Recently the docents did an end of tour season lunch to meet one more time and talk about how the year’s tours went. I remembered sitting in the classroom overlooking the bare Magnolia macrophylla back in early March, feeling wistful, eager, and ignorant. My goals were to learn more about the plants where I live, more about the outdoor classroom of Plantations (since it taught me so much already just nosing around), and to get outside myself by talking about things that are easy to talk about when you love them and are excited. There at lunch with our teacher and a few of the old pro docents, in the classroom overlooking the fading Magnolia, I felt confident, comfortable, and a notch above ignorant. Shame we’ll have to wait until next May to get going again–the newbies were just hitting our stride.
Plus, the herb garden is stunning right now, with Stephanandra incisa ‘Crispa’ glowing on the slope, but most of the rest of the plants are becoming textural shells. Hips and berries adorn bare branches, and the formal Winter Garden is coming into its own. Here’s the last photo tour from a walk through the herb garden as it goes to bed.
Hi y’all. Today I officially launch my photography business and web site: www.lynnyenkey.com!
Being in our garden renewed my passion for photography, which was dormant for too long. Plants and the people who grow them are helping shape what I’d like to do with my work, and I have many of you to thank for your kind words and encouragement as I’ve shared images through this blog. Thank you!
Most days you just walk the dog and dig in the yard, and you’re happy. Then some days you wake up and find yourself in the news. This morning I opened email to find a message congratulating this blog on being one of Horticulture magazine’s 20 favorite garden blogs. I know, odd considering I have about 9 regular readers who aren’t my family, and I know most of them. The rest come for silly suit pictures, bloody eyeballs, how hellish getting to the top of either Mt. Colden or Mt. Rainier will be (in my experience, a tossup), and funny turtles, rounding out 8 of the top 10 all time search terms.
I started this blog when I moved east to get married and soon after spend 5 months in Kenya, anticipating a lot of photos and needing a way to share them without spamming our families. That first summer, we dug up the yard, and I fell in love with having the first garden I could truly call my own. Looking for advice, I found the garden bloggers. Through them I’ve gained essential knowledge, inspiration, confidence, and friendship, and I’m grateful. There are so many great garden blogs that I know tomorrow’s top 20 would look totally different, so it’s a real honor to be recognized today.
Thank you.
If this is your first visit, I hope you’ll come back for the gardening & the seasons, and hang around for the travel, the music, and the beagle.
Someone nudged me that I missed Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, but it was for a good cause: gardening in a tank top in mid-November in central NY! I’m still not done doing stuff that should be done (not telling you what still waits to get into the ever-cooling ground), but it was progress. Here are some images from under today’s partly-sun. Let’s focus on the color and save most of the winter interest for winter.
Anemone sylvestris winking out
Aster novae-angliae i think
passalong Korean mum, name unknown, but i like it
passalong lamium, probably in too much sun
passalong Stipa from Kris
Panicum virginicum
sedums as always
Buddy is also autumn colored
Hope you’re enjoying the colors wherever you are!
see ya next summer, Dahlias
Yep, we woke up to a freeze (not a frost) on Columbus Day morning. Bit of a shock and sad to see the Japonese anemones go at the height of their brilliance, along with the blood-red Dahlias, Nasturtiums, Zinnias, and all the peppers and tomatillos. We still have greens galore and Borage nodding on in blue and pink. Then it snowed. It’s almost bedtime for the garden.
early morning in the field
frost-edged cranesbill
Then, on Bloom Day (10/15), it snowed, and we woke up to about 2″ the next morning.
By our mid-morning walk, most of it was gone.
Been a while since I made a bloom day post, so tonight I did two! Thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting the bloomin’ love fest. Remember to stop and smell the flowers–they might not be here long.
Looks like fall
Helianthus helinthoides 'Lemon Queen' with Sanguisorba
Rudbeckia maxima (still young & minima) with Joe-Pye
Periwinkles and pots
Nasturtium 'Alaska'
Anemone 'Honorine Jobert' taking her time
Colchicum, the autumn crocus
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- Nasturtium ‘Alaska’
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- tufty blue and white bed
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- Chelone lyonii, Salvia superba, Zinnia ‘Polar Bear’
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- Homerocallis ‘Buttered Popcorn’–a gift
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- Eryngium yuccifolium ‘Rattlesnake Master’
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- daisies of course
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- the freebie orange Zinnia shows off
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- Ecinacea, uh, yellow
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- Feverfew and Chamomile
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- Periwinkle
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- the antisocial Dahlia
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- the last Sweet Pea
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- oops, blooming broccoli
Living in the sticks, music news comes late. But just let me tell you that that it made for a helluva Monday to make these two late discoveries–Jim James has a solo EP out, and Monsters of Folk (J. James, M. Ward, Mike Mogis, and some other dude) are about to release a record and go on tour! NYC here we come! Seeing them together at HoB in Vegas in 2004 (?) was a huge treat, and also a cultural enlightenment into the emo kid world (there to see he-who-shall-not-be-named,convulsing on stage, and discover James and Ward). Why is he with this band and why does he get top billing in the illustration and elsewhere? blehh)
As discovered on the NPR Song of the Day, Jim James put out a solo EP covering George Harrison songs from All Things Must Pass. He recorded the songs in 2001 just after Harrison died. It’s worth it to go to the NPR site to hear Long Long Long in the NPR player. If you just can’t be bothered, listen to Behind that Locked Door on youtube.
As compared to the original.
Or buy the whole dad-blame thing for 6 bucks on Yim Yames web site. Why the Y’s? Silly, but makes it easier to search for the solo stuff. Part of the profits go to the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary. Jim’s made good.
And then, Monsters of Folk is a brilliant name even if the music weren’t special, which it is, and which you can hear a preview of on their site.
This is my favorite so far. M. Ward’s picking and singing lead off…
My sister sent me Tanya Tucker’s new record of covers, a sweet and sentimental gift. Speaking of covers, Tanya’s looking shockingly like Dolly Parton in her cover photo! It’s great to hear a familiar old voice, but it makes me want to dig out her old music, which is a touch more raw.
“Delta Dawn” was my first favorite song, at age 3. According to legend, I sang it to the neighborhood from the front porch, and those were pre-karaoke days.
She might be 11 here. Still don’t know what she’s saying: “a man of loaded peas stood by her side”??
My second favorite. So southern (and in the prairie dress). Little glimpse of Buck Owens, too.
Check out the interview in Texas Monthly to hear what the old days were like. sorta.
1. Cornell Plantations has its Fall Lecture series up. This is an incredible series and sort of special to me. It wasn’t long after I got here in 2007 that we attended the season’s first lecture and heard Diane Ackerman read from her book, The Zookeeper’s Wife. I was charmed, awed, and suddenly aware that Plantations was more than just a garden refuge for me. You can see a video of last year’s lecture highlight, Richard Louv’s “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” on CornellCast.
2. The Plantsmen nursery had its first Customer Appreciation Day today, with food, music, an outdoor art installation, and a scavenger hunt for free plants! As much as I would love to plant an Eastern redbud and some Ninebark in the front, I resisted, but brought home some on-sale perennials and picked up two freebies–a 2-gallon White Wood Aster and a 1-gallon Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’ (Soon the garden will be only tufty plants with purple flower stalks. I should stop.). Plantsmen is a great place to find native plants and is Buddy-friendly, too. Get on their mailing list for good deals and announcements.
3. Craig at Ellis Hollow dug me up some boneset, Joe-Pye weed, and some asters for the ditch! He says his bog won’t miss ‘em, and we love ‘em. It started raining as soon as we got home: perfect Eupatorium conditions. Thanks, Craig!
pink Joe-Pye, white boneset, purple asters
gonna put 'em down at the lonely end of the ditch. That's a Joe-Pye cultivar I actually bought last fall.
4. Before all this, I got to talk to my good friend Andrea down in Tejas, from Grow Where You’re Planted. I hope it bucked her up knowing that their stellar season is just about to pop!
5. It stormed again, but stopped, so I still got to garden.
6. Saw the first Colchicum popping up under the black cherry tree as I planted the free aster.
7. Appreciated the first Japanese anemone bloom, the first I’ve ever grown, from tiny plants put in last fall. I’m so proud of these.
Anemone praecox
8. Talked to my dad.
9. Spent the whole day with Buddy until he pooped out and went to bed.
10. Sweet corn.
Hope your Sunday was equally fruitful, or just good and lazy.
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