The Garden in June

 In an attempt to keep my promise to blog more often than once a month, here's my second post for June!! 

Back in the 80's, I used to love making macrame plant hangers. A few years ago, I made some for our patio when we first moved in, but I have hunted high and low and been unable to find them, so I made a few more. Happily I discovered Hobby Lobby have a decent selection of cords, metal rings and beads!

We have three Crepe Myrtles in the garden, but this is the best of them.  Last year a hummingbird could be seen daily perched in the branches, keeping an eye on the feeders.

I know I planted several of this Liatris, but this is the only one that came up (or possibly the others got "weeded" before I realized what they were. It's surrounded by Salvia Greggi and Pineapple Sage.

Here's the Turk's Cap I showed in my last post, happily settling in to its new home. I noticed some volunteer Turk's Cap seedlings under the Southern Wax Myrtle that will need to come out.

Another plant that I think suffered from my early spring "weeding" was Zinnia.  Last year the flower beds were overrun with zinnia, but my vigorous hoeing this spring meant that I ended up having to buy more!

Some of the daylilies are still hanging on and shrugging off the heat now summer is here.

Lots of little joys in this island bed this year.  First, the Hamelia Patens that I thought had died actually came back and is flowering.  Plus the Cosmos and Cleome that I started from seed are doing well (no photos).  Finally, the native milkweed I planted earlier in the year are coming along nicely.  No blooms yet, and they are still small, but I hope the Monarch butterflies will be able to enjoy them for a long time to come.

Here's a long shot of the island bed -- earlier in the week I planted some Dallas Red and Pot of Gold Lantana across the front side.  They will spread and fill in the bare patches as summer draws on and the butterflies will love them in July and August.

I'm so happy I managed to bring the Rose of Sharon (via cuttings) from my previous house.  I just love it's happy blooms, and the bees and hummingbirds love it too :-)

 This next photo is rather deceptive.  Unfortunately our Sam Houston peach tree just isn't living up to its name.  First of all, the tree never properly rooted -- if it weren't for be staked up, it would fall over.  All it's roots are in the top couple of inches and none have ventured down far enough to anchor it.  Too much clay down there I guess, even though we dug a pretty big hole when we planted it.

While this looks like a nice big healthy juicy peach, it's rather small and there's a bruise/hole on the other side.  Update:  I decided to go and check on it today and there was another one near it that wasn't too beaten up so I picked it and ate it.  It was the most delicious peach I have ever eaten!  Sweet, juicy, warm from the sun.  We have to try and save this tree!

That's it for today's post - I hope my dad enjoys it after his comment on my last post!

Today I'm linking up with  the following memes:

Friday Flower Photos hosted by Nick V.
Flower Friday hosted by Aquariann
Today's Flowers hosted by Denise at An English Girl Rambles

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Daylilies ..mainstay of the island bed

I didn't think it was possible, but the weather has been even more hot and humid since my last post.  So much so that other than fill the bird bath and water the container plants around it, I've spent very little time in the garden.

I have, however, taken a few minutes here and there to get some photos of the summer garden.  

I love the way the afternoon sun catches this Crepe Myrtle as it sets.  I also like the fact that, now the Crepe Myrtle is growing up, it's not so susceptible to the ugly black fungus it kept getting for the first couple of years. I'm not sure if they all develop a resistance as they grown and get older, but I'm thankful that this one has.

And now here follow some photos of the Daylilies which are blooming prolifically in the island bed. 

  
As I've mentioned before, I don't know which varieties they are, I just enjoy them for their beauty.

Some of them produce single blooms, some produce great clusters of blooms.  I think these photos are of the same plant, taken a few days apart.  The one below was taken today. There are still more buds to open :-)

Sorry this post is rather brief.  It's been a long hard week at work.  Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday.  I promise to catch up on my blog reading over the weekend - at least I know it will be too hot to spend much time in the garden!!

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

The Garden in May - Then and Now

After showing you a photograph of the Rose of Sharon soon after it had been planted in my last post, I thought I'd show some more "Then and Now" photos of the garden.

The "Then" photos were all taken in May and June 2009.  The "Now" photos have been taken in the past couple of weeks.

THEN:
The first photo shows the border we built using stones the builder had left over from accenting the front of the house.  My husband was glad to have them out of the garage, not so glad he was the one that had to move them!

I would have liked to have made the border deeper, but we had to work around underground utilities and sprinkler heads.

NOW:
Views along the back of the garden today show how the garden has filled in. The Vitex has grown like gangbusters, as have the Southern Wax Myrtle and the Rose of Sharon.  You can also see "Junior", the young pine tree we had put in to replace the mature pine we lost.

THEN: 
The builder put a few holly bushes around the utility boxes, but eventually all but one of them died.  The vast expanse of lawn made the garden nice and green, but not much to offer for the birds and butterflies.

NOW:
To disguise the utility boxes, I got a couple of lattice panels from Lowes and believe it or not, I managed to cram in a butterfly bush and a small crepe myrtle behind the utility boxes.  (Probably not the wisest choice, but the butterflies enjoy it :-)

Here's a close up view of the utility box corner.  Not sure if you can see in this photo, perhaps in the enlarged version, but I've been using the area as a convenient place for a brush pile, which has made it a favorite spot for the birds too :-) 

We also got rid of some of the vast expanse of lawn by putting in an island bed.  It's a bit of a hodge-podge, with no real planting plan, just things stuck in the ground as and when I think about it.  I had planned to organize it this year, but it didn't happen.  Maybe next spring....

In the meantime, I'm happy that the daylilies are finally blooming (they did nothing last year) and the Profusion zinnia has self-seeded.

The character of the bed will likely change as the peach tree and the river birch grow, but I think they will both provide dappled shade, so plants should still enjoy  sharing the bed with them.

THEN:
When we moved in, the most striking thing about the property was that it was surrounded by trees.  That's really where the "Green and Serene" in the name of my blog came from.  Of course, we knew it couldn't last, but we enjoyed it while we could.

NOW:
Now we have houses either side and those trees are gone, but our new neighbors have planted a small tree in their back yard, so perhaps together we can rebuild the habitat :-)

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

The Garden in July

While June was an exciting month, with all the Monarch caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly action going on, I'm rather disappointed with the garden in July.

Looking back through photos from this time last year, it does seem I had more blooming in the garden then, in spite of the drought.

This year, the Vitex already bloomed and is now a mass of seedpods that need trimming off.  Trouble is, since the tree is about 18 feet tall now, I can't get to most of it.  It will have to do it's own thing and hopefully bloom again later in the year.

I've been worrying about the Rose of Sharon, that was star of the garden last summer.  The one that bloomed so prolifically last year has put out about two blooms so far.  However, when I took a peek at it yesterday, I noticed it has a lot of buds on it, so hopefully we'll see some flowers soon and out little hummingbird visitor will have some natural nectar to drink.

There *are* some things blooming in the garden - you just have to look for them.

This Cat's Whiskers plant, Orthosiphon aristatus, is a new addition. I planted it in the island bed this spring and it seems to like it there.

I adore the blooms, which really do look like cat's whiskers (and I should know!) Apparently butterflies and hummingbirds are attracted to it, but I haven't noticed much activity on it yet.

We have three crepe myrtles - two in the back garden and one in the front.  The two in the back are in full bloom with (thankfully) no evidence of that sooty mildew that young crepe myrtles are plagued by.  The one in the front, that the builder put in, looks pathetic and I'm considering ripping it out in the fall and planting another.

The veggie garden is doing okay.  This basil smells wonderful and is covered in blooms.  The tomato plants have given us quite a few cherry tomatoes and we've had a few tiny carrots as well.

We had thought the pepper plant wasn't doing anything, but finally it's getting some buds.  The cucumbers had us puzzled for a while.  They had lots of blooms but no fruit.  We assumed we weren't getting any pollinators for some reason and determined to help them along by pollinating ourselves.  That's when we noticed there are actually very few female flowers on them.  Hmmmm.

Once again this year, the "Midnight Lace" sweet potato vine is blooming. I've never seen blooms on the light green variety though.

Another plant covered in buds is the white Texas Star Hibiscus (no action on the red one yet).

The bud was opening yesterday and when I looked out after this morning's rain storm, I saw it was fully open. It got beaten around a bit by the wind and the rain, but I think it still looks beautiful.

Before I go, I thought I'd share a couple more Monarch photos with you.  The first one, I didn't even realize what I was taking a photo of last week.  It wasn't until I downloaded the pics to my computer today that I realized I had photographed a Monarch butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.

We counted 8 hatched chrysalises around the house.  There's one more still to come, on the fence in the back garden.

Here's one of "our girls", resting on the front window sill before taking off to parts unknown.

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Bugs and Blooms in the Garden

It seems like I haven't blogged in a while. I don't know where my time is going, but I just haven't found time this week to sit down to resize photos and blog until I decided I had to make it a priority this evening.

I don't have a specific subject in mind tonight, so I'm just going to take my cues from the photos I have taken in the past 10 days or so.

First, let me re-introduce you to an old friend.  If you read my post Wild America, you will remember the three-legged stick insect I found in the garden.

Well, guess who I saw again, by the front door this past weekend?  And guess what?  She has a boyfriend!

It has to be the same insect.  I can't imagine that two of them in close proximity to my garden would be missing the same three legs.  It certainly doesn't seem to have affected her adversely and apparently her boyfriend doesn't mind either.

Here's a photo of another fascinating insect that I took recently.

I don't know what type of dragonfly it is, but it's quite lovely and for some reason, it reminds me of an old World War II bomber, somewhat like the one that flew over our house, out of Hooks Airport recently...

(I think it's the "undercarriage" that makes it look like a bomber)

But I digress, this is supposed to be a Garden Blog, so what else has been going on in my garden?

Well the Phillipine Lily, that I mentioned in my blog last week, finally got around to blooming. I actually had three blooming at once, but I tried to take photos on a humid morning and the camera lens kept fogging up.  This was the best I could get...

In the front garden, the Lantana "White Gold" is blooming. I've got several of them dotted around the front and back gardens, but the one in the front is doing best so far.

I love this detail shot of the blooms.

I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with Crepe Myrtles.  I have three of them in this garden, and I love the bright colors that last all summer long.  What I don't like is the mildew they seem to get afflicted with every year.  I think (and this is my unscientific opinion just from personal observations at previous residences) that the mildew is worse on young plants and once they have got a few summers under their belts, so to speak, the mildew won't be such a problem any more. At least I hope not.

This particular photo was taken on July 7, but a week later it was covered in mildew.  I treated it with a fungicide this past weekend, so I'll wait and see how it does.

Last week in my blog, I included some photos of butterflies on the milkweed, Asclepias curassavica. I think it's now safe to say that other than the daylilies, I have more milkweed growing than I have anything else.

The two original plants (one in the back and one in the front) reseeded so freely, they are everywhere :-)

It's just as well we rarely use our front door, using instead the interior door from the garage to the house, because you almost need a machete to get through these milkweed to the door!

Ditto the garage.  "Fideaux", my husband's venerable Toyota, has to plough through a jungle to park.

And they keep popping up!

So I potted some up to share with my neighbors :-)

To conclude my blog post tonight, here's my favorite photo that I took this week -- a bumble bee on the Vitex. As with all the photos, if you click on it, you can see it full size.

Have a great week!

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Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.