Made it to Irene's

 I managed to forget to take a picture with Cindy, where I stayed last night. But the link at the end shows us a year ago. I keep using her for a motel on the way east, but she's always glad to see me.

It was hot, hot, hot, and there was traffic, traffic, traffic. The best event of the drive was seeing an egret near the rest area along Lake Erie.

I guess I haven't been at this house of Irene's in mid summer before. She has some lovely lilies. This one might be 'White Pixels,' but there are quite a few cultivars that are similar.

These are (I think) the ones I am missing at home. The color isn't quite as deep, but they are close. Apparently their actual cultivar name is 'Black Falcon.' It's considered an heirloom daylily.

But this one is the stunner. And it's about 4 feet tall. I think this one is called 'Nettie's Pride.'

And Irene and me? Well, we aren't getting younger, but we are still here.

Today was the longest drive. It was a tough one with the heat (I have no air conditioning), but I made it OK, and only in mid afternoon did I break down and buy a drink with ice.

See Yipi, I'm in Yspi

Garden Solutions

 I told you there would be more gardens. Did you expect one so soon? I found where the demonstration rock garden is at the nursery where they develop the SunSparkler hybrid sedums. The name of the company is Garden Solutions. And they've lableled the space in case you weren't sure what it was. (This kind of thing always cracks me up.)

I'm just going to show you several long shots of the gardens today. Of course I took many pictures of individual plants, but I'm loving how these are giving such a good idea of the kind of landscape you can create with a rock garden.

Rock gardens can vary from places like this where they brought in big rocks, and so they can even use shrubs and small trees and it won't overwhelm the rocks, to rocks with tiny nooks where the plants are "micro." The rock garden at Matthaei Botanical Garden in Ann Arbor is of that type. (I have some pictures of it, but not with me) Mine is somewhere in between. Shrubs would overwhelm mine. In fact, now that I'm finding more varieties of sedums, I'm liking the 14" high mounds of geraniums less and less. But they can be thinned and removed gradually as I get more of the plants I like better.

The emphasis of this garden is to create a visual treat by varying foliage color and texture. That is also my goal, so I got a lot of nice ideas. I actually have (and/or have killed) an awful lot of the same plants, not counting shrubs) that they have used.

Of course, most of these plants do have interesting flowers at various times of the season. Those are just like frosting on the cake. But you can easily see that the color palette includes yellow, green, deep red, purple, blue-purple, and variegated leaves. They have plants that are spiky, fuzzy, bumpy, mounded, sprawling, etc.

I saw several plants that I have no idea what they are. Some were labeled, others I'll have to sleuth out. And of course, I covet several. It would just be too much for today, but maybe another day, later, I'll show you some individual plants.

So this is in Hudsonville, on Port Sheldon Street. It's a wholesale nursery company, so there is no one to answer questions and nowhere there to buy plants. But the gardens are open, right in front, for people to wander through.

I met up with friend David Snoek for lunch, and finally got to meet his wife Carol! Then we toured the garden in the rain. Actually the rain made the colors of the plants look very nice. Sometimes sunlight washes out the colors in pictures.

Now I'm in Ann Arbor for the night. Pretty beat, since I had a lot of final things to do before I left home this morning. Lots of heavy rain on the drive. It let up just so we could visit the garden! What a quality day!

See SunSparkler Sedums

Now and Future Blooming

 I'm going to miss a ton of good stuff in my garden, but at least the lemon lily graced me with one flower before I leave. I really love these. The old fashioned maroon one hasn't bloomed for years (because I haven't weeded well), but it has two buds this year. You can see it in a previous year at the link at the end. Also, 'Revolution,' the solid maroon one has lots of buds. The other yellow one, 'Young Love,' does not have buds, but it's alive, so maybe next year. I'm sure these would recover if they got weeded two years in a row.

Also in the driveway bed is that globe thistle that was determined to live. Sure enough, it is going to bloom. I'll miss it too, but you can see it's starting to get blue. Either later this year or in the spring, I'll bring it some friends for company.

In that same flower bed are some viper's bugloss (blue). This is a plain old alien weed, but I love them. In fact, I planted some here on purpose at some point. They are a biennial, so you have to watch for babies in the spring and put them where you are going to want them the following year. These are not where I want them, and they are small, but they bloomed, and they look nice with the meadow sage (purple). The really nice ones grow in my yard where they get about two feet tall over the septic tank.

Speaking of alien weeds, I let the silvery cinquefoil grow where it pops up in the rock garden unless it's crowding out something else. It's nothing special, but it's pretty enough. And it stays low to the ground, so that fits the rock garden.

I have no idea if the full blossoms on this will last until I get home. I hope so, because it's going to be amazing. The largest rosette of the 'Red Heart' sempervivum is going to bloom. I've been taking pictures of it for almost 2 weeks, and the development has been slow enough that I'm hopeful it will last. You can see it will be the pink, daisy-like flowers. I really want to know how big they will get!

Moving to the front bed, those astilbe I got for almost free last year are alive. Two of them are blooming. Not much, but it's a start. The two bloomers are both white, 'Bridal Veil.'

We'll end with two hostas. This is 'Tiny Tears' again. They are just making me happy with how profusely they bloomed this year.

And this is one of my small unknown hosta. One flower stalk, but I'll take it.

I will leave at about 11 am tomorrow, so I think the only other thing that might bloom is another lemon lily. But I'm sure there will be other gardens to share while I'm on my adventure. When I get home, the rock garden will need another complete weed-through. I hope some of the new sedums that are getting buds now will also still be blooming when I get back. THe sedum flowers do tend to last well, so I think so.

Almost, almost done with How to Hike the North Country Trail. I should be able to finish the details while on the road with no big issues. It has to go to be printed by July 15.

Got the Sampler Patches for NCTA designed and ordered. Got a few more Long Distance Hiker awards sent out (these take forever to process, so I'm still behind), and I picked up another editing job.

Just a few more tasks to finish before I leave.

See Yellow and Maroon