Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Ditto Monday

The weather today was identical to yesterday with the chilly morning and nice, sunny afternoon around 70 degrees F. Nice shot above of our sitting area in the wishing well garden. It will be nice to develop this garden again next spring as we had a "split year" out there in 2010 with the irises being featured in spring, lifted in July and late annuals planted for interest thru the remainder of the growing season. The garden space really looks good right now but doesn't have any plantings/themes specific to children. Our intent next year is to make this a more interactive space with plants kids will be interesting in observing, touching, smelling, etc. As our newest garden, this area is certainly a "work in progress." To the left is a recent shot of the rose hips from the 'Dortmund' rose. High in vitamin C, rose hips have been used historically for many purposes including their nutrient content. I love the ornamental interest of these fruits and this rose (behind our pergola) caught my eye from 40' away. To the right is the delicate appearance of the tufted hair grass (Deschampsia cespitosa 'Schottland') that becomes wispy early in the season but gets this nice bronzy look in late summer. This is one of the more popular varieties of this perennial grass for full sun (preferred) or part shade. Below is one of the large, tropical leaves of the variegated shell ginger (Alpinia zerumbet 'Variegata') that looks so nice as a foliage plant in part shade (in this case, in our shade garden).
The progress out on "the point" has gone well this week and the majority of this project phase is now complete (see above). The guys (Nature's Touch) did a nice job with the rock placement and are currently working on spreading/filling with topsoil over that site. Our next step out in this area is to locate where the large arbor will be placed and oriented and we'll hopefully get it installed yet this fall. We'll then decide where we'll place trees, shrubs, turf, benches, etc. as we'll have a better feeling for the extent of this area once it is leveled and organized. We had a small crew today with Janice, Big John and Little Jerry. Janice and John started working on lights then moved on to other projects that including push mowing and watering. Little Jerry worked on pruning and collected debris. I had some meetings but otherwise worked on some odd jobs. I have another talk ("Bulbs!") up at Olbrich (Madison) tonight as well. Kay was here doing her usual top-notch tidying in the shade garden and we had Dr. Gredler, Dr. Yahr, Maury, Kay and Del here as well. To the left is the variegated maiden grass (Miscanthus sinensis 'Variegatus' that looks so great with sunlight shining thru the plant. To the right is the seed capsule cluster from the 'Carmencita Red' castor bean (Ricinus communis) plant at Kay's garden. The vivid red is as showy as any flower and actually, the flowers of castor bean aren't real exciting anyway. Below is our ornamental edible wall planting (looking delicious) this morning and at the bottom is the beautiful (but thuggishly rampant) morning glory (Ipomoea sp.).

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