I’ve come to love using trees as anchoring points for developing new garden areas; a starting point to build from that a messy brain can latch on to and think, ‘Yes! A starting point.’ Planting under established trees is challenging. It’s far easier to buy a young tree, plant it, […]
Natives
The uphill battle of aster identification
Asters are no longer asters, they are in the genus Symphotrichtum, unless they are Eurybia, and there are dozens of species. They are all harassed-looking daisy-types with 1/4″ or 1 1/2″ flowers, heart shaped leaves or lance-like leaves, in varying shades of murky blues and purples and whites and pinks. […]
2024 Fall Foliage highlights
A few favorites. I may add more to the post later in the season, when January and the desire to do literally anything with gardening becomes unmanageable. These are a mix of natives and non-natives. (I’m writing up some thoughts on the native/non-native plant discourse; I’ll update with a link […]
September and early October 2024 Highlights
(I struggled with image classes on this post and think I fixed them but apologies if a later update blows out my edits. I’ll fix it. Eventually.) Above: Bottle gentians, blue, late blooming, good cut flowers–in particular with late flowering orange and yellow daisy-shaped flowers and dahlias. Native. Allegedly attractive […]
September 2022 – in bloom
So much beauty so late in the season…
Beneficial insects: Five banded tiphiid wasp
Seen today on a black eyed susan. If I’m correct about the ID, it’s a female (the red legs are the tell apparently.) From the link: “Females of some species of Thynnid wasps are wingless. Males find them on the ground and carry them into the air on a nuptial […]
Pollinator garden, drafts 1, 2, 3…..
One of the front pollinator beds was added in April 2020. At roughly 4′ x 15′, it contains twelve Golden Alexanders (host plants for black swallowtails and food source for a lot of the little solitary bees) and twelve Bottle Gentians, both from Prairie Nursery. There’s a birdhouse at the […]