ABC Wednesday: Unfinished Business

For this week's ABC posting for the letter U, I am uninspired. I have had trouble coming up with anything unique or even one of my utterly ordinary posts. Frankly, I have been so busy working in the garden that I can't think of much else. Here it is the second week of June already, and despite the hours I've spent outside, my garden remains Unfinished.




My wise friend Cheryl once wrote "Is a Garden Ever Finished?" I would agree with her, and I have to remember that the fabulous Lurie Garden in Chicago pictured above did not look this way overnight. It took years for the enchanting "river of salvia" to get to this "finished" stage. My garden is on a much, much humbler scale, but I've resigned myself to the fact that there will always be something else that needs to be done in it.





One of the chores that was left unfinished this year was to transplant some of the many new coneflower seedlings. In early spring I did dig out a few, but more kept popping up, and I fully intended to thin them out. But time got away from me, and now it looks as though purple coneflowers will be ubiquitous in my garden this summer.

Two jobs that will continue all season are watering and weeding. This hydrangea bud looks pretty promising right now, but unless I water it soon, it won't look so good by the time it's ready to bloom. Wasn't I the one complaining about so much rain just a few weeks ago? That just proves that a gardener is never satisified. We've had either too much rain or not enough. Yesterday the skies--and the weather forecast--threatened storms all day, but they never materialized. Today I gave up on rain and started the process of dragging hoses around the garden. Depending on how our summer goes, this may be a daily chore all season. And then of course, there's the weeding. While I was away at Spring Fling, the weeds grew twice as much as the flowers. (You didn't expect me to show a picture of my weeds, did you? Of course, if you look closely enough at some of these photos, you'll no doubt spot a few.)

But the biggest chunk of my time this spring has been spent on planting. I have made a good dent in the "pot ghetto" in front of my garage door, but there are still a few homeless plants waiting to be put into the ground. One reason for my lateness is that I lost a few perennials over the winter and kept waiting and waiting for them to appear. When I realized my favorite gaillardias "Oranges and Lemons" didn't make it through the winter, I had trouble finding them in any nursery until this past week.

While I did lose several perennials this past winter, there have been a few unexpected surprises like this dianthus that has bloomed in the same pot now for three years. This is one reason I don't clean out my pots in the fall as I probably should; every once in awhile I have an annual that decides to come back for another year.

I've also spent a lot of time plant shopping this spring. I had no trouble finding the usual geraniums I use in a few containers. But Beckie and I commented on one of our plant expeditions this spring, that we found fewer unusual plants this year. We wondered if that might be due to the economy; perhaps nursery growers decided to stick more to the traditional plants this year rather than risk growing something that might not sell.

But garden centers and nurseries needn't worry about me. I have a serious case of plant-envy, and I find it hard to visit a garden center without buying something. Seeing a display of hostas on sale like this one at Rich's during Spring Fling usually makes me salivate and forget that there really isn't much more room in the shade garden for another hosta right now.

And while I was on a search for a few more Victoria Blue Salvia to fill in a space, I found something else, this Solenia Begonia "Dusty Rose," which I couldn't resist.

And this new-to-me flower, Lisanthus "Forever Blue." I still don't know where I'm going to plant this.

I never did find the needed salvia, but on the same shopping trip I found a new nursery that also had many garden accent pieces. This cast iron pot caught my eye, the price was right, and it already had a hole pre-drilled in the bottom. It quickly found its way into my car and is now filled with soil and seeds.

Not everything I buy, though, is an impulsive purchase. While hunting down my replacement gaillardia, I found this plant that I have wanted so badly since seeing it during Spring Fling. Do you recognize it? I'm sure you would if I showed it to you in full bloom . . .

. . . Yes, I am now the proud possessor of my very own Baptisia, "Purple Smoke," also known as False Indigo. I was thrilled to find it and hope that it is happy in its new home in my garden and one day looks as good as this one seen in the Lurie Garden.

Let's face it, as long as I keep visiting other gardens, whether in person or through blogging, my garden will never be "finished." There are always new ideas to try and more plants to be added. Last weekend I celebrated my un-birthday. (I coined this term last year--my theory is that if you don't acknowledge your birthday, it doesn't really count and you can subtract a year from your age rather than add one:) Doesn't that make sense?) Anyway, one of the gifts I received was a gift card to my favorite garden center, so I know there will more additions to the garden, if not this year, then next.

I already have another idea for next year's garden--I am definitely going to plant some alliums. I saw them everywhere in Chicago and realized they're a perfect in-between season perennial, not to mention their striking blooms. Thanks to Mr. McGregor's Daughter for sending me this photo. She and another blogger thought I must have purposely worn this purple top to color coordinate with the blooms of the allium:)

Finally, if I am spending all this time in the garden and it's still unfinished, you can imagine what my house looks like. Suffice it to say that during gardening season, the housework remains Undone!

Check out other ABC posts by clicking here.

ABC Wednesday: Q . . . and a leftover P

This Wednesday we have reached the letter Q, which puts me in quite a quandary. Q's are not very common in the garden. I can't very well use my Quercus Macrocarpa once again, since it was the focal point of the last round through the alphabet and also showed up for O two weeks ago.

I do have another Quercus, much younger than the Bur Oak, though I don't know what specific type of oak it is. Like the grand old man at the end of our lane, it is one of the last trees to leaf out; now that it has, the front yard is full of shade once again.

For some time, however, I had planned to use the only other Q word in my garden--a flowering quince. But not everything in the garden works out the way you expect it to each year.

These are the lovely coral red blossoms that appeared for the first time last May on the quince. In fact, until last year I didn't even know what this plant was. As far as I was concerned, it was a shaggy, unsightly shrub that I was ready to dig out, so I gave it an extreme haircut in early spring. Apparently, that was just what it needed, because it was covered with these blooms last year. After it flowered, I took the advice of several garden bloggers and cut it back to half its size, thinking this would produce even more blooms this year.

Unfortunately, what I've had this spring is the same unkempt, boring shrub of past years.

Instead of a mass of blooms, a few appeared but hidden by the outside branches. I can only conclude that I should have trimmed this shrub again early in the spring to encourage its flowering. Perhaps someone more familiar with this plant can suggest another reason why it didn't bloom as prolifically as last year.

So I am rather disappointed with my Q's this week, and I'm also wishing we could turn back the clock one week, because I would have had some great additions to my P post. On Saturday my friend Beckie and I went on a day-long plant shopping expedition, starting with the local Herb Society's sale and ending at a favorite garden center, Prairie Gardens.

We managed to test the volume of my new crossover vehicle to see how the volume of the back compared to the old minivan's. I think we could have squeezed in a few more plants.

But this isn't the week for P's . . .

. . . so I won't even tell you about the local Prairie Plant Preservation Society's sale or how some of these plants made their way home with us. All this will have to wait for another day.

In the meantime for more creative and quirky representations for the letter Q, you can visit Mrs. Nesbitt or the ABC anthology.

April's Last Hurrah

There's an old cliche in Illinois (and probably elsewhere) that says, "If you don't like the weather, just wait a few minutes and it will change." That has certainly been true here the last few days. Last week started out with beautiful spring weather, and my hyacinths were in all their glory.

By the end of the week it was summer, or so it seemed--so hot and humid that the hyacinth blooms dried up and blew away, as did my daffodils. Then it became colder and colder; by Monday the weather gods were so confused they didn't know what to do. The sun shone, then it rained, then it snowed, then sleeted, then hailed, all in less than a few hours. I put blankets over my hydrangeas and a few other tender perennials Monday night in preparation for the freeze warnings. Thankfully, we didn't get the freeze forecast for that night and the next, and everything has survived.

The forecast for the rest of this week is warmer once again, and I'm hoping that lasts. My flowering crabapple trees were just about to bloom last week.

This week, in spite of the crazy weather, most of them have opened up.

They put on quite a show for a week or two for anyone who drives up our lane. These trees were all planted by my in-laws some years ago, and as you can see, there are at least two varieties of flowering crabapples. Perhaps some people think the pink and red clash, but I like the effect. The green tree to the left of the photo is another variety of crabapple, I think; it has white blooms that are not quite open yet.

If the weather isn't being cooperative for gardening, what's a girl to do? Why, go shopping, of course! And that's just what my good friend Beckie and I decided to do. By the way, in my last post I wrote about good friends of mine that I had taught with for many years. Beckie and I have been best friends even longer than that, which is pretty amazing since we're both only 35!

Ok, wipe the smile off your face, and back to the subject...

Since we both find shopping for plants infinitely preferable to clothes shopping, we decided to visit a couple of garden centers, including Prairie Gardens, where we attended a few workshops earlier this month. I have been wanting to try a newer species of gallardia called "Oranges and Lemons," and luckily I found just enough for the area I've planned. We bought a few other perennials we've been looking for, but resisted the temptation, for the most part, to buy annuals--it's still too early here for them. We checked them out, though, and took some notes and some pictures to remind us in a week or two what we'd like to buy.

There was certainly no shortage of petunias! Growers must be coming up with a new variety every year. There were the now-common wave petunias, the supertunias (my favorite), million bells, and something called surfinia (I'm not sure now if that is the correct name). I love this lavendar double petunia pictured below and plan to buy some later for containers. It was in a hanging planter, so I didn't get the name of it, but I'm sure I'll recognize it when I see it again.

By the time we hit the second garden center, our wallets were getting a little thin, so we mostly window-shopped, although neither of us could resist buying a yellow fusion impatiens. It was a little pricey, so I'm hoping we'll be able to find more of these a little cheaper in a couple of weeks. I didn't check the price on this basket of pink double impatiens below, but I'm sure it was more than I wanted to spend. I love this look, though, and am going to try to duplicate it myself. Last year was the first time I had ever seen double impatiens--they look just like miniature roses and far outshine regular impatiens.

One last stop before going home--we wanted to see the Master Gardeners' Idea Garden on the U. of I. campus. We had stopped there at the end of March when the only thing "blooming" was the rabbit planters. What a difference three weeks can make! Although there weren't that many spring blooms, there was green everywhere.

The nice thing about this garden is that every plant is clearly marked with a sign indicating its species and common name besides its native habitat.

The Master Gardeners experiment with many different varieties and species so that it's a great place to see how well a particular plant might do in this area. This beautiful flowering quince, for example, is not very common here, I believe, but it's obviously thriving in this plot.

I can't believe I have lived in this area all my life, and yet this is the first year I've ever visited this gardening site. Beckie and I made a vow to visit here often during the summer to enjoy the garden and to pick up new ideas for next year.

Finally, it was time to go home--I had to get to my granddaughter's soccer game. But we hadn't gone more than a few hundred feet down the street when we spotted a whole field of lilacs. Well, of course, we had to stop to see--and smell--them. There were several varieties of lilacs planted, including this beautiful, but not very fragrant, white lilac.

The field is on part of the University campus, but there were no signs, and I couldn't find any note of it on the official campus map. My guess is that it is part of an experimental plot for the horticulture department, since this whole area includes other gardens and groves of trees.

We finally tore ourselves away and made it home in time for the soccer game. As you can see, there was still plenty of room in the back of my van; I think we showed remarkable restraint on our shopping spree, don't you? Of course, next time I'll take out the back seat so we have more room!