Why I Oughta...

Just when everything was going dormant, dropping their foliage and going to bed for the season, I'm seeing a couple of anomalies.  First, was that Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea bloom last week .  Everything else is in decline...but one stem and small pink bloom.  Today, I'm posting a photo of something else:  the Matcha Ball Ash Leaf Spirea in our backyard.  This is planted in the 'kitchen curved' bed on the southside, right near the Butterscotch Amsonia.   This is one of two of these shrubs that have a Japanese-garden-inspired look to their fern-like foliage.  The other one is in the front porch bed.  These never did SUPER great this year after being planted in November of 2023 .    I noticed that these had set some buds this Fall and assumed they went dormant.   But...we haven't had a hard frost...yet.  Normally it arrives in/around mid-October.  But, this year...everything is winding down very slowly. The Matcha Ball Ash Leaf Spirea, however...had a different idea

Three weeks ago, I noted that the Anemone 'Lucky Charm' flower show was just getting started with the emergence of those purple, sphere-shaped buds that stand at the top of thin, upright stems .  Today, that show is happening in full-force.  If history is any guide, these will bloom all Fall.  But right now, they're showing-off with a light-purple petal show in the 'kitchen curved' bed in our backyard.   See below of the current state of this little colony of Fall color.  Something to think about is using these in other spots in the garden.  They get 'part sun', but are really the ONLY blooms left to pop-off in our foliage-heavy garden.  I could use these elsewhere to provide some late-season action.  NOTE to future Jake:  Divide these in Fall. 

The small colony of Lucky Charm Japanese Anemone is now a, well....bigger colony.  They've filled in the space in all directions.  And, we're just at the start of the late Summer bloom season that seems to last all the way until Fall.  Here's a look at what the three plants looked like last August - one year ago .  Barely touching each other and lots of mulch showing around them.  Today - see below: They've formed a mass or drift instead of three individual plants.   And, you can see the first few blooms opening up.  

In late Spring/early Summer 2023, I planted a small (1.5 gallon) Emperor 1 Japanese Maple - Acer palmatum in what I call the 'kitchen curved bed' .  Right behind/amongst some Fanal Astilbes.  By last Fall, it was showing a little bit of new growth and put on new foliage .  A good sign.  This Spring, it was one of a few trees that I wrapped in tulle - to protect from cicadas.  Doing that, wasn't great for the tree and damaged some of the tips of the tree along the way.  No big deal because the trade-off of a few broken small branches vs. the tree getting killed by the cicadas seemed worth taking. This was also a spot where I did a 'garden edit'.  Moving a border of Ajuga Chocolate Chip in and widening out the front of the bed this Spring.   I removed the netting more than a month ago and today, the tree is rebounding a little bit.  Below is a look at the current state of our second Emperor 1 Japanese Maple: Looking forward to this one filling up and out and providing

As part of a larger " Garden Edit " to the "kitchen curved bed" in the backyard, I needed to move a few things OUT to make room for what I'd like to install.  Hence the notion of an 'edit'.    One of those edits is a Cat's Pajamas Nepeta that needs to get out of there.  I moved it here last Fall when I noticed it wasn't thriving in the shade .  Little did I know that I'd move it twice in six months.   The good news is that the Nepeta 'came back' this Spring.  Here, below is what the young plant looked like before I dug it up: Below is a little bit more context - showing the Nepeta vs some of the peonies: A few years ago, I posted about how Nepeta is listed as one of the Disneyland Rose 'companion plants', so it was a natural move to trasnplant it right in that long, foundation bed.  Below, you can see the tiny plant tucked in next to a Summer Beauty Allium:

Last Spring, I took a shot on a couple of primroses at an early-in-the-season garden show.  I was pretty unfamiliar with them - hence this post titled: " Giving Primrose A Shot " from March 2023 where I figured I was lulled into a false belief that these early-blooming flowers would work in our Zone 5b (at that time, now Zone 6a) garden. We're suckers for blue blooms and the three Primula belarina 'Blue Champion' that I bought were pretty close to blue.  I seem to have ONLY posted about the blue ones, but if you look back at the photos in this post , you can clearly see that we brought home four Primulas that day;  three blue and one white one.   They went in and seemed to manage their first growing season without much drama.  By the very early days of 2024, I posted about seeing some of their foliage - despite the harsh Winter temps in the garden.   Today - about 90 days since then, they're in bloom.  And they're quite nice.  Below is the 'Blue Cha

The past few years have been a love story between me, the gardener and Ajuga 'Chocolate Chips', the groundcover.  I've bought it a few different sizes (quarts and plugs) and have scattered them around the front and back of our yard.  Some have really thrived.  Some have died totally.  And others...well...they're still TBD.  This time in early Spring is when these Ajugas take on a different form - with curled-up, darker foliage that make them standout a bit.  Soon...they'll be filled with blue/purple flowers.   Here's a look at some of those - starting with some less-than-one-year-old plugs.  These went in the bed in late May in our backyard, sort-of in-front-of the Fanal Astilbes .  The six plugs are not stretching out into six plants.  Soon...maybe this year, they'll connect to each other: Next up, is a pair of plugs that went in the backyard in late Fall.  These are planted in front of the Baby Blue Spruce Tree.  They, well...survived the winter.  Are they

Over the years, we've had a tough go-of-it with peonies in our yard.  I suppose you can say that we were totally spoiled when we lived in Elmhurst.  We had a number of peony plants that were very productive.  But, in Downers?  Not a lot of luck.   I have long suspect that was a result of too-much shade, so that lead me to a number of years of moving them around.  From the far back to near(er) to the house.  And then, in 2022, I moved a couple of them out to the IB2DWS bed.   And guess what happened?  We got our first peony bloom in 2023.   Or, should I say 'blooms'.  The IB2DWs peony produced a number of blooms.  And, so too, did the ones by our curved-kitchen-window bed .   Each year, they emerge in late Winter/early Spring with their redish-purple tips.  Here's the 2023 version when they showed-up in early April .   Last year, because of the production, I decided to leave them as they were - a mix of front and backyards.  I'm now re-thinking that and have some ear

These #FallPlanting posts are getting further-and-further out from reality.  The photos below show lush, green garden.  I'm posting this at the end of November.  This was from way back in early October.  I had a Cat's Pajamas Nepeta planted in the backyard in pretty deep shade.  It wasn't doing well.  So, I dug it out and brought it over to the curved border outside the kitchen window.   The first photo below is the Nepeta peeking out from under a Guacamole Hosta leaf.  The second is the new home by the peonies and Lucky Charm Anemones: This doesn't count in my new/divided plants, right?  It is just a transplant.   I'm posting this in November 2023, but I did this transplanting in mid-October 2023.