Speaking of hunters--Where are those turkeys?

If you've been following this blog, you might remember that the wild turkeys started the idea of blogging.  I haven't seen them all growing season, but one late afternoon in October, they appeared.
I ran to get the camera and caught them as they disappeared in the high grasses across the street. You can see a tail of one and the neck and head of another one further into the laurels.  There must have been a dozen of them.  Many less than I had seen in April.

It interesting to see them again after so long--and at the end of my garden year.  The blog is winding down as the plants notice the shorter days.  The planter boxes on the deck were still supporting some bloom when the snows hit--and the electricity went out here for two days.

I pulled them into the garage before the storm and they are still blooming on the front porch, safe from frosts (after the snow?!) and getting some sun in the mid-afternoon before the sun goes down by 4:30 even though we've left Daylight Savings Time.  Neighbors remark when they see the Sunny Susans still budding! I plan to use the rosemary and sage next week for Thanksgiving.



Full Moon October--Hunter's Moon 10.10.11

It was a beautiful evening!

And a great year of gardening!

November 17th Fall is really here!

It's been a long time since I last posted. The garden has been overlooked for most of October after Hurricane Irene and more recently the nor'easter in late October.  It was hard to see the garden under 10 inches of snow on Halloween.  Now, the snow is gone but we had some pleasants days during October. I was kept from the garden by some sewing projects and a back that couldn't do winter clean-up. I hope to get the garden put to bed this weekend since the sewing projects are in hiatus.

I'm posting some photos I've taken in the past six weeks but didn't have a chance to add to the blog until now.

Visit to Lee May's garden in East Haddam 10.9.11

A creative use for tomato stakes--Chinese ribbon dance in the wind!

Old fence parts as trellises

Broken urn becomes two planters.

Old bottles reflect light on an old fence rail.

Cairn or inukshuk in CT woodland garden.

No mowing necessary with moss and gravel and stones.

Bonsai garden by the back door.

Beginning of CT autumn color.

Morning Glori--ous!

The sun was out and the skies were clear blue. It's a little chilly but the morning glories are blooming.

It was so glorious that a bee decided to visit as I took the photograph!

There was other life in the garden today.

A cabbage white.  One spot means it is a male. Females have two spots.

I found a great web site for identifying butterflies by shape and color and size.

First of Fall, Part Two

Here are some photos from yesterday:

Leggy mums, a few vibrant buddleia blooms, a new hydrangea looking more upright among the artemisia, and the Adriondack chair half-hidden.  It is all symbolic of the end of summer--and an unusual one at that? We had a blizzard with record snowfall in the winter, an earthquake in the summer and a hurricane at the end of the growing season.  During the month of September we have had six more inches of rain than normal; we are 20 inches over for the year. I rolled up the soaker hose for the season!

The lavender looks better than it did early this season.  It should bloom in July, not September! I thought it liked dry feet and hot, sunny days, but it is now thriving in the planter in the landscape bed.

The False Indigo or Baptisia australis finally formed its black seed pods.  It is drought and heat tolerant, so it, too, was confused by the excessive water and lack of extreme heat this season.

The Montauk daisies were pinched back too hard and too late by some confused gardener, but the asters are doing fine.  They, too, hard a hard pruning late in the season but recovered.

And the sedum 'Everlasting' by the garage door looks good also.  It was very leggy so I pinched it too. I didn't know if it would recover, but it was going to be very limp with full bloom if I didn't do something.  The plants can be forgiving if other factors play into their success.  As a gardener, you just wonder sometimes what the success factor is...

First of Fall 2011

September was not a good time in the garden. The plants did not do well after the hurricane. Leaves were stripped by the wind. The weather was humid and wet for several weeks. It wasn't officially fall but somehow it looked like fall and felt like August with the humidity and bugs. Suddenly, last week everything perked up. I had planted mums and gerber daisies in the planter boxes on the deck--and they finally looked good.

I took out 15 divisions of daisies, hostas, rudbeckias, and artemesias for the garden club fall sale in late September. They looked good after being in their plastic containers for two weeks under the deck with wet conditions, but the sale was on another rainy, humid Saturday.

Today I put composted manure around all the plants and transplanted a few plants to better locations. I took out a huge pile of dead stems, leaves and spent blossoms. With cultivating the manure into the soil and redistributing the mulch around the beds, the garden shows some energy again. The peony hasn't turned its beautiful copper color. The butterfly bush continues to bloom, although it's still propped up with twine and a metal post after the hurrican uprooted it. The mums are blooming, but I didn't get them snipped again before the end of July and, as a result, they are leggy. The roses are blooming well now in cooler temperatures of the past few days. The daisies have a second bloom, but they're sparse.

Here are some photos from a week ago:

A sun "shadow" breaks the shade in late afternoon.

The 'Walker's Low' Nepeta or Catmint blooms among

the Chrysanthemum 'Golden Helga'.

Up the side landscape bed, the 'Stella De Oro' daylilies are still blooming with the asters (I don't know the name) and the Montauk daisies and the sedum 'Autumn Joy". The Montauk daisies are sparse because I pruned them too late. The sedum recovered from a late pruning and is standing erect and full of bloom. Sometimes the garden recovers from the gardener's mistakes--and sometimes not.

The bees were busy in the asters on the first clear day in weeks with some late afternoon sunshine. I had pruned the asters severely twice during the summer, but they looked all the better for it!

9.11.2011

After watching the memorial services on television this morning, I had to be outside in the sun under the clear, blue sky.  Not as clear, nor as blue as that sky ten years ago, but a close reminder of how perfect an early September day can be.  Of course, ten years ago, the day turned to terror and horror that is difficult to remember.

The butterflies were busy in the garden.  I've noticed the monarchs for the past couple of weeks, but have not been able to capture them with my camera. Today after dividing some perennials and deadheading and weeding, they didn't seem to mind me near the butterfly bush with my camera.  Maybe they were enjoying the day as much as I was--or just focused on preparing for their migration.