January Garden Calender

In the Garden Albums forum at Memory Book Inspirations, I have issued a challenge for all gardeners to create a 2007 Garden Calendar during the coming year. It can be an actual calendar you hang on the wall, a desk calendar, a scrapbook filled with calendar pages, or whatever you like. Just make sure you create at least one page a month & record some interesting (or non-interesting) gardening facts and/or pictures on it!

Here's a January calendar layout I did in 2005. Ironically, I thought we had so little snow that January and that's what I was trying to capture with the pictures. Compared to this year though, we had an abundance of snow that January!...That might all change soon though. We're supposed to have a snowstorm tonight and tomorrow.

The photos were adhered on the dates they were taken, and snowflake stickers show which days we had snowfall.

Some May Flowers (layout)

I finally did a garden layout last night. These are a few of the flowers that were blooming in my garden in May. On the left side, "PJM" rhododendron and a section of my rock garden. On the right side, old-fashioned lilacs at the top and old-fashioned bleeding heart at the bottom.


The patterned papers, "M" mongram, tag and sticker are from the Three Bugs in a Rug "Rhapsody" Caboodle Kit. Cardstock is Bazzill.

Moving Things Around

As if it's not bad enough that I've been rearranging my web sites, now I'm creating and rearranging blogs too! LOL

When I started this blog, my intent was for it to primarily be about garden scrapbooking. As it's turned out though, it's been mostly about gardening and not at all about scrapbooking. So, I'm going to start a blog that's just about gardening...it's My Adk Gardens.

I've also started some other blogs...the links to them are on the right. As for this blog, I'll use it for "Garden Scrapbooking". :)

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!