Mmmmmm...free samples!

On Thursday evening I got home to find a pair of large boxes waiting for me. Well, I didn't order anything and opened them with some curiosity. Inside were these two trays of plants from PanAmerican Seed. Left to right we have:

Marigold Bonanza Deep Orange
Begonia Dragon Wing
Begonia Gryphon
Petunia Shock Wave Coral Crush
Angelonia Serena Blue
Wave Purple Improved Spreading Petunia

When I got them it was too cold to put them in the ground and so I kept them on the back porch. In fact, it was so cool that I was concerned enough to put a sheet over them at night. But, the weather is now improving so once I get a chance to get a little garden clean-up going I'm going to stick them in the ground. Some will go out front and some will go in the back yard flower bed.

Cold Day at the Cherry Blossoms

This year I was happy to get away and check out the Washington DC cherry blossoms a bit early. They were just about to peak but most of them were out and the display was quite nice. Not may people were around because it was COLD! I bundled up in a winter coat, hat, scarf, and thick sweater. Well, it usually is chilly but this year there was a bit of snow the day before we went. (Which did not harm the trees.) I was glad to get over there and enjoy it while the crowds were away.

Poinsettia Ponderings

It has been a crazy busy fall for me and this blog and my Twitter account have been two of the casualties. I’m still keeping up with my writing, though and plan to get these peripheral things back on track soon so I can prepare for the coming of the spring gardening season.

This is not the greatest photo as I just took it as the light was beginning to wane. Also, this poinsettia is a bit past it’s prime. Before the holiday season I wrote two articles on these plants and squirreled them away so I didn’t have that worry. They are “How to select and care for a poinsettia plant” and “How to rebloom a poinsettia plant”. (I plan to take my own advice and rebloom this guy down the line.) Oh, and I learned why I could never correctly spell poinsettia over the years. I was spelling it as “pointsettia”. Duh.

I Love Zinnias

Yes, I do and I try to grow them every summer. I usually have a mini variety in pots and semi-doubles in the main flowerbed. This year I tried some new types but they didn’t quite make it. I find that mysterious, as zinnias are the one flower that will grow for me anywhere. In fact, they were the first flower I grew in the all cement yard next to the outhouse.

Well, as you can see some of them are recovering from the drought and heat of early summer and beginning to bloom. I believe this is a Candy Cane mix. I also have them in white with pink streaks, and pink with white streaks. They add a lot of splash and I will certainly grow them again next year. Last year one of my neighbors had a great bed of cactus type zinnias in their front yard. I want them next year but I’m afraid they’d look too crazy in with the candy canes.

And yes, I wrote an article about zinnias. Actually, I wrote this last winter but deleted it a few months ago and re-wrote it for summer. I had planned to introduce a “flower of the month” thing to my column but it seemed hokey so I dropped it. I wanted a winter series but I’ve since come up with better ideas. I also liked the photos in that article, but since Examiner is migrating to a new style we don’t have control over our layout and things look wonky unless they are super simple.

Gladiolas

The gladiolas that my aunt gave me began blooming last week. I’m glad because it seemed that everything else was doing so badly in the heat. I have a lot of impatiens and things that won’t set flowers when it is too hot. I thought I had a lot of bare spots but actually things just aren’t blooming. I got some portulacas for half price on my way back from the Eastern Shore so I popped them in for quick drought resistant color. Hopefully the recent rain will help.

Coneflowers

Coneflowers are everywhere these days. I should have done a Wordless Wednesday with them yesterday but I had to go to work early. These are down by the Inner Harbor. I used a photo from the same session to accompany my events article this week.

I’m so busy these days. We had a big family weekend and it is also so hot. I continue to be plagued by my sore arm so I only do the writing that I have to do.

The only reason that plant diseases are good is that they give me an easy, newsy article to write. Earlier this week I found out that downy mildew is attacking local basil crops. Mildew is also a problem in my garden as I have it on the impatiens on my porch. They are in a dark corner that doesn’t get much air circulation, though. My basil is doing great, though.

A New Camera

I impulsively bought a new camera on Wednesday. Well, I never do anything impulsively and as my father reminded me, I’ve been drooling over this camera for months. It is a Cannon Powershot SX120 with a 10x optical zoom. I wanted a point and shoot that was both easy to carry but with better features for nature photography. The most powerful zoom I had before this was 5x so I was due for an upgrade. The zoom is always my favorite camera toy.

My first real camera was a Cannon, given to me by my father on my birthday, perhaps when I was 19 or 20. It was a film camera that I still have. I originally wanted one when I moved to digital but they were too expensive and so I settled for Kodak instead. I’m fairly happy with Kodak—they make great walking around cameras, but I’m glad I finally got my Cannon.

Wordless Wednesday - New Plantings at Sherwood Gardens

Wordless Wednesday - Alley Flowers

Wordless Wednesday - Assorted Alliums

Summer Flowers and Tomato News

The other afternoon we went to the Peabody to get tickets for an upcoming performance of the ballet Sleeping Beauty. Well, for some reason they were not sold at the box office but in the dance department. Because of that, we got to take an interesting walk through the Peabody. When we went through their courtyard to get to another building I noticed that they have a nice little variety of summer flowers out there already. Besides these, they have hollyhocks and pincushion flowers.

I’ve been a little busy this week but thankfully there were some tomato related news stories I could write about for Examiner. First, late blight was reported again this year. Also, cold damage is now plaguing home gardeners. I found out about both of these issues through the Grow It, Eat It Page on Facebook, so I am finally convinced that Facebook has some use after all.

In other Examiner news I continue to edit old articles. This seems to be like bailing out the ocean with the tin cup but I do a few every day.

Wordless Wednesday: Roses are in Bloom at the Flag House

The Flag House

Flowers From Eden

I’ve been a little bit under the weather these days. Besides my arm problem (which is slowly going away) I have this weird tiredness. I have a friend who went though this and can only assume it must be a virus of some sort.

The flowers above came from How Sweet it Is, which is located in Eden, Maryland and on the way to Chincoteague. I always look forward to getting a flat of plants from there each year. They have annuals we don’t have in the city such as double petunias and pink stocks. Some of these are destined for the front of my house, but others I don’t know what to do with yet. They are just so appealing I had to buy them. Also, they have good produce and I got some excellent strawberries from them.

Investigating the Tulip Library

When I went to visit the cherry blossoms in DC a few weeks ago I stumbled on the Tulip Library, which is also near the Tidal Basin. I was excited by it, but there were no brochures or other information available. I only knew it was the Tulip Library because some excited kid came running up to his mother to report that he found the sign.

At home, I didn’t have much luck. Little research is on the web and the National Park Service write up mostly just mentions the history of tulips. The most helpful was this 2007 blog entry from Washington Gardener magazine. (Hmmmm…note to self…change blogger theme.) They have a link to a PDF of an old brochure, which was better than nothing. If Tulip Library had been here in Baltimore City I would have the good old Pratt library vertical file to play with. (Yes, I know that this garden is in another city. But I also like to write about places within easy driving distance of Baltimore because most gardeners love to visit other gardens.)

Well, with my arm still on the injured list and my ability to do a lot of typing and mousing curtailed, I pulled out the Tulip Library research and put up an article. It is not what I wanted, but if I don’t do this now the topic won’t be relevant again until next year. (Then, I can revisit it and do a slideshow or something.)

The photo at the top of this post was my first choice for the article, but it looked too similar to the photo on the National Park Service PDF and also to the one I selected for Sherwood Gardens. Tulip gardens are rather hard to photograph at times because of the way the flowers are spaced. If I don’t get a good angle and lots of flowers blooming at the same time I end up with a picture of little dots of color amidst the dirt.

Rainy Day Dianthus

This morning on my walk I noticed these dianthus. They were so bright on this rainy morning that they almost won’t photograph well because the color is too intense. I’ve always liked dianthus. Then, a couple of days ago when I was shopping with a friend he said that they looked like “little stars”. Yes, I can see that, especially on a gray day like today.

By the way. I'm quite happy with my new Sherwood Gardens article, which includes a slide show. I've resolved to do more slide shows this year. It is a kind of visual reporting that I like because I carry my camera everywhere.

Elbows, Sherwood Gardens and Graveyard Lilies

Owww….after all of the “advice” I give people about garden safety I hurt myself while gardening yesterday. Actually, I had been feeling a twinge in my elbow all week but I thought it was gone by the time I went out in the yard last night. Instead, it was just lurking, ready to come back in force after I came inside for the night. Now it seems worse this morning. I’m actually thinking of making a sling from a scarf. I also might have to cancel my date with the Phantom tomorrow. I volunteer at the Hippodrome and hate to miss working a show of the “Phantom of the Opera”, especially since this is the supposed farewell tour.

Well, on with the writing news. This morning I posted on ways that gardeners could spread the word during National Gardening Month. Unlike the other articles I wrote this week, I kind of like this one. I used a photo of last year’s display at Sherwood Gardens, and the photo above is from the same flowerbed. I’ve been picnicking at Sherwood a lot over the last couple of weeks and I think last year’s display was defiantly better.

I also wrote a short piece on gravestone lilies for my Curious Urbanite blog. I’m not particularly obsessed with death at the moment, but when I visited Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond a couple of weeks ago I was intrigued by all of the graveyard symbols that involved nature. I would have liked more time there as the array of stone flowers, tree stumps and other garden related cemetery art was fascinating.

Wordless Wednesday - April Flowers

Encountering the Old Blush rose at the Hollywood Cemetery

Last weekend I visited Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, VA. Even though the east coast had some warm weather recently, I was very surprised to find a rose blooming near James Monroe’s grave. Soon I realized that there were roses all over a moderately sized bush. A helpful marker identified the rose as “Old Blush, Class: China, Intro date: 1752”. I was charmed by these lightly scented blossoms appearing in the middle of the quiet cemetery, so when I got home I decided to look them up.

Old Blush is a rose with semi double pink flowers that appear darker or “blushing” in the sunlight. It is one of the oldest roses and the Chinese cultivated it for more than a thousand years. Old Blush and other China roses were brought to Europe by traders like the Dutch East India Company. These were later crossed with other varieties to make modern hybrids. Any rose varieties that existed before 1867 are labeled as “old” while those after it are “modern”. Older roses tend to be smaller flowered and more rambling. Old Blush can grow well in poor soil but can get out of control if left untrimmed.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - April 2010

This month my blooms are almost the same as last months. I only had time for a few quick pictures, but besides these I have pansies, violets, and a lone muscari is left under my tree. I really lack spring blooming flowers, other than bulbs. This weekend I hope to get cracking on the garden and put in a few things to spice it up a bit.

I did my monthly “What’s Blooming in Baltimore?” post and was quite envious of what other local gardeners have. There are some nice iris out there and one lady near me even has a nice potted blooming azalea. I did notice that the azaleas in Sherwood Gardens are beginning to bloom as well.

Wordless Wednesday - Oz at the Spring Flower Show

(Spring flower show brightens the Druid Hill Conservatory)