Flying Cloud

When I made a lamb stew in the spring, I planted the cut-off tops of market carrots in the border to help the butterflies. The foliage was great. Yesterday, when I was preparing the border for fall, I pulled up these fat fellows. Very fragrant! Interplanting perennials, herbs & some veggies is a great way to use available space.

Lion hunting at Cloud Cottage. I use the border spade. The dandelion prong is more likely to snap the taproot, from which a new one will grow.

Now flowering: Chocolate Chip

Virginia Bluebells under the great oak, thriving in dry soil with carex pensylvanica, which is found naturally under oaks on south-facing slopes. It has to be topped with the weed whacker about the time the bluebells are done. Carex will lodge if it isn’t cut back a little. A delicate operation because of the martagon lilies growing there.

Same ajuga Chocolate Chip, not doing much in the way of flowering yet. Soon, no doubt. This path is in shade all morning, so that might explain the difference.

Ajuga Chocolate Chip in full bloom in one part of the garden. Don’t know why it’s so far ahead of other plantings.

Birds nested in a cherry, crape & Japanese maple this past summer. It’s winter now at Cloud Cottage, but soon it’ll be baby bird time again.

An unusually warm fall giving way to more seasonable cold weather. May be last gasp for the garden flowers. No more tender heliotrope, impatiens & sweet alyssum. Last roses from ‘Heritage’ & ‘Wollerton Old Hall.’ Digging corms to divide crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ for more prolific flowering next year. Camellia’Winter Star,’ planted earlier this year, still has many more buds on it. Coming - photos of the off-season drabs & what the garden catalogues don’t tell you.

A teensy-weensy hummingbird stopping for a fill-up on its long migration to South America. I keep the feeders through October, even later if weather is good. This year’s crop of young-uns are typically the last to migrate, so feeders are essential for them.

Meet Jeana! Tiny petals, bright lavender-pink, fragrant. This girl has been flowering all summer & I’m only now beginning to dead-head (which isn’t easy because she’s short & I’m tall). A fairly new variety of phlox, stateside. Helps to hide the brown knees of the New England asters.

Tall phlox John Fanick with daylily Swirling Water (which is a deeper purple than it looks there). JF is floriferous & uncomplaining. Also fragrant. The black line in the photo is the wrought iron pole for the hummingbird feeder. I thought the birds would be drawn to the phlox, but they only wanted the sugar water. Lazy, aren’t they. 😂

A (very) tall phlox the colour of bubblegum. This volunteer came from the mighty David, which is pure white. Surprise!