Butterflies

Chrysalis

I am overwhelmed by the butterflies, caterpillars, and bumble bees in the garden now. Two monarch caterpillars have started their journey toward their new life in front of my eyes, but I've missed the final act. I had no idea it happened so quickly. First, I saw one attached to the underside of a leaf. It slowly started to curl up. I thought I would come back down in a few hours and see what had happened. When I came back two hours later, it was a done deal! I couldn’t believe it. How could that have happen so quickly? It has to be so hard to turn from a caterpillar into a chrysalis. Doesn't it?

Two days later I happened on another caterpillar on the underside of a Salvia Indigo Spires. He was just starting the process: green, black, and white; striped, fat, and very zen.  "Ah ha!" I thought, I will come back in one hour and see how far she has progressed.  One hour later, I came into the garden and presto, all done, the green gem was already formed.

If I am so lucky to find another this year I am not leaving. I'm not even going to blink. There's some magic in this everyday miracle of nature. When you have gardens as big as we do, miracles of one type or another are an ongoing thing. This very large garden started from things so small, seeds or cuttings. Every time, they grow into just what they are programed to be.  The seeds that come from my phlox never turn into surprise frogs in the garden. Some great new colors of  phlox seedling yes, but no frogs.

Some new things we have at the moment: Epimedium ‘Orange Queen’ are great for dry shade. I love these plants, I have to admit I took one for myself. Hypericum ‘Chocolate Lion’ and ‘Pink Lion’: I am also keeping a few those beautiies for my garden. The fruit of these plants in flower arrangements is to die for. Plus those bright yellow flowers in summer are perfect. The fall blooming anemones ‘Prince Henry’ and ‘Party Dress’ both double pink spreading shade plants. These need some room to spread.

Well I have wiled away a few minutes of your time telling you about the happenings here at the moment. Always good to keep in touch. Come visit us and see the garden. We always love to have visitors!

The Quiet Garden

Coxcomb

The garden is quiet now. No bees or butterflies at work. The finches have eaten all the echinacea seeds from the seed heads. The frosts have made the gardens droop and the monochromatic colors are shadows of what they were last week...but it makes me smile because it's time to clean up and plan next years garden.

Now, because we use perennials and annuals every year the garden can be different. This year for summer and fall the front of one of the gardens was purple, blue, yellow and orange. I liked it a lot and it gave me pleasure everyday to look at it. It's funny: I actually had meant to put a coxcomb in that area that was a sunset orange color called Temple Bells, but I misunderstood George when he told me where they were in the greenhouse and put in HUGE red-velvet looking coxcombs instead. That was not in my orange/purple plan at all. When I could tell which way the wind was blowing concerning their color it was too late to pull them out so they stayed and, surprise, everyone loved them. I would try to explain the error but no one seemed to care much and took lots of pictures anyway. The other side of the garden got the temple bells a few weeks later when I figured out the color thing, and somehow that just didn't work as well. Actually, I think it was the time difference. But what I thought of as a big mistake (big RED coxcombs), everyone else thought was genius.  Sometimes good things in a garden just happen despite my best efforts.

Getting back to next year... I went into a friend's art gallery and she had a beautiful arrangement of flowers on the checkout table. I immediately thought, "That is what I want to do in the garden next year." It was all different shades of reds and oranges with touches of chartreuse thrown in. Very rich colors, very beautiful for a garden.

I will happily do my clean-up chores thinking of next year and my new attempt at a planned color garden:   pinks, oranges, double apricot, white, and deep red. Can't wait. Until next year.

Planting the New Garden

One of the new greenhouses

We have a new planting project here at Morningside Farm: our new huge display bed. It stretches on forever around the new retail area. The back side of the garden is going to be a rain garden, which will help with erosion and runoff problems into our new pond and on down the pond chain to the river system and the Chesapeake Bay. I am savoring the idea of planting this garden. Our friends Jeff and Bill came and tilled the whole garden bed. It's beautiful just as it is, but of course an empty garden to a gardener is a battle cry. We will all work on it. I like to imagine it will be the wonder of the neighborhood, and it will certainly be the wonder of our nursery. As children at Christmas with sugarplums dancing in their heads, our heads are full of dancing perennials and annuals, maybe a few small trees and shrubs, a few pieces of iron work maybe, beautiful blooming containers over-spilling with summer lushness. I am going to do the containers now so they will be ready to add to the garden after mother's day.

Crab Apple

I was thinking of a seasonal Spring, Summer, and Fall garden starting with Spring at the big blue house and continuing around. The whole garden would be of interest all the time, with an emphasis on a particular season in a particular area. I haven't broached this with the men yet; I'm trying to get it straight in my own mind first. I plan on making a list of all sun blooming Spring perennials, a list of Summer perennials, and a list of late Summer/Fall perennials. I'll start with a list and veer off entirely by the end.

I would also like to have bays of annuals in the garden that stay the same every year, kind of like annual islands in the perennial bed, with their own area they can be planned as a garden within the garden every year. That's the end of my garden musings for now.

A small, funny string of tips about old-fashioned clothespins (the ones with a coil of wire between the pieces of wood):

• Use an indelible ball point pen to write on them, snap it onto the rim of a flower pot to identify the plant
• Put on opened packages of seeds to keep tightly closed or to separate different packages
• Flank a partly broken stem with pieces of wood and hold in place with the clothespin
• Hold the pages of a book open to free both hands
• Hold covers in place to shade a plant.
• The last part of the tip..."Keep in your basket of tools at all times"

That's it for me this week. I will let you know about our garden progress, or better yet, come visit.