The persistent pansy: The Sequel

We came home from three weeks vacation in mid-August and found that all of the pansies planted last October had finally died.

But then I found this fellow poking up through a crack in the sidewalk, a few feet from where the other blue pansies had been planted:

I assume this child of that batch will be the last, but am curious to see if others pop up.

June blooms

Here is everything in my yard that was in bloom on June 28th:

Calais lily (a potted plant gift I planted last year)

Dark pink astilbe

Pink hydrangea bush (before the deer ate the blooms)

Pink hydrangea bushes

Sweetshrub (the deer didn't eat this year)

Blue hydrangea

Yuk--what's left of the hellebore blooms

White echinacea (not exactly deer-proof)

Cosmos (grown from seed in my basement)

Marigolds (purchased in bloom)

The persistent pansy (all that are left)

An easy way to make watercolor pictures of your garden

I don't normally review apps or profess to know that much about them, but I recently discovered the Waterlogue app and have been using it to make watercolor-ed versions of flowers in my garden.

I spent part of an hour turning photos of my garden into "watercolors," all while watching something on PBS. This may be my new hobby, at least from time to time.

Here are some samples (this includes flowers from earlier in the season and from last summer):

Where do baby hellebores come from?

Click on this photo to see the tiny black seeds inside the leaves

For years I'd heard how hellebores drop their seeds when the flowers wither at the end of season and that, underneath, at the beginning of the next season, one would find baby hellebores. I looked every year and found nothing.

Meanwhile, every year I also weeded this mysterious small plant that was in my garden. There would be dozens of it in random spots.

It wasn't until I went to a garden club sale recently that I finally realized that what I thought was a weed was actually baby hellebores. I don't know how many I have murdered over the years. Apparently its seeds fly off everywhere and don't stay just under the plants. Sometimes they grow randomly and sometimes in clusters.

Happily I now have groupings of baby hellebores that will now live and, hopefully, thrive.

Info on hellebores: http://gardening.about.com/od/plantprofile1/p/Hellebore_Pro.htm

May showers brought these May flowers

Here are the flowers that managed to bloom in my yard this month amid the near-constant rain (which may have delayed the bloom cycle somewhat):

Chive blossoms

Peony

Clematis

Pansies (still going!)

Dahlia (annual) [a flower from the dump pile at a garden store]

The really persistent pansy

In a post last December, I praised The persistent pansy because the pansies in my front yard had survived not being planted (or watered) for a week before being planted, being munched down by deer* shortly after being planted, and then the onslaught of cold weather. The pansies appeared to die down into green nubs and were lost in the snow, so I forgot about them.

Then when the temperatures rose just a little, they began to reappear and bloom again. They have since survived and thrived in wild fluctuations in temperature, a big hailstorm, and a closeby cohort of eager deer.

I thought they would be gone by now, but here they are, bigger than ever. It probably helps that we've had only a few hot days this spring. The pansies seem to love all the rain we've had.

Finally I've found something positive to say about all this rain!

(As always, click on the small photo above to enlarge it!)

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* Afterwards I sprayed them with Deer Out, and have only sprayed them once this spring.

My latest addiction: local plant sales

It's still mostly rain and gloom here (and the article I'm linking to here was written before our current, drizzly weekend), so I've been spending my time planning where to put plants when it dries out and, whenever I can, I've dashed off to local plant sales.

Plant sales, sponsored or attended by local garden clubs, are the perfect place to see which plants are thriving in local gardens. They are also a great way to get advice from gardeners on particular plants or challenges with local soil, etc. The easiest way to find out about local plant sales is to join a garden club. You can also google "local plant sales" or "native plant sales" [e.g., here's a list of native plant sales in Maryland: mdflora.org/plantsales.html]

Yesterday I went to a neighborhood plant sale and came back with an impressive haul for only $11 (they cut prices earlier because of the persistent downpour). So far this month I've spent $51 for a carload of plants, including four new succulents for my deck.

Mostly for my own record keeping, I'm including photos below of some of the plants I've purchased at recent sales. Beneath, I list links to pages on how to grow them. Many of these plants are native to Maryland; at the very least, they supposedly do fine here. I hope to update the pics at the end of the summer to see how or if they've grown.

Pink Peony

Blue and black salvia

Forget Me Not

Bleeding Heart

Bear's Breeches (Acanthus)

"Fern with Seeds" *

Aucuba

Also purchased (not pictured): various succulents, greenhouse grown sage and lavendar, and pink petunias for a deck container.

Info links:

Peonies: Sunset: How to Grow Peonies; How to Propagate Peonies

Blue and Black Salvia: Perennial Resource: Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'*

Forget Me Not:  How to Grow Forget-Me-Not Flowers

Bleeding Heart: Fine Gardening Plant Guide: Bleeding Heart

Bear's Breeches: BHG: Bear's Breeches

Acuba: Fine Gardening Plant Guide: Gold Dust Plant

 * Fern with Seeds (haven't found the particular species of this one; it was pouring rain by the time I bought this, so I didn't linger to ask questions)

** (assume this is the plant I purchased; it didn't have a tag... will see when it blooms!)

On a rainy day, playing with gardening websites instead of playing outdoors

We've had 16 days straight of measurable rain, breaking all past records for most rainy days in a row. This means that, despite May being the prime time to plant seedlings, weed, etc., I've spent most of that time indoors.

While it's enjoyable to look on the misty and verdant scene outside my window, my gaze is not without wistful longing. The seedlings I've carefully nurtured under a grow light in the basement need to be transplanted--now. But I worry they might not survive a heavy deluge, and the rain is supposed to continue at least another three days. (Unfortunately, the organic basil plants I bought a couple of weeks ago have been damaged by an onslaught last week of hailstones as big as large pebbles, and haven't been able to recover in the sunless dampness. Other plants also look equally lethargic and waterlogged).

So this is a good time to look at landscaping and gardening websites and Pinterest pages. Here are a few of my go-to places, along with others I'm listing for my own future edification.

• For landscaping tips and garden plans, one of the first places I check is Better Homes and Gardens' landscaping pages: http://www.bhg.com/gardening/plans/ (I often find pertinent pages there by first using Google search for a particular topic, or via pinned pages in Pinterest).

• It's easy to get lost in Pinterest, especially if you start pinning all things related to your current garden wish list. Fortunately, it has become easy to find specific and related topics using the Google search engine. For example, here is what Pinterest sent me to when I googled "circular driveway landscaping": https://www.pinterest.com/explore/circle-driveway-landscaping/

• Fine Gardening magazine and finegardening.com are like porn for plant lovers. An especially useful tool on its website is the Plant Guide.

Here are other websites I've bookmarked to check out later:

• Gardens Illustrated 

• Garden Design

• Mother Earth News (not advice I can use all that much, given my shady yard, which won't allow me to grow much in the way of food crops)

• About.com's Gardening page

A Mother's Day tradition: a walk in the azalea garden

2016 Walk (screenshot of Google Photos page)

Every year, I only have one request for Mother's Day. That my family accompany me to the Brighton Dam Azalea Garden, where we pose for family photos. It's a nice way to mark the passage of time and, of course, it's a gorgeous way to spend a Sunday afternoon. (We were lucky this year that the rain stopped in time for our walk!) The azalea garden boasts 20,000 plantings.

Last year the flowers were more spectacular since we hadn't had weeks of rain. But I got to be with my family and with thousands of flowering plants. What could be better?

Screenshot of 2015 Walk

(You can click on the pictures above to see them in a larger format.)