we've had in the last 48 hours it still has several blossoms. Also, it's a non-succulent that likes dry sandy soil which is a big plus. (Not that it's seen anything dry in the past week!) This is the good part.

The amazing part is that it spreads faster than some weeds. It's trying to invade several neighboring spaces, and I had already moved some tiny sprigs to another location on June 12, so 12 days ago.

These are already going to bloom!

Now for the bad part. Japanese beetles love the flowers. I don't have a picture, because every time I've found them, I have just killed them without going for the camera. If they become a problem, I may have to take action, although given the aggressivenes of the plant, maybe the beetles aren't bad. However, I like to see whole flowers instead of chewed ones.

In other news. About 2 pm, I realized I was going to have to make a major formatting change in the book. Yikes! It's late in the game to do that. I morphed into book panic mode and I've been glued to my chair since then. I'm now back to where I was at 2 pm. Pretty much a whole extra day of work. It's looking like I won't have this wrapped up before I leave for NY. This is not the end of the world, but I was hoping to not have to work very much while traveling. So much for that.

No gardening. Maybe it was a little wet for that anyway. We had another 0.3 inches of rain last night. That's 8.0 inches this month at my house.

See What a Surprise!

More Yellow

 We'll do a few comparisons today. I'm starting with the Forbidden Fruit hosta. It was so not yellow last year that I thought it might have been mis-labled. However, it clearly did not get enough time outside. This year, it looks great. I hope it makes a baby soon.

Here's what it looked like last year. It was one of my almost free plants. Big difference



The next comparison is the sad little non-hardy Sedum mexicanam 'Lemon Coral' I got for almost nothing because it was beat up. As a reminder, here's what it looked like on May 20.



One month later, I am loving this. I will bring it inside for the winter, and hopefully manage to keep it alive.

It's similar to the Sedum 'Angelina' that Betsy gave me, which is hardy, but the 'Lemon Coral' is more yellow-green, so it's a color I would like to keep. This is the 'Angelina' starting to bloom. You can hardly tell them apart in the pictures, but in real life, the 'Angelina' is a bit more toward golden.

This is the almost free Corepsis I got last year that was all battered with many broken stems. Looking happy this year!

Edited my brains out, need to keep that up. We had 1.9 inches of rain over 36 hours.

See Color of the Day - Yellow

Almost Christmas, Almost July

  OK, I'll just get the joke over with first. Cathy and I were going to take a hike this afternoon, but someone upstairs decided to kick over every bucket of water in the house. 1.5" of rain here.

So... we came home and pulled out a jigsaw puzzle. It's a Christmas one, and it's going to be very pretty. But it has 1000 pieces, and it's a little harder than it looks. Love the bright colors. We did not get it done. But it's been two months since I worked on a puzzle!

But the main reason Cathy and I were together is that we went to White Cloud to hear another North Country Trail hiker give a talk. This is Nancy DeJong, and she has hiked all of Michigan, a little piece in every state, and is more or less working on Wisconsin. (She says she doesn't have blue blaze fever... right.)

I've known Nancy for quite a few years because of trail stuff, and it was nice to hear her "take" on hiking the trail. Very fun morning.

As for almost July... well, it is. And I am heading east in July. The book has to be very close to ready to go to the printer in one week. If I have to do a few final tweaks on the road it's OK, but I have to buckle down and really make progress.

Today was a rest and play day to give me enough motivation and guilt to work hard all week.

See Not Easy!

Three White, Two Oops

 Today's featured color is white. OK, don't go technical on me and proclaim that white is not a color. I am using the word according to common usage.

I'll start with the oopsies.

I've had this sedum since 1997, starting with a small pot. Now it's everywhere! But that's OK, because I like it, it's easy to rip out if it gets too agressive, and it is attractive in all its forms. Here are the flowers, which is why it's called white sedum, Sedum album.

Look closer, aren't these just adorable?

I've always thought these were Sedum rubrotinctum, 'Pork and Beans,' because they often color up like this, and the leaves are like little round beans.

But they don't always get red. And I assure you every bit of this plant on my property came from that same little pot.

But, I am prepared to eat my ID of all these years. I did suspect that 'Pork and Beans' was supposed to be a little larger, but stuff here almost always is smaller because the soil has been so bad. But the clincher is that the flowers of this are white, not yellow as they would be if it was rubrotinctum.

Now for oops number two. I bought one of these last week. It's candytuft, (Summer Snowdrift), Iberis amara. I'd always believed these were not hardy. But the tag says "hardy to -40oF." I just double checked. That is indeed what it says. Hmmm.

So I looked it up, and my assumption was correct. Everything I can find about this says it's only hardy to 0o. Bother. I wonder if I mulch it if I can get it to live. I don't want to have a lot of plants that need special treatment in the fall. I already have two I'll have to deal with (one bought on purpose, one other oops). Well, it's pretty, but it's lonely out there. I was thinking long-term and splitting it with the purchase, but that may be a forlorn hope.

Now for the winner. I KNEW I had white globe campanula, Campanula glomerata, probably 'alba.' And my notes say it bloomed after the purple one. Check. It's also shorter, which could be useful. Here's the weird part though. I don't recall that I separated these by color when I planted them. However, all the white ones are about 10 feet away from where the purple ones are. These haven't bloomed for quite a few years, so I'm pretty happy.

It was pretty hot and damp today, but I managed to format and do book stuff for 4 hours. Only managed 45 minutes outside, but it was hot.

And now it's started raining!

See Sorting Out Sedums

The Unrelenting Genetic Drive to Reproduce

 I'm starting this post with a picture from another year because it's prettier.



These are globe thistles. It's not really a thistle, The genus is Echinops (which means spiny). The leaves look prickly, and the ball-like flower heads look spiny, but all those parts feel soft when you touch them.

Anyway, I used to have a whole row of these in my flower garden when the house was down by the road. They were here when we bought the property in 1971. Despite complete neglect they have refused to die, although they are getting pretty crowded out by grass. Alive is a good thing because I really love them. Here's what the flower heads look like in full bloom.



They aren't blooming yet, but they are in bud. I want to move some of these up to the driveway flower bed that I have been cleaning out. You know that transplanting a plant while it's in bud is the very worst time, right? But there are still quite a few plants, and I decided to move the smallest and see if it would survive. If it even lived, then next year it would blossom.

I moved one plant on June 12. Here's what it looked like on June 17. I was pretty sure by then that it was going to live. Even though it's very droopy, some of the leaves perked up every day, so I knew they were drawing water up from the roots. The recovery never quite made it all the way up the stem, but I watered it heavily at least twice every day.

Here it is today. The lowest leaves have yellowed and wilted, and it still looks droopy, but can you see the real difference?

I'll help you out. Even though the upper stem can't recover to be completely vertical, look at what the bud is doing. It's turned upwards to the light and is getting larger. If a plant can be said to have desires, those are to find light and produce seeds. That means to create a flower. Despite some really tough odds, this plant is going to live and reproduce. It is putting all its energy into that flower head. Forget the leaves, just get water and nutrients to the top! Unrelenting.

Today was much better, weatherwise. We had 0.6" rain this morning, which cooled things down. It got a bit steamy this afternoon, but never made it to the really high temperatures. It was too wet to do any real gardening.

I edited. Gotta keep at it.

See Spikey Things

Color of the Day - Yellow

  It seems to me that most of the summer-blooming sedums have yellow flowers. Not sure if this is really true, or just the ones I own.

But right now, the rock garden is blanketed with yellow. This picture has two different plants, but the farther one is Sedum elecambeanum. I had some of this, and a friend gave me more. It's a great, reliable groundcover.

Also seen in that photo is Sedum sexangulare (the stalks have 6 sides). It's not one of my favorites, but it does add a lot of color when it is blooming.

Remember those fountain-like sprays of blue-ish sedum that look like spruce twigs? This is what they look like in bloom. Sedum reflexum

I showed you this before, but to complete the theme, and it's still blooming wonderfully, this is the Sedum 'Bright Idea.'

For the last shot of yellow, we have to go to the front flower bed. That mystery lily is looking great. Last year, it had three flowers. This year it will have four.

The heat got to me today. I have managed to do 3 hours of computer work and 30 minutes outside. Mostly I read a book and drank ice tea. I'd call it age, but this has been my heat MO for years. We may get some rain and a break tomorrow.

See SunSparkler Sedums

SunSparkler Sedums

 I've mentioned the Sunsparkler (trademarked) Sedums several times. These are ultra-hardy hybrids of Sedum and (at least in some cases) Orostachys. Orostachys is a genus of succulents mostly from the far east. I had never heard of it. I believe the first of these released for sale was in 2012. Of course that represents a lot of years of research and testing, and then growing enough to be able to sell them. They are commonly referred to as sedums, but most seem to be in a new genus Hylotelephium.

You might also remember that I've been trying to track down where their demonstration garden is located. I'm pretty sure it's in Hudsonville, MI, and is part of Garden Solutions, which also creates the Chick Charms brand of Sempervivum. Well, that's a bunny trail for today. (But only for today.)

What I want to do today is show you all the Sunsparkler varieties that I currently own.

Before I even knew that the trademark was going to become of great interest to me, I bought this one as a reward for a week of hard work in 2020. It came from Wal-Mart, and as you have heard me complain yesterday, was not labeled as to the variety. But it has to be 'Dream Dazzler,' patented in 2019. The original was a single sport of the already hybrid 'Plum Dazzled' (which is solid purple and much taller). I've already split this a couple of times, so I can't complain that the original clump isn't much larger than when it started. The leaf bi-color is stunning.



The second one I bought in 2023. It's 'Lime Twister.' I liked it so much I bought a second one at the end of the season last year. Here's what that first one looks like now. It spreads well, and is filling in this space. The newer one isn't quite as large yet, but it's also doing fine. 'Lime Twister' was released in 2015.

Not long after getting 'Lime Twister,' I looked up the Sunsparkler series and realized these were going to seriously be plants I wanted to acquire. In fact, I confess to being covetous. So much so, I ordered two plants. Well, this is often not too satisfactory. You get some tiny sprig of the plant for an exorbitant price. Nevertheles, I ordered 'Cherry Tart' and 'Dazzleberry.'

'Cherry Tart' is a bright red-purple. It's doing OK, but it certainly doesn't spread very quickly. That said, it's looking a little bigger than it did this spring, and my purchase last year only got me one little stalk. Interestingly enough, this is no longer listed in their official catalog, so perhaps it hasn't been as successful as some of the other hybrids.

The 'Dazzleberry' has dark blue-black leaves which I love. I might have gotten two sprigs of this for my $8.99 plus shipping. :/ (that's what greed costs). When it gets large enough to bloom, the flowers are a bright raspberry color. Meanwhile, it seems to be slowly getting larger.

By now, I was actively on the prowl for other varieties created by Sunsparkler. I have found three more this year. The first one I found is 'Firecracker.' I almost wouldn't care what color the flowers are, the leaf color and spread is so great. The flowers are supposed to be magenta. I've only had this a month, and it's spreading fast.

A week later I came across 'Wildfire.' I wildly love this. It spreads quickly and the colors are spectacular. I've already pulled off one sprig to get it started in another place. Just for contrast in price. I got this entire large plant for $6.99. Interestingly enough, this one was developed from a sport of the previous one, 'Firecracker,' in 2014. It's supposed to get rose pink flowers. I've had this less than a month and you can see it's already growing new shoots.

Then I saw this one at Wal-Mart a few days ago. And I'm really sure this is 'Lime Zinger,' one of the first ones Sunsparkler released. I love the growth form as seen from the top. Very concentric.

Now, mostly for my own reference, I'll list the Sunsparkler varieties I don't yet have:

'Plum Dazzled' - dark purple leaves and it grows upright rather than spreading
'Angelina's Teacup' - pretty much like Angelina, but it stays small and doesn't spread all over so much.
'Cosmic Comet' - very blue foliage and low growing (apparently popular- it's sold out in their catalog)
'Dazzling Dynamite' - a lot like Dream Dazzler but add orange to the two shades of purple/pink
'Jade Tuffet' - more upright habit with pointed green leaves and pink flowers
'Saphire Tuffet' - taller and upright, with smoky-blue serrated leaves and hot pink flowers (new 2024)
'Blue Elf' - one of the first ones released, a low mound of blue leaves with purple flowers

That might be all the choices for now.

There was a breeze all day which saved the weather from being oppressive. I did a lot of editing and a good bit in the gardens. I might go out for another 15 minutes yet this evening.

See Sorting Out Sedums

Sorting Out Sedums

 First, I have to tell you that I broke two of my rules last week. I shopped at Wal-Mart, and I bought a plant that wasn't properly labeled. OK, I go to Wal-Mart a couple of times a year, and one of them is to just check out the garden section in case they have something I want. I think maybe one of the reasons things are cheaper is because they don't care whether stuff is labeled correctly. This is a Sunsparkler hybrid Sedum, but it doesn't say which one. However, by elimination, since there are only a limited number of Sunsparklers, I think it has to be 'Lime Zinger.' When it blooms I should have a more solid idea. I do like the way it fills in a space.

It's also interesting that W-M's plants have the Better Homes and Gardens Label, Lowe's carries Proven Winner, and Meijer has Garden Exclusives. But if you read the small print on the tags, they were all grown at Sawyer Nursery.

This is the Sedum I showed you a few days ago in bloom. I bought this last year. It's Sedum hispanicum 'Pinkie.'



It was another I thought I'd give a second try because I'd previously killed a S. hispanicum. That one was 'Blue Carpet.' Guess again. Two little patches of it have shown up. Opposite corners of this picture.

I also had another tiny low-growing sedum, S. dasyphylum. I haven't discovered any of that yet. But so many things have unexpectedly popped up, I'm keeping my eyes open.

Finally, for today, Sedum spurium 'Tricolor.'

Remember the one I bought that was only green and white, and I hoped it would stay that way? I should have known better. Now that it's getting sun, it clearly has pink edges. That's OK, it looks nice.

This is a tricolor I've had for a long time. It has settled in and become almost "woody."

And then, this is a tricolor that Betsy gave me last year. It wants to ramble all over the place, unlike the other two. It's interesting to me how variable this is. That said, it's a hybrid, and might have been created by different greenhouses. It's an "old" hybrid, so it's not like it's patented any more.

It's so hot and humid here that I struggled to keep working, but I managed laundry, shopping, editing for others and myself, and a couple other things. I can live with that. Only a little garden time. Too hot.

See Newly Blooming Mid-June

Swoopy Sky

 Today's big event has to be the storm that swooped in early afternoon.

Literally.

I looked these up, and this kind of cloud formation has a name. It's called Asperitas clouds. It is defined as a low layer that looks like the upside-down surface of a roughened sea. Interestingly enough, these rarely carry rain.

There sure was a good suggestion of rain. I could see the radar. I could smell the rain falling somewhere (actually the smell of the newly wetted earth). Even better, I could see the rain falling behind these interesting clouds.

The "waves" were moving fast. The heavenly sea was roiling.

Quickly, this formation moved off to the east. You can see that ragged edge on the back side. Sure enough, not with these clouds, but behind them, within a few minutes the rain reached me.

It was almost like a spring rain, gentle and falling straight down. A half-inch total. Very nice.

I pretty much took the day off. I did write a newspaper column, but other than that I goofed off. Hopefully, tomorrow morning I'll be ready to jump back into working hard.

See Yesterday's Storm