November

It's looking more and more wintry. The bright colors have faded to tans and grays, punctuated by some red berries and stems.

From TTH200811

From TTH200811

Laurel Hell

I've planted this bed with mountain laurels and native woodland ground covers. Kalmias grow slowly but I hope they will eventually mound up and make my own little 'laurel hell'.

From Through the Hedge

Mountain Laurel - Kalmia latifolia

From Through the Hedge

Goldenseal - Hydrastis canadensis

From Through the Hedge

Wild Ginger - Asarum canadensis

From Through the Hedge

Virginia Snakeroot - Aristolochia serpentaria

From Through the Hedge

Jack in the Pulpit - Arisaema triphyllum

From Through the Hedge

This fall I added more native groundcovers:
Virginia snakeroot, Aristolochia serpentaria
Rattlesnake plantain, Goodyera pubescens
Allegheny spurge, Pachysandra procumbens

Autumn colors

Itea virginiana 'Henry's Garnet'

From TTH200811

Viburnum nudum 'Winterthur'

From TTH200811

Winterberry, Ilex verticillata, an orange berried variety.

From TTH200811

More winterberry and coral honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens. This native, non-invasive honeysuckle gets red berries too. It scrambles up over the winterberry shrubs and makes a nice tangle.

From TTH200811

Red twig dogwoods, Cornus sericea 'Cardinal'. This variety gets cherry red stems in the winter. I had originally planted it in the front yard under a big pine tree. It never did well there so I gave some to a neighbor and planted some in the mixed hedge in back. We've both found it gets much brighter color in full sun.

From TTH200811

Fothergilla, two varieties, one the species and one Mt. Airy. Can't beat this for brilliant color.

From TTH200811

The Shed

Here it is in all it's concrete floored, vinyl sided, non-leaky roofed glory. I moved in here in 2001 and the shed needed replacing then. It never rose to the top of the priority list because there was always something more important and because I knew this was going to be a big job. There isn't enough clear space at either side of the yard to have a ready made shed hauled in and I knew I was going to need the old one taken down, the cracked concrete dug up and a new foundation poured before building could begin. I had one picked out at Lowes but they and their installers aggravated the life out of me and I ended up calling the contractor who has done all the previous work on my house. This is the shed that Burt built.

From TTH200811

From TTH200811

Inside it has shelves all along one wall. I'm going to add hangers for the tall garden tools. There's even room for the garden cart.

From TTH200811

From TTH200811

Behind the shed
I had them build me a canoe rack so I could finally get it up off the ground. I can't tell you how many times I've had to drag it around the yard to get it out of the way of garden projects.

From TTH200811

The new cart tracks to the back yard:

From TTH200811

The contractors used a front end loader thing to move materials to the back yard. There was some inevitable damage to the lawn. I have some grass seed to sow if it ever rains around here again.

I don't seem to have many pictures of the old shed, probably because it had become such an embarrassment. Here's a shot from last winter that includes the tarp I had to stretch over the roof. The big spruce had knocked a hole in the roof so I nailed up plywood from inside and the tarp outside. Not pretty but it got me through one last winter. Do note the door hanging on my a shred. I tried screwing the hinges back on but the wood was so punky they wouldn't hold.

From First snow of 2008

The new shed is 12 by 12 feet, much bigger than the old one. The mower and garden cart fit nicely. It has floor to ceiling shelves along one wall and I was able to move all the garden clutter off the back porch, making it much more habitable.

Front foundation bed

While I was home this summer recovering from the double knee replacement I had time to sit and contemplate the front bed and consider how little it pleased me. I had originally planted it with a variety of deciduous azaleas in yellows and oranges and then underplanted it with wild columbines and wood poppies. The result was a mess. The azaleas are leggy and ratty looking except when actually in bloom. The underplanted perennials made weeding a real chore. This fall I dug everything out, moved the azaleas to the back of the house and the columbines to the corner and bought a selection of low growing shrubs, most of them broadleafed evergreens. I'm very pleased so far with the effect and will see how they do over the winter.

Before

From TTH200811

Things in pots

From TTH200811

Leucothoe 'Girard's Rainbow'
I like leucothoe though it has a reputation for getting a bit messy with leaf spot and scorch. We'll see how these do.

From TTH200811

Winterberry 'Red Sprite'
A low growing, deciduous holly. I have some of these along the fence line in the backyard too.

From TTH200811

Abelia 'Kaleidoscope'
Small pinkish flowers on variegated foliage. These were just humming with bees at the nursery.

From TTH200811

The dark green shrubs are inkberries, Ilex glabra 'Shamrock', a dwarf cultivar.

From TTH200811

Beau thinks it looks much better now.

From HOC200811

Franklin Tree

Read here about the Franklinia, discovered in the 18th century by the Bartrams, named for his friend Ben Franklin, and now extinct in the wild. All of the ones in cultivation are descended from a few seeds the Bartrams collected so the population is limited and genetically fragile. Here's a picture of mine. It has been in the ground for several years and is about 4 feet tall now. This one is a touch chlorotic but the flowers were lovely.

From TTH200811

From TTH200811

The buds look like slightly fuzzy, pale green ping pong balls.

From TTH200811

Welcome visitors

I will plant just about anything that is reputed to be attractive to butterflies or hummingbirds. I've tried to include host plants for butterfly larvae, especially for the varieties that have a very specialized diet, even when the plant is not very showy. Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars eat pipevines, plants in the Aristolochia family. Dutchman's Pipe is a huge climbing vine. I don't have a suitable place for such a big thing and blanch at the thought of encountering fat black worms at eye level. Or horrors, having them drop on me from above. Instead I hunted far and wide and found one source for Virginia Snakeroot, Aristolochia serpentaria. Rod Angeroth runs Loess Roots and sells well grown, bare root plants. A few years ago he very kindly let me have some seeds and I grew the first few dozen plants myself.

From TTH200811

From TTH200811

Late this summer I discovered an odd caterpillar crawling along my front sidewalk. It was unlike anything I had seen before so I got the butterfly book and found it was a PVS caterpillar! I tenderly picked it up on the end of a stick and carried it over to the bed with the snakeroot. OK, maybe that doesn't sound very tender but there's no way on earth I'm going to touch one. I found about a dozen more cats busily devouring the snakeroot plants. My young neighbors made the same discovery and brought their caterpillar to be admired. I explained what it was, showed them the snakeroot that it eats and loaned them the butterfly book to accompany the thing in to school for Show and Tell. I'm told that it spun itself a cocoon while in their custody.

I decided I didn't have nearly enough plants so ordered some from Rod. He shipped some great plants, much larger than my own two year olds with nice thick root systems.

Still life with apples

From TTH200811

I have a big old apple tree at the corner of my back porch. There's no record of what type it is but a neighbor said he think it might be a Stayman. At any rate the apples are wonderful, very crisp and tart. The tree is way too big to spray even if I were incline so I will not bite directly into an apple without dissecting it first. Here are the last few in a plastic trug purchased from White Flower Farm though they're pretty widely available. It's lightweight and very sturdy and I find myself using it even more than my usual cheap plastic laundry baskets for weeding and hauling around the yard.

From Garden20070620