Some Very Needed Time Away...

I know some of you are missing my posts, and I know I haven't had so much to say lately.  I'm doing ok though, and during this hiatus I've been following along with your posts.  My time away began as a time-budget thing.  It was really hard for me to manage my time because of my new job.  I pretty much came home, cooked supper, tended to as many chores as I could manage, and hit my pillow already asleep.  I wouldn't trade my job for anything though.  Love it!  As much as I love to post things on my blog, I had to cut back in one area for the success of other important areas.  For those of you who haven't given up on me yet and are still reading this, I thank you and am humbled.

When our winter finally broke, that began a whole new arena for me to spend any extra inkling of my time.  I usually have all sorts of new plantings and the occasional new flower bed happening.  This year is a little different though.  I dialed it back.  Oh, I still have new plantings don't worry about that.  I just didn't get too crazy with the creativity this year.  I have just enough planted that I feel like there's something pretty to look at. 

I never really had an annual color theme thing going on here.  I usually planted whatever sparked my fancy and tied it all together.  This year, I don't know why, but I decided to have a "Color Theme" with my annuals.  I think an Annual Color Theme will be fun!  Maybe I could create whole new bedding ideas with this?!  For my First Annual Color Theme, I've decided to go with something of a Patriotic palette.

I don't have any photos of that yet (I'll try to do that soon!), but I do have a couple I took of my bleeding hearts. I absolutely swooned over them this year.  They were just so striking, and there were so many bloom spikes that lasted for weeks and weeks!  Our weather must have been just right for their liking.

There was also another thing going on for me during this time.  Well, ok, a kinda big thing.  And this big thing has been going on for some time now.  Nearly 3 years to be exact.  And it was getting bigger.  You'll have to trust me on this, bigger is not always better.  It brought along with it many complications; quite debilitating at times!

So after dealing with far too many evil complications, much contemplation, much self-reflection, and a great big deep breath...

2.  Days.  Ago.  I.  Did.  Something.  About.  It.

The new me.

Each day has been a tiny bit better than the previous one.  Tiny is good.  I'm up on my feet, albeit a bit unsteady and a bit achy, I am up on my feet!  I'm a very lucky girl; my family and friends have been so supportive of me.  Somebody needs to tell me to knock it off and try to rest after all!

Now, a whole new chapter awaits me.  And I can hardly wait to see what and where it will bring me.  So my flower beds will keep till next year.  I'll be ready.  For now I'm content to have my little uncomplicated plantings.  Amen.

Halloween Cactus?

I have a little Christmas Cactus that is entirely confused.  Now I think they're called Christmas Cactus because they tend to bloom at Christmastime.  But not mine, nosiree.  It blooms at Halloween.  And I have no idea what's up with that!

Here's the condensed version of how this little cactus came to live with me.  It was given to me by one of my students during the very last class I taught.  I had been teaching for many years when my DH decided that it was time for him to move on.  I was also attending college classes during the day, which I immediately needed to drop out of.  I took a day job instead, in addition to my night classes, and I continued teaching for about a year after our divorce was finalized.  I taught 3 classes per night, 3 nights a week (of course in addition to working more than 40 hours a week!).  My son would come along with me at night, and my classes started around 6pm, and wouldn't end until around 10pm, so it was hard for him to work on his homework while there.  Not to mention, it wasn't exactly my idea of spending "quality time" with him.  Of course I always wanted to be available for him with homework questions, and just to hang out.  So...after much thought, I made the decision to go into an early retirement of sorts.  At this point I had been an instructor for 15years, and I really liked it!  Besides, I thought I could always teach classes any time I wanted to in the future.  I really loved it.  Everything about it.  I met the most interesting people, and I made a wonderful friendship that I still have to this very day.

Annnnnyway...

At the very end of my very last class (November 1997!!!), one of my students and her little girl presented me with a tissue-wrapped object.  When I opened it, it turned out to be a cute little Christmas Cactus!  How sweet!  It wasn't blooming, and the only plant stake it had said that it was a Christmas Cactus and that it had been grown in Canada.  I really had no idea what color the blooms would be, but I couldn't wait to find out.  My dear grandmother had an absolutely gorgeous Christmas Cactus that bloomed hundreds of bright red blooms every Christmas.  I knew how she cared for it, and I thought my odds would be pretty good that I could have beautiful blooms too.


I read up on Christmas Cactus's, and followed all of the advice, but I never seemed to have much luck in getting it to bloom.  Nonetheless I kept trying.  It did have an incident once when a well-intentioned neighbor was house-sitting for me.  Half of the cactus got broken off, but it was a tough little guy and pulled through.  Eventually, that half filled in pretty nicely, but still no blooms.  I moved it to different parts of my home with darker and cooler rooms for periods of time.  Still nothing.

A couple of years ago, I bought a small bakers rack and set it up on my front porch.  I have always admired porches that had one.  I'm on the lookout for a full-sized bakers rack so I can have two and get my porch looking more the way I'd like it to.  I decided to put my Christmas Cactus right out there on the porch, and I also bought several different varieties of cactus to keep it company.  But that's another story for another day!  At the end of the season, I brought them all back inside and set it up in the living room below a southern exposure window.

Well.

I was certainly shocked to find my Christmas Cactus filled with all of these tiny little whitish nubs.  At first I thought it may have insect casings or something.  But those little nubs looked much different in a just one day.  Could I have buds forming?!  I'd better keep my eye on this.  They grew very quickly, and in a matter of days, they began to pop open!!  So that's what my cactus was wanting these past 10 years!!  Oh what a glorious sight!  You would have thought I won a lottery or something.  They are creamy-pinkish-ivory, with fuchsia stamens.  No idea what variety this Christmas Cactus is, but I adore the exotic-looking blooms, and how fragile they look.  If you happen to know, please send me a note!


This is the second year that it's bloomed, and there are even more this year than there were last year!  Oh, I hope next year it will produce even more!

 

 

 

It's a Wrap...Almost

Where did summer go?!  It seems as though it was just getting started.  Fall is definitely here to stay with its crispy air.  Most of my gardens have been nipped into dormancy, and are waiting for me to properly settle them into hibernation.  I always have mixed emotions about fall.  I adore the colors and the smell in the air.  Yet I am saddened to think that for the next 6 months everything will be just so...naked.  But for now there are glorious displays of golds, oranges and bright reds waiting to be noticed around every new turn.

I took this picture of a Marmo maple (Acer freemanii) on November 11, 2008

And this one on October 27, 2009 of the same tree.  It's kind of hard to tell the difference!

My beautiful Japanese Whitespire Birch (Betula platyphylla japonica) in a riot of bright gold.  I took this on October 21, 2009 just before it started raining.  (Sorry about the blurring on some of the branches, it was quite windy when I took this!) It rained for 3 straight days and nights, with even more wind.  The show's over now for this tree, or rather it's been relocated, as 99% of its leaves are now scattered across my lawn.  It makes such a pretty carpet!

The Bidens (Bidens ferulifolia), and Lobelias (Lobelia erinus) are still holding their own.  Even though they've stopped producing new blooms, the foliage and existing blooms are still looking pretty fresh.

I've also got a few cute little Callie Rose (Calibrachoa) blooms hanging on.

I just happened to look down at the rocks along the edge of one of my flower beds as I was walking my yard.  It was just too perfect not to photograph; all of the colors were arranged better than I could have done myself!

My Crimson Pygmy Barberry (Barberis thunbergii'Atropurpurea nana') has begun to prepare for winter too.

I found this leaf stuck to one of my benches and thought it had a very interesting pattern.  Sort of makes you think of camouflage doesn't it?

And my snapdragons are among the season finalists every year.  I have no idea what variety they are, they didn't have any plant tags when I purchased them.  :(

They're so pretty, I just don't have the heart to cut them down.  They're really much brighter in person.  The blooms are so deep and bright that they almost hurt your eyes to look at them in the sun.  I've really had amazing luck with these guys.  This snapdragon basket was drowned nearly to death when we had flooding this past June.  The entire basket went completely limp within a few hours.  I brought it into my garage hoping that it would perk up.  Whenever the weather was dry, I optimistically set it back outside again.  Nothing doing, it stayed limp, the soil stayed soaked, and eventually the leaves got crispy, but stayed green.  I set it back outside again after a month, thinking that it was a goner.  It rained again (of course!), and you'll never believe it.  In a couple of days there were all of these miraculous, tiny leaf sets popping up all over the stems!  (I really wish I knew what variety they are!)  I cut away the stems that didn't show any new growth, and found that I had lost half of my basket.  The remaining half filled in so nicely, and the new growth was just as gorgeous as the original!  Snapdragons truly should be called a resurrection plant.  I am planning to clip the spent blooms from this plant once they freeze, and dry them out.  Next spring I'll plant them in hopes that these seeds will give me beautiful color for another year.  Cross your fingers for me...

~~Diana

Bright Splashes to Lift The Spirits

I thought I'd take a little time to share some of the things that I've grown in my gardens. Life's too short not to enjoy the color and fragrance of flowers! I try to keep my flower gardens blooming on an ongoing basis, so as one stops blooming, others take over. For me it's a true spirit-lifter. My mother, and both of my grandmothers (and many aunts) were avid flower gardeners, so I was happily born into it.

The weather this summer has been really strange though, and not really the sort of weather that makes your bedding plants want to thrive. It's been pretty tough on my flower gardens, and I'm having to water once or twice a day. We've gone from near-drought to flooding, to 40 degree nights in August (yes...in August!), and then back to more drought. Right now we haven't had a drop of rain in 2 weeks, so it's back to the drought thing again.

Think I'll get my truck washed today...that usually does it.

I've got an enormous Saucer Magnolia that's a real head-turner every spring. I planted it in 1989 when it was below my knee. It's now at least 12 feet in height, and I've topped it several times. For the last few years, it's been putting on a small second blooming (10 or 12 blooms) later in the season as well.
This was taken as it just began blooming. With threatening weather on one horizon, and bright skies on the other, it provided wonderful lighting to show off the blooms.
How lovely. I so look forward to seeing this every spring!
It's so enlightening to see new life and glorious colors popping up everywhere with the coming of spring. I've got these tidy little crocus clumps tucked around the corner of my garage. They've multiplied so much that I need to relocate some of the bulbs! They're even popping up in the midst of my peonies and hyacinths. They are fairly tough little guys and they don't seem to be intimidated by the other plants at all.

Aren't sunflowers amazing? I remember driving through Kansas and seeing hundreds of acres of sunflowers in a full riot of yellow. What a striking sight!! I always try to have a few around here (if the critters don't get to my seeds before they come up!).
I was a very young girl when I came across these beautiful flowers randomly growing in a field. I had no idea what they were, but I thought they were so delicate and pretty. I just HAD to bring them home for my mother, so I ran back to get a shovel and a bucket to dig a few up. She still has them growing in her yard today, and it's been over 35 years now. 3 years ago she thought it would be nice for me to have some in my yard, so we divided them, and now I have them too. Over time I learned that they're a native wildflower called Spiderwort. There's so many varieties and I'm not sure which one we have, but they are just so cute.
I'll have to do another post sometime about my other flowers and gardens. Have a lovely day, keep a smile on your face, and a flower in your heart! Diana