Rejuvenation

Forced Flowering Quince

This long, dreary and very cold winter has me looking for tiny signs of spring. A couple weeks back I pruned the Flowering Quince and brought some of the trimmings inside. Here it is blooming in my dining room only with much lighter blooms than what it's doing outside.

Inland Sea Oats

The Inland Sea Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) is starting to pop up causing me to dither about whether or not to cut the old stems off. Are there more hard freezes in the offing? Well even if there are, it's growing now so it probably won't hurt to cut them off. I'll do that this weekend.

New growth on chives

After the "Artic Blast" of early January the autumn transplanted chives looked horrible. Although I was tempted to leave them as is because of future freeze risks, I just couldn't stand the look of them wallowing in their sad bedraggled state. So I cut them back and now the dark green of new growth is poking through. Any light freezes to come will be okay (they've already gone through a few).

Cardinals and one Junco keeping the lawn free of leaves and seeds

There has been tons of activity at the bird feeders. Sadly we had only a quick fly-through by the American Goldfinches. In "normal" years they arrive at our feeders in early January and stick around until about mid-March. This year I had a quick siting of them last week, about 10 of them, and then they were gone.

White Breasted Nuthatch

I took this photo through my kitchen window of this White Breasted Nuthatch on the tree because he was just frozen there (not literally). All the birds had disappeared momentarily but this guy hung on completely motionless. I didn't spot any nearby hawks so I'm not sure what was going on. Which reminds me, don't forget about The Great Backyard Bird Count going on February 12-15. Click on the link on the right of my page for more information on how to participate. I hope to add this little nuthatch to my count this year for the first time. And for the first time, no goldfinches!

New firewood - willow oak logs

In contrast to the poor folks in Texas, Oklahoma, and elsewhere who have been pruning ice-damaged trees from last week's ice storm, we finally had the tree trimmers out to do a little rejuvenation on some of our older trees. First order of business was trimming some of the lower branches from our Willow Oak (Quercus phellos). This will allow more light to a crape myrtle as well as some beds. Below is the newly pruned oak and the crape myrtle to the left.

Willow Oak, Quercus phellos

We also wanted to lighten the load on our old and potentially dying pecan tree.

Pecan tree on left, red oak on right

We've lived in this house for five years now and have been babying the pecan tree for almost that long. It was never in good shape but it provides some great shade in that part of the yard. So a few years ago we had a red oak planted about 10 feet in front of it in hopes that it would take over shade duty when the time comes to remove the pecan. In the meantime we keep removing limbs in the pecan to lighten its load and prevent it from keeling over.

Red Oak, possibly a Shumard (Quercus shumardii)

Here's the lower part of the red oak. It's grown very tall in a few short years! I have such high hopes for it that I think this may be the pecan's last year. I better plan accordingly for the back "shade" garden!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Gumdrops and Meatballs

Dwarf Yaupon Holly gumdrops, complete with vivid red colored mulch

Time for a little rant. What is it about corporate America's fascination with bushes that look like gumdrops or meatballs? This time of year exposes all that is weak in a landscape. Driving around my town, which has lots of banks for some reason, I just couldn't look at another crappy bank landscape without deciding to blog about it.

Indian Hawthorns maybe?

Look at the bushes above. Can't you just tell they're dying to break out of their squat little molds? At least they didn't submit the Crape Myrtle to whacking.

Click to enlarge and see the red berries

These holly bushes above look like they're trying to hide their beautiful berries.

I did manage to find one bank landscape that hadn't screwed things up...yet. The landscape above is for a new bank. Dward Yaupon Hollies, Indian Hawthorns, Crape Myrtle, and some type of taller hollies. Yes, it's the same-old, same-old when it comes to plant variety but at least they're letting them grow normally.

Just down the street from the above photo was a fast food joint. Check out what they've done to their crape myrtles.

I ask you, is that pretty?

Another public landscape with whacked crape myrtles (can anyone tell me definitely if it's spelled "crape" or "crepe"?). Below is a close up of the wounded tree.

So here's what I want to know - is it the corporations who want their landscapes to look so artificial or is it the fault of the landscapers themselves, the ones who should know better? Do you see this in your town?

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Wherein I Reveal...

Photo taken about 2 years ago

...my un-garden in the front yard. Extremely observant and regular readers of my blog may have noticed that all of my posts about my garden are about what's going on in the backyard. There's a good reason for that. I haven't started the gardens in the front yet. Not that nothing's been done in the front. Oh yes. It looked very different when we first moved in.

Spring of 2005

You can't see it very well in this photo but the brick walkway leading to the porch was fairly uneven. The front porch was even worse, with some steps being much higher than others. (Fortunately the mailperson was adept at getting up there!) On either side of the porch were some very big azaleas, much taller than me. They created quite a damp environment against the house. In front of the azaleas were boxwood, which were very lovely until an overzealous lawn person trimmed them (after this photo). Off to the left of the porch was another brick walkway that was in much worse shape (I frequently tripped on uneven bricks there.)

The driveway, of which you see a portion above, was huge. You could fit four cars abreast on it. The lamp would have been nice except that it had been permanently disabled. There was a small weedy garden just in front of those side windows and some daylilies lining the driveway behind the brick edging.

This photo was taken when we first looked at the house 5 years ago

The yard is a corner lot so it's pretty big on the side. Many trees lay against the side of the house, including a Southern magnolia!

So what is the design plan? Well, as I explained in a post last year, one idea is to reveal the house itself. And obviously we needed to fix the situation with the plants being too close to the house and the dangerous brick walkways. So first we removed the plants.

In the photo above you can see the front of the house revealed as well as the walkway I tripped on occasionally. Also, the little boxwood to the left shows how I pulled out towards the street the small garden just a bit more. Unfortunately the small garden, destined to be mostly a rose garden, has lots of small bits of asphalt in it still. But at least drainage doesn't seem to be a problem. :-)

The summer of 2007 is when we made the most dramatic changes (although I guess you could consider getting rid of ancient blooming azaleas rather major!). My style is more contemporary than traditional so with the help of my friend Alexis, a great designer, it was decided that some simple steps would look best. I wanted to find some nice big concrete steps but failed at that. So I decided to go with a company that could not only create the steps in situ, but also give them any kind of finish and color.

So in rumbled the big cement truck. The man guiding the truck is standing on the newly removed driveway and daylily planting (I couldn't place all of them so some of the daylilies went to a neighbor).

One at a time, each step was poured. Once it had cured, they came back to spray a material that made them look like granite (kinda, sorta, but not really).

This photo shows the new portion of the lawn in place, the new steps, and gravel surrounding the steps. The front porch is awaiting curing and its coating in this photo. Putting in a lawn was the cheapest thing we could do at that moment. Eventually this lawn will be a mostly perennial garden with possibly even a picket fence. But because there is quite a slope there, more money than usual will have to be expended to make a garden there possible.

This photo of the front corner taken just today shows that there is still a lot of work to come. Most of the fence has been put in but unfortunately we never had the gate put in. (After installing the fence the great carpenters got full time jobs!) But most of the trees against the house have been removed, a small garden has been placed in front of the fence, Savannah hollies (Ilex x attenuata ‘Savannah’) and parsley hawthorns (Crataegus marshallii) have been planted, and that green stuff under the hollies, spider lilies, have been saved from our old mower. If I can get some help this winter, I hope to enlarge that small garden and continue it along the fence for a bit. Eventually I may incorporate the hollies into that garden. The gate WILL be put in place someday and will hide the air conditioners. And perhaps a little picket fence will extend from the gate area to around the front of the house, allowing for yet even more gardens. I just need more money and time (don't we all!). So now you know why you never see my un-garden in front, ha!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Winter's Beauty

This month's Gardening Gone Wild Picture This contest is to showcase winter's beauty. I would have loved to enter this contest with a photo that shows some beautiful snowy or frosty scene in my garden, but that's just not gonna happen here I think (although I certainly got my share of freezing weather this month, no such luck with the snow). I had almost resigned myself to not entering when I realized that this amaryllis says winter's beauty for U.S. southerners as much as snow or ice does for northerners. So this is my entry.

A little bit about this amaryllis - it was supposed to be of the variety Apple Blossom. But this strong orange color tells me I got duped by the big box again! Don't get me wrong though, I think this variety is quite beautiful. Anyone know which one it is?

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Foliage Follow-Up Following the Freeze

Crepe Myrtle Bark

Today is Foliage Follow-up day hosted by Pam at Digging. The idea is to showcase all the lovely foliage, bark, berries, and other beautiful non-blooming plants in our garden. Pam's got some gorgeous photos of her succulents and other beauties, and links to others' posts can be found there as well. So go check it out.

A few days ago I strolled around the garden, camera in hand, to create a photographic history of what plants faired well and not so well after our record breaking cold weather. So today I plan to share some of those photos, pitiable though some of the plants may look. I'll start with some of the sad looking ones.

Bunny Ears cactus (in good shape), Aeonium 'Zwartzkopf' (bent over and dead), and Agave desmettiana

The stock tank didn't fare so well, so no pretty pictures here. Although I prepared the soil well to survive our rainy winters, and I heaped pine straw and sheets over the plants, nothing could prevent the damage from the kind of freezes we had. Oh well, it's an opportunity to find something that will survive.

To avoid a long litany of thoughts on each plant that didn't fair so well, here are a few photos of some other plants and their damage.

Fig Ivy's frozen leaves. This should survive I think.

My Bamboo Muhly (Muhlenbergia dumosa) turned gray. Will have to cut it back for the first time.

‘Silver Shower’ mondo grass (Ophiopogon jaburan) surprised me by freezing. Note the frozen Smilax vines next to the rock - I wish those would freeze and die completely!

Oregano. Bet that comes back though as it's almost weedy.

First time to see frozen leaves on the Madame Alfred Carriere climbing rose

Now on to brighter things. Some plants survived pretty well. The Red Veined Sorrel below, though small, is rather cheerful looking to my eyes.

Red Veined Sorrel

My Wavy Leaf cactus is a sentimental favorite of mine since I grew this from a pad I brought from my old garden in Austin. It sacrificed its top two pads to the freeze (seen kind of laying down) but I'll just pot those two up and get more! I used some garden stakes for a tent for the sheets. Seen behind the cactus is Agave multilifera, another plant I brought from Austin. This was its first winter in the ground and it did just fine.

Wavy Leaf cactus and Agave filifera

I'm concerned about the camellias. I have two small ones. One of them now has brown buds but this one, Pearl Maxwell, looks in better shape (no close ups of buds as this is a foliage post!).

Camellia japonica 'Pearl Maxwell'

Last but not least is a hardy Autumn fern. It doesn't seem to like the summers here, at least where I've got it, but the cold didn't phase it a bit.

My post last month for Foliage Follow-up looked much more cheerful. But I'll bet by mid February I'll be happy at what's come back. Be sure to check out the other posts at Pam's!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day Jan 2010

Carol is hosting Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day again but of course the big challenge today is finding blooms in the dead of winter. Normally that wouldn't be so hard for me. There's always a few here and there. But with that "Artic Blast" so many of us in the U.S. experienced, blooms are now hard to come by. In fact, impossible. But wait. Is that the shadow of bloom I see??

Apple Blossom Amaryllis

Yes, one of the few plants I have indoors is an Apple Blossom Amaryllis, bought for a gift exchange at our Master Gardeners club last month but won back by me. Yay! I was hoping this would be entirely open by Bloom Day but no matter. It's still fun to watch and document the transformation. Plants are amazing, aren't they?

UPDATE: Turns out this isn't an Apple Blossom amaryllis, although that's what the box said. I'm not sure which variety it is now.

Tomorrow Pam is hosting Foliage Follow-up, which I plan to post about. A couple days ago I took some photos of what did and did not make it through the Artic Blast, just for my own historical benefit. So I'll go ahead and post about that (not that anyone wants to see mushy plants!).

Happy Bloom Day!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Crawling Out from Under the Comforter

Old Fire Station Fountain

No, this is not my own water fountain. Somehow I managed to roust myself out from under the covers this morning to attend a meditation session. As I was driving there I noticed this fountain at the old historic fire station. The station has now been converted into a meeting place and the courtyard houses this large fountain.

Somehow the fountain is still running, despite almost 72 hours so far of below freezing weather. This morning at 8:00 it was 12 degrees F. Each morning has been colder than the previous one.

All I can say is, I'm ready for this deep freeze to be over. I do live in the south, don't I??

Tufted Titmouse

The birds have been spending many daylight hours at the bird feeders. This Tufted Titmouse is eyeing the frozen birdbath and wondering what the heck I'm going to do about it.

Well, okay, I guess I'll try to help you feathered ones out.

Sorry, this is the best I can do. I never thought I'd need a birdbath heater down here.

Meanwhile, I've been most reluctant to peek under the sheets to see how my Wavy Leaf cactus and Agave multilifera are doing.

I already know that my Agave desmentiata in the stock tank is toast (see my last post). Okay, I did peek. A couple of cactus pads are laying horizontal but the rest looks like it might survive. I think that us southern gardeners won't really know the extent of damage until spring. Gee, I guess that means we have more in common with northern gardeners than ever before!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Fingers Crossed

Old Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia species)

Now that it's gotten nice and cold, it's time to start tree trimming down here. This old crape myrtle is in need of some rejuvenation, having survived a major landscape makeover and who knows what else before we moved in five years ago. I do know for a fact that someone tried to commit "crape murder" on it some time ago. That is evidenced by the big old knots the tree has on each trunk at about the same height. For those who haven't heard of "crape murder", it's when one tops the trunks. It destroys the natural beauty of the tree trunks and I think it could be a plot by landscape contractors who need more work in the winter! Here you can see the beauty of a stem next to the ugly mess left by years of topping.

Old knot caused by topping

One thing I've noticed in the last few years is a decline in the number of healthy looking bloom ends. Whether it's due to trauma or just old age, I'll never know. But yesterday my muscle (my husband) helped me take some drastic steps in trying to help it out. We took out many big trunks, especially those that were criss-crossing up top.

Hopefully you can see how it's opened up in these before and after shots.

So fingers crossed, the old crape myrtle will bounce back this summer.

We're bracing for a very cold week here, probably the coldest we've had since we moved here. I have my doubts as to whether my Agave desmentiata will survive in its stock tank. Here you can see some of the cold damage it already has (yellow spots).

Agave desmentiata

So today (while it was snowing no less!), I added some pine straw around the agave. Fingers crossed it'll make it past the week!

Agave desmentiata, Bamboo muhly stalks, and Aeonium arboreum v. atropurpureum ‘Zwartzkopf’

And then there's my portable greenhouse. I've never tried heating it before. I've just always hoped the temps wouldn't stay below freezing for long. And for the most part it's worked. But since the predictions are for temperatures to stay below freezing for at least 24 hours and in the mid-teens for several nights in a row, I went ahead and purchased a heater.

Don't try this at home!

This is NOT a heater one should purchase for a greenhouse. But since I couldn't find one specifically made for more wet conditions, I'm taking the risk. It won't have to work for long and I'll be very careful. Fingers crossed it'll work like a charm, the plants will survive, and nothing will burn down!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

First Bluebonnet of 2009

2009 was an interesting year for me, personally and in the garden. I spent much of the year looking for a paycheck and also trying to figure out where my future lay. For the first time ever though, I found more of my time focused on one of the real joys in my life - gardening.

Blogging and Writing
Wow, I did not anticipate, when I started blogging in the summer of 2008, that I would get so into it. Granted, I don't actually blog as much as I'd like to and I don't get to read as many blogs as I'd like to. But boy has it been fun. I attended the garden blogger's Spring Fling in Chicago, not really knowing what I would take away from it but knowing I'd see some great gardens. It was SO MUCH MORE than great gardens. Getting to meet some of the bloggers and really connect with some was such a highlight. Reading their blogs now is like chatting with a friend.

Cindy, Beth, and Pam at Chicago Botanic Garden

Over the year I picked up a few pass-around awards and then was surprised to see Blotanical subscribers award my blog Best Louisiana Blog. And then to find out that Horticulture picked my blog for one of their Top 20 garden blogs. Well it was almost too much.

I have been writing the newsletter for our farmers' market this past year. That effort combined with my blogging confirmed that I wanted to pursue more writing so I am happy to say that I have almost completed my first article for a garden magazine, scheduled to come out in June (I'll let you know about that when it happens).

Learning and Sharing
In 2009 I decided to pursue a Louisiana Master Gardener certification. In order to retain your certification you must contribute hours to other efforts, mostly ones that benefit the community. Our class decided to update a garden bed in a local park as a teaching tool on butterfly and bird gardening. Although it was a group effort, I designed the planting plan, learned how best to measure a garden bed from my friend Alexis, and learned how to stay patient when the fall rains wouldn't quit!

Kathy and Virginia busy planting the butterfly garden

I gave a talk at a local nursery about butterfly and bird gardening and plan to give another talk in March on perennials. I started a garden coaching business but it's growing VERY slowly.

I worked part time in a nursery, learning more about the plants that folks in this area prefer and hopefully sharing some of my knowledge of different plants with them.

I managed to visit several public gardens that were great (and some outstanding). Here's some links to posts I did about them: Wildwood Gardens in Little Rock, Chanticleer Garden in Pennsylvania here and here, Chicago Botanical Garden, and Briarwood Garden in north Louisiana. And here's some great private gardens I visited: Layanee's Ledge and Gardens in Rhode Island and Rick Bayless's garden in Chicago.

I also learned a lot more about photography through the Gardening Gone Wild photo challenges and hints from my photgrapher brother Brian.

The Gardening
Well, the gardening was frugal but fun. The successes? Finding some plants that are more native to the area.

Viburnum obovatum ‘Mrs Schiller’s Delight’

I also managed to plant and even grow some favorite plants from my past gardening experience (by travelling back to Texas to buy them!).

Malvaviscus drummondii, 'Turks Cap'

I was also finally able to attract some much wanted butterflies to the yard.

Monarch and Coneflower

The failures in the yard in 2009 include very few fall tomatoes, mis-labeled daylilies from the big box store, a rose that grew way out of its normal bounds and on to the driveway (The Fairy), and the inability to find any plants in this area in the fall that weren't pansies, snaps, or mums.

Although there's not much I can do about it, the rather strange weather was a bit much - first, no spring rains; then too much spring rain; then August temperatures and drought in June and July; then June-like weather in August and September; then 40 days and 40 nights of rain; then early freezes. Hmm.

Looking Ahead
Now what? What will 2010 bring? Well I hope it brings me more garden blogging friends, more opportunities to pursue my writing, more garden coaching clients, more learning opportunities, perhaps a steady paycheck, and a chance to grow into my full potential as a person.

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

McKinney Falls State Park and Happy New Year!

This past weekend after a trip to see family in Houston, we drove to Austin for another quick trip to see friends. The weather was typical Austin winter weather - glorious sun and a nip in the air. Our friend Marcia is a volunteer trail guide at McKinney Falls State Park so we decided to take advantage of her knowledge for a little hike.



The park is on the southeast side of Austin and has some natural limestone rock formations that have sheltered people for 8000 years. The photo above and below reminds me of my Native Plants class that I took at UT in the mid-70's. We went to this park before it was open to the public then and it was the first time I saw a plant, a variety of maidenhair fern (Adiantum sp.), growing in the wild when I had only previously seen it in a pot. This is growing right on/in the limestone ledge.





The photo above is of the base of a giant old Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum), said to be 500 years old. Marcia said the Parks personnel ended up watering it by hand this summer because of the drought. They didn't want the old beauty to die.



In our walk we came across the ubiquitous Juniperus asheii, otherwise known as the bearer of the dreaded "cedar fever". That orangey stuff on the branches is the pollen and it causes many people to suffer cold, allergy, and flu-like systems for as long as the pollen is around (many weeks!).



One of my favorite plants, Prickly Pear cactus (some kind of Opuntia).



At last we came to the Lower Falls. Marcia said this summer it was barely a trickle. Good to see some water back again.



The falls are fed by Onion Creek, a creek that meanders through much of south Travis County (and I think north Hays County).



Because of the creek's proximity to a major urban area and thus urban runoff, the creek has its issues with algae growth, which you can see hanging on to the limestone caves under water. Still, it's a little jewel of a park and well worth seeking out for a nice hike, especially with friends or family.

I hope everyone has perfect weather, a perfect garden, good and healthy friends and family, and a great 2010!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, etc.

Foliage Follow-Up to Bloom Day

Pam at Digging has a new meme going that celebrates foliage and other non-blooming natural things around the yard, the day after Carol's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. While photographing my yard for blooms (my Bloom Day post is here), I had great fun in photographing the many interesting textures and colors in the garden. I think this might be the last hurrah for my 'Bloodgood' Japanese Maple above, but a nice hurrah it is.



I wish I had thought to put something at the base of this pine tree so you could tell how massive it is. When I hug this tree (yes, I do that occasionally), I can't get my arms all the way around. I wish I knew the variety of pine it is (might be Short Leaf pine since it has very short needles).



This time of year is when the ‘Silver Shower’, Ophiopogon jaburan, a type of mondo grass, starts putting on new growth. Seems a strange time for it but that's what it does. I have several of these in mostly shade.



The foxtail ferns (Asparagus meyeri I think) are in large pots nestled against the house. I'm too scared to leave them out exposed where I normally have them most of the year. I probably don't have to worry though. They're very hardy.



The texture on my ‘Felt Plant’, Kalanchoe beharensis, is like velvet. Although this photo is towards the top of the plant, the older leaves show more bumps on their undersides.



I like the way my red oak is still determined to hang on to some of its chlorophyll.



Moving to a more ancient form of vascular plant, we have Horsetail Rush, Equisetum hyemale. (It's ancient because it reproduces by spores, not seeds.) This is in a pot in my little water fountain. So far I haven't had to protect it from freezing yet.



I really don't mean for this to be a botany lesson but now I seem to have moved to non-vascular plants like this moss (the black stuff is mold, green stuff is moss). This appears during the rainier seasons on our chimney.



And now I've moved to lichens, which according to Wikipedia is "a symbiotic association of a fungus (the mycobiont) with a photosynthetic partner (the photobiont or phycobiont), usually either a green alga (commonly Trebouxia) or cyanobacterium (commonly Nostoc)". Plus a little moss thrown in on the rock for good measure.



More lichens and rock. The only native rock around here is something called "iron ore", so these rocks come from Arkansas. Makes me feel a bit guilty that they're not native but iron ore is usually small, rusty, and hard to work with.



I guess I'll end my impromptu romp through the plant kingdom with a fungus, some type of big mushroom.

Be sure to check out the links to other Foliage Follow-up posts at Pam's (and my Bloom Day post if you haven't seen it yet)!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, Dec 2009

Even though we had a couple of hard freezes last week (very early in the season for us!), I was surprised by the number of blooms left while I made the garden rounds yesterday. There's not many but there are a few. Above is one of the last blooms on my Patrick's Abutilon. Having never had an abutilon before I don't know if it's normal for them to mostly bloom in the fall, but that's what this one did. Can anyone verify that for me? Next year I plan to prune it back quite a bit, hoping it'll stay a good short size while still blooming as prolifically as it did this fall.



Here's a surprise bloom - a lone Ox-eye Daisy ((Leucanthenum vulgare). Must have liked the fall rains.



Marie Pavie rose is doing it's usual winter thing, blooming yet covered with blackspot.



This is one of the long awaited blooms of Viburnum mistflower (Eupatorium viburnoides), also called Joe Pye Shrub. It's very subtle and not as pink as I had hoped it would be, but I kind of like that subtleness. I think this will be a nice bush in a very short time.



Another surprise for me is the trailing Lanai Bright Pink verbena. It just keeps on blooming. It was to be a match for the Homestead Pink verbena in the other box but that has since died.



The creeping rosemary is blooming now and will most likely continue to bloom throughout the winter. Too bad there aren't any bees around now to enjoy it. What you can't see in this photo is the mold problem it developed this fall when we got so much rain. At least I think that's what it was. Some of the branches towards the middle of the plant turned black. I may still rip this out but the blooms have given it a reprieve.



A few posts ago I talked about this dianthus, Dianthus barbatus interspecific Amazon Neon, a great butterfly attractant. Most of them have finished blooming now but the big box store got a few more of these in. Again, I just had to rescue it since it was extremely pot bound and drowning from too much watering! I kept it in my storeroom for a couple of weeks until the harsh weather passed. It's now happy outside in the ground. I wish you could really see how neon this is.

For more Bloom Day posts from around the world see Carol's May Dreams Gardens. And stay tuned for a post here (found here) tomorrow as I join Pam at Digging in posting for Foliage Follow-up.

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.