What's Your View?

And I forgot to say, now my next door neighbor has infected some of his neighbors too.

Wow! What a dramatic mass of Lilies! I love the idea of a hedge of Lilies.

My camera seems to be dead, so I haven't gotten pics for a while. We had several friends over for the weekend and a few of them took some garden pics that I've snagged. Its interesting to see what others choose to focus on- so many things I'd never have thought to take a pic of. Also found it interesting that some of the best shots were from a phone.

This is part of our view looking from the front of the house into the front yard, and captured my last Lily of the season, speciosum 'Rubrum'.

This is taken from the lower north corner of the front yard facing west. That bed is new this year and has several first year Lilies, lots of perennial seedlings, and various annuals and Dahlias for some color this year.

I like that first pic. Nice....

Just wonderful.

I like them both. Very nice. :)

I'm amazed at how much your yard looks like Massachusetts yards, gemini!

As we shift seasons slightly, grasses and smokebushes become the stars of the show.

They add tons of subtle color.

The grasses bloom at different times.

It was foggy this morning, and it makes them really pretty. This is silberfeder.

My DH's favorite grass - when it blooms it's almost 3 feet taller, to 14 feet, and it's completely hardy. Gives a certaon over-the-topness to the garden.

Donna

So does the fog! Cool pics and I love how the bloom adds to the fuzziness. :)

Cool Donna. I love the giant-ness of it all ;)

We have had truly freaky weather. Fog, rain, and coditions more like England than the midwest. I couldn't be;ieve, and had to grab my camera and capture it before the sun burned it off.

Thanks! It's fun to show them to great gardeners.

What a peaceful view....very nice!

If you check out my Aug 5th view, you'll see that my view was not so pretty for a couple months. The tree service finally got everything hauled away, but by that time my plants were very smashed, trampled on and all the markers had been flattened, raked up and tossed into a pile or lost. That area was well passed needing a redo, so I dug everything up and put in 2 raised beds each 12'X4'. The stepping stones that were used for edging are now being used for a path way between them. When I get some help, I will moved the trellis back in the corner in front of the Hydrangea bush.

The third of the beds nearest the trellis will have lilies, the middle of both beds, Iris and the fronts, daylilies and miniature Iris. Will have to wait till they bloom to be able to ID everything and decide if they will need to be moved again. The Iris were way overdo to be divided and I ended up with just a few good pieces of each, so it may take 2 years for them to bloom. but I think they will like the raised beds.

Will put narrower paths around all the other sides of the beds for easy access, and then need to redo some of my old paths so that they will match up with the center path. Am trying to get all the vines killed off the chain link fence and will redo that area too. What with moving paths around, I may come up with a little extra planting space.

Guess one of the fun parts of gardening is that our views are always changing. (sorry about the view of my cat)

Susan

Here you can see the corner where the trellis will go. Hopefully my neighbors will repair the fence someday and I will get rid of what is left of the chain link in that area. The sticks in the pile are waiting for new orders of lilies to arrive.

Looks really nice, Susan ~ you've done a lot of work. Isn't that every cat's way of greeting people? ;)

Looks supa!!!! You are making a silk purse out of a sow's ear! (love that expression!)

Looking great, Susan! I can't wait to see it next year, after you've worked your magic. There's something so satisfying about reworking garden spots. And I find it fun to see whats been happening underground. I've been digging today too, and have a lot of sympathy for buggycrazy digging her mondo bulbs now. Good grief! I didn't expect such increase in bulb size with the clay content here. It is a dark loamy clay, so good soil, but heavier than I thought would promote such bulb size. A clump of 'Yelloween' had to go since it topped 8' this year- way too tall for its spot. Those bulbs were like grapefruits, with some babies as big as tennis balls! Then there was my high holy assortment of yellow and white OTs from Faraway, that were way too far away from my view, and my nose. Those babies were all bigger than softballs. They now reside in a loamier, richer soil, and are underplanted with blue Flax (which may not like the richer soil...hmmmm..?).

Your blue flax will probably bloom just fine, but be a bit more lax. I am not sure what will happen in your climate, but I might expect them to act more like annuals than perennials.

These bloomed the 2nd year from seed, but I've heard they tend to be short lived (especially in richer soil I'd imagine?). The plants had lots of seed pods on them, so I sprinkled those about after I planted them.

Blue Flax reseeds extremely well. :) It reseeds so well for me that I rip it out by the handfuls where I don't want it. :)

Your well on your way back to a beautiful garden for next year :-)) I don't know why but the cat struck me as extemely funny there and I just couldn't stop laughing.

My view today.

It is kind of pretty. You can keep it, though. ;)

I think it's headed your way!

It wasn't supposed to get this nasty until tonight so I waited to harvest my peppers. 25° right now.
Yes, that's snow in the bowl. Makes me wanna cry......

Ouch.

gorgeous peppers though. What are you going to do with them all? Are you saying they're ruined???

Moby, I think you're colder than me! I bottomed at 23F this morning.

This garden looks better with snow right now. Not much going on since my Impatiens namchabarwensis froze the night before, and Impatiens balfourii and glandulosa last night.

Some of my orientpet seedlings:

I know what you mean Lefty. The garden was looking a little tired and a fresh dusting of snow is always pretty.

This is fairly cold, even for Minn. When I lived there back in '84, I set my wedding date for Oct. 5 of the following year because the weather and fall foliage was so beautiful. Ended up having a sloppy little snow storm the day before, but it cleared up and we sure didn't need coats or gloves ~ unlike this morning! After bringing in the first load of peppers, my hands were freezing and had me digging out the gloves.

Not sure yet if the peppers are ruined until I cut into them and see how the texture is. What makes me the most sad is that I grew these red and orange peppers specifically for eating ripe as I'm not expecially fond of green ones. Either way, we'll eat up what we can, the rest will be chopped and frozen for chili and stews.

The earliest ripening colored bell pepper I ever grew was Sunrise Orange (or a name close to that). The seed isn't easy to find. Good tasting too.