Foliage

My sweet bay tree seems very happy to be out of her pot.
I have carried her all around the country
and she's lived but since I've planted her she's
really flourished.
This picture was after the great rain we had yesterday.

Fatsia.
I wanted a sort of tropical feel to the side of the house,
but I questioned yesterday whether it isn't
starting to look like an overgrown jungle.

Unknown hosta.
A row of these were planted in front of the house by the previous owners.
I killed two of them by trying to move them to the back yard.
Thank god I didn't try to move more.

Elephant Ear 'Black Magic'
Not looking too black.
I wonder if its because it now has to hide under the angel trumpet?
Anyways it almost disapears in this spot
so I'm trying to find a place it can shine.

Amy Azalea with new leaves.
Underneath are her leaves
that had what I believed were spider mites,
but might have been azalea lace bugs.
Either way a couple of applications of soapy water
seemed to stop the spread and brought out pretty new leaves.

This bush, I don't know what it is.
I see them all the time in Lowes or in people's yards
but I never really stopped to find out what it was.
I like how someone trimmed it into a tree form though.
It gets pretty white drooping flowers on it,
but you can hardly see them through the verigated leaves.

New leaves from our oak trees.
I believe they are laurel oaks.

Turk's Cap or Malvaviscus drummondii

Ever since I read about turk's cap over at Zanthan Gardens
I've wanted one.
I pass them everyday on my way to and from work.
They have been blooming up and down Old Shell for months now.
How pretty it would be blooming next to our bedroom window!

I could have gone and bought one from Plant Delights for $11 (plus shipping),
but when someone called it a weed online
it was all I could take.
I made a plan to go steal a cutting this weekend.

I loaded up the babe, the stroller, and some clippers
(who knows how woody this thing might be)
and headed out for the great heist.

Actually it didn't turn out to be all that exciting.
It just happend to be growing down an alleyway,
not in front of anyone's house,
with a bunch of other weedy plants.
Underneath the large mother plants were little babies.
I pulled one up.
Probably not a great example for Alex,
if he even knew what his crazy mother was doing.

Anyways...
I got my weed, Yay!!

 

Dreaming of Fall

We have finally been getting some rain!
It gives me a break from trying to keep everything
alive...watering morning, noon, and night.

So I've been dreaming of fall.
(I know I have a long way to go)

I've started to order things that won't get here
and /or I can't plant for another couple of months.

First I ordered two types of Turban garlic,
Lotus and China Stripe. I wanted to plant some garlic
because my mother used to grow it under the plum tree
in Summerdale, but Bill Finch's artlcle on
Growing Garlic in Mobile really got me excited
about doing it.

Then I've ordered a bunch of bulbs
from Southern Bulb Company :

Butter and Eggs
Double Roman
Pink Rain Lily
Jonquil
Campernelle
Lent lily

I guess I got all caught up in the excitement
and ordered some more over at Old House Gardens :

Erilcheer
Oxblood Lily and
Byzantine Glads

I still have to order seeds for the fall/winter vegtable garden too.
We are going to try a bunch of greens this year.

Babies

This is a baby snake I found while making my rounds this morning.
Isn't he cute?!
He'll probably grow up to be a some huge, horrible
poisonous snake,
but I left him alone.

This is baby Althea.

Her mother is kind of a white/light pink

with a red inside.

What a pleasant suprise to have this just pop up.



Here's mama making more babies.



My baby.

Side Patio Garden

Side Patio Garden
Originally uploaded by amyferg.

Root Garden

We have a large pine tree in our back yard
who's roots are exposed down the side of a hill
like a waterfall.
I've decided to put hens and chicks
(and maybe other succulents?)
in the nooks and crannies
the roots create.

The pine needles seem to be falling more this week.
According to this site on pine straw management,
there is a small peak around this time
(or maybe more around June?)
in the slow monthly rise that peaks in November.

Azalea Fruit?

Guess it has to be.
Can't really find anything on the internet about it.

Update: Dad says they are new leaves
with the begining of a flower bud.
I don't know about that.
I still can't find anything.

"It's not the heat, it's the humidity"

At weather.com for 36608 :

3pm

92°F

Feels Like
103°F

azalea caterpillar

 

Second Season Tomatoes

According to the Plain Garden Planting Cycle we have two tomato seasons here.
I have never tried to grow tomatoes in the second season.
By now the tomato plants are usually 10 ft tall and
I'm just fed up with watering and staking and bugs
to even think about starting this again.

But we got our plants started pretty early this year
and they were all determinate plants so they didn't get out of control.

So I cut off two branches of the old tomatoes,
stuck them in bottles of water on the windowsill
until they sprouted roots
and put them back in the cleaned-out pickle buckets.

Just two of them.
We'll see how this goes.
Gary says it will proababy go great
and we'll be mad we only did two.

 

Interesting Ferns

At the bottom of all of our oak trees we have these ferns.
I don't know what kind they are
but they only plump up like this after it rains.
In a day or two they will be all shriveled up again.

The Forgotten Flowers

This morning I decided I was going to start taking pictures
of the forgotten flowers /plants around the yard.
Plants that just aren't that exciting.
This dianthus is about as far as I got.
The humidity was at 95%
and every time I wiped off the lens
it would fog up again.

This plant is almost 2 years old.
It blooms continuously.
It looks kind of pink in the picture but its really a dark red.
I bought some more to plant on the side of the patio.
They did well until the weather warmed up
and cut worms got to them.
The worms would cut off a piece which would die and turn brown
and then a new section would spring up.
I got so tired of looking at brown, dead plants everywhere
I dug them all up.

 

Wilted Azaleas

This is how badly we need rain.
The old Indian Azaleas are wilting.
Everything is wilting.
We got a little bit of rain today at lunch.
(That is why I didn't get a closer shot of this...I didn't want to get hit by lightning)
It was good enough for today.
Now if we could just get that everyday.