fall already? 9/26 update

just another sunday in the garden with the usual suspects. we arrived to chilly temperatures and loved it! an urge to make a batch of danish dough resulted in a basket full of fresh cinnamon rolls and we started off the morning in style.

the asters in the rain garden are in full bloom

once the sun came out and warmed things up, the skippers flocked to the asters and just about every other flower in the garden.

sedum, autumn joy, before the sun came out and before the skippers arrived.

the berm is looking a little overgrown. the switch grass has multiplied and today we thinned it a bit to make it manageable-it was nearly impossible to get to the weeds around it.

ripe habaneros hanging like little lanterns.

i am just loving the hyacinth beans and their blooms.

over in the herb garden, things are looking beautiful.

my three dollar rose bush, chosen to demonstrate edible flowers and for rosehips, is growing like mad. it has pretty open flowers and is now beginning to develop some hips.

cayenne peppers

bronze fennel with swallowtail caterpillars and lots of seeds

the basil blooms are full of carpenter bees and there are a few honeybees too.

arrrrgh, i missed a week...

ahoy matey, happy holiday to all ye scallywags...face it, we're master gardeners and that makes us landlubbers by default. we gave it a shot but the celebration didn't last long-none of us quite knew what to say and the conversation quickly changed. but it was fun, for a minute or two.

and how do a bunch of landlubbers/gardeners celebrate talk like a pirate day? by eating cake! today we had a sweet potato-pecan upside down cake. gooey pecans on top and sweet potato cake on the bottom-yummy! arrrrgh, now if ye jerns us in that thar garden, ye too might be havin some cake...

let's move on to what is happening in the garden:

perilla in the asian herb bed is now in bloom

habaneros!

long cayennes or cowhorn peppers

the climbing spinach is reaching out all over. i had two branches in water on my kitchen counter for a week. my cat enjoyed the leaves and then i noticed they had sprouted roots. into the home garden they went. they are now climbing my bean poles.

asters in the rain garden are blooming

texas star hibiscus. this plant has finally bloomed! here it is at 8am.

and again at 11am

such a beautiful flower!

we installed the soil fork in the herb garden. we will find some sort of climber to plant with it and i also want to hang a hummingbird feeder from it. i thought about a bird feeder but do not want to spend time picking sprouts.

we relocated our gate and will install the arbor where it was on the other side of the herb garden.

some wonderful landlubbers-gulf frittilary caterpillars on the passion vine in the herb garden.

hyacinth beans

sedum-autumn joy is a buckeye magnet

the herb garden has run amok! basil everywhere needing to be pesto'd!

while removing some logs, we found lots of these centipedes

anne weeding the pathway. she did a wonderful job of getting it all cleared. now if we just had some mulch...david???

hyacinth bean blooms are so pretty, i love the color they bring to the garden

now, doesn't that look better? the sign is standing and flowers are blooming below it.

9/5 update, getting ready for fall

in october we will be opening the garden to visitors during the music and molasses celebration.
to be honest, the garden is always open and visitors are always welcome but unless you come out during our work sessions, there isn't anyone around to answer questions or give you a tour of the various beds. we usually hold a field day event in june but the flooding of may forced us to postpone the event and we have decided to hold an abbreviated event at the same time as the annual music and molasses festival held in the nearby agricultural museum on 10/16 & 10/17. be sure to mark it on your calendar and come on out to the festival.

in the mean time, we are attempting to get the garden ready for the event and this is what we are doing...

we are planting fall greens and crops in the junior master garden beds. this is a hyacinth bean that we have tied up on a sign in one bed. it is adjusting nicely. fall greens have been planted around this bed.

pineapple sage in bloom in the herb garden, hummingbirds love this plant and so do honeybees

basil in bloom, bees of all kinds love basil

do you have cannas in your garden? if you do then you know how much the tubers can multiply. apparently, so can the seeds that form on top. do you see the little canna that sprouted in our asparagus bed? it is in between the irises. they can be invasive and according to dave's garden, most seeds do not produce plants but i am a little skeptical of that claim.

anne and nancy turning the soil and adding leaf mold in an effort to get it ready for new crops.
they pulled out the tomatoes and soon we will have some fall veggies in this location.

construction of the herb garden is almost complete. we only have one more bed to outline and fill and then we can concentrate on adding plants and decorative accents.

the asian herb bed was out of control, at least the perilla was. it was cut back and now the path is easier to walk on. this is another bed we need to fill so if you have any interesting herbs, let us know.

we are a little overgrown; if you have the time, consider coming out and giving us a hand making it pretty for the party.

gotta love the buckeyes, they are easy to find in the garden. this one is sampling chive flowers.

one more note, we feasted on freshly baked cinnamon rolls this morning. every sunday, i bring some freshly baked treat out to the garden and today it was homemade cinnamon rolls. come on out and give us a hand and have some breakfast with us!

8/29, where has time gone-it's almost fall!

the year is just flying by and i am not sure i am ready for the seasons to change. i am not a fan of the cold weather and i really like things to be green and colorful! you know that summer is in full swing when the herbs grow berserk and ours are just about there...

so much basil and so little time to eat it all

lemon verbena-it may just take over the herb garden!

(the catmint behind it is going to give it a run for its money...)

but no matter what, the perilla is the king of this jungle. that clump is at least 5 feet tall!

pretty little mexican petunia

butterfly weed and seed pods

we found this little sign laying in the greenhouse and decided to give it a home and a purpose. it will live in the junior master garden bed and we can put verbage on it or attach a poster or something. darry gave it a little red to make it stand out.

anne tied the hyacinth bean plant to it so it would have a place to climb

we were getting a little tired of seeing at the memorial sign leaning against the building in a bed of weeds. i got in there and yanked out all of the weeds and darry installed the sign so that it is now standing up and not leaning on the building. what an improvement! and by the way, if anyone decides to move it there are carpenter bees living in the posts and they didn't care for darrys use of the mallet to install the sign.

we picked a pile of peppers...

the climbing spinach (called malabar spinach) is all over. it looks like an octopus plant

and last but not least-what would sunday be without a cake in the garden. today we had banana bread. come on out and join us sometime!