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

The Rest of the Freebies

OK, techically, the plants I bought yesterday were not free. You can say one of them cost $1.06 and the rest were free, or they each cost 9.6 cents. Take your pick. But in fact, I got $88 worth of plants for $1.06.

This is the best of the lot in terms of desire for me, and it's also the healthiest. Yes, another hosta. As long as I can keep the deer from eating them, I don't have to worry about flowers. The shades of foliage provide the color. One of the risks of buying clearance plants is that you may not know what you are getting. This one had a tag. Supposedly, it's 'Forbidden Fruit." Hmmm. I doubt it, but we'll see. The center color is supposed to be more golden and the edge more blue. That would be nice. It may get bleached out later in the season. Is this considered late?

These don't look like much right now, but I'm super happy to have them. I used to have some astilbe, long ago, but they eventually died out. I know two of them are white 'Bridal Veil,' and one is pink 'Rheinland.' The fourth one is pot luck! They were all pot luck when I bought them because it turned out the tags had slipped down the sides of the pots. They don't like to be transplanted mid-summer, but I'll try to keep them watered. I put them right back where the astilbe used to be. That garden used to have more sun, and I think that made the previous ones a little unhappy. Ignore the unweeded area behind them. These won't bloom again until next year. (Yeah, there's a baby white pine in there I need to move.)

Finally, because I needed to pick one more plant, I chose this Coreopsis. I don't know what cultivar, and haven't tried to figure it out yet. I've sort of been working at weeding the sunny garden, but haven't made much progress, so for now, this is thrown in very near a bunch of grass that will have to come out. But it's blooming! Of course, everything was root-bound, so it will take a while for new roots to spread anyway.

Hopefully, I can keep them happy, but the price was right!

Also under the heading of freebies... there is a black raspberry bush growing under the outside steps. Not an ideal location, and I'll probably chop it out in another week or so. Meanwhile, it's been providing me with one or two berries a day if I can get them ahead of the birds. There aren't enough berries to really do much with except eat them, but it's a nice treat. I do love them! We called them blackcaps when I was a kid.

I spent the whole day finishing up writing an article about my hike for Outdoors.com. I am getting paid for it! Just sent it off. I'll let you all know when it's published.

The only gardening that happened today was to plant the plants shown above. I do have to move one plant I put in the rock garden. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I bought it. It doesn't want full sun, and it's very unhappy. Sigh. The starlings that are mobbing the mulberry tree pulled up a couple of things, but I don't think they really killed anything.

The big unhappy news is that my scanner, a quite good one, will not work with Windows 10. No drivers to download, just "sorry, tough crunchies." I can still use it with the old computer until that totally dies, but what a hassle. To replace it with comparable quality will be over $300. The list of reasons I did not want to upgrade the computer goes on and on.

I don't want to end on a low note, so let me tell you that one of the frost burned hosta I bought at half price a few weeks ago, and there were two in the pot, is going to bloom. Hosta flowers aren't usually very exciting, but hey. I'll take it's picture when it performs.

See Astilbe in Bloom

How Ester and I Spent the Day

 
Ester and I went out for lunch and then ice cream. Then we drove to the Gene Straton Porter estate, Limberlost, to visit again. This time the gardens had flowers in bloom.

Astilbe.



Missouri Primrose, or Sundrops.



And a lovely Japanese Maple.



I was wanting to help Ester get some things done that she needed to accomplish, but she said what she needed most was a day off. Here's the tree that was struck by lightning that started the whole crazy chain of events. See the stripe running the length of it?


But this was the only structural damage. Some of the wall beneath the window and a few floorboards need to be replaced.



The problem is that the whole thing smoldered for two days while she was not home and was unaware, so the entire house had to be emptied and everything professionally cleaned. To bring things up to code and rebuild, everything inside has been or will be taken down to the studs and rebuilt.

She's setting up camp to be nearby and live in relative comfort until its done. It's all going to be great in the end, but what a mess.



Keeping this post short and to the point. Gotta scoot. We have things to talk about, and I have to head home in the morning.

	See Limberlost
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