When Blogs Collide

What happens? Will you see the same set of images and hear the same story?















I spent a wonderful day with Xris from Flatbush Gardener starting at the North Carolina Arboretum then touring a nice stretch of Western North Carolina.







I need sleep, so you will have to come back for my view of the day a bit later.

Bloom Day for August

This is what a big chunk of my garden looks like right now. Several years from now, the plan is that a small two bedroom house will be built at the top of this hill. The small cabin I am currently building to live in will become the guest quarters.















Match up the white rock on the path and the small headless tree on the right side and then the left side of the pictures and this is the other half of the slope that is below the road, the cabin and the future house. At the bottom of this hill is a stream. Almost all of the trees on this hill are the dying Hemlocks. You can see they are not very generous about letting much grow beneath them.















For now I have to borrow a lot of flowers from the resident gardeners for Bloom Day. There are several large patches of these Rudbeckia hirta scattered across the mountaintop garden.
















At the edge of the wild forest this White Wood Aster, Eurybia divaricata is beginning to put on a show.















The Great Blue Lobelia, Lobelia siphilitica (I think we need to get the County Clerk to investigate this name) has the first early birds coming in to bloom. These plants are scattered every where.




















I found this at the bottom of my back hill across the stream on what may or may not be my land when we do a survey and draw new property lines. It straddles the line maybe. This is the more rare pink form of Turtlehead, Chelone cuthbertii. I did find another one definitely on my side. They look like they would root from cuttings very easily.




















The deep deep purple of Iron Weed, Veronia noveboracensis.

















And then there is this, Ambrosia trifida, Giant Ragweed. I discovered this a few days ago in my septic drain field area and wondered what it could be, what the blooms were going to be like. Then I noticed the suspicious resemblance of the bloom stalk to the regular Ragweed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia that is starting to flower. Oh crap!














Last week I had a major sneezing, runny nose and stuffy head attack. It has managed to linger mildly all week. I have never been prone to allergies to any great extent. My body must be completely confused by all these strange new pollens and bugs and things that float through the air on the wind.

For a complete roundup of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Iron Beauty

Caption Wanted

Please leave your suggestions in the comment box.

The Death of Joe Pye

A unitary meme?

Annie, the Joe Pye Weed is very true to color in its cinematic debut. It is a blush pink tone. There are much darker colors of Joe Pye and Eupatorium maculatum and E. purpureum are species that may be more in the nursery trade than the wild E. fistulosum I have growing here.

But this blush pink is not the only color of the wild Joe Pye.

There is one a tone darker in the pink of the flower and with a purplish red tint to the stems that is compared to the ones here and coveted by the resident gardeners. It is on the far side of the stream at the bottom of the mountain by Ferguson's gas mart, grocery, fish and tackle, trout farm, U-haul, storage, split rail, farm supply, bait and fried chicken diner.















Most of the Joe Pye up here are a tone lighter, almost white. They pale in comparison. Joe Pye Weed-The Movie is a deep as it gets for us.















These pale, almost white Joe Pye have failed to impress and fall short for some reason with the resident gardeners. In a sea of white Fleabane, White Wood Aster, newly emerging white Frost Aster, Ox-Eye Daisy, Yarrow, Snakeroot, and white Hydrangea it is a bit puzzling, but most of the Joe Pye Weed, except for the star of our movie was beheaded today, before it could set seed and spread all over the place.



















There is a better Joe Pye out there.















And all of these must be stopped.

Something I would like to nominate for ruthless eradication is this gorgeous Virgin's Bower, Clematis virginiana. It is the dominant plant in the bed I need to clear on the left side of my driveway. It seeds quite prolifically and ends up twining into every thing. It looks fantastic driving down the highway and is just beginning to come into bloom, however one of them may be one to many.

I do not get to make these decisions. I will always only be the international observer in the garden next door.















The carcass of Cacophony was hiding under a leaf.














And today there was power attached to my pole.




















This thing that is rising from the yellowish orange saprolite soil filled with potatoes on a bit of a slope is just a tad disconcerting. At first I was reminded of Planet of the Apes and the totems placed at the entry to the Forbidden Zone. It has since taken on a Mad Maxx or Waterworld quality. The batter boards are here to find level, parallel and straight. Simple enough one would think, but my contractor is older, retired and spent his career in the flat sands of Florida, not the mountains of North Carolina.

My slope, slopes in two directions. It falls to the west and rises to the south. The north west corner of my cabin will be close to seven feet above the ground. The front porch on the south east will be about two steps above the ground.















This strange construction is being done to help stabilize the tubes that will become the concrete and steel posts of my super enhanced earthquake and hurricane proof foundation during the filling process.















Five of these tubes will be stood up and filled with concrete on top of each of two 27'4" long, 16" wide cement slab footings. Each footing and five post section will be one connected unit. Upon these ten posts I will build my cabin.

Did I mention the heat wave has made it to the top of the mountain. The rain has stopped. The sun is blazing and it has reached 86 degrees up here, while I dig level trenches in saprolite that has turned to dust.















But I am sure you are all far more interested in Iron Weed, Veronia noveboracensis coming soon to a blog near you.

Joe Pye Weed-The Movie

The picture quality on this one turned out better than the one with the butterfly feeding frenzy.

Adjusting My Eye

I have been very used to big bodacious plants for quite some time.















This Angelica, with the Audrey-esque look is getting ready to bloom. It is most likely Angelica sylvestris. Even small, this is one plant that is hard to miss. But here in the forest there seems to be two sizes of plants, the large tall trees and the smaller herbaceous plants that grow beneath them or in the sunny holes between them. There is a significant lack of shrubs in the forest except in the Rhododendron or Mountain Laurel thickets.

This short carpet of green beneath the forest can hold an amazing number of plant species. They are interwoven and intermingled so closely it can be hard to tell them apart.

As my eyes adjust to this new light, the different plants have begun to show themselves more freely.
















One of my patches of Goodyera pubescens, the Rattlesnake Plantain, which is actually an orchid.
















Origanum vulgare running wild.



















One of many species of Goldenrod, probably Solidago nemoralis. They are the markers of the end of summer and have just begun to bloom.

















Formerly Eupatorium rugosum, the Joe Pye Weed genus, now it is Ageratina altissima, White Snakeroot.
















A patch of Hepatica, Anemone acutiloba. This plant might be all of three inches tall. It hides beneath every thing else. The patch is huge though, possibly bigger than my slow growing house.

Of course there is much more. I have seen plenty of Bloodroot, a bunch of Trilliums on their way out, Jack in the Pulpit in all stages, some relatives of Ginseng, Wild Ginger and too many Violets to count.
















Back out front I continue to garden in the sun. The little bits of progress I make here help add to the little bits of progress I make on the cabin. Today the electricity man came by to have a look. He says I may have my temporary pole hooked up by Friday. Now we won't have to drive lumber back and forth to cut it, just as we are coming in on the finish of the batter board system.

I bought new plants. I was feeling a little depressed. A Picea abies 'Nidiformis', three Catananche caerulea, Blue Cupids Dart and four Chasmanthium latifolium, Northern Sea Oats.

The Bird's Nest Spruce went at the back at the widest part of the semi circle of ground on the other side of the drainage gully. I need to Roundup the rest of that space now that it has greened back up from my initial hard core chop. There are a couple of Iron weed, Veronia noveboracensis in there that I want to save.

The Cupids Dart went in the bed along the drive in front of my baby Mugo Pine and between the Dwarf Crested Iris and the Daylilies.
















This is the cut on the right hand side of my drive. I have been pondering what to put here. I wanted a low maintenance, solid sweep of one species of plant that would help hold this hill. I have plenty of land. There is no need to get all busy with landscaping in such a spot.
















That is where the Northern Sea Oats are going. I plan to collect all the seeds this fall from the plants I bought and work on introducing them across the face of this slope. I read they are some what invasive and have a tough root system. Good!





















And if it doesn't work out, well there are ways of getting rid of things up here that I have been playing with non stop since last Friday when my nephews were here and we had a Big Bonfire and S'mores.

Cacophony

It has been getting louder and louder over the last three days. And there are people on Maui who complain about little coqui frogs.