Hello all,
Madgardener here. I have been gone for awhile as things have been
going by way too fast. with all the heat, rains, working those odd hours at
the garden center at Lowes, it's been four weeks since my precious dawg,and
baby girl, Rose died unexpectedly....and more heat, and dealing with Sugar
who has never been without Rose since I got HER a year ago.
One day I had daylilies blooming in all colors, great trumpet lilies
opening up and perfuming the air the morning I found my sweet baby as close
to me as she could get. She's in my heart and I have many wonderful memories
and some great pictures of her. But now the humidity, heat and days running
into themselves have done their work.

I see my perennials acting like it's late August. The red summer
spiders that I attribute to late summer days that hang massive webs between
trees and bushes for us unsuspecting humans to walk into and do the freak
spider dance are already out.

The 17 year cicada's have come, done their crazy mating, sliced every
crape myrtle, my beloved Vitex bush, and every oak and maple tree around the
woods up here on my ridge and died. Well, Rose had gotten her fill of them
before she passed away. She gained a few pounds eating them for four weeks.
But she was loved, and my cat's almost seem to be wearing little black
armbands even four weeks later.

After getting heat stroke at work three days in a row, despite the
early hours, I got two days off in a row to heal and the heat drove me
inside. Today I finally ventured outside to take some pictures of what was
struggling in the heat blasts, and discovered my Harlequin Glory Bower is
not only budding, but is BLOOMING!!! WOW.

So armed with camera, I started at the NSSG. For some reason which I
attribute to the fairies whispering in my ears, I heeded their quiet
beckonings of distress and walked to the opposite side of my gardens, forced
my way past the Zebra grass, ducked under the Orange sherbet trumpet vine,
wrestled with the vinca major that is intent on claiming what little
pathways there are between the raised beds, and came to the Western bed that
sits beside the very pruned Lilac. (I had a fit of grief after Rose died and
took the loppers to the lilac and thinned out the third oldest branches and
now have to climb into the pasture weeds to retrieve the dead branches and
put them on my pile of debris down in my lower woods, I had a momentary
lapse of reason.......)

As I stood there, looking at the bed, it occurred to me what was
wrong. The lush foliage of my Japanese anemone's which were already setting
fat buds on top of the three foot stalks was bones. ACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. I
knew, I KNEW what this was, and I was sick at heart that I had neglected to
face the heat and check on the gardens. In my distractions, heat sicknesses
and grief and just life around me I forgot about the blister beetles.

Last year was the first year I actually had blossoms because I had
diligently sprayed them with a pyrethrum spray and had cut down their
numbers. It was wonderful. But this year, somehow I had slipped up and
forgotten to check for them.

When I first discovered these things, I didn't even know how to
identify them. How could I? If you don't know what you're looking
for......but my mentor and gardening friend, Mary Emma had given me an old
water color insect book and there they were. Blister beetles. And once I
knew them, I looked them up in my Rodale's Organic Encyclopedia and
discovered they were BENEFICIAL. NOT FAIR!!! Apparently their young eat the
grasshopper larvae. And their shells are so irritating, as to raise blisters
that they are what was used long ago for something called "Spanish fly".
Hmmmmmm. Well, I didn't care. Beneficial or not, I wanted my anemone's to
bloom. When these things hatch, they are so massive in numbers and so
voracious, they eat the leaves down to veins.

thus my description of "bones". And you can't crush them like Japanese
beetles. They'll raise blisters on your fingers. So my only alternative that
was sorta safe was to use a pyrethrum on them. I located some this year
specifically for this purpose at Dollar General store for $2 a bottle and
bought the only three bottles I could find. And what did I do? I spaced
their arrival!!

So I stood there in a kind of heat induced shock and snapped out of it
and went and grabbed a bottle and set it on stream and started spraying the
boney plants in the Western bed, watching as the insects started writhing
and falling off what was left of the plants. The buds will die because the
leaves that feed the flowers are gone. I will have to cut the plants back to
the ground and they'll regenerate but not bloom this year.

I then snapped back and remembered there was another patch of anemones
on the east side in the NSSG working itself towards the boardwalk bed that
actually IS the NSSG and I know they also munch hosta if they don't have
Anemones, so I headed to the eastern side and discovered whole leaves, but
just emerging beetles and soaked the leaves on every plant under the
Jackmanii clematis on the old twisted grapevine I've rigged for the clematis
to climb on.

My brain was working a bit better and I remembered another young patch
of anemone tucked in the chaos of the southern "constipated flower beds" at
the front of the house. I had to search for them. They were grown thru the
branches of the Spice bush, thru the Korean spirea that is taking over the
whole eastern bed, woven thru the spent thick stems of the trumpet lilies
that perfumed the air the morning Rose died, and even popping out behind the
purple clump of desperate monarda that has nowhere to go they're so crowded.
I sprayed the anemone there too. Better safe than sorry.

While I was doing that, I discovered my tetraploid daylily, Bruce
(it's the real name, I bought him 11 years ago when I moved over here at a
little place called Daydream daylilies on 11-E in Jefferson City on the way
towards Morristown) was still cranking out a few flowers amongst the foliage
of the swamp sunflowers that have started choking the bed (I'll love them
when they rise to six and seven feet and are covered with over sized
coreopsis looking flowers, but they flop, and I need to remember to drive in
grid rings next year).

I see unwelcome knobby kneed 4'o clocks mashing everything in it's way
as it falls over from too much rain and heat too soon. I adore the magenta
and yellow flowers but they grow four foot tall and kill good perennials
when they flop over under their own weight. They pull up easy, but I don't
get the black tuber, I break the stems off at soil line and I know they're
still in there.

Satisfied that I have sprayed well enough for now, I open my eyes (I
was apparently on automatic pilot) and see the phlox has thrown a daughter
outside the beds into the middle of the Frakartii asters that will bloom at
the end of September. And my Herbsonne rudbeckia is blooming incredible
screaming yellow with green cones flowers, but they needed staking or grid
ringing too, and so I tie a girdle of sorts halfway up the stems and hope
they don't break.

I also see every pot of perennials along the front and tucked into
spaces are in need of watering in the heat. The orange zinnia angustifolia
are crispy. I've waited too long. In the ground they toughen up, and crank
out flowers. But in a pot,they're delicate and need pampering.

All the returned mums in niches everywhere are blooming. Soft orange
ones in a bricko block with a sedum, spilling down into the tangle of vinca
I thought I got rid of. Fat chance. Dark, but soft red with yellow eyed mums
in a black nursery pot all alone in front of the Lady Jane and Autumn Jazz
viburnum that will need watering tomorrow morning as the rains missed us and
went into North Carolina and north-east behind me.

The cement urn I got at my mom's before we sold her house 3 years ago
I planted thread leaf coreopsis into can take the heat, but it wilts in the
blistering sun, and I had tucked burgundy hens and chicks and they love the
pot just fine, so I have to water the pot just the same and I hear
sputtering sounds from the semps.

Prickly Cat's whiskers or Cleome spinosa aren't as thick this year as
last, but welcome never the less. And despite that the Japanese beetles are
out in full cluster of love-in's, they're munching my purple Loosestrife, so
munch away. Soon will be the June bugs that come in July. I love them and
know the young dog, Sugar will have fun with them when she discovers them.

The Helianthus hasn't set buds, but the two colors of almost five foot
asters Mary Emma had me dig up three years ago have started cranking out
blossoms that block your path between them and the fig tree. And the fig
tree.......I pruned it last fall, and it will be the last time I do. Its
loaded down with lots of little green figs. I hope they have time to ripen
for me to munch. Now is the time to let it just be a tree. I never should
have pruned it one year so low.

I grid ringed the crocosmia that my best friend, Dian sent me from
Oregon. It's a creeper but I adore it and this year I finally got grid rings
positioned over the emerging shoots and the airy stems of beautiful orange
bird-like flowers are more visible and not flopping all over everything. And
the Crispa spirea isn't being smothered by the leaves. I tend to plant
things all over. Bushes with bulbs, perennials with grasses, it's wild and a
tangled "cottage" garden, it's the madgardener's garden.

The fairies approve. You can almost hear them clapping their little
hands with delight.

I have Cumberland River hibiscus I dug from the banks of my beloved
Cumberland River in Nashville 13 years ago and brought with me, and I hope
Sir Lord Baltimore, my red hibiscus has returned for me. I'm hoping to get a
piece of a most unusual hibiscus that I located from a little 80 year old
lady over behind me. A shocking pink/purple/burgundy that I was unaware of
until I went to visit her and there it was. I had to have a piece of it
somehow. Tomorrow I take my new Fiskar's shovel and go see if I can dig a
hunk of it safely in the cooler hours of the day, at least she's a farmer's
wife....... In trade I'll bring her an offering of a Vitex that we have at
the nursery..........

As I start to feel the heat and the satisfaction that maybe I've
stopped the destruction of the blister beetles, I see that Joe Pye is
setting buds and has grown past the gutters, protecting the tree peony but
not the red rhoddy. So out the rhody comes. The Chocolate Eupatoria is still
thriving and stands out from the foliage of the phlox I finally cut back and
positioned another grid over. It's taken me nine years to remember and buy
these to use to hold up the stems when they get taller. I need more........

All the sedums are making little broccoli buds, each one different. I
have Matrona, a white edged one whose name I've lost. The Autumn Joy needs
moving. It can't give it's all under the fig. So it lies prostrate, gasping
for sunlight like some deprived sun worshiping teenager on Summer break.
Raspberry ice is in it's pot, very happy in the heat. The cuttings of the
yellow edged green sedum I snagged from Karol's trailer down the road one
day are taking, on the deck,in a nursery pot with some Garter grasses. and
the last of Joyce's unusual variegated sedum need my attentions or I'll lose
her and it would be sad to lose it after it lived here for so long.

The mortar tub that I have dubbed the Chicken Peace Rock garden
because it consists of hens and chicks from Micki (about 19 different
kinds), a few orostachys, and a Lewisia with portulaca tucked in amongst the
pea gravel and the Peace rock that Gloria and her sweet hubby brought me as
a gift (it was a neat fake rock) is going great guns.

All the cacti are now adapted to the rains and thriving in the heat.
Hawortia's are throwing stems and delicate white and soft gray striped
bells. Caladiva's that almost died put out a few more leaves and are
blooming. All the Euphorbia's in all their prickly wonder are growing
extensions and appendages that arouse suspicion, but I adore them.

Michael LaForest will be pleased to know I found some worthy residents
for the Indian and Mexican bandito planters . And all his gifts of
sanseveria's are doing quite well on the deck in their old antique clay pots
he gave me. I killed the bog garden though. I'm thinking of planting
Japanese variegated sedges and tucking the Wally world plastic pot that has
some unidentified iris in it. I suspect it's a Louisiana iris that has
survived but refuses to bloom. The bog garden will be more to it's liking.
The death of the carnivorous plants was inaudible amongst the tangle of
foliages that reside on my deck. You can barely walk between everything.

Stripy tomato's, eggplants in windowboxes on the wide railings that
underneath their toes are sleeping bulbs for next spring. Potted up
perennials from nurseries, not yet tucked in. The Honeyfarm stokesia from
Carroll Gardens, and Anne Greenaway lamium in the same pot, with a
variegated Kalameris (Japanese aster or Orphanage plant). Pots of Amber
Waves Heuchera, Cimicifugia Ramosa Brunette, A Heuchera called winter Red,
and I think Heucherella Sunspot but not sure......I'll know eventually.

Pots of Virginia Davis' daylilies I dug up three weeks ago and potted
them instead of just plugging them in in random places. An experiment of
trying one more time to get a dug clump of Butterfly weed to live.

And all those pots of cacti and succulents, euphorbia's and the other
windowbox that has pompom dahlia's that the wren has woven a nest into the
foliage when I wasn't looking. Above the Chicken Peace rock garden is the
third window box garden with creamy variegated geranium, with red and white
pom pom zinnia's and a fiber pot of spicy oregano for my son to cook with
when he visits. (the eggplant was grown for him too).

Down below, the double althea that I planted a soft pink with burgundy
throat and a purple double with dark purple throat together are loaded with
blossoms despite the shredding of the ends of all their branches by the
Red-eyed devil ladies in their egg laying frenzy.

Over in the shady black walnut garden, the bronze ajuga has grabbed
hold, there are five more pips of lilies of the Valley now along the
timbers, the perennial begonia is fist fighting with the baby money plants,
and below them, on the downward slope of the box I built against the steep
slope, the three single Althea's are blooming. I planted a Pepto Bismol pink
with deep maroon eye, white with maroon eye and pure white all together and
they are now cranking out some blossoms. I hope one day they will form one
large bush and wow me and unsuspecting people when it starts showing off
it's ruffled skirts.

By now I am seriously over heated, and I take one quick glance at the
former tomato boxes that are now jam packed with perennials, and see the
daylilies are doing fine and the pot of purple coneheads are happy. No sign
of my beloved gaillardia, but the Park's improved Stella d'oro has a
blossom, and the Mystic Merlin malvacea is resprouting from my whacking a
few weeks ago when Rose was following me around on my rounds. (yes, I miss
my baby girl)

I almost missed the only candy lily, or Belamcandia, I wish I had a
whole box of them as they untwist and show me their assorted star like
flowers of orange and colors in between with the freckles. Lucifer crocosmia
are almost finished and I was able to stake a few up before I missed their
bird like red flights. And the wild black eyed Susan's are popping their
petals open to cheer up the eyes.

Lambs ears are totally ticked off with the rains and humidity, and
flop like petulant teenagers over the edges of the raised bed, and the
extension I dug and lined with pine trunks is floundering. The plants don't
know whether to live or die. I'll put someone else there if they dissolve.

when I wasn't looking, the smashed Black Knight butterfly bush has
resprouted and given me some wonderfully honeyed blossoms. Great monarchs
and monarch wannabee's and other huge winged fairies fly above me sipping on
their many little tubes with the orange eyes.

And the lavender with orange eyed butterfly bush I cut completely back
at the base of the Jack Pine the little tree man felled for me has girthed
up and is cranking out way more flowers than Black Knight.

The Bengal Tigers and old Indian shot canna's of my dad's are lush in
the gray water from my washer and kitchen sink, but no red flowers on my
dad's Indian shot canna's yet. The Bengal's however have screaming orange
flowers atop the lime yellow striped leaves that are almost six foot tall
now.

I remember the dark purple red leafed Futurity canna I tucked into the
sea of yellow archangel lamium out front and that's my last stop. The red of
the flowers are brilliant against the dark purplish leaves. I am fearful it
won't survive winter, so this will be a first for me, I'll lift it this fall
and next year will plant it deeper in the same spot.

Thank you for letting me ramble about my fairy gardens and to talk
about Rose. She walks my gardens with me still despite that she is no longer
here. I had to let the vet bury her as despite all the heavy rains here, and
during the time she passed, I couldn't get a shovel into the clay soil to
put here where she grew up and lived her whole life. But her spirit lives
all around here and my cats all walk around with little black armbands still
in mourning because somehow they still sense her loss. Especially her little
mini cat, Pesters. He seems at a loss for his big ol' dawg. so now he picks
on Piquito, Sugar's tailless long haired teenager cat. Sugar and Piquito are
the same age, but Piquito is growing into quite the hunter, despite his
neutered conditions.

As I walk around the front dog run of the house towards the BBQ
fountain, I startle the twelve frogs that have taken up residence in the
little pools that my sweet Squire made from the bricks and bricko blocks and
lined with pond liner. I have a fairy fountain statue that trickles water
down a dish, over river pebbles and into the first pool where a horsetail
lives in a pot from my house in Nashville, spills under a blue slate bridge
from a piece we got from a friend who lives in North Carolina into the
holding trough made from those bricko blocks and in the end of the two foot
deep holding trough, I scrounged a thrown away water garden from work with a
few sprigs of parrots feather grass, and a Cardinal flower. I sunk them at
the west end near the pump that operates the statues. I have one huge frog
who reside and watches from the upper portion of the BBQ pit/water garden.
We filled dirt on either side, lay fabric and lined it with large stones and
I planted Mexican primroses that will creep over time and at the corner of
the spill dish, is a nice clump of Japanese painted fern. The large frog
hides in the foliage of the primrose. On the opposite side trailing nicely
are Pewter palace heuchera.

The little frogs now have little fishes. I had more skeeters than I
wanted, so I purchased the ugliest goldfish I could find at Wally World and
tossed them in the deep trough. I thought I had three. I have five of them.
When you walk to within sight of the fountain, you hear splatting and
plopping and see flying frog rear ends. Some of them have spunk and sit
there defiantly, not moving, waiting to see if you pose a threat to them.
There is one teeny little one no bigger than my little finger joint that
sits at the base of the goddess holding the wine jar that needs cleaning out
so she'll flow again. He sits at her feet. It's rather cool. And I catch
myself smiling back at them.

Again, thanks for letting me ramble. I needed this.
Stay cool and don't over garden in this heat.

madgardener up on the ridge, back in Fairy Holler overlooking English
Mountain where the cicada's and frogs are singing loud choruses with the
crickets, in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36

Yawn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"madgardener" wrote in message
...
Hello all,
Madgardener here. I have been gone for awhile as things have been
going by way too fast. with all the heat, rains, working those odd hours
at
the garden center at Lowes, it's been four weeks since my precious
dawg,and
baby girl, Rose died unexpectedly....and more heat, and dealing with Sugar
who has never been without Rose since I got HER a year ago.
One day I had daylilies blooming in all colors, great trumpet lilies
opening up and perfuming the air the morning I found my sweet baby as
close
to me as she could get. She's in my heart and I have many wonderful
memories
and some great pictures of her. But now the humidity, heat and days
running
into themselves have done their work.

I see my perennials acting like it's late August. The red summer
spiders that I attribute to late summer days that hang massive webs
between
trees and bushes for us unsuspecting humans to walk into and do the freak
spider dance are already out.

The 17 year cicada's have come, done their crazy mating, sliced
every
crape myrtle, my beloved Vitex bush, and every oak and maple tree around
the
woods up here on my ridge and died. Well, Rose had gotten her fill of them
before she passed away. She gained a few pounds eating them for four
weeks.
But she was loved, and my cat's almost seem to be wearing little black
armbands even four weeks later.

After getting heat stroke at work three days in a row, despite the
early hours, I got two days off in a row to heal and the heat drove me
inside. Today I finally ventured outside to take some pictures of what was
struggling in the heat blasts, and discovered my Harlequin Glory Bower is
not only budding, but is BLOOMING!!! WOW.

So armed with camera, I started at the NSSG. For some reason which I
attribute to the fairies whispering in my ears, I heeded their quiet
beckonings of distress and walked to the opposite side of my gardens,
forced
my way past the Zebra grass, ducked under the Orange sherbet trumpet vine,
wrestled with the vinca major that is intent on claiming what little
pathways there are between the raised beds, and came to the Western bed
that
sits beside the very pruned Lilac. (I had a fit of grief after Rose died
and
took the loppers to the lilac and thinned out the third oldest branches
and
now have to climb into the pasture weeds to retrieve the dead branches and
put them on my pile of debris down in my lower woods, I had a momentary
lapse of reason.......)

As I stood there, looking at the bed, it occurred to me what was
wrong. The lush foliage of my Japanese anemone's which were already
setting
fat buds on top of the three foot stalks was bones. ACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. I
knew, I KNEW what this was, and I was sick at heart that I had neglected
to
face the heat and check on the gardens. In my distractions, heat
sicknesses
and grief and just life around me I forgot about the blister beetles.

Last year was the first year I actually had blossoms because I had
diligently sprayed them with a pyrethrum spray and had cut down their
numbers. It was wonderful. But this year, somehow I had slipped up and
forgotten to check for them.

When I first discovered these things, I didn't even know how to
identify them. How could I? If you don't know what you're looking
for......but my mentor and gardening friend, Mary Emma had given me an old
water color insect book and there they were. Blister beetles. And once I
knew them, I looked them up in my Rodale's Organic Encyclopedia and
discovered they were BENEFICIAL. NOT FAIR!!! Apparently their young eat
the
grasshopper larvae. And their shells are so irritating, as to raise
blisters
that they are what was used long ago for something called "Spanish fly".
Hmmmmmm. Well, I didn't care. Beneficial or not, I wanted my anemone's to
bloom. When these things hatch, they are so massive in numbers and so
voracious, they eat the leaves down to veins.

thus my description of "bones". And you can't crush them like
Japanese
beetles. They'll raise blisters on your fingers. So my only alternative
that
was sorta safe was to use a pyrethrum on them. I located some this year
specifically for this purpose at Dollar General store for $2 a bottle and
bought the only three bottles I could find. And what did I do? I spaced
their arrival!!

So I stood there in a kind of heat induced shock and snapped out of
it
and went and grabbed a bottle and set it on stream and started spraying
the
boney plants in the Western bed, watching as the insects started writhing
and falling off what was left of the plants. The buds will die because the
leaves that feed the flowers are gone. I will have to cut the plants back
to
the ground and they'll regenerate but not bloom this year.

I then snapped back and remembered there was another patch of
anemones
on the east side in the NSSG working itself towards the boardwalk bed that
actually IS the NSSG and I know they also munch hosta if they don't have
Anemones, so I headed to the eastern side and discovered whole leaves, but
just emerging beetles and soaked the leaves on every plant under the
Jackmanii clematis on the old twisted grapevine I've rigged for the
clematis
to climb on.

My brain was working a bit better and I remembered another young
patch
of anemone tucked in the chaos of the southern "constipated flower beds"
at
the front of the house. I had to search for them. They were grown thru the
branches of the Spice bush, thru the Korean spirea that is taking over the
whole eastern bed, woven thru the spent thick stems of the trumpet lilies
that perfumed the air the morning Rose died, and even popping out behind
the
purple clump of desperate monarda that has nowhere to go they're so crowde
d.
I sprayed the anemone there too. Better safe than sorry.

While I was doing that, I discovered my tetraploid daylily, Bruce
(it's the real name, I bought him 11 years ago when I moved over here at a
little place called Daydream daylilies on 11-E in Jefferson City on the
way
towards Morristown) was still cranking out a few flowers amongst the
foliage
of the swamp sunflowers that have started choking the bed (I'll love them
when they rise to six and seven feet and are covered with over sized
coreopsis looking flowers, but they flop, and I need to remember to drive
in
grid rings next year).

I see unwelcome knobby kneed 4'o clocks mashing everything in it's
way
as it falls over from too much rain and heat too soon. I adore the magenta
and yellow flowers but they grow four foot tall and kill good perennials
when they flop over under their own weight. They pull up easy, but I don't
get the black tuber, I break the stems off at soil line and I know they're
still in there.

Satisfied that I have sprayed well enough for now, I open my eyes (I
was apparently on automatic pilot) and see the phlox has thrown a daughter
outside the beds into the middle of the Frakartii asters that will bloom
at
the end of September. And my Herbsonne rudbeckia is blooming incredible
screaming yellow with green cones flowers, but they needed staking or grid
ringing too, and so I tie a girdle of sorts halfway up the stems and hope
they don't break.

I also see every pot of perennials along the front and tucked into
spaces are in need of watering in the heat. The orange zinnia angustifolia
are crispy. I've waited too long. In the ground they toughen up, and crank
out flowers. But in a pot,they're delicate and need pampering.

All the returned mums in niches everywhere are blooming. Soft orange
ones in a bricko block with a sedum, spilling down into the tangle of
vinca
I thought I got rid of. Fat chance. Dark, but soft red with yellow eyed
mums
in a black nursery pot all alone in front of the Lady Jane and Autumn Jazz
viburnum that will need watering tomorrow morning as the rains missed us
and
went into North Carolina and north-east behind me.

The cement urn I got at my mom's before we sold her house 3 years
ago
I planted thread leaf coreopsis into can take the heat, but it wilts in
the
blistering sun, and I had tucked burgundy hens and chicks and they love
the
pot just fine, so I have to water the pot just the same and I hear
sputtering sounds from the semps.

Prickly Cat's whiskers or Cleome spinosa aren't as thick this year
as
last, but welcome never the less. And despite that the Japanese beetles
are
out in full cluster of love-in's, they're munching my purple Loosestrife,
so
munch away. Soon will be the June bugs that come in July. I love them and
know the young dog, Sugar will have fun with them when she discovers them.

The Helianthus hasn't set buds, but the two colors of almost five
foot
asters Mary Emma had me dig up three years ago have started cranking out
blossoms that block your path between them and the fig tree. And the fig
tree.......I pruned it last fall, and it will be the last time I do. Its
loaded down with lots of little green figs. I hope they have time to ripen
for me to munch. Now is the time to let it just be a tree. I never should
have pruned it one year so low.

I grid ringed the crocosmia that my best friend, Dian sent me from
Oregon. It's a creeper but I adore it and this year I finally got grid
rings
positioned over the emerging shoots and the airy stems of beautiful orange
bird-like flowers are more visible and not flopping all over everything.
And
the Crispa spirea isn't being smothered by the leaves. I tend to plant
things all over. Bushes with bulbs, perennials with grasses, it's wild and
a
tangled "cottage" garden, it's the madgardener's garden.

The fairies approve. You can almost hear them clapping their little
hands with delight.

I have Cumberland River hibiscus I dug from the banks of my beloved
Cumberland River in Nashville 13 years ago and brought with me, and I hope
Sir Lord Baltimore, my red hibiscus has returned for me. I'm hoping to get
a
piece of a most unusual hibiscus that I located from a little 80 year old
lady over behind me. A shocking pink/purple/burgundy that I was unaware of
until I went to visit her and there it was. I had to have a piece of it
somehow. Tomorrow I take my new Fiskar's shovel and go see if I can dig a
hunk of it safely in the cooler hours of the day, at least she's a
farmer's
wife....... In trade I'll bring her an offering of a Vitex that we have at
the nursery..........

As I start to feel the heat and the satisfaction that maybe I've
stopped the destruction of the blister beetles, I see that Joe Pye is
setting buds and has grown past the gutters, protecting the tree peony but
not the red rhoddy. So out the rhody comes. The Chocolate Eupatoria is
still
thriving and stands out from the foliage of the phlox I finally cut back
and
positioned another grid over. It's taken me nine years to remember and buy
these to use to hold up the stems when they get taller. I need
more........

All the sedums are making little broccoli buds, each one different.
I
have Matrona, a white edged one whose name I've lost. The Autumn Joy needs
moving. It can't give it's all under the fig. So it lies prostrate,
gasping
for sunlight like some deprived sun worshiping teenager on Summer break.
Raspberry ice is in it's pot, very happy in the heat. The cuttings of the
yellow edged green sedum I snagged from Karol's trailer down the road one
day are taking, on the deck,in a nursery pot with some Garter grasses.
and
the last of Joyce's unusual variegated sedum need my attentions or I'll
lose
her and it would be sad to lose it after it lived here for so long.

The mortar tub that I have dubbed the Chicken Peace Rock garden
because it consists of hens and chicks from Micki (about 19 different
kinds), a few orostachys, and a Lewisia with portulaca tucked in amongst
the
pea gravel and the Peace rock that Gloria and her sweet hubby brought me
as
a gift (it was a neat fake rock) is going great guns.

All the cacti are now adapted to the rains and thriving in the heat.
Hawortia's are throwing stems and delicate white and soft gray striped
bells. Caladiva's that almost died put out a few more leaves and are
blooming. All the Euphorbia's in all their prickly wonder are growing
extensions and appendages that arouse suspicion, but I adore them.

Michael LaForest will be pleased to know I found some worthy
residents
for the Indian and Mexican bandito planters . And all his gifts of
sanseveria's are doing quite well on the deck in their old antique clay
pots
he gave me. I killed the bog garden though. I'm thinking of planting
Japanese variegated sedges and tucking the Wally world plastic pot that
has
some unidentified iris in it. I suspect it's a Louisiana iris that has
survived but refuses to bloom. The bog garden will be more to it's liking.
The death of the carnivorous plants was inaudible amongst the tangle of
foliages that reside on my deck. You can barely walk between everything.

Stripy tomato's, eggplants in windowboxes on the wide railings that
underneath their toes are sleeping bulbs for next spring. Potted up
perennials from nurseries, not yet tucked in. The Honeyfarm stokesia from
Carroll Gardens, and Anne Greenaway lamium in the same pot, with a
variegated Kalameris (Japanese aster or Orphanage plant). Pots of Amber
Waves Heuchera, Cimicifugia Ramosa Brunette, A Heuchera called winter Red,
and I think Heucherella Sunspot but not sure......I'll know eventually.

Pots of Virginia Davis' daylilies I dug up three weeks ago and
potted
them instead of just plugging them in in random places. An experiment of
trying one more time to get a dug clump of Butterfly weed to live.

And all those pots of cacti and succulents, euphorbia's and the
other
windowbox that has pompom dahlia's that the wren has woven a nest into the
foliage when I wasn't looking. Above the Chicken Peace rock garden is the
third window box garden with creamy variegated geranium, with red and
white
pom pom zinnia's and a fiber pot of spicy oregano for my son to cook with
when he visits. (the eggplant was grown for him too).

Down below, the double althea that I planted a soft pink with
burgundy
throat and a purple double with dark purple throat together are loaded
with
blossoms despite the shredding of the ends of all their branches by the
Red-eyed devil ladies in their egg laying frenzy.

Over in the shady black walnut garden, the bronze ajuga has grabbed
hold, there are five more pips of lilies of the Valley now along the
timbers, the perennial begonia is fist fighting with the baby money
plants,
and below them, on the downward slope of the box I built against the steep
slope, the three single Althea's are blooming. I planted a Pepto Bismol
pink
with deep maroon eye, white with maroon eye and pure white all together
and
they are now cranking out some blossoms. I hope one day they will form one
large bush and wow me and unsuspecting people when it starts showing off
it's ruffled skirts.

By now I am seriously over heated, and I take one quick glance at
the
former tomato boxes that are now jam packed with perennials, and see the
daylilies are doing fine and the pot of purple coneheads are happy. No
sign
of my beloved gaillardia, but the Park's improved Stella d'oro has a
blossom, and the Mystic Merlin malvacea is resprouting from my whacking a
few weeks ago when Rose was following me around on my rounds. (yes, I miss
my baby girl)

I almost missed the only candy lily, or Belamcandia, I wish I had a
whole box of them as they untwist and show me their assorted star like
flowers of orange and colors in between with the freckles. Lucifer
crocosmia
are almost finished and I was able to stake a few up before I missed their
bird like red flights. And the wild black eyed Susan's are popping their
petals open to cheer up the eyes.

Lambs ears are totally ticked off with the rains and humidity, and
flop like petulant teenagers over the edges of the raised bed, and the
extension I dug and lined with pine trunks is floundering. The plants
don't
know whether to live or die. I'll put someone else there if they dissolve.

when I wasn't looking, the smashed Black Knight butterfly bush has
resprouted and given me some wonderfully honeyed blossoms. Great monarchs
and monarch wannabee's and other huge winged fairies fly above me sipping
on
their many little tubes with the orange eyes.

And the lavender with orange eyed butterfly bush I cut completely
back
at the base of the Jack Pine the little tree man felled for me has girthed
up and is cranking out way more flowers than Black Knight.

The Bengal Tigers and old Indian shot canna's of my dad's are lush
in
the gray water from my washer and kitchen sink, but no red flowers on my
dad's Indian shot canna's yet. The Bengal's however have screaming orange
flowers atop the lime yellow striped leaves that are almost six foot tall
now.

I remember the dark purple red leafed Futurity canna I tucked into
the
sea of yellow archangel lamium out front and that's my last stop. The red
of
the flowers are brilliant against the dark purplish leaves. I am fearful
it
won't survive winter, so this will be a first for me, I'll lift it this
fall
and next year will plant it deeper in the same spot.

Thank you for letting me ramble about my fairy gardens and to talk
about Rose. She walks my gardens with me still despite that she is no
longer
here. I had to let the vet bury her as despite all the heavy rains here,
and
during the time she passed, I couldn't get a shovel into the clay soil to
put here where she grew up and lived her whole life. But her spirit lives
all around here and my cats all walk around with little black armbands
still
in mourning because somehow they still sense her loss. Especially her
little
mini cat, Pesters. He seems at a loss for his big ol' dawg. so now he
picks
on Piquito, Sugar's tailless long haired teenager cat. Sugar and Piquito
are
the same age, but Piquito is growing into quite the hunter, despite his
neutered conditions.

As I walk around the front dog run of the house towards the BBQ
fountain, I startle the twelve frogs that have taken up residence in the
little pools that my sweet Squire made from the bricks and bricko blocks
and
lined with pond liner. I have a fairy fountain statue that trickles water
down a dish, over river pebbles and into the first pool where a horsetail
lives in a pot from my house in Nashville, spills under a blue slate
bridge
from a piece we got from a friend who lives in North Carolina into the
holding trough made from those bricko blocks and in the end of the two
foot
deep holding trough, I scrounged a thrown away water garden from work with
a
few sprigs of parrots feather grass, and a Cardinal flower. I sunk them at
the west end near the pump that operates the statues. I have one huge frog
who reside and watches from the upper portion of the BBQ pit/water garden.
We filled dirt on either side, lay fabric and lined it with large stones
and
I planted Mexican primroses that will creep over time and at the corner of
the spill dish, is a nice clump of Japanese painted fern. The large frog
hides in the foliage of the primrose. On the opposite side trailing nicely
are Pewter palace heuchera.

The little frogs now have little fishes. I had more skeeters than I
wanted, so I purchased the ugliest goldfish I could find at Wally World
and
tossed them in the deep trough. I thought I had three. I have five of
them.
When you walk to within sight of the fountain, you hear splatting and
plopping and see flying frog rear ends. Some of them have spunk and sit
there defiantly, not moving, waiting to see if you pose a threat to them.
There is one teeny little one no bigger than my little finger joint that
sits at the base of the goddess holding the wine jar that needs cleaning
out
so she'll flow again. He sits at her feet. It's rather cool. And I catch
myself smiling back at them.

Again, thanks for letting me ramble. I needed this.
Stay cool and don't over garden in this heat.

madgardener up on the ridge, back in Fairy Holler overlooking
English
Mountain where the cicada's and frogs are singing loud choruses with the
crickets, in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36

"Harriet Nation" expounded:

Yawn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Troll.
--
Ann, Gardening in zone 6a
Just south of Boston, MA
********************************

hate I bored you honey..............just skip over me if that's the case.
madgardener

--
Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect." Chief Seattle


"Harriet Nation" wrote in message
...
Yawn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

true................ give me a stick so I can poke it a few times.

--
Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect." Chief Seattle
"Ann" wrote in message
...
"Harriet Nation" expounded:

Yawn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Troll.
--
Ann, Gardening in zone 6a
Just south of Boston, MA
********************************