Gardening – Page 5

Autumn blooms in my garden

November 1, 2009 by Tricia

Well it looks like Autumn is here and it won’t be long until winter arrives and the ground is covered in snow. I know … depressing isn’t it?

It’s been such a cold rainy summer and now fall that I’m not looking forward to winter at all! So I’ll look back on our fleeting summer and show you some of the beauties that will get me through winter …

This is a lovely small rose called Lavender Dreams.

It blooms regularly throughout summer, but it’s one of the few roses that I grow, that I think, looks best in the fall. It’s colours deepen and it’s beauty just shines through once the cool weather arrives:

I can’t say farewell to summer without showing you a photo of a true summer flower! I always grow sunflowers in the planted boulevard in front of my house. In fact that’s often how people visiting our house for the first time find it … we say just look for the sunflowers and you’ll find our house.

One rose that I know will keep blooming into December is “Bonica”. This pretty little rose is one of my best bloomers. it blooms from June through until it’s covered in snow. What a trooper!

Do you have a garden? Is it starting to shut down now that we’re well into Autumn? Are any of your flowers still blooming?

It was a great weekend to get some gardening done

November 1, 2009 by Tricia

We got a little bit of gardening done this weekend. It had been raining on and off most of the week, but it stopped on Saturday so we took advantage of that and decided to get outside to do a little bit of our “garden shut down” chores.

A week or so ago I was outside cleaning up the plants – getting rid of ones that had died off due to the cool weather and pruning some of the rose bushes. So this time around I didn’t have too much to do in the garden itself. That’s a good thing because I really need new work gloves – they sure take a beating when you have tons of roses!

Yesterday we took out all of our solar lights. I think we could leave them out during the winter, but I don’t like taking a chance that they’d be damaged by the heavy snow and moisture. Besides … we wouldn’t be able to see them come January or so anyway as they’d be covered in snow.

We also put away the garden torches. Each year we put some torches in the garden that we use to light up the garden and create atmosphere when we are entertaining at night. We fill them with a mixture of kerosene and Citronella oil to help keep the bugs away. Of course, we didn’t use the torches all that much this summer since it was so cool and rainy, so for much of the last week we had the torches burning in the garden to burn off the rest of the oil.

Other than tidying up a few planted containers that was pretty much our gardening chores for the weekend. All we need to do now is wait for more leaves to fall and then put them on the garden beds for the winter. The leaves help protect the plants. We even gather some of our neighbors leaves bags so that we can have extra leaves for the garden beds.

Did you do any gardening this weekend or were you busy doing Halloween stuff?

We passed on Halloween this year. We usually decorate the front of the house and give out candy to the kids, but we just couldn’t afford to buy all that candy this year. (it’s expensive!). Plus our dog seems to have turned into a barker and we figured that she’d be barking her head off every time some kids came to the door (probably scaring them). Maybe next year. Did you do Halloween?

Finally started to do a little Autumn gardening

October 20, 2009 by Tricia

I haven’t been feeling all that well for the last week or so, but something drew me to the garden this afternoon.

Chris was home today – he had a day off work – and he decided to do some work on a cabinet that’s built into our backstairs. He wanted to make it as snow and moisture proof as possible so that we could store the lawn mower there over winter.

While he was outside working away I decided to come out with my camera so that I could take photos of the Azure Monkshood and Toad Lily blooms (both only bloom in mid-Autumn so I couldn’t miss those pictures!). Of course, as always happens when I go outside into the garden, I started working – tidying up the garden beds and cutting down some plants that had already succumbed to the cooler fall weather.

I think I tidied the garden for about two hours, and then I finished up by watering both the back and front yards. That probably took another hour and a half to two hours. Hey … the dog was out and she jumps into my watering stream for fun so it takes a lot longer to water when she’s out!

If I were looking to burn fat I sure got a workout. My back is aching (along with my stomach as usual). Four to five hours of bending, twisting, stretching in awkward positions … that’s my way of gardening!

Even though I’m paying for my time in the garden I’m glad I got outside and did some work today. I’ve been stuck inside for the last few days because I was just feeling awful .. hence the reason I haven’t been writing any new posts for the last week!

Do you have a garden? If so, have you started doing any Fall garden maintenance yet?

BTW in the next day or two I’ll be posting some of the garden photos I took on my gardening blog and probably my photo blog. Watch for them!

The Beauty of a Dead Flower

September 20, 2009 by Tricia

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As most of my regular readers know I have a garden and spend quite a bit of time working in it and caring for my plants.

I also take a lot of photographs of my various plants and their lovely blooms.

One of the things that I’ve discovered in the time that I’ve been gardening is that as much as I enjoy looking at my flowers as they bloom I also appreciate the look of the flowers as they die down and turn into seed heads or seed pods.

As it turns out – Clematis flowers produce lovely seed heads. One of the prettiest Clematis seed heads comes from my Daniel Deronda Clematis. Take a look –

Isn’t that beautiful? Each strand coming off the dead flowers seed head looks like a feather. So pretty!

Have you ever taken a moment to take a close look at fading or dead flowers to see their beauty?

My garden has a hold on me!

August 2, 2009 by Tricia

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I was still feeling crappy yesterday thanks to yet another Crohn’s flare, but in the late afternoon I decided I wanted to go outside and at least take some photos of my Rose of Sharon tree.

You see, it just started blooming about a week ago – huge lavender Hibiscus like flowers – lovely. In fact, yesterday, while gazing at the tree I could see more flowers than green leaves. Yes, it was blooming like crazy!

While I was outside with my camera I must have had a surge of energy because suddenly I didn’t feel as bad as I had an hour or so before. I noticed that some of my plants were flopping over and that some of the roses had some dead branches and the next thing I knew I was busy tidying up my garden!

Meanwhile … my husband was in the front yard watering and as he made his way to the back I put him to work helping me tidy up some of the garden beds too.

All in all I think we were outside from about 5:30 pm until 10 pm! By that time I was in pain … my poor back was aching and my stomach was screaming in pain. So I guess I’d better be careful the next time I want to go out and take some “pictures”.

I didn’t upload the photos from my camera that I took of the Rose of Sharon tree and my other plants yesterday, but I’ll do that soon. I’ll probably post them on my gardening blog when I do! In the meantime … here’s a couple of photos of some of the other plants that are blooming in my garden right now.

Climbing iceberg roses 9 — Climbing Iceberg Rose

Of course there are plenty of other plants blooming, growing and or producing fruit and veggies … this is just a sampling!

We also picked raspberries yesterday evening and plan to have them for dessert this evening. Yummy!

Do you garden? If so, what’s blooming or growing in your garden this week?

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Autumn blooms in my garden

It was a great weekend to get some gardening done

Finally started to do a little Autumn gardening

The Beauty of a Dead Flower

My garden has a hold on me!

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