We have plants! No more mud, no more growing chasm in the backyard where the runoff was carrying our dirt away. The landscapers finally arrived and we now look a lot more finished.
Can you find the plants in this photo? There are 29 of them (not counting the ones in the pots on the porch)!
The past two years I’ve posted articles titled “Too Much Zucchini?” and “Too Much Zucchini 2.0.” It’s time for a couple more recipes calling for zucchini, something most gardeners have in abundance at this time of year. As I’ve said before, you may have too many zucchinis, but you can never have too many zucchini recipes!
I sat me down to watch upon a bank
With ivy canopied and interwove
With flaunting honeysuckle. (John Milton)
Mention honeysuckle, and we think of green hedgerows, sultry summer days, and childhoods spent picking the flowers and putting them in our mouths to suck out the sweet nectar. There are around 180 species in the genus Lonicera. Fast growing and tolerant of inhospitable conditions, honeysuckles have much to recommend them. Many are valuable landscape plants able to withstand Colorado’s challenging conditions while presenting us with beautiful flowers and berries adored by birds.
With the hardscape decided, it’s finally time to consider the plants—my favorite part! Since our home came with a certificate good for a free garden design (e.g., they make you pay for it in the price of the house), I decided to hire a professional. She asked for a scale plan of our property and a list of plants I particularly like. I gave her four pages worth! (Really, I tried to only list my favorites). I also included a shorter list of plants I do not want in my yard—with junipers in the number 1 slot. (See last month’s post.)
While most people grow bearded irises for their rainbow of spectacular blooms, Variegated Sweet Iris (Iris pallida) is prized for its striking variegated leaves. Yes, it blooms in late spring with lovely violet-blue flowers, and your nose will appreciate their delightfully heady fragrance.
But long after the flowers fade, the stiff, sword-like leaves, with their vertical stripes of green, white and cream, will remain an exclamation point in the landscape. Plants grow two to three feet tall, and clumps spread over time.
We’d been working hard all week, moving slowly but determinedly through our list of move-in chores. It was time for a break. So… being the romantic sort (on occasion), my husband asked me if I’d like to go out for the evening—to look at rocks.
Sure, I answered. While not a huge fan of gravel and mulch, going out, even to look at rock piles, sounded tons better than another night spent discussing the placement of dressers and hanging pictures.
Three weeks have now passed since we took ownership of our new house. Three weeks of lugging heavy furniture from room to room until it looks “right”—or ends up in the “to sell” pile. Three weeks of unpacking boxes only to find we need to add shelving to closets before the contents have a place to land. Three weeks of making decisions—picking out new bar stools for the counter in the great room, choosing a table and chairs for the deck, researching what kind of window coverings we might want. Three weeks of spending every spare moment indoors, settling in.
I miss my birds. Until a month ago, we lived on almost five acres outside of town, with huge Ponderosa pine trees and a two-acre field. My yard list numbered over 60 species. I could stand at the kitchen window and watch three species of hummingbird at the feeder hanging from the eaves, and enjoy the antics of the Bluejays, Steller’s Jays, and Scrub Jays as they competed with the magpies for peanuts left on our balcony railing.
I really don’t like junipers, but it’s not their fault. Rather, I blame the landscapers.
Think of the countless homeowners who plant Pfitzer junipers (Juniperus chinensis ‘Pfitzeraiana’) in front of their living room windows, then shear them to a fraction of their normal size. That’s not fair to the plant, it’s unattractive, and it makes a lot of work for the gardener.
Similarly, junipers are planted along sidewalks and in parking lots (where they tenaciously hang on despite compacting foot traffic and scorching summer heat). Quickly outgrowing the space allotted, they’re pruned at the edge of the pavement, resulting in a wall of dead, brown branches.
It took me a while to warm up to a plant named “Spiderwort.” I kept getting this mental image of a cross between the crone in a fairytale (with warts on her nose) and a sinister tarantula. Not appealing!
Of course, worts are small plants used as food or medicinally. It’s not at all the same word as “wart.” And a Spiderwort is no more likely to host a friendly spider than any other garden plant. (Their common name comes from the silk-like threads of hardened sap that seep from a cut stem.)
I was finally won over by the beautiful blossoms and all-around toughness of this worthy garden perennial.
Mountain Plover 