Fall Gold Swap Afterglow: Photos & Chat

Heya! Thanks so much to everybody who came, bringing wonderful plants, delicious treats, and -- most importantly -- friendly faces to make our DG gathering such a success yesterday. We missed those who couldn't be there, but we're already looking forward to the next time we get together, and we're hoping to see you then!

Here's a thread where we can post photos, chat about the swap, ask questions about plants we brought home, etc. I belatedly realized I gave a rather abbreviated garden tour with some hand waving about "more stuff over that way," so if anybody has questions about plants they've seen (or plants they'd like to put on their wish list for spring divisions), just let me know!

I had a wonderful day, thanks to all of you! :-)

My FIL took this sunset photo from the deck after the party parted.

Here's the gang!

From left to right: Lisa & Jerry, Holly & Ric, Devon (Happy), Bobbie (Miata), Felicia (my MIL), Theresa, Angela & Adam, Tom, Jill (Critter), Sherry (Nutmeg) & Ron, Al & Irene.

Theresa is my best friend who gets me into a lot of gardening and yard sale mischief. Her family has been my chief source of local garden advice and inspiration... Angela and Tom are her sibs, Al & Irene are her parents. I am trying to convince them to join DG en masse, so I was glad when Theresa brought them along yesterday. I think yesterday's event may have been convincing! :-)

Bobbie & Felicia getting some goodies from the buffet

It was such a lovely day to sit out on the deck!

Swapping plants... do you think Angela found something she's excited about?

Bobbie, Happy, and Theresa's brother Tom swapping plants

Some hugs were swapped too!

We had a little garden tour after the plant swap...

Tom found a couple of Mimosa seedlings to dig up (I think Mike was helping).

I dug some siberian irises for Holly & Happy.

I also dug a clump or two of Translucent Golden Thyme for Lisa & Happy from the bed by the front door.

(Lisa -- the other plants from the bottom of the driveway are threadleaf Coreopsis 'Zagreb' and lanceleaf Coreopsis 'Early Sunrise'.)

(edited to say the photos so far have been from my FIL's camera... I think there are a couple on mine also, and I'll upload them later.)

This message was edited Sep 21, 2008 4:45 PM

Well, the folks are all packed up and getting ready to head back today. Their visit was too short! We did some fun nursery browsing yesterday (Dutch Plant Farm and Meadow Farms... Meadow Farms has a huge selection of blooming mums for I think it was $3.50 a pot!).

My MIL is all set for her new little mini-bed of DLs... She's got 6 really nice pots of 'Happy Returns' (I'll split them up further if she decides she wants a bigger bed), a couple other pots of smaller types from me, and we found her a stuffed pot of 'Eenie Meenie' at the nursery yesterday. She is stunned by the number of DLs Sherry brought for her and by the number of hostas that Mike dug for her!

Looks like everyone had a great time! Thanks for the photos, always enjoy being able to 'meet' everyone through the pictures even if I can't make it to the swap :)

We missed you! A few of your pots found new homes, though (some of them even went out empty, despite my best last minute efforts).

The back seat of Mom's car was filled with plants when they left yesterday. She kept saying that they'd never fit all those plants into the car (Mike's hostas made 3 huge pots plus a little pot of a variegated one)... LOL... clearly she has never seen me pack my car for a swap! One blue storage tub with DLs in the bottom, a few smaller pots stacked on those, brimming at the top with the 2 pots of mums she picked up for the front porch... that left just the 3 big hosta pots to go next to the tub on the back seat... no problem! :-)

We had such a great time. Ric brought the camera but with all the fun we never did take any pictures. He had a great time talking to your FIL and your FIL did a great job capturing the event for us. Apparently according to Ric we missed part of the tour, something about a table in the basement full of Orchids???
Really enjoyed meeting your friends, they were all very nice and interesting would be wonderful additions to the DG family.

LOL... nope, no orchids, just some amaryllises taking their ease and a very messy seed starting area with light shelves etc... right now, nobody gets to see the basement!

I'm quite determined to get that clan onto DG one way or another! Irene is still a little computer-uneasy, but I think I need to work on Angela or Tom... :-)

Jim's folks have been members for a while now, and I really want to get Mom onto the forums, but it's a gradual process as she gets more comfortable with doing more than email on her new computer. She is still having option anxiety over picking a username. I'll start a thread in the welcome forum for her when she makes a decision, and I'll post a link! :-)

Ahhh what fun...I'm so sorry I missed it!!!

That happy never can get enough Siberian iris. C'mere, I sitll have a bunch, Somebody told me shes in an Iris society and they say Siberians will eventually quit unless moved to a whole new spot. A self allelopathic thing. I dunno...

Yup I also am sorry I missed the conversation and swapping..Like I need any more plants ...

Somebody left a big pot of purple siberian iris, and I'm about out of room in my "soggy spot" so am passing it along to a good friend with a pond. (Her sons are the ones I hired the previous weekend to help mulch etc, and they did a great job!)

I'm sorry the schedule didn't work out better.. If Jim's folks had been able to stay longer I might have tried to see if Sunday would have worked as well or better for people this time, but between their schedule and the early start I knew Jim had on Monday, that just wasn't going to work.

There were a couple of orphan pots tucked into Mom's box of DLs that she didn't remember asking for.. does anybody recognize these? No labels.. can you tell me what I've got here? :-)

one more shot (from my camera) of the buffet counter, with Holly and Ric on one side, Bobbie and Happy on the other

and for anybody in the area... here's what the selection of mums looked like last Sunday at Meadow Farms, big full plants for something like $4 per pot (may have been $3.49 or $4.49 but was less than $5).

Try with trying eyes as I do....I saw no Sedum Autum Joy. I sure know where there is a bunch to share. They will save for the next get together.

Anyone close by Williamsport, Pa who would dig and divide may have easily up to seventy five divisions for mass or large bed plantings.

Oh Critter............ I still have a few plants I'm not sure about. These two came from the mint tray you gave me. One is marked Jessies sweet pear, there isn't enough of the leaf left to get a good picture. The other one was marked as a Brunnera Mac. here is the picture of that.

Jesse's Sweet Pear is a hybrid mint from Jim Westerfield.

LOL, that's not a Brunnera! I must have done a quick repotting in an old pot or maybe got a volunteer, sorry about that. That's "Bloody Dock," and it should be perennial for you (mine have been so far, coming back after 2 winters even though I thought initially they were supposed to be only biennials).

Here's the PF page (Rumex sanguineus) http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/1999/

Thanks Critter, It didn't look like any Brunnera I've ever seen but wasn't exactly something I thought of as a mint either. Thanks for the ID.

Watch out with the Bloody Dock -- I have some too, and I love the markings, but it does self-seed voraciously. It also likes a fairly moist soil - might self-sow less in less favorable conditions.

Mine is in that bed around the side of my house, by the walkway to the back deck... it doesn't get a lot of extra water there, and so far it hasn't tried to take over. The perilla on the other hand... LOL!

LOL? Sorry if I'm being a curmudgeon or something, but I'm just not seeing the humor. I see Perilla in the woods here all the time. It's yet another problem, this one apparently being caused by gardeners.
This is what the Maryland Invasive Species Council has to say about Perilla fructescens:

"Widely recognized by biologists and natural resource managers to degrade natural resources and/or negatively impact native species"


"Known to have a negative economic impact on agricultural or natural resources."

In Pennsylvania, it's a "serious threat to our native ecosystems".

I never tasted anything worth all that.

It hasn't been escaping beyond that one bed, where it came up like a groundcover the year after I planted a single plant of perilla. The "LOL" was for my amazement at what one plant could become. I didn't realize it was on the list of problem invasives... volunteers will be pulled next year. I'm not eating it; I just left it alone because it attractively filled bare spots. Thanks for the heads-up.

Sorry, I thought you knew it was listed and were growing it anyway. But those tiny seeds are like nothing for the wind to blow around.

Thanks for the warning, too Claypa. I was given some years ago and haven't seen any signs of them growing in the area around my house, the woods or hedgerow. Even in the yard they are only in the area where they were first planted and a few volunteers near the compost. I always leave them up for the small birds to eat the finches love the seed heads I wonder how many plants start by bird droppings. We don't eat it either.I had no idea that they were so invasive either.
There are woods behind my house and a creek not too far away I remember years ago while out riding in the middle of those woods where no houses are around finding a very large stand of bamboo growing along the creek replacing the natural woods. There is a house miles and miles away along the same creek with a stand of bamboo planted by the owner and I always wonder if that is where the wild stand came from.

I have seen perilla various places and couldn't put a name to until I grew the purple one. The ones I;ve seeen in woods and pond edges were mostly green, but the leaves and seed heads are the same.

Invasives behave strangely, for sure. I have had several (I'm thinking right now of a trumpet vine, and a particular persicaria, but there are others) that were well behaved for years, and suddenly went nuts. I don't know what would account for that, but it definitely is true. Maybe one year the conditions were extra favorable. But it has been very hard to eradicate them ever since.