Eryngium and Agertum at the Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago

This was taken at the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago recently. Echinops of some variety, no - more likely eryngium - a sea holly....

The sun shining brilliantly through a large leaf.

These tiny violet and purple fuzzballs are probably an agertum of some sort.

lady bug larva/nymph plus chipmunks & voles!

My chrysanthemums in the stump garden are playing host to an unbelievable amount of baby lady bugs! That's the goods news - bad news is that chipmunks have set up house in the decaying stump! I just got a bobcat/fox urine mix in the mail. Hopefully I'll have some luck with that. I'm also digging up their tunnels and adding permatil (aka vole block - a sharp gravel that pokes tender little paws) to the soil. On top of that, I'm also using Mole-Out, one of the castor oil repellents to get the soil good and nasty tasting. I don't mind sharing my gardens, but the warm winter seems to have created a population explosion in small critters - chipmunks and voles run amok! Between the little nibblers and some butter-fingers action during repairs to an old building in back, I've lost almost a dozen lilies so far.

Wild Blue Yonder Rose

The new Wild Blue Yonder rose is of course blue in name only. The flowers are darker red in bud. Once opened they start as a deep mauve-ish kind of red that fades to have white-streaked lighter red petals. This is my first grandiflora (and my first Tom Carruth rose) and I'm sold! The flowers are larger than a floribunda but with the same great repeating habit. We'll see how she handles the fungal petri dish that this part of NC is once the summer heat and humidity kick in. She has nice dark, glossy leaves so she might be ok (the dark leaves isn't 100% guarantee of bs resistance, but seems to be the case more often than not).

Mr. Carruth has been a hybridizer for Weeks Roses since 1989 and has won more AARS honors than any rose breeder currently working. I'll be sure to be looking to his work as I make future additions to my rose collection. Some of his other winners include: Hot Cocoa, Betty Boop, Julia Child, and a 2007 winner, Strike it Rich.

Giant White Calla Lily

White Giant

My Giant was purchased this spring and is rather petite yet. She looked gorgeous right after a shower so of course we had to get a picture. Her expected mature height is over 6 feet tall! And hardy done to zone 7 to boot.

If you've never shopped at Plant Delights, you are missing an eyeful! Luckily, I live not too far away so I got to treat myself to an open-house visit in March. While the Hellebores were gorgeous, I bought lilies - the Giant and a White Queen to add a bit of height and drama to the rose garden (giant) and nearby strawberry patch (queen). The Queen is an even tinier thing however and won't put on a show for some time.

Darlow's Enigma and Madame Alfred Carriere Rose

The first of the roses are starting their show! Madame Alfred Carriere has several sweetly perfumed blooms going. She'll soon be tall enough to begin to train up the trellis on the wall. This lovely came from The Antique Rose Emporeum in Texas. She's on her own root and was relatively trouble free last season (summer of 2006 - aka the dark summer of black spot). Every rose got at least a touch of the BS, but only a touch for the Madame.

My Darlow's Enigma arrived looking great from Ashdown Roses. She's adapting swiftly and is the first rose in the shadier back yard. Everybody else is on the sunny side of the house.

Ashdown is a great choice for me as the shipping distance isn't much. But both Ashdown and Rose Emporium sent me marvelous specimens! Last year both my Pat Austins purchased from another mail order company were disappointing. One started showing symptoms of Rose Rossette Disease by mid-summer. I should have taken photos, but once I realized what it was it was yanked, bagged and gone instantly! The weird super succulent, massively thorny red growth presented by the mite-borne illness is truly alien looking.

The second Pat Austin was mailed separately (originally omitted from my shipment, a mistake quickly remedied by the company) and shows no signs of the disease despite a relitively close position. I'm just not sure what it is though. I don't think its a Pat - it has too many petals giving it a fuller shape and the color is not quite right either. She's pretty, this mystery lady (shown above).

Ants on the Peony buds

The buds on the peonies are teaming with ants. I think its still a few weeks until they bloom. This bud is from the least mature of the three pink guys who came from my mother-in-law's garden. He's the only one of the three that bloomed last year. This year, only one of the three is still not ready to make buds.

A freeze tonight after several 80 degree days?!

Can you believe it?! We've had so many days in the 80s already and now we're expecting a freeze tonight and several days (through Sunday night) of similar lows - BBBRRRR!

I think I'll move everything inside and go ahead and dismantle the pine straw cold frame. I don't have a car to use this afternoon and I'll need the straw to prep all my little babies already poking out of the ground. Even my Rose of Sharon has already leafed out (much earlier than last year!) because its been so warm.

Cold Frame from Pine Needle bales

This is the simple little cold frame I've been using to keep my plants in good shape until it warms up just a bit more. I've used a sewing cutting pad (made of semi-sheer white plastic) as a top when temperatures have required - an old window frame makes a great top too.

I just heard we're expecting to have a warm end to the month, so hopefully I'll be able to put some of these guys in the ground soon. I've got marigold, cupid's dart, crape myrtle and a few different kinds of pepper seedlings I'd like to move into the cold frame. It's a lot and I still haven't sprouted my tomatoes yet! Yikes - gotta get a move on!

Jetfire Daffodils

Jet fire daffodils have a fabulous profile. Here they are surrounding an Abraham Darby rose that is just starting to set out leaves. Next season I'll create a large daffodil patch around my flowering quice. I'm thinking of trying some of the 'orangerie' daffodils.

As we've had lots of vole problems, I'm trying to scatter daffodils and flowering onions throughout the landscape - they seem to dislike these. I've also been using 'vole-block' in my soil mix. It helps create better drainage in my very clay soil as well as discouraging those varmits!

Harmony Iris

I mixed some of these short little irises behind my grape hyacinth (muscari). They are similar size and color so add some depth and texture. The foliage of the muscari went dormant last year in the hottest part of the summer, then regrew in the fall. It looked good most of the winter, getting only minor cold damage.

Pickwick Crocuses, Pink Heath and Daffodils

I began gardening in North Carolina just a few years ago. I have only a little previous experience dabbling in dirt (I grew mainly tomatoes in Boston back in 1988, thereabouts). We moved to this place in Burlington, North Carolina in March of 2002. The house is an old one (1930s) on the top of a hill in a usually quiet neighborhood.


The yard had been long neglected when we purchased the place, so the first couple of years were spent pulling overgrown ivy off of trees and hacking back thorny thickets of wild raspberries. Now I've been creating flower beds and planting bushes for a little bit and am hoping to organize and record some of it all here. The arrival of spring in the North Carolina Piedmont seems like a good place to start.