A beautiful autumn day

What a beautiful day it was for working outside today! It was sunny and in the low 60's, so I planted some daylilies in a border that runs along the top of a stone wall. I think I spent even more time just enjoying the day though, than I did working. Which, is okay! :)

Here are a few glimpses of today's garden. The pictures are of a butterfly on Sedum 'Autumn Joy', a Hibiscus 'Southern Belle' that I started from seed several years ago, and Physostegia 'Vivid'. There are other things still blooming in the garden, but this is all I took pictures of.

I hope anyone reading this has a great week-end!

Mystery Plant Identified

Joseph, from the Everything Perennials Group, has identified the mystery plant. I never would have guessed! It's Purple Flowering Raspberry (aka: 'Rubus odoratus'). Here is a picture of one of it's leaves beside a dollar bill, so you can see how large the leaves are.

Mystery Plant

Can someone identify this plant for me? At first I thought it was a Swamp Maple tree sapling, but then I noticed the flowers. The plant is growing at the edge of some woods, in ground that was bulldozed a few years ago. It's about 3' tall and it looks like a young tree. It's flowering now....zone 4 in the Adirondacks, upstate NY.

The Bee Balm Garden

Hurray! I finally got most of the bee balm garden planted today! I say "most" because there's one section left that I haven't planted yet. My neighbor is giving me starts from her bee balm for that particular section and I didn't get over to see her today, to get them. Maybe tomorrow after church, as it's supposed to be another nice day!

The bee balm garden is a 70' long border, running along the outside of my propagation garden. I do have bee balm planted in the Secret Garden (if you haven't seen the Secret Garden, you can see pictures of it here), but I wanted a larger section of garden that was planted to nothing but bee balm. A friend of mine has a huge bee balm border along the outside of her fences & it looks awesome when it's blooming!

If you've never grown bee balm before and you're thinking about planting some, beware that it's a spreader. You should also know that it's best to divide bee balm every 3 years or so, because the centers tend to die out. Bee Balm is also prone to mildew. It prefers sandy, acidic soil that is fertile, and it grows best in full sun or partial shade. Hummingbirds LOVE Bee Balm!

This evening, I did some scrapbooking. I only did a few quick and easy layouts though, and none of them are gardening-related.

I hope anyone reading this is having a great week-end!

Where did the summer go?

Yikes! Where did the summer go? It's hard to believe it's already Labor Day!

I spent a few days in mid-August working in the garden, but other than pulling a weed here and there, I haven't done any real work in the garden since then. What I had STARTED doing in August was planting a long border to various shades of bee balm, but I got less than half the border planted. Maybe now that the cooler temps of September are here though, I'll get it finished. I love working in the garden during the cool, bug-free days of September!

Hopefully, in addition to working in the garden, I'll also start updating this blog more often! :)