Tea Root's Journal- Part Two

9 Oct '09 5:12 am

Hi-I haven't called in to contribute for ages-what with one thing and another my heart has not been in the garden at all.So it was lovely to call in this morning and read about the imaginative fairy garden you are creating,Tea root.I will call in to the other gardens after this and see what everyone is up to.

14 Oct '09 4:17 pm

I've snipped three bright orange pumpkins from the vine. Smile

14 Oct '09 9:23 pm

A harvest. Smile

Well done!

(When we used to grow pumpkins we made pumpkin soup... mmm!)

18 Oct '09 10:41 am

Thanks.

I've not tried pumpkin soup, but I'd probably like it.

15 Nov '09 12:03 pm

We're having a nice Indian summer here and by 10:00 this morning it was warm enough to work some out in the main garden. The sky was blue and the sun bright, and I started with picking some weeds out of the strawberry patch and noted the 'Bouquet' dill growing among it. It had been awhile since I'd weeded and there were many of them, but most not very big. I pulled out the dead pumpkin vine and dug up the rose bush and 'Moonshine' yarrow. Although the rose bush produced pretty pink blooms in the spring, it had been an eye sore for most of the year and I just didn't like it anymore. It grew by the butterfly house and that's where I now just want to grow borage which has popped up there and a simple wildflower or two that will probably come up in that area next year. Something I'll mention here is that the common yarrow I've grown is still a green ferny carpet while the 'Moonshine' yarrow had browned up. Oh, it probably would have come back, but I just didn't want that plant anymore, either. And by the way, the common yarrow patch still has some white blooms hanging on.

The patch of common foxglove looks really healthy and green and they are a good size. Of course, this herb is a biennial so they should sail through the winter and then reward me with a lovely mass of flowers come spring. The one Strawberry foxglove that's growing alongside that patch is also doing well still. However, it bloomed for me this year and so its life cycle should end once it gets cold enough. Meanwhile the young dogwood tree in a nearby corner has a few red leaves hanging on and the corkscrew willow has dropped yellow leaves into the garden. At one point during my gardening day, a blue jay squawked. It was perched on a honeysuckle branch.

As I was pulling or digging, I discovered that wild onion has popped up here and there. I like the smell of the stuff. I also enjoyed the smell of dill as I weeded among it and there's a soft ferny carpet of the common variety on the other side of the garden. The autumn season has turned bits of the dill leaves to colors of red, plum, and bronze. Some even looked pink! The 'Bells of Ireland' are dried and browned up and the seed of it by now must be scattered into the soil. Meanwhile, the 'Jewel of Africa' nasturtium flowers are still bright and fresh and there's quite a few left. I noticed that a lot of those blooms are a bright goldish yellow. Next year I don't want any nasturtiums growing where they're at now in the main garden. Instead I want to grow pumpkins in their place. If you remember the leek that I grew this year, it's still out there and it's green.

As for the wildflower garden behind the unattached garage, it's adorned with colors of purple, white, orange, yellow, and blue from cosmos, calendula and centaura. Then add to that the faded pink blooms of 'Cherry Rose' nasturtium which were attracting the honeybees. I dug up some mallow out of that bed.

And in the little garden in front of the greenhouse, there's an aloe plant that I've never brought in and the Texas terragon is still crowned with bright orange-yellow flowers. Meanwhile, the prickly pear sports a reddish fruit. And now I want to share that a new columbine has come up from seed in the fairy garden. I'm assuming that the seed has dropped from one of the yellow flowers of the columbine that's already there, and not from a columbine seed I've sown previously. But it would be lovely to see a columbine with blooms of a different color growing by that yellow-flowering one.

On a final note, it was after 4:30 in the afternoon when I came in from gardening for the day. It had cooled down a little and there was some cloud coverage. Smile

Tea Root's Journal- Part Two

garden plans

Pumpkin harvest...

An autumn update...