Why I Oughta...

I have a mixed record with house plants.  I am (usually) pretty good with what I'll call 'project house plants'.  Those are things like Amaryllis that I can grow from a bulb for Christmas that have a defined season and duration.  I've tried other houseplants and I usually get bored of them.  Nat, on the other hand, maintains a number of her own houseplants and she's been a good steward of the ones she's grown.  That includes some good runs with Orchids that she's nurtured into re-blooming.  But, I *do* have one houseplant that I've kept alive for a while.  In fact, I call this the eighth year of growing it:  my firesticks cactus.  Planted in a small orange pot back in the Spring of 2018.  It was small, green and maybe five inches tall .   Today, it is taller.  Fuller.  And more well-branched.    Below is a photo showing the current state of my Firesticks cactus as it lives out on our back stoop during the S...

Over the past few growing seasons, I've become a coleus-as-bedding-plant believer.  I 'praised' it in Fall of 2024 .  And, called growing three Inferno Coleus at the corner of our patio a ' garden win ' at the end of the growing season (October) last year.  This year, I didn't plant any Inferno Coleus, which...in retrospect was a mistake.  I've been unhappy with the coleus up front, but I can't say the same about the coleus I planted in our backyard - in the same spot as Inferno last year.  This year, I planted three Talevera Moondust Coleus in that spot.  I found them at Wannemaker's and they jumped off the nursery table with their speckles of paint on the foliage.   If you go back to the planting post , you'll see that they're described this way by the grower: Sun-tolerant varieties maintain color and foliage patterns in both sun and shade conditions. These late-flowering selections are tidy, non-bolting plants in the garden. The plant tag...

Back around the border of the fire pit is a Redbud Tree.  I originally planted a weeping Lavender Twist Redbud tree in 2020, but it came cracked-in-half .  It came back alive, but I'm not sure if the tree was grafted or not, which means that the trunk was some other kind of tree.  I also sort-of lost track of where this tree was planted, because back in 2020, I planted it along the fence .    But...today....as I mentioned in the first sentence, we have a Redbud tree around the firepit.   I also have a memory of this tree getting stomped by some tree guys. However, it has persisted.  And, grown.   And, it *is* weeping.   But, now it is a multi-trunk tree. However, it is arching up and out (over the lawn and the firepit) and has taken on a nice shape.   I haven't documented this tree in the [tree diary], so I thought it was about time.    

We had a pretty big rain storm a week or so ago that brought with it some welcomed precipitation.  It also battered some of my plants and trees.  Downed branches and (in a couple of cases) bent-over dahlias and other plants.  I scurried around and straightened everything out and found the dahlias that weren't staked (enough) and tried to provide some support.   I also cut a bunch of things and brought them in for an arrangement for one of Nat's friends.  The Saint Martin dahlias are on very long, thin stems while the Melina Fleur dahlias (decorative) are (for now) on short, stubby ones.  And, the Plectranthus Silver Shield is plentiful.  But, I still don't quite know the best way to use it in an arrangement.  The underside of the foliage is (to me) the star, but when I tuck some of it in the vase, the underside sort-of disappears.  There's also a spring of Silver Dollar Eucalyptus in here that I'm still learning about how best to cut to...

My first (ever) Ikebana arrangement was just two sprays of Disneyland (Floribunda) roses stuck into my flower frog.  That was back in June .  It wasn't, well....great.   But, as they say...the only way you get better at something is by doing it again.  And again. So, I'm doing just that:  making my second Ikebana arrangement with a Lisianthus, a leaf(let) from a Dark Side of the Moon Astilbe and a spray of Sun King Aralia.  In a vintage McCoy cereal bowl.  Below is a shot of it: In this case, I have a subject, object and secondary stuck in the kenzan (flower frog). The subject is supposed to be the tallest stem - so I'm calling the chartreuse Sun King leaf the subject. The object is "the queen".  That you place in the front/center.  That's the Celeb 2 Metallic Blue Lisianthus. And, the Dark Side of the Moon Astilbe leaf(let) is the secondary.  

I recently cut that pair of purple flowers off a dahlia plant in our backyard and brought it inside to put in a vase in the kitchen.  These were the second round of blooms that I pulled from this plant this growing season.   Back in July, I posted a roundup of some dahlia blooms that I had cut and brought inside including Burlesca, Blue Wish (Waterlily), Wizard of Oz, Creme de Cognac and a couple of 'mis-marked' dahlias that were sold/labeled as one thing, but once they bloomed were wrong including Rip City and what I called at the time a 'single dahlia'.   It was this purple-flowered dahlia.   Turns out.... I don't think it is a "single dahlia" after all.  (or maybe it is and I'm wrong in the case I lay out below.  That *could be*, because I'm still learning....) I was poking around the Longfield Gardens site and came across a class of Dahlias called " Peony-Flowered Dahlias ".  Longfield has two listings .   One of those lis...