Summertime Bloom Begins

Gooseneck Loosestrife lurks below the roadside.

'Haas Halo' hydrangea. The deer did not eat it.

The chicory filled grass Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light'

Would you believe there is a vegetable garden in there filled with growing fine produce? There is.

On the other side

Yucca, parsnips and verbena on a stick.

In my vegetable garden in the summertime.

The leeks are in bloom.

Squash grows.

Daylilies bloom. The verbena lives here now.

A forgotten seed grown white baptisia shows itself.

It's summertime.

The Hairball Is Dead

Button is having his afternoon nap. I may get there one day.

 

The hairball that was my mortgage is dead. Hallelujah. Paid in full.

I could be more excited, but I am exhausted, physically, mentally and spiritually. There is Fly Poison in this picture with Bottlebrush Buckeye and Aralia cordata 'Sun King'. Excitement can wait for another day.

I barely moved through the garden. My pace did not qualify as such, an exhalation of weariness. 

Yes, there is time for a cleansing fire.

Time for the heiau to grow.

There is a light in the trudgery of everybody's life.

And a basement patio to rest on.

The Fifteen Year Anniversary

On a June morning head high in a patch of feral parsnips, I remembered

I arrived on the mountaintop fifteen years ago this week.

In my fifteenth June, the mortgage was paid off. A hairball was combed out. Maybe. 

I am kama'aina.

I've seen blue skies through the tears in my eyes

And I realize

I'm going home. I'm going home.

On A Country Road

It looks like a hairball that needs a good combing out.

June Bloom Day

June is the greenest month of the year when the plants are reaching full size well before many of them bloom. There are plenty of flowers about, but it is not like the big color bursts of spring. The summertime show starts in July.

We can start Bloom Day with Thermopsis caroliniana. It has done much better for me than Baptisia and has begun to gently self sow. That reminds me. A white baptisia I grew from seed is blooming for the first time. I need to go look at it.

Into the chartreuse Lush we wander.

Where the foliage can get mighty big, to see what flowers we may find.

The 'Black Gamecock' Louisiana Iris has started to flower in a week that can only be described as weirdly hot and humid without any rain. My body does not process that kind of hot very well anymore.

The glass is half cracked and the white Iris ensata grown from seedlings have become large blooming clumps. I should have just taken starts of the purple and lavender ones I wanted. Patience doesn't always work out.

The candle stick blooms of Bottlebrush Buckeye prepare to open.

Persicaria polymorpha in full bloom frames the Great lawn where the Louisiana iris named Clyde resides.

Clyde is blue and a sprig is going to go live in a vat of pond scum to multiply. I need more. Funny how that is with flowers. So if you need more, go to Bloom Day Headquarters for flowers from around the world.

I will be outside with Clyde.

The Roadside Vegetable Garden For 2022

The future is in storable root crops, squash and dried beans. That is the theme of this year's roadside vegetable garden. The feral parsnips are in bloom.

The vegetable garden is fully planted on this 12th day of June. The cucumbers and squash went in today. I had two full flats of seedlings and was worried they wouldn't all fit in there. I managed to squash them all in. I even had one opening left for extra squash seeds.

There are four kind dry beans: Mississippi pink eye and California black eye peas, Black Turtle beans and Six Nation Iroquois. Beans are easy.

 

The peppers are still sitting there after almost a month. The tomatoes have perked up and are starting to grow. The abundant germination of beets and carrots is still a challenge. I tossed on some slug bait. Something is eating the sprouts.

The okra has germinated along with the dry beans. Now all it needs is some hot. We came close to 80 degrees today.

The feral parsnips and Meidiland roses are in bloom.

I hate roses. This was the only rose up here when I arrived that ever bloomed well and looked halfway decent. I found a rooted stem and transplanted it along my drive. It did so well, now there are more. One day I will surely curse that decision.

When the chicory blooms in the morning, the garden will be red, white and blue.

Up To The Roadside Vegetable garden

Foxglove have established themselves on the slope along the driveway. They have been migrating downhill. I'd like them to wander back up. Self-sustaining populations are a goal in the wild cultivated gardens. I don't always get to pick where that happens.

I have been happy to see that the Angelica gigas has also sown itself about the garden. When the population starts increasing I will know the introduction was a success. 

Along the scenic byway, the grasses are growing tall and the chicory is getting ready to bloom.

The cucumbers and squashes will be ready for planting in the roadside vegetable garden this weekend. I went to tidy a bit to prepare for their arrival. The dried beans and okra have germinated. The carrots and beet sowing were mostly a failure. Something is eating the fresh spouts. The tomatoes and peppers are just sitting there. It has been three weeks since their planting. It is time to grow! The feral parsnips are in bloom.

Then I wandered back down to the Carrion Flower to take another whiff. The smell was faintly there. It was the scent of an earthy manure compost, a fragrance I know all too well.

I Went To Smell The Carrion Flower

The dead looking thing is the Barton's Cypress, Chamaecyparis thyoides. The winter burn was so bad from the Polar blast in March I am declaring them a failure. They have struggled with snow and winter for years. Cryptomeria japonica 'Black Dragon' is the planned replacement.

The scent was not there. The flowers were open.

I will have to go smell again another day.

The Blue Iris Of Maui

The Louisiana Iris Clyde Redmond I bought mail order from a NY grower has finally bloomed after four or five years and one relocation in the garden. Just one flower. Just three fans. Coming from a NY grower I was hoping it would tolerate my cool and cold a tad better, but it has struggled. The Black Gamecock Louisiana Iris has done much better up here. It came from local stock.

I grew and propagated this blue iris on Maui. It began as a weed in a potted plant I bought at a flea market. I have no idea anymore what the actual plant I bought was. A tiny seedling that looked like a lily of some sort said save me. I did, just to find out what it was.

That weed seedling grew up to be a prolific deep blue Louisiana Iris of unknown parentage that bloomed in abundance and set seed leading to a pure white strain. Iris were not common on Maui. I remember the blue iris of Maui.

After twenty years on Maui, I moved just a bit outside of Clyde, NC as the crow flies. Somehow it became known to me that the blue iris of Maui was named Clyde Redmond. I had Black Gamecock growing here, why wouldn't Clyde? I had to have one through the looking glass. Clyde Redmond liked Maui better. I should take a sprig of Clyde to live beside a vat of pond scum and see if that helps. 

I am the junk man  in blue.