June 2009 – Ellis Hollow

Plants I should have put together

When I saw these shots from scattered spots around the garden on the thumbnails page, I wished that I’d put them all together in one place in the garden, too. The whites and purples work well together.

Verbascum. (Don’t know the species, but it’s seeding around nicely.)

Closer view

Cerinthe major

Purple-flowered tradescantia

White-flowered tradescantia

Purple-spotted foxglove

Another view.

A shrub whose name escapes me.

The verbascum I opened with, along with some Verbena hastata coming on. If the Verbena speeds up and/or the verbascum slows down, could be a nice pairing.

Rosa ‘Cuisse de Nymphe’

Or ‘Cuisse de Nymphe Emue’. Ask Delphine for a translation, and you’ll understand why the rather staid Brits changed this rose’s name to ‘Maiden’s Blush’. Unfortunately, these bloomed too late to enter in the Gardening Gone Wild rose photo contest. Oh well. Last year’s blooms were larger, not so rain-soaked.

Fallen grasses

Wet and stormy week. Those lovely volunteer grass patches I posted about a week ago went down. So did my Scotch thisltes, which has never happened before. (But that happenstance has me working on a Plan B pruning plan that could transform Scotch thistles from an architectural skyscraper of a plant to a prostate groundcover. More on that later.)

A week ago:

Gotta go weed…

Look out for late blight

late blight on tomato Late blight — a very destructive disease of tomatoes and potatoes (yeah, the same disease that caused the Irish potato famine) — has appeared here in New York earlier and more widespread than ever before.

Go check your tomatoes and potatoes for signs of the disease. If you’ve got it, there’s nothing you can do about it. But it’s important that you seal up the infected plants in a plastic bag to prevent its spread to other gardens or commercial farms, and report it to your local Cooperative Extension office.

You can find details on the Cornell University Department of Horticulture blog. Meg McGrath, Cornell plant pathologist has excellent images of the disease in her photo gallery, and Amy Ivy, horticulturist in Clinton and Essex Counties has a podcast on the subject.

The twist on this one: Late blight doesn’t overwinter up here. Its spores are usually carried up from the South on storm fronts. This year, it appears that one source of spores are from infected plants shipped in from production facilities in the South.

High-angle views

One of my favorite views of the garden is from our second-story bathroom window. Looking for a better view of the mystery bog grass the other day — looks like it’s American Manna Grass, Glyceria grandis (thanks Lisa) — I tried something a little different that gives me a similar high-angle view:

I fully extended my monopod, set the timer on the camera, and held it up over my head. I’m guessing that puts the camera up around 14 feet or so above ground level. Here are some other high-angle garden scenes.

Patio area.

Bottle tree/grass border.

Veggie garden. (Looks much better from on high than it does up close.)

Original bog grass shot.