Fall Has Arrived

Summer is still holding on! It has been gorgeous, warm and sunny for over a week. Tom Skilling says that's about to change, though, and I'm looking forward to crisp and cool conditions -- sweater weather. My Amaranthus "Love Lies Bleeding" is draping itself all over the place. Since the heavy, heavy rains of a few weeks ago, the plants are mostly laying on their neighbors.

I actually managed to wrestle a few ripe tomatoes away from the squirrels this year. But for the most part, I had to pick them days before they were fully ripe, to let them ripen on my kitchen windowsill. Dang squirrels!

I drew a diagram of my main backyard border yesterday, and also took pictures, to help with garden planning and design (of which I have little!) I have been known to throw plants in wherever there is a space, with no regard to color, etc. The great thing about perennials, though, is that they are movable! It seems like the mistake I make most often is planting shorter things in the back of the border. I always think a plant is going to be taller than it is, I guess.

August Border

My backyard border usually looks beautiful in late summer and fall -- it comes into its own. My two large perovskia bloom their bright periwinkle blue, and sprawl all over their neighbors like they own the place. I love this combination of grass, amaranth and echinacea.

Today was a beautiful day -- blue skies, cool and dry. High of 70. I scrounged and found a perfectly ripe tomato deep inside the tomato plant. We'll have BLT's for dinner.... I love summer.

My front shade garden

I love my front shade garden. It is peaceful and of course, shady. I am not a sun worshiper, and since my back yard faces full west with very little shade, I spend a lot of my time on my front porch. After work I sit there, sipping a martini (gin, of course!) and planning my future gardens with the help of magazines and seed catalogs. I usually have lush, colorful containers on my porch, but this year I had a big problem with spider mites. I bought some annuals from my neighborhood Jewel grocery store, and I think those were the culprits. I had to destroy one container, and cut back several other containers in the beginning of the season. They look OK now, but I will never by plants from Jewel again. I'm sticking to the Farmer's Market in downtown Chicago, every Thursday, right down the street from where I work. Growers come in from Michigan and Wisconsin. They have gorgeous plants at very reasonable prices. I'm just going to have to tote them on my trek across the loop and home from the train, but that's OK.

I love my caladiums and my hakone grass. I have them in containers, because the soil is not the greatest in my front garden, I really need to work on amending it. My lamium groundcover looks good most of the season, but my poor old violet clematis really struggles. It doesn't get enough sun, and I only get 3 or 4 blooms. I really should move it, but it has been there, doing it's best, for about 15 years. It's a trooper!

Love Lies Bleeding

I have long wanted this annual Amaranth in my garden, but never got around to planting it. Culpepper called it "flower gentle," and it does add a gentle feeling to the border. I started seeds in my basement under grow-lights, so I consider these plants to be my babies. I love to smooth tangles out the long flowers, they are like red dreadlocks. They look very cool in a vase, too, but I had to find a high shelf so that the red fronds could hang down. I think I will not ever be able to live without them in my garden!

A Great Summer, So Far

Here in the City of Chicago, the Summer of 2008 has been a lovely one, so far. Plenty of rain, with warm sunny days and cool nights. A thunderstorm or two, but nothing serious. A few days of heat with high stupidity -- I mean humidity -- but only a handful of them, and only one at a time. Nothing like the endless stretch of 95+ degree days we had here about 10 years ago, killer heat that caused the deaths of many homeless and elderly. The morgue was overflowing, so the bodies were held in refrigerated trucks in hospital parking lots. The nightly news was gruesome. But I digress........

I am a grump when the weather does not cooperate -- when Mother Nature sticks her tongue out at me and all the rain storms pass right over my house, usually heading south. And then I have to go to work and listen to my co-workers from Indiana brag about lovely, soaking rains. Bah!

Last August, during the rather evil Summer of 2007, an horrific storm blew down my ancient stockade fence (I'm reading lots of Jane Austen lately, so I wrote "an horrific storm" instead of "a horrific storm". So cultured!) The day my fence blew down, August 23, 2007, was the 23rd anniversary of my mom's death. She died on a Thursday, and it was also a Thursday that my stockade fence blew down, along with the huge grapevine that had draped it for many years. I was secretly glad to lose the grapevine because for all its beauty, it was a maintenance nightmare. Here's a picture of a portion of the old stockade fence, all dressed up in its grapevine:



After the fence blew down and the grapevine was history, a new, maintenance-free white privacy fence was installed. I was then left with what seemed to be miles of pristine, white fence. A very white fence. White, White, White. Here's a picture, along with my new Viburnum Onondaga. Pray that the Viburnum, and the other shrubs I have planted, grow quickly -- before I succumb to snowblindness: