My lettuce!

Small things amuse me these days. Facebook finally paid off. I saw that putting the remains of a lettuce head in water will give you a new head of lettuce. This picture was taken yesterday when the new leaves were 2 1/4 inches tall at about 3 PM. Right now (11 AM) they are 2 3/4 inches tall. I also planted lettuce seeds this year. We'll see how they do if warm weather ever comes to the DC area. Right now we've swapped weather with the PNW. Generally I'm just fine with that, hating the hot, humid DC springs and summers as I do. But come on--my seeds need the heat!

Four o'clocks at my front door.

I didn't plan to have only these creamy white blooms by my front steps but that's how it turned out. A couple of years ago I planted about two dozen 4 o'clock seeds under the window at the left. Now they are spreading everywhere but I'm OK with that. The vines crawling up the railing are red cardinal climbers that will soon produce tons of little red flowers for the hummingbirds to feed on. I'll never be a garden planner. I prefer random acts of planting.

Fall is the most beautiful month.

I think that's a fact, not an opinion--speaking only for the area surrounding my house of course. Spring is light green, summer is green, winter is gray and brown.

I'm so sorry to report, to those who don't already know, that Estorbo, a NYC cat who had his own blog, died yesterday. This was a sweet, funny blog, with Estorbo's human mother interpreting (channeling?) the "beeg blad Dominican cad."

Burning Bush?

Anyone know what this shrub is? Maybe Burning Bush (Euonymus alata)? There is a small grouping of them in the park next to my house and a neighbor wants me to try to grow one for her (she likes the shape and the shortness). I'll give it a try. Or maybe I can find a tiny seedling to liberate from the park. I know BB is invasive and serious gardeners and landscapers probably hate them. One plant isn't going to make much difference. Flawed thinking no doubt.

My cantaloupe. About the size of a cat's brain.

I'm not much of a food grower. I do better with flowers.

It's the season to collect seeds.

 

 

These Purple Hyacinth Beans are so easy to grow, and with enough sun and something to climb they'll get huge and be pretty all summer. I still have a couple of blooms (not the above). When the bright purple beans shrink and turn almost black the beans are ready to harvest. I especially like the inside of the pods after the seeds are removed. Those pale white lines must come from the white edge on each bean. I'd like some wall paper in that exact color and design.

 

The last of the basil so the last of the pesto.

I make easy pesto: in my small food grinder I add leaves, pour in some olive oil, sprinkle in some salt, toss in some walnuts, and top off with shaved hard cheese. Grind a bit, and toss with pasta, fusili for example.

[Note: I don't know yet how I feel about this blogging daily thing. I sure don't have anything of much interest to say. A daily record of my activities would be a snooze-fest. "Today I put 147 books on the shelves at the library." "Today I went to the grocery store." zzzzzzz.  But I think I like the tiny bit of discipline it takes.]

Late-blooming, hardy Nasturtiums.

My nasturtiums are mostly yellow, with a sprinkling of orange. They've been blooming all summer long but in some ways are at their peak now. They creep and get larger throughout the season, and although delicate, they are aggressive.

My milkweed is home to some pretty but unknown (to me) insects. I saw a single Monarch butterfly this summer. One is better than none.

Hellebores. The first of many posts about hellebores. Dahlias are great but not quite as great as hellebores.

 

These are all new transplants with their very first flowers. I think I moved them from near their mother plants 2 years ago, or maybe just last year. The big surprise is that they have that inner ruffle, which I've never seen in my hellebores. I have a lot to learn about these random double blooms.

 

Last week I went to a plant sale at the American Horticulture Society in Alexandria, VA, and I met one of the authors of this book. So I had to buy it. Hellebores, also called Lenten roses, may be the perfect plant: they require virtually no care and very little sun, they survive very cold winters (the picture below shows my blooms under the last significant snow we had in late March), they produce many seedlings that can be easily moved, and (drumroll) deer won't eat them. Deer do, however, stomp on them so they still have to be protected a bit.

Red cardinal climber, one of my favorite unruly plants.

 

 

A number of years ago I bought one cardinal climber vine (Ipomoea sloteri) at a farmers' market. Since then I've grown them every year using the seeds I collected at the end of the previous season. The hummingbirds love these flowers, and although they are pretty and reliable and long-lasting (I still have a few blooms), they aren't spectacular. You have to be very near in order to see the little blooms. But next year (I'm always saying that... "but next year") I hope to plant tons of them and see if they'll make more of a splash. Don't know yet if the deer will allow that since I've only grown them on my deck and behind fencing.

 

 

 

 

Beloved 4 o'clocks.

 

These flowers make me so happy. They bloom from July to October, produce hundreds of blooms and thousands of seeds (for next year), and smell heavenly. They start blooming late in the day, bloom happily all night, then begin to fold up at 11 AM or so. The deer generally don't eat them until late in the season when everything else is gone.

 

I prefer red 4's, but am too stubborn to go out and buy seeds for reds. The plants shown in this post are the descendants of 4's I planted a few years ago -- white blooms with a hint of pale, pale yellow. I like the process of gathering and saving seeds for the next year. I have many baggies of various seeds scattered about.

 

I've been a very bad gardener this year, just awful. I may post pictures to prove my point. Or maybe not. I've also been a very bad blogger this year. (But I've read a LOT of good books!)

Christina's weeds: remember to pull weeds in the Christina position. Millet's ladies probably ruined their backs bending like that.

 

A friend told me about injuring her back because she weeded too long over the weekend. She was enjoying it so much that she did it for hours. She's not the only friend or relative who over-gardens and pays dearly. So let's all adopt the Christina Pose and save our backs.

A Colorado columbine successfully re-locates to Maryland.

Thanks to Kitt, who a couple of years ago sent me some seeds from her gorgeous patch of Columbines.  I planted the seeds a year ago but nothing happened. I saw this plant growing a few weeks ago and thought at first it was a weed. But my weed-loving instincts told me to let it be. I was rewarded! Only one plant came up (or survived me poking around in the ground nearby) but maybe I'll have more next year. Thanks again Kitt!

Look at those stargazers in the right background of this 15+ year old photo! Daughter with Socks, Wonderful Cat of the Past.

But about those stargazers. You can see three groups of them on the right. That shows how much the wildlife has changed in our backyard in 20 years. When the top photograph was taken we had no deer fencing in our back yard and we had big hostas and those lilies. We certainly saw deer from time to time and they were free to wander over the very ground Socks and Daughter are sitting on. But apparently they didn't. Because look at all those stargazers! 

And there she is once again, February 22, 2013, with Sean. Wedding coming up soon. [Clothes to find/buy!]

I bought some of the herbs that I plan to nurture into much bigger herbs to use as planter centerpieces for the June wedding.  Behnke's Nursery had a good selection of herbs, but not the full selection they'll have over the next weeks. I watched an employee with an old-fashioned clipboard and a printed list of different herbs and she was counting and checking them off. I love that stuff.

Hellebores and crocuses. Spring is just around the corner.

Photos I forgot to post over the summer.

Volunteer cantaloupes, which I get every year because of my compost pile -- I guess. Purple hyacinth beans (seeds courtesy of my sister), the ONLY nasturtium I managed to grow all summer despite planting a number of plantlets, and some late tomatoes. These tomatoes perplexed me because they remained green on the outside but were red, as shown, on the inside. And tasted ripe. Unfortunately I don't remember what kind of tomatoes I planted.

Wisteria.

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2011/04/22/the-hanging-gardens-of-berkeley/

Check out these stunning photos of wisteria in Berkeley, CA. According to the author:

There are several types of wisteria. Most common is Japanese Wisteria (Wisteria floribunda) which winds in a clockwise fashion and the Chinese Wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) which winds in a counter clockwise fashion. There are more than 25 different cultivars.


My wisteria winds clock-wise so I guess it's a Japanese Wisteria (floribunda). But I'll check this out on some other sites. One is never enough when checking out info from the web.

Cold frame.

Last winter I bought an inexpensive (about $50) cold frame and set it up in my very small vegetable garden. Then I didn't do much with it -- just let it sit there -- all spring, summer, and fall. The top blew off once or twice so at some point I just moved the top onto the porch. Finally in November I reattached the top and planted some lettuce plantlets, not seeds but plantlets. Everything is still growing, or at least nothing has been frozen, so I guess the frame is doing its job. Our temperatures have sometimes been in the 20s at night which normally would kill off lettuce (I think). Unfortunately, although alive and presumably healthy, the lettuce doesn't seem to be getting any bigger. Bottom pix was taken yesterday, pix above it was taken 3 wks ago. Maybe if we get a burst of sustained  warm weather -- in the 60s -- everything will grow in a burst.

See the grass in the upper left corner of the top picture? That's my neighbor's lawn. She has a lawn service which comes occasionally to give her lawn a "treatment." The kind where the lawn guys leave little warning flags in the ground near the driveway, warnings about pets and children, maybe? I haven't examined one. Anyway, do you think her chemicals, plus the chemicals from the neighbor next to HER, who also gets such treatments, will get into my lettuce? I think yes, probably. If nothing else some chemicals will be airborne and will float onto my garden.

It would be a big deal to move my vegetable garden to another location in my yard. A combination of not enough sun in some places, not enough free space in others, proximity to the road (and the stuff that cars spew out), and the whole aesthetic factor. We live on a corner lot so two of our four sides are visible and accessible from the street (ie, open to the hands of passers-by...we have a fair number of passers-by since we live next door to the entrance to a park).

A fried green tomato. We had our first true frost last night so I picked the few that remained.