plant swap!

I made this bench on the front porch (some of the legs a bit wonky, it's not nearly as sturdy as I'd like, but it does the job of holding up whatever I need to set down for a moment)

and here it is with plants ready to go to the swap. I took two rue, four pots of echinacea, the mini geranium, some coleus, three potted catnip, and some aloe vera babies. But nobody wanted the catnip, I had to bring it home again. And I'd had it identified wrong all this time- I thought I was growing catmint, but it's catnip- no wonder it seemed too tall, and the flowers not-quite-right. I was corrected at the swap.

and what I brought home! Here's some, plus more pics below of individual detail- the one lower front left is buttonweed. Not even sure I'll plant that one now, having discovered it's considered a difficult-to-control lawn weed . . . 

The rest I'm pretty happy about. I got slender mountain mint-

'Shrubby' St. john's wort- Hypericum prolificum-

Elephantopus carolinianus or Elephant's foot (referring to the root) makes small purple flowers, in the aster family. Seemed interesting!

A sedum that looks different from the ones I already have-

Virginia sweetspire

Also a small rosemary plant, two New England aster (yes, trying that again even though every time they disappear. I think get eaten) and a wild bergamot (monarda, or bee balm) why do plants have so many names for the same thing. And- shining sumac! I have wanted a sumac for many years, although I was hoping to eventually find a stahorn sumac, this will do for starters.

American beautyberry!! Very excited about this one.

and a good-sized rosemary that someone had obviously just pulled out of the ground, so maybe I'll have one that gets through the winter at last. It's as tall as my hip.

Plus a few little houseplants- two little succulents, Haworthia and a dwarf snake plant, plus this one with purplish tint that wasn't labeled- it looks like another begonia variety to me, but I'm probably wrong on that.

and three bags of iris bulbs- 'Black Gamecock' Louisiana Iris, 'Pallida' and 'Victoria Falls' both a tall bearded iris. I've never grown iris before but I have a damp area I think they'd do well in.

time to joyfully plant stuff

the coleus

I potted up all my cuttings. More than I'd planned on, took the ones off the aquarium and put them in pots too (changed my mind on that). I liked the look of this handful of the 'witchy' cuttings in a jar, with all the growing roots visible,

but those got potted too.

(Parent plant looking good still)

My favorites are in the kitchen window

and almost every other too

Lots of these 'gay delight' as well

Disappointingly, the 'exhibition limelight' that used to make such big leaves, is puny this year

and the crazy 'rodeo drive' cuttings faltered as well (half of them got mold and I removed lots of icky leaves/stems)

Not pictured but doing fine: the 'kiwi fern'. Have been pinched, and growing new leaves already. Since houseplants, here's a few more: 

I took cuttings from the pot of arrowhead

and put them in a jar of water to start more stems

and now that it looks nicely recovered, here's a photo of my shiny begonia

structure

I've been working a lot outside- the cooler weather plus my improving health makes me delighted to be outside for hours getting sweaty and sore muscles. It's great! But not a lot of work to do with plants, although I'm pulling weeds, raking, trimming stuff per usual. Straightening garden bed edges, where some bricks had fallen out of alignment over the past few years. And digging small rocks with flat edges into the ground, to make a "mowing strip" of sorts around the base of the beds.

A few days ago I started this task: putting a flat path in the one garden area the lawn mower won't fit. Between beds four and five (which is the small square one with just rue), straight down between beds three and six (the perennial herbs). It's the annoying area where I always end up pulling tons of weeds by hand, trimming grass with scissors or a knife, and getting struck by rue (from just brushing against it).

So I had all these narrow cinder blocks, the kind with two holes through the center. They're the same dimension as my garden bed edging bricks, but my husband picked them up (free) for me not realizing I couldn't use ones with holes. Various reasons. Had them sitting around for over a year, trying to think how to make them work for the garden edge- fill the holes with cement and make them solid? put in as-is with a flat stone cap? plant stuff in the holes (don't like that look)? never satisfied with any ideas so they'd been on my porch holding up a planks for a makeshift bench. (Useful, but not a nice look either).

Then I asked my husband to cut them all in half lengthwise with his wet saw. And I dug them into the ground with the flat sides up, packing clay and small broken stone under the hollows. One cracked in half because I dropped it, otherwise they feel pretty solid- firm to the ground and not rocking. Mostly. 

Next job -yesterday- was to straighten the bricks on the outside edge of bed 10. Which was the most crooked of them all. Quite a bit of work, but very satisfying. I must be a real garden nerd, I love pulling the edges off and seeing the darkness of the garden soil, from my compost enrichments. Even though in this bed it's kind of shallow (because of the initial stick layer, which has broken down by now).

I laid a string line this time to get the edge straight. 

It was also satisfying to see that, in spite of some wedges I had shoved under the bricks to level them the first time around being wood- which rotted away- the clay soil under them was pretty compact and smooth, flat surface once I brushed away the dirt that had sifted down through cracks. I think it was mostly the pushing of roots, motion of insects and shifting of dirt from gravity, that had caused the bricks to get crooked.

Now fairly straight- not perfect, but good enough for me.

I keep thinking I ought to dig all the edges out, make a narrow shallow trench around the beds, fill with sand or fine gravel, and set the bricks again on that, for a proper base. Just didn't have the energy, time, or want the expense of buying more materials the first time I did all this. Wonder if I even need to. The rest of the garden edges are in good shape still, only a few more I might pull off to straighten- and I am pretty sure they're all ones I had wedged with wood shims. Now I wedge with small flat rocks or just packed clay soil. It stays pretty firm. 

Also satisfied to see they've held up well, where the bricks are under/against the soil. The sealant and paint layers have not worn off (in four years). 

After all that, I went back to finishing the path. I'm really pleased with it- so I took a lot of pictures, from all angles! It's nice to walk on.

After walking on it for a day I realize I'm probably going to take the trouble to lift half the path again and re-dig so they sit deeper. It slopes down and then goes up again towards the outer edge of the garden- following the land- but is too shallow between the rue and bed four. Bed five with the rue needed almost all the bricks pulled off and re-set. They were very wonky. I had to chop a lot of roots- I think their pushing is what made the edge go crooked. 

Trimmed the rue back quite a bit before starting work, and even then I brushed against it too many times, so went inside and washed my hands, arms and face with rubbing alcohol and then soap and lots of water, hoping to stave off a skin reaction. Interesting to see when I exposed the soil in the rue bed, it was paler than in the other beds- not so black, but still darker than the plain red clay soil. Because this bed I don't feed compost, it just gets some grass trimmings and leaf litter mulch in fall.

Looking straight down it. See how tall the dill umbrels (green)! This is after I cut it back twice earlier in the season. It's really growing crazy in the cooler weather now.

From above. I spy another brick on the short edge of bed three, that needs straightening . . .

While doing all that digging, I pulled three large dandelions. Nice straight roots the width of my finger, so I cleaned, scraped and roasted them for tea. Hadn't done that in a long time.

around the garden

I've been doing some work on the garden structure- the bed edges and such. But too tired from that to write it all out now, so here's some incidental pictures from the past few days. More on the actual work tomorrow. Found an unknown caterpillar- black and spiky!- on the boneset plant.

Which is doing great- it grew so fast, 

already the height of my small camellia.

I want to get more of this plant, or the common one that blooms in summer. Near it is the yarrow- so thin and small- I really admired some yarrow in a relative's yard several states south this past weekend, where it's warmer- hers so bright and thick and feathery! I suspect now mine would do better if I move it to a sunnier location.

Funny though, the same gardener had arum growing here and there in her yard. She asked me what it was- they'd been pulling it out! I like the bright, exotic appearance. She thought it might be an objectionable plant. I shrugged and said: well, if you like it, leave it be- but if you don't want it around, you'll probably have to dig up the tuberous roots. Here's mine, regrowing in fall-

I dug up a few echinacea to take to the plant swap soon. Here with other potted extras on my little bench- several catmint, a few beautyberry, and two pots of the miniature geranium (which I've grown tired of).

Not sure I'm going to take the beautyberries to the swap, though. Half the larger ones I transplanted died, or look like they did. This one by the hydrangeas is just a few thin sticks with a few leaves- 

but it does have three clusters of bright purple!

The side bed it's in, starting to look a bit neater and more deliberate. I've dug the stones into their places in the ground, to make the edge. Pulled more grass from behind the edge, and transplanted some errant ajuga out of the lawn, back into the bed.

When I was doing that work (actually about a week ago) I trimmed a bit of the wild chrysanthemum, and just stuck the cuttings in the ground on the other side of the little ornamental cypress. Wasn't sure if they'd take- but not only did they survive, they're blooming! Hard to see in this photo, I'll get a better one soon.

a few things

in the garden- not much, but there is stuff growing. One blue collard from last year, actually producing since I took all the catmint out of bed eight. (Ate most of this with salmon and quinoa for dinner). There were green caterpillars. I plucked them all off, and fed the two smallest to Tucker.

Big soft leaves of nicotiana. The borage has succumbed to something - heat a few weeks ago, or insect onslaught- but the nicotianas are fine. Self-seeded into several garden beds and since I wasn't planting, I just let them be.

Some herbs that weren't looking so great at the end of summer heat, are doing better now- sculpit, which I cut back to remove all the funny balloon flowers- 

and winter savory in particular- this one so hard to get a good picture of. I'm considering giving it a severe cutback, trying to plant the main stem as a cutting, and restart the original plant branching out further down. Not sure if I will loose it, though. In spring, maybe.

I do miss having sage and rosemary. Will have to try again with those . . . 

Look at this surprise. Even though the plants are scrawny, got their leaves eaten continually by deer and/or rabbits, and look stricken from aphids or some other pest, there's quite a few skinny little beans forming.

And these two pods look like they actually might give me the beans. It's the kidney beans I planted on a whim one day, at the wrong time of year too. Ha!