It’s been a busy week of pretty light, projects and laughs – here’s a little review in pictures.

On Tuesday morning the last (?) Lotus bud opened up.

On Wednesday, the volunteers had an extra helper — Julie, our director of horticulture belongs to Tara, a Tibetan comedian diva who just says “poo” to the no-dogs-allowed-at-Blithewold rule. Dogs generally seem to have a different kind of (dis)respect for the gardens than we do… Dog loving readers, would you agree?

Because I liked how these pictures came out, here’s another daylily ‘Autumn Minaret’.

I was inspired by this blogger (thank you for the bakery treats, Layanee!) who was inspired by another to get down low in the garden. Here’s an on-my-knees shot of the arbor in the Idea Beds through the Agastache ‘Summer Breeze’.

And finally, the week in review ends in the North Garden with Hydrangea ‘Limelight’ and the North Star wall.

Happy Labor Day! Until next Tuesday – Garden On!

1. ‘Autumn Minaret’ day lily is blooming.

2. School started in Bristol this week. On my way to work I passed a kid who was waiting for the bus wearing a scowl that could send us all to the cornfields.

3. It’s time to start taking cuttings. This week Cathy (our summer garden helper) and I cleaned out the cutting bench for a fresh start. We use coarse perlite as a rooting medium in a bench outfitted with a mist system and heating pads. We take cuttings of any tender perennials we’d like to use in the gardens again and if we need more of a particular hardy perennial, sometimes we propagate those by cutting too. Late August into September is a great time to take cuttings because plants are putting on a burst of fresh growth. Check around the base of your Salvias, for instance, and you might see new shoots ripe for cutting: tender growth that hasn’t developed a flower bud yet. If you don’t see new shoots, cut the plant back on one side and wait a week or two. Usually the cuttings we take at this time of year become greenhouse stock from which we take more cuttings that then make it into the gardens next spring.

4. The pollinators are furiously busy. A bunch hummingbirds were pipping and buzzing all over the gardens this morning chasing each other as if there wasn’t enough nectar to go around (there’s plenty for everyone, kids). I was lucky enough to catch one resting (scoping out his territory) on the Idea Bed arbor.

Some plants are so full of bees and wasps it’s unsafe – I guess stings are just another occupational hazard – The last few weeks, Julie, Gail and I have all gotten in somebuzzy’s way…

5. The light is long, the sky is deep blue and dew in the morning makes everybody photogenic.

What signals summer’s end for you?

Weekends seem so narrow to me that, although I truly love my job (and feel my luck for loving it), I still get slightly whiney Sunday evenings about having to get up the next day (already? so soon?!) and go back to work. What can cut my blues off at the knees though is thinking ahead to how I get to spend my Monday mornings. My friends rib me a little about having slight O.C.D. but I say, yeah-who doesn’t? Good news is, I don’t have to do things like spin around 4 times before leaving the house or wash the skin off my hands. But easing into the work week is easier when I get to do one of my very favorite mindless and obsessive tasks first thing. While Monday volunteer, Diane deadheads and de-beetles the Rose Garden, I compulsively de-leaf blackspotty roses and rake up the debris. I don’t know why I have to do it. Operative words here are “have to”. It’s true that removing diseased foliage from the plant (I knock off loose leaves by shaking and wacking the plants) and raking up around the base of the plant is supposed to keep the roses healthier. (Black spot spreads by a rainsplash release of spores). Whether it really slows the fungal spread or not – and it should – the garden just looks better to me when it’s done. So I guess that’s why I have to do it — it’s for my own personal gratification on a Monday morning (the house is closed Mondays and Tuesdays and there are fewer visitors on the grounds so it really is for mostly me!) I’m not alone in having a favorite obsessive garden chore am I? Care to confess a compulsion? What do you “have to” do in your garden?

Visitors have been asking about a very late blooming, very tall, very floriferous daylily blooming just now in the North Garden. It was purchased probably 20 or so years ago from Tranquil Lake Nursery in Rehobeth, MA and we think it’s either ‘Autumn King’ or ‘Wee Willie Winkie’. ‘Autumn King’ is the taller of the two so that’s my guess (our plants are a good 5+ feet tall) but the name ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ rang bells for Julie (who would have ordered the plants originally).

Here’s a selection of pics from my foggy walk this morning (mouse over for names and click for larger images):

A new grass (new to us) in the Cutting Garden (love it! I want a hundred next year)

A Cutting Garden giant (6′ plus) with delicate flowers – but just wait for the seed pods!

A washed out Dahlia ‘Karma Fuchsiana’ – I’m not sure why my camera refuses to capture bluey pinks and pinky blues… This is the dahlia we’re considering for the North Garden. What do you think?

A four O’clock in the morning

Fog lift on the bay

A Joe Pye weed walk (a path from the bay to the Water Garden)

And the Franklinia is starting to bloom!

Have a great weekend!

Late August. The annuals are up to speed or off the road, the perennials have shown their colors or given us a good hint of what’s to come and it’s time to assess the success of the gardens. Gail and I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon cruising the gardens and picking them apart – we’re especially hard on the North Garden.

My notes for the North Garden say things like “too much phlox! – divide/thin this fall” and “‘Sympathy’ dahlias are too pale – try ‘Fuchsiana’ next year?” The roses (Rosa ‘Ballerina‘) looked great in June and are doing their rusty leafdrop trick now. We anticipated that and in front of most of them, we planted Geranium ‘Rozanne’ in hopes that it would climb the roses and cover their naked legs. It worked! But we didn’t have a ‘Rozanne’ for every ‘Ballerina and the Rozanne-less roses stick out – literally. We can also see now that the daylilies are done that there are giant holes and we really need to find something that can either tough it out under all that foliage and take over when it gets pulled or think of something that could be planted about now. Any suggestions? Gail also says (every year she says) “anything not in bloom by mid-September has GOT to go!” We’ll see…

The Rose Garden looks better than it (ever?) has – everyone says so. Julie thinks there might be a little too much orange and I’m not sure there is such a thing… We’ve only begun the renovation in that garden and I’m already excited to think about next year’s additions.

The Display Garden has been growing gangbusters on one side and slow as molasses on the other. The new beds are just not thriving like the old ones. New soil might be to blame – it’s good stuff but evidently not as sweet as the old… This particular bed is boxed in by recycled iron from the old greenhouse and there’s been some speculation that the iron is leaching and stunting the plants. (These are tried and true plants for us that are usually fully abundant by now.) What else could it be?
This fall we’ve got to get ready for the guys to do more redesign work – the Idea Beds will change and all the perennials and shrubs in those beds will have to find new homes. Plenty to think about.

Some things on the property defy critique – like bosquet blooms, wild flowers and critters:

Lycoris squamigera (Resurrection lilies or as Gail has it – Naked ladies) are blooming in the bosquet. They emerge foliage-less in late summer and flower-less in spring. The Marsh Mallows (Hibiscus moscheutos – or palustris?) are blooming in large swampy swaths down by the bay.

Could this be my mantis maybe?

And does anyone know this fellow on the Clethra?