Seasonal: September Page 2

Seasonal Page: Page 2

September: Will It Ever Rain?

Here's the second half of the month...still dry!

Just light and leaves can be very pretty in any season. In the early Autumn the sun comes in at such a low angle and it's hard to get photos without a lot of contrast. This was taken from the deck on the north side. The Birch tree was a "pull-up" from the front bed.

Kind of stark, but this shows you how much lighting, form and bark begin to take center stage in the early Fall. When we get into Winter, the bones of the garden will be the colorful barks like the one on this Birch tree, as well as the evergreen plants of the garden. Even the Winter grass will be an improvement over the brown of the lawn after summer! We should get rain tomorrow and in another couple of weeks, I expect to see the grass greening up.

This is very similar to the sunset shown above, without the rain clouds. Lately, we have not had the colorful sunsets I usually associate with fall. There should be more of those before winter sets in. You can't tell from the photo, but there is currently very little snow on those mountains.

Another example of strong Fall lighting. This is the bed by the driveway and the Aster at right had no name when I bought it. It looks white here, but opens more of a blush white or extremely pale mauve. The blades to the left are the Crocosmia 'Lucifer' that you saw so often in August!

Here is a new Aster, 'Winston Churchill,' that I bought at Valley Nursery, in Poulsbo, WA. I have old friends that work there and it is a beautiful place to browse and shop. This was planted in the driveway bed just a ways off from the whitish one above. Right now there is a trio of Aster color in this bed, with 'Professor Kippenburg' being the third. The butterflies and bees love them!

I hope you like Asters...here come a lot more!

This photo and the next are of the same Aster ericoides hybrid...maybe Erlkonig? I'll bet if I dug around behind the crown of this I could still find that tag...I couldn't find a record of the purchase in my garden notebook. Anyway...it is in full bloom now. It tends to flop over its neighbors (in this case the foliage of the Dierama shown on the summer pages and also a Korean lilac 'Palibin' shown below) but still has charm with its tiny, delicately colored flowers.

Those prune-juice colored leaves in the lower left of the photo are the foliage of Korean Lilac... Syringa meyeri 'Palibin.' It turns this unusual color every year and makes a subtle color echo with the centers of the Aster flowers.

A much showier Aster cousin is 'Patricia Ballard.' Again...I'm doing this from memory, since I failed to write down this purchase also. I try to keep a log of my purchases for these occasions when I forget the name or mix it up with something else. This struggled through weeds and grass until June and I was amazed to even find a remnant of it had survived! I hope it will be larger next year...it is a beautiful color.

This is a small portion of the Ash Bed that recently had some rework. I took out the large and weed infested Lady's Mantle, reset some of the pieces and added this little Salvia 'Icterina.' It has golden markings on the green leaves that are especially pretty when lit up by the sun like this. Sorry there is so much contrast...you can't totally appreciate how it looked to me when I snapped the picture! (Too bad I forgot that I had intended to transplant a particular Daylily to this spot...I wonder if there's still room nearby?) Once those little Alchemilla plants get some size, the deer will most likely eat all the leaves...they seem to like them. In the past week they have browsed the tops off almost all the hardy geraniums in the yard. They were putting on some new succulent growth after being cut back. I forgot the sprinkling of blood meal or repellent!

Aster 'Hella Lacy' is another plant I assumed I'd lost but managed to salvage. The few pieces that were reset this spring are now opening flowers. It is much brighter when fully open than it looks in bud, as you can see it here. The companion behind is Achillea 'Coronation Gold.'

I really like Aster 'Climax' and, considering that it gets marginal watering, it looks quite nice right now. It is very tall (around 4 1/2 feet) but manages to stand upright without support. The flowers are nearly true blue, with just a touch of violet. I kept reading about this old standby and finally ordered it by mail from Canyon Creek Nursery in California.

These lovely, delicate stars belong to Autumn. They are Schizostylis and this cultivar is 'Oregon Sunset.' The poor plants were covered up by the growing clump of Crocosmia 'Lucifer' behind them and that will be remedied this Autumn. After cutting back the Crocosmia a couple of weeks ago, these little guys got some much needed light and breathing room!

The Red Maple is one of the earliest trees to turn color in the yard. It started its life on the other side of the back within the perennial bed, but it became obvious rather quickly that it would be hard to garden underneath it. The Oak tree behind the carport is wonderful because I NEVER run into roots while working under it.

The Japanese Maple at the corner of the house in front has these gorgeous little seeds on it this month and into next. I took another picture this week and hope to replace this with an improved one. The leaves have started coloring even since this photo was taken (this is Oct. 7th).

Our messy porch, Lynda (our youngest daughter) and two boxes of the four the girls picked for me off the Jonalicious tree. If they had been watered, sprayed and thinned, they would be twice as big and nicer, but we will still use them. I had hoped to let them hang on the tree a few more days to sweeten a bit more, but the numerous crows moved in and starting working it over so we had to act fast. They came off easily, so they are not too green. I have a love/hate relationship with the birds on this acreage. We could be a bird sanctuary, there are so many species and the numbers so high! They are rather greedy with our crops however, and at those times I don't appreciate some of them much...especially the crows because they are so destructive and waste more than they eat.

Robert took these for me using a telephoto lense. This one is a Red Admiral Butterfly. They are easier to capture because they spend a fair amount of time with their wings open after they land. Isn't it beautiful?

This would have been a photo of a West Coast Painted Lady, but she got away. You can see her backside in the upper right hand corner. This species has less white on the wings than the standard Painted Lady.

What a life...definitely short and SWEET!

This page last updated on October 7, 1998.