Burgundy

So it's not the color of passion, but it appears in various plants around the yard, usually in the form of foliage. There's also purple and pink.

Veronica spicata "Red Fox" with perilla.



Purple heart (or purple queen).



Etoile Violette clematis on the perennial bed arbor.



More bloody dock.



Thundercloud Plum.



Castor Bean.



Agastache "Golden Jubilee" and Perilla.



A sea of self sown Amaranthus and Crabgrass. Pink bee balm will bloom later in the summer.



Camellia sasanqua. This was the large pink flowering camellia that I cut down in the summer of 2008 to provide the backyard with more sunlight. It was probably 20' tall.



It's 63 degrees. The high today will reach the low 80s. No rain, plenty of sun.

The Orchard.

The fruit trees are producing this year. The Morris plum, planted last summer, has a few tiny fruit developing.



The Thundercloud plum. This tree was originally installed in the perennial bed. As it grew too large, I moved it last fall to the backyard. There are tiny plums forming on it as well.



There are peaches on the Belle of Georgia.



Figs on the rooted cutting from last spring. Probably a Celeste.



Strawberries are forming. Let's hope the critters let me taste a few.



Tent caterpillars. I saw their nests, high in the trees out back a couple weeks ago. They're all over the yard.



The blueberries are just starting to bloom. The blackberry should be next. Fruit will begin ripening in mid summer. My seedless grape vines are growing again, but have never produced fruit. Last year I did find a few tiny grapes, but they disappeared long before they were ready to harvest. Maybe this year.

It's 52 degrees. The high today will only be in the mid 60s. I might need long pants.

Thundercloud

It's 45 degrees. The temperature will slowly rise to the low 60s this afternoon as the storms move in. We've got chances of thunderstorms and rain all evening and night.

In honor of the rain, the Thundercloud Plum has decided to bloom.





This plum tree has purple-red leaves and pink blossoms. It was transplanted in the fall from the perennial bed. It's about a week late in blooming this year. I suppose it could be the cold winter, or maybe the move. In any case, another few days will show it completely in bloom. Only a few scattered branches are showing any color yet.

The Belle of Georgia peach is still blooming away. The blossoms have turned a darker color. The leaves are coming on nicely.



Before work, I'll dig out the Lagerfeld rose in the Neighbor's Corner. I'm giving it to Marty, a customer at the store. She brought me beautyberry starts in the fall and seeds for a blue milkweed, Tweedia caerulea. I've already sown them. Soon, I'll start giving away the brugmansias to people who have asked about them. I also plan to sow the rest of my datura seeds in the new fragrant bed outside the basement door. I need to spread the broken bags of soil that have been sitting in the basement for weeks first.

9:11am - I've spread three bags of topsoil and a bag of pine mulch over the newest bed. For two weeks, I've been spraying the weeds and grass here with RoundUp. I'm sure the wire grass will continue to pop up through the season. It has in all the beds I've created along the retaining wall and basement door. I'll spot treat and pull whenever I see it. Datura, marigolds, and four o'clocks have been sown here.



A splash of rain passed through as I was digging the Lagerfeld for Marty. There was a bit of blue sky a few minutes later. The sun is shining now.



The "dead" Loropetalums are blooming.



The Eastern Redbuds are opening. They're pink. I don't know why they call them redbuds.



The first of 100+ muscari has pushed up a bloom stalk. There was supposed to be a blue stream amongst the daffodils on the front slope. So far, only a handful have pushed through the soil. This one is in the crape myrtle bed.



Peonies at the end of the driveway are up. I transplanted these from Virginia last March. I really hope they bloom a bit better this year. They don't like to be disturbed.



Larkspur by the perennial bed arbor.



It's still 45 degrees. We should start to climb soon. It's going to be a rough afternoon of storms from the looks of the radar.

Potting up, planting out, and things that bloom.

It's Sunday. Another month and I can create the full year of pictures. The circle bed feels very empty without the Thundercloud Plum.



Oh, what to plant here?



Some pictures were taken yesterday. Like the dianthus pinks maiden that are blooming again.



The "orange" rose.



Mountain bluet



And a camellia. I thought this was C. japonica, but it's got to be sasanqua, right? Where's Nell?



I planted a few plugs of Little Bluestem in the meadow garden. I hope it does take over.



7 lantana cuttings got potted this morning.



Two white, 5 Miss Huff. I'm starting to think the seeds I got were mislabeled. Miss Huff is supposed to be sterile. So maybe this isn't Miss Huff after all, but another lantana. That's fine. I like the flowers.



I've spread some broken bags of mulch on the rear bed where I pulled out ivy yesterday, half price and all. I'll spend most of the day today raking leaves in Larry's yard and shredding them. I'll be mulching the north beds where hosta, ferns, and cherry laurels live. I'll scatter a little here and there around the house too. I think I may just use the lawnmower to collect them into rows. There's a LOT of leaves out there in his yard.

It's 48 degrees with a high of 78 in the forecast. A bagel and coffee before heading out.

1:13pm - I've collected and bagged 3 sacks of leaves from Larry's yard. The sack is a queen sized bed sheet folded in half and sewn together. I put one against the stone wall on the north side of the house. The other two were spread in the back yard behind the upper potager and over the mulch I spread this morning. I just think it's more consistent looking.



While cutting the grass (mulching leaves), I noticed that I have defined edges. I like edges.





The high has been raised to 84 degrees. It's 72 and sunny.

Awesome.

The 10-day forecast.



It's 50 degrees, sunny, and clear.



9:34am - Goodbye Ivy.



Hello Shastas.



Thundercloud Plum. Got my fingers crossed.

The Orchard.

If I'm going to have a meadow, I should really have an orchard too. And all this on half an acre where 1/3 of the space is driveway, house, or mature trees. I wonder if I can purchase sunlight?

In any case, I was told to mark the fruit trees half price. I didn't really need a 20' wide Morris plum tree, but I have one now. I planted it this morning beyond the lower potager. I filled the very large hole (which, for some reason, was very easy to dig this morning) with cow manure compost and created a small berm to retain water. This area is very dry in summer, but I'm hoping the leaf cover from this fall will start adding new organic material to the soil. In February, I'm intending to sow seeds of creeping thyme back here.



Also part of the orchard, which runs from the upper potager, along the wild, all the way to the gully, there's a sad little Montmorency cherry that I planted this spring. It's a dwarf variety and spent most of the summer struggling as I wasn't able to get back there and water while on crutches. The twigs are still green when snapped, so I hope it comes back in the spring. If not, I probably don't have room for it anyway.



There's also the spring planted Belle of Georgia peach. It has white fruit.



Then the Apache blackberry.



Two blueberry bushes.





The first of three figs. I think the others may get planted in the area under the dead oak tree.



And the Thundercloud Plum. This variety may or may not produce plums, but I'm hoping that it will give me some color and variety in the backyard. It will be transplanted this fall as soon as it starts to lose its leaves in earnest.



I found enough stone in the woods to finish edging the crape myrtle bed.



I have two beds left that need stone. The largest is the shrub border in the very middle of the back yard. Above that, the rose garden needs some attending to as well. Along the front side, I planted strawberries.



I'm not sure where to put my three seedless grapevines that are currently struggling for sunlight along the back edge of the upper potager. The soil back there is hard packed clay full of roots. Maybe I'll stick a couple 4x4s into the middle of the meadow and let them have at it. I'll really need to amend the soil a lot better than I did when I first planted them. Poor things have been moved three times since I got them last year off the clearance rack. They were the first fruits I bought. Oh, what a mistake that might have been.

It's 57 and overcast. Heading to Morrow Mountain today to take a look at some leaves. Apparently, they have them there too. No rain in the forecast today, but the clouds and my right leg say otherwise. Going to shred a few more leaves before Laura arrives. They'll get dumped into the crape myrtle bed, hopefully finishing that area for the week. I'll move on to the potager beds next week forking in the leaves I collect from Larry's yard.