Red and Gold*

Gorgeous red peony in my neighbor's yard (mine are smaller, later, pink and white). Ruby coloured crimped petals with a garland of gold - perfectly understated elegance.
Speaking of which this is most definitely not!

*OR: The Peony and the PCV

Chartreuse

It's still officially Spring so I'm going to forgo Nature's burst into bloom* and let myself be seduced again by green, or more precisely, chartreuse. A mix of yellow and green, chartreuse is bright and peppy almost like the new growth on the weeping juniper tree.

 

The difficulty is finding a shot that will truly reflect the color on the screen. In the yard these hostas are edged with a perfect chartreuse. On the mac? Not so much.

Chartreuse is elusive -  at first glance it's everywhere but through the camera lens the lime-tinged conifers outside the kitchen window are just pale green.

This shrub held promise but the yellow turns out to be insipid not inspirational; wishy-washy, or simply washed-out.

 

It's a colour that's hard to define exactly; the paint chips lean to more muddy yellow hues while the hex designation on the web is an equal mix of yellow and green that results in an acid tone. I was so obsessed with Chartreuse that when we painted the kitchen I tried many variations on the kitchen walls from Anjou Pear to Sweet Pear and every chartreuse inspired pea shade in between. Sadly none of them replicated the color that I find in my yard... or the one in my imagination.

 

Perhaps the problem is that chartreuse is such a saturated hue it needs a contrasting colour to set it off- a smoky blue or a stone grey,

a soft silver green or a bluey-purple?

Why the fascination with chartreuse, apart from the mellifluous sound of the word itself? Because, every so often I'm reminded that once in my sophisticated youth there was a fondness for liqueurs. I was a Benedictine girl but my drinking companion loved Chartreuse and asked for one in a country pub atop a lonely hillock in the wilds of Cumbria. She got what she deserved. The bartender laconically replied: We ain't got no green but we got som o' that yella. Our faux urbanity dissolved in a fit of giggles and henceforth "som o' that yella" was used to describe any delightful but possibly pretentious and overpriced item.

Not at all like the gorgeous chartreuse green of the new leaves on this azalea or the flecks of colour inside the white blossoms.

*(I fibbed because I couldn't leave you without one shot of the yard in bloom).

Inspired by Daffodils

One lone daffodil to be precise. I don't know the variety but the combination of pale sunshine yellow and hot orange makes me want to sing* and decorate with:

A bright orange Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair

Soft saffron Elin bed linens by Area from The Conran Shop 

Finnish designer Sanna Annukka's folklore inspired Kanteleen fabric from Marimekko

Or maybe I should make a couple of DIY art panels with a quart of Benjamin Moore Citrus Orange and another of Lemon Meringue?

What would I be singing? Well, certainly this number from the Belgian days

Magnolia

Such fleeting beauty...

Artistic License

The Pierre Bonnard painting, Table in Front of the Window, in the previous post must have left more of an impression than I thought.


It influenced something I'm calling Forsythia Through The Office Window.... on a rainy day.
Enjoy!

Seasonal change

The hibiscus may still be flowering but there is a 50% off sale at the nursery so I wandered over there this morning and selected three evergreens, two Russian conifers and a dwarf blue spruce that can overwinter in the big pots outside the garage.


Of course we'd didn't just discard the hibiscus. After the lovely surprise I had when last year's plants flowered again this year I got Sadie The Guy to dig three holes in the same sheltered south-facing spot and plant them. Even if they don't make it through the winter they will probably still flower for a couple more weeks.

Imagery

As the financial meltdown continues, with news that Playboy is now a junk stock with no future, I stepped out to the beach to take some shots. It's pretty stormy out there, too. These are the words that kept leaping to mind: Bail, bailout, maelstrom, sinking, ship.....


Then, to the side of the road I spotted one perfect, beautiful flower on a scrap of wasteground, thriving in spite of the wind, the peeing dogs and the occasional truck. There's always hope....

Smells Like a Spa

As the thyme had decided that it couldn't survive, let alone thrive, along the flagstone path I had to come up with another solution. I still wanted something that would smell great if you brushed up against it, was hardy enough to tolerate to being trodden on and had a green or grey color. The local nursery had sent us a $10 coupon as an anniversary gift so on Monday I wandered around the new autumn selection looking for something suitable.
I was drawn to this plant, Cumberland Rosemary, by the herbal scent. It's reminiscent of rosemary but has slight eucalyptus note to it. It looks like a softer, more feathery version of the rosemary bush but is supposed to be hardy. They did say it was the first time they'd offered it so it will be an experiment for all of us to see if it makes it through a New York winter but if it's as warm as it was last year it should fine (global warming may have advantages, after all).
Beach car still smells like a spa, (and I only transported three plants two miles) which makes a nice change from wet dog, an advantage I hadn't counted on. We'll see if it likes this sunny spot and forms nice clumps of fragrant green along the path. If not I think I'll have to learn to like the raw earth look!

Garden Round Up

Let's see what's doing well in the yard this back end of summer


The impatiens continue to pop up all over the yard, some where I had them last year and some in random places that have never seen an annual before. This beauty, however, is in a planter and its petal was pierced by a new bud.


The sedums I planted in early July behind the barbecue are now flowering. They seem to really like the mix of sun and shade back there.


The thyme we planted around the flagstone path? Not so much. There's almost nothing left of it now. That really was a waste of.....yep, time.

Summer surprise

It's not been the best summer here on Long Island. It was too cold to swim in the pool on Memorial Day, too rainy on July 4th and and not warm enough for us on Labor Day either. Three summer holidays and not one swim party, that hasn't happened before. In fact we added it up and The Guy has only been in the pool seven times this season. I've done a little better but we just haven't used it as much as normal. Nor have we barbecued. Rain, hail, cold days, whatever. We look forward to summer all winter and then it's gone in a flash. This year it went in a flash of lightning and earth-moving crashes of thunder.
And yet, some things almost make up for it; like this annual impatiens from last summer that somehow managed to survive the winter (and my weeding and planting efforts in this corner of the yard). I walked out of the back door and saw this blossom amongst the dark glossy leaves of the holly. I guess it's protected back there and with luck, like the hibiscus on the other side of the yard, it will keep flowering until the first frost.

Hydrangea colour

There's a rich blue hydrangea at the east side of the yard that blooms throughout the summer. In front used to be a patch of lawn 4'x 6' with low-growing junipers on either side. Gradually over the past four years that patch of grass has turned to moss, and although we've removed all the ivy and weeds from that area, it was looking sad and neglected. The blue hydrangea was the one bright spark of colour on that side.


This weekend we decided the lawn would never return and planting another couple of hydrangeas would be more aesthetically pleasing and (once they were in) less labour-intensive. Of course August isn't the optimum time to find hydrangeas at the nursery but we set off on our quest anyway. We found only one worthy specimen, Hydrangea Annabelle, whose 10" snowball heads should be a joy next summer. The Guy planted it early Sunday morning and it almost covers the lawn area right now. By next Spring you will never know there had ever been a minute patch of grass on that border.

Maui

I try not to play favorites with my plants but this Hibiscus and its two siblings have bloomed triumphantly since I bought them home a couple of weeks ago. Pretty pink flowers with a fuchsia center, that arresting yellow stamen and dark glossy leaves, how could I not love them? And the name of the variety is Maui, isn't that perfect? It's the nearest I'll get to Hawaii this summer so it's a bonus.

Hibiscus by the Garage

They are having a 50% off annuals at the local nursery so I scored three of these lovely pink hibiscus and three bone colored pots to put them in so I could beautify the garage


I started by buying just two yesterday and decided that looked odd so I went back this morning and got one more. Very luckily they had one pink plant left. Yesterday they had tons but at $25 for a 3' plant they were selling like hot pink hibiscus should.


This is something I'd been meaning to do since we moved here - to draw the eye away from the acres of asphalt and focus on something pretty. Something pretty and pink.

We need more friends like these

We came home from the Jersey Shore to find our neighbor, the loyal blog reader, leaving three enormous Ligularia "Little Lanterns" on our doorstep. He'd been sent by the awesome designer, who knows of our trials to turn the sunken bed from dump to shady dell, one free (or extremely cheap) plant at a time.


In a 100' by 20' area I had plenty of spaces where they could have been planted but I chose the area under the black pine where the can be seen from the dining room and den and from the tiny window in the dressing room. This spot gets a couple of hours of sunshine a day and has the loamiest soil so they should do well. The awesome designer chose the ligularia because of my ongoing frustrations with Heucheras. Every one I've planted has failed to thrive, even though they should be an obvious choice for these conditions. My long term plan is to find a Heuchera that will contrast with the Ligularia. I'm hoping the silver ones will do better than the copper-leaved varieties that I've tried before and if I can find any on sale at the nursery I'll experiment.

Trickin' Out the Yard

When we moved her 47 months ago (I can't believe it's been that long, it seems like yesterday) we took a look at the property and pronounced it perfect "We don't have to do a thing here", The Guy said, "Except take down those trees a foot away from the window" I added. "Ha" the garden gods mocked us, and this weekend found us spending a few more dollars at the nursery,


We got a tray of Woolly Thyme to go between the bluestone pavers on the north path


And sedums to make the rockery next to the bridge look pretty. The two in the foreground I planted a couple of years ago and they are huge now so I hope the others grow in the same.


Unfortunately while planting we discovered that one post of the bridge has completely rotted and the only thing holding it up is the cross span. We'll need to replace that and six boards before anyone leans on it.
If the garden gods are reading this: we are not finished with the yard, we will never be finished with the yard. We are sorry for our hubris.

Spring

There's lots of yellow


And the promise of more colour to come

Still more sedums

Sedum sieboldii
Originally uploaded by modernemama

This is Sedum sieboldii, which I planted in full sun on the rock bed by the bridge. There isn't much soil there, so hopefully it will thrive.

Plant, prune, weed, water, snap

That pretty much sums up Mothers' Day for me. The herbs: chives, basil, coriander and oregano went into a terracotta planter. I put a sweet bay bush next to the sage in front of the kitchen window and I will get another rosemary bush soon. The planter above is new too; I try to put something totally different in there each year. Last year it was an everlasting hydrangea that's now under the den window. This year it's this spiky dracaena with sweet potato vines and variegated ivy.
In the afternoon I whiled away an hour under-pruning the large rhododendrons and nipping the dead bits of the azaleas, which took a beating from the winter weather this year. The warm January forced new growth while the brutal February and March blasted the leaves causing them to turn brown and wither. We seem to have completely lost one rhododendron out back and half the others are badly damaged. That seems to be true of most of the rhodos on Long Island this year.
I also spent an hour or so trying to eradicate the Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) before it gets a hold. I don't want to use Roundup so I'm trying to pull it out but I think I'm fighting a losing battle.
Then it was time to water all the plants that get missed by the sprinkler system and take a few photos of my handiwork.