Repotting

Crowded.

That's what happens when a plant likes where it is. It grows and grows until the pot it lives in is crowded. All of these aloe plants were occupying the small pot on the right. They liked the east filtered light that they were getting.

Today I separated the plants, carefully tearing away the papery sheath around the base of each stem. There were no scabby looking plants to discard. Each aloe has healthy roots, stem, and leaves.

I use cactus soil mix for my houseplants. Cactus mix has lots of fiber and that seems to give the roots more air and room to grow. Most of my houseplants are in bright pots. I tend to favor green glazed pots, but this yellow one sets off the green aloe just fine.

I always like to have a few pots of aloe growing. When someone gets a kitchen burn, we tear off a big leaf and spread the sap on the burn. If it is a minor burn, after a day or two the red is gone and the skin is healing.

You can tell that the outside garden clean up is almost done when I start repotting indoor plants. The aloes are the first indoor plants to find new pots this fall. There will be a few more as the days get colder.

Volunteer Pumpkin

Have you ever sat next to someone on a plane or a train who just couldn't quit fidgeting? Someone who talked all the time, or fiddled with their mobile, or rustled a newspaper? Some people just exude excess energy.

There is a volunteer pumpkin plant growing in our big compost pile that is like that. It just doesn't know when to quit. It has not been singed by the early autumn frost. It survived the summer drought. It is still sending out blossoms.

 

 

This pumpkin plant is like the Tenacious Geranium that I write about. It just keeps on, keeping on.

 

I know that there is a botanical term (like tomatoes being "determinate" or "indeterminate") for this quality in a plant. While I don't know botany well enough to know that term, I must say that I admire plants and people who just keep on blooming, even in autumn, even as the growing season slips away, and even as the sun fades from the sky.

 

 

Copyright 2012

Wanda Hayes Eichler

Late Coneflower

Even a late coneflower has innate beauty.  Pink petals are seasonally subdued, almost mauve. Twisted, burnished leaves hang on toughening stems.

Morning light heightens the graceful lines and gives a luster to a plant whose days are numbered by the coming frosts of October.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

The Nancy Rose

I planted a Queen Elizabeth rose this summer. With blossoms described as majestic, this grandiflora rose joins the Sister Rose Row where there now are six red Dortmund roses and one pink.

The Nancy rose which honors my sister-in-law, has had a tough time adapting. Lots of hot days burned its leaves and even though I watered and fertilized, it did not thrive. I dug it up and checked the root system. I resettled it into the same hole which I dug out larger. I pruned it and gave it some of my friend Gloria's magic mulch, a fine shredded pink bark.

This fall the rose is sending out new leaves. It has three new shoots. Now I'm hoping that the late summer pruning, not recommended for roses, will do this rose good. A late fall will allow some growth and then a blanket of snow should protect the rose for the winter.

Next summer, the Nancy rose should be a glory of pink, shining bright in the Sister Rose Row.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Melon Man

Ed's garden at Graywood Farm yielded tasty melons this summer. Big and textured, these cantaloupes have pale orange flesh that is sweet, yet not astringent like melons can be.

Ed used leftover flooring tiles to separate each melon from the damp ground. He's been thumping them and testing the strength of the stem end, waiting to harvest each one at just the right time.

The cracks around the stem help to signal the ripeness of each melon. The green spot is where the stem was attached to the melon.

The deep veins and tracks on the skin of a melon give little hint of the nutritious goodness and luscious flavor inside. Ed purchased the plants locally and has been caring for them all  through the hot Summer of 2012, a true melon summer for a melon man.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Late Roses

In the great and grand scheme of all things gardening, this has not been my best summer. The deer ate most of the green beans. Hornworms attacked the grape tomatoes. I forget to water and the pickle vines wilt. And it has been hot. Way too hot for a Michigan summer garden.

Yesterday I tended the roses. Stirred the soil around their roots and put down new mulch. I cut back the Dortmunds again, just a little. It seems so late in the summer to be pruning, but with the additional heat units and a fall that will probably be much warmer, too, it seems the okay thing to do.

The roses have been the bright spot of the summer. Along with the daylilies, their abandonment to riots of color, and their blossom after blossom have made the flower beds a delight.

A poet would write an ode to late summer roses. As a gardener, I offer this image of a fall rose and its bud.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Kale Kritters

I wanted this to be an artsy fartsy photo of a flowering kale that I planted at Cedar Bluff in September. Close inspection via Photoshop revealed "kale kritters" that look a lot like the green worms that are the bane of broccoli growing in our part of Michigan.

Anyway, I still like the ruffled leaves, the gray to teal to vanilla colors, and the play of light on this plant. Just a reminder that the morning sun is really eluding us. By the end of this week, sunrise will be AFTER 8 am here in Michigan. No wonder it is getting so cold. The sun is leaving us.

Copyright 2011
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Spider

This spider lurched around the bottom of my gray plastic garden cart this weekend. With about an inch and a half "wingspan," he seemed feisty, but was soon scooted out of the cart onto the lawn.

I tried identifying the arthropod. It might be a grass spider, I'm guessing, from the websites that I looked at. Once again, this photo was taken with my cellphone camera. I used the closeup setting and thought that the results were pretty good.

Copyright 2011

Wanda Hayes Eichler

Perennial Bash

The Plant Farm in Bad Axe tempted me! Josh Roggenbuck, proprietor of the Plant Farm, is offering all leftover perennials for $1 a pot. Josh and his staff have offered an extensive selection of perennials all summer, so there is quite a selection left. He says he's done well with perennials and is offering the remainders to his customers for fall planting.

Fall planting! Who would have ever guessed that during the week of Election Day we'd be thinking about (and doing!) golfing and gardening?

So, I spent one and a half wonderful hours in the gardens at Cedar Bluff yesterday afternoon. I planted three new spring and fall blooming irises that Josh helped me pick out. Then I added three daylilies (including one named "Bella Lugosi" which was named to the Top Ten by the Wisconsin Daylily Society and is pictured in this post) to ever the increasing varieties of daylilies at Cedar Bluff. These will be my "In Honor of President Elect Obama" daylilies.

I moved some hostas and pulled out the now frost bitten geranium. I've been row composting rotten garbage, so I dug another trench in the garden and buried rotten pears and leftover kitchen scraps. I replanted daffodil bulbs and took a chance on planting a bulb selection that's resided in the frig for over a year.

The back hatch of the BNB (Big New Buick -- the Rainier) is filled with pots of hostas for the farm, bone meal, and planting tools.

This morning is rainy. Intellicast's radar shows snow over Minnesota. The reports from the Dakotas include blizzard warnings. Still, Ed and I ordered more daffodils from Jung's in Randolph, Wisconsing this morning. We put them into the cedar naturalized areas around Cedar Bluff.

Are we late gardeners? You betcha!