Now In Bud

You never know til you know how the various iris are going to react to being zapped by a late freeze. It has happened often enough that I know it's not good. There are so many barely observable variables about such events, you still can't know the true reaction until you know.

The Caesar's Brother iris is sending up buds. Will it be a meek bloom, average or good? I'll have to wait and see.

The yellow Louisiana Iris took forever to grow out of the freeze damage. In the past such damage has eliminated most of the bloom. Only once has it put on a truly spectacular show. Will it bloom at all this year?

Ah, we have buds. Nothing generous at this point mind you.

Hey, my yellow trillium has actually turned from chartreuse to yellow. This trillium is getting old. Is that when it finally decides to be yellow?

I love the False Solomon's Seal, Maianthemum racemosum. The bloom is quite showy and far superior to the tiny hidden flowers on Solomon's Seal. The red berries it produces are an added bonus. This is a great plant for the shade garden.

Of all the bearded iris, most of which have failed to bloom at all this year, the Black Iris has come through. It's now in bud.

The Status Of The Freeze Dried Bamboo

When talking of growing bamboo, the word slow is not an adjective that is going to be used very often. You are more likely to hear about new bamboo shoots growing a foot a day. Freeze dried bamboo recovering from -8 degrees is an agonizingly slow process though. Week after week passes and from a distance, the bamboo is still a crispy brown.

Leaf by leaf it is turning green. The old canes are leafing back out. That is better than them being frozen to the ground, even if the recovery is slow.

From threat of death to new life is a slow process.

The strangest thing is this season's new culms. They came up, grew a foot tall and pretty much stopped. Normally you see them coming up one day and the next day they are poking above the old foliage. The new shoots grow fast. Not this year. Are they going to be stunted? Is all I'm going get this year a frilly fringe around the bottom of the bamboo?

At least the cold hardy, clumping, Fargesia bamboo is alive. There are a few other allegedly cold hardy plants in the garden looking quite dead.

Lorelei the reliable is blooming, even if it is a bit subdued compared to blooms past. The rest of the bearded iris were so shocked by the late freeze they have refused to bloom so far. They are supposed to be blooming now.

I'm not sure what coreopsis this is. It is vigorous though and does well competing in the Lush. In proper gardens it spreads pretty quickly.

The new computer process is also moving along quickly and so far pretty smoothly. This blog post comes to you from a new operating system and the not used enough Picasa photo editor program. I had it on my old computer, but never made the switch from the Kodak program that came with my cameras. Old dog, new tricks, you know how it goes.

Aggravation is a great motivator for change. I have been forced to move on to better things. So be it.

Making Progress

The new computer is hooked up and running. I'm clicking all the buttons, wandering around and learning. Picasa is my new photo editor. I can do water marks with it. There are many more days of getting used to this and getting things working the way I want.

One oddity is Office which contains Word is listed as a program on this new computer. I can't access it and I tried, without Word, the new computer cannot read any of my documents.

The monopoly is about to extract more money from me and win again.

Death Threats

As if on cue my computer started crashing from the moment Microsoft ended support for Windows XP. It went from crashing once every few days to crashing several times a day. I was spending more time trying to get the computer running than being on it. Surely, Microsoft has been sending my computer death threats to force me into buying a new one.

Well Microsoft you win. I bought a new computer. And since you are pretty much a monopoly, yes it is the Windows 8 operating system. Now stop sending me death threats and crashing the computer until I can finish getting my stuff off of the old one.

I spent last night moving all my files to the external hard drive. Now I'll double check and start deleting things from the old computer. You never know where and in whose hands it could end up.

Then I'll hook up the new computer. I will have to learn a whole new operating system. It didn't come with Word. That was another $140 bucks. Can the new computer read Word without Word? All my documents are Word. What about photo editing? And on and on.

I'd rather be spending any spare time I might accidentally acquire in the garden than dealing with computer hell. Alas, it it not to be. Hopefully it will be quick and smooth. See you on a new computer next time.

Colors In The Ridge Top Garden

Cool Greens

Baby Blue

Combinations

Primrose Pink

Shining White

Lots and Lots of Magenta

While She's Still Here

We had our first visit and tour of the gardens today with the leaders of our volunteer group for the upcoming Master Gardener Tour. The whole team will come back the second week of June.The idea is to orient themselves to the gardens so they will be better able to direct people and answer questions.

I can't talk and take pictures at the same time. The Yellow Lady's Slipper however demands to be photographed while she is still here. Like all else she has her moment, then it is time to move on.

Just Don't Go There

It has become apparent that one of the employees at my favorite local independent garden center has a habit of procuring small orders of obscure plants for the shade garden. Every year I find some new interesting plant way in the far back corner of the place. It's so far back in the corner it is basically their work area. I don't get into that far corner very often.

Today I stumbled across the Shredded Umbrella Plant, Syneilesis aconitifolia back there. That leaf. I must have it. I think I'll take two. With a leaf growing to ten inches across, it will definitely stand out in the Lush.

The Shredded Umbrella Plant is a perennial hardy to zone 4, good, and sends single leaves up from an expanding clump of rhizomes. The tag says a non-aggressive slow spreader. Well I can live with that.

I also bumped into a hybrid Meadowsweet 'Red Umbrellas' with a most interesting leaf. This will need more sun and Meadowsweet likes wet soils. Got that. Plus they have fuzzy pink flowers on stems rising well above the foliage. At 30 inches it is short for a Meadowsweet, but I think it will be tall enough to work with the Lush.

It was another umbrella kind of day, cold and windy with passing showers.

I've been watching some trillium blooms hiding under their umbrella of leaves. Are these the red trilliums that followed me home last year? They are in the right general location. Sure enough, they are red. This is them and they are an added new species, Trillium vaseyi. They differ from the red Trillium erectum that was already here by the larger overlapping petals. The color is also a much deeper red.

Now I wonder where that Painted Trillium went?

The returning transplanted trilliums were not the only thing I found when I got home. The new and improved weather diagnosis is suggesting a low of 33 and patchy frost. Don't even think about going there. I will not have it. Thirty eight degrees this morning was bad enough. I do not want to have to replant half the roadside vegetable garden. One late damaging frost before a garden tour is already one to many.

There are two suspiciously dead looking Deutzias next door in the ridge top garden. They have yet to leaf out and very well may have been killed to the ground like all the roses and butterfly bushes. They are both ten feet tall and eight feet around and may have to be cut to the ground.

I'm still cleaning up from the first late frost. I do not need another.

A Very Quick Bloom Day

It's cold and wet out there as is most often the case in the middle of May. The suggested low for Saturday morning is 38 degrees. It's 43 degrees right now on Thursday evening. We'll have to maintain a steady state of things not to breach that lowest of the suggested upcoming lows. My peppers, tomatoes and squashes sure are not going to be liking this.

At first I was just going to dash out there and snap a few pictures of the Yellow Lady's Slipper Orchid and call it a Bloom Day. No one else out there in Bloom Day Land is bound to have a Lady's Slipper in bloom. That should be enough from me.

But well you know, I had to pass by all kinds of other blooms to get to the Lady's Slipper. A few more pictures were snapped. The rhododendron are coming into full bloom. The second to third week of May is their time high on the low spot.

The Phacelia and Dame's Rocket are a bit droopy from last night's rain and a day of drizzle. They will perk right back up when the sun comes out and things dry off.

Another of the deciduous azaleas in the ridge top garden is blooming. Not a one of them in the garden becoming has produced a single flower. They must take years to settle in and get happy.

It really was cold and wet out there and after working all day in intermittent rain, I was done with wet. It was time to go home and try to get the warm back in my bones.

That's it for May's Bloom Day. Not to worry. The sun will come back out. By next Tuesday it will start to warm back up a notch. The chronicle of blooms will go on.