Summer is gone in Wisconsin

When I left for Mexico 11 days ago, the temperatures were near 70 degrees. The rose bushes were in their final burst of flowers. I didn't want to cut them back because they were so beautiful.

The sudden cold snap that hit last week, froze the roses in their bloom. I took this picture this morning. There were about 50 blooms on the bushes and all were frozen and frost covered.

I'll be putting the rose bushes to bed this weekend. That will be fun as the temp is expected to hover around freezing with sleet and snow expected.

Late summer flowers are still blooming

The warm days of mid September and the cool nights have caused one last hurrah of the blooming season in the backyard. The roses are offering up a third round of blooms this summer. The photo above shows the early morning sun casting shadows across the bloom while the morning due glimmers.

In the photo above I used the macro setting on my camera to get a real close up on the flower heads of the sedum. Holding the camera about two inches away from the flower head, the above photo shows the whole picture, but I miss out on all the beautiful dew drops that are there.

So if I zoom into the photo closer, the clarity and pixel strength is still there and now I can see all the dew. Kind of cool.

Well it's friday, and Todd and I are off to see Neko Case, headlining the Forward Music Festival taking place across Madison this weekend. Yay!

Only a weed

I always like the old saying "A weed is only a flower growing in the wrong place". Here's a great example. A sunflower of some sort found a spot to grow next to the arbor vitae in the backyard. I assume the seed was dropped there from the birds as we feed sunflower seeds in the winter.
I just don't have the heart to pull such a sunny and smiley flower from its "wrong" place. What a nice surprise to find.

French Marigolds - so pretty!

This little french marigold bloom is so lovely. It's the first marigold I've planted in my garden since I was 13. I've always kind of dissed them because when I was a kid, marigolds were planted in every yard, windowbox and planter in the neighborhood.

But I saw these at the nursery this spring and thought the single petals were more like a coreopsis than the big-headed stinky flowers of my youth. These are great bloomers as well. They've been blooming since May.

Roses in the garden

Spent a good portion of Saturday and Sunday out in the gardens weeding and fighting off the hordes of mosquitos while I worked. I also put in several new perenials and 10 new rose bushes to the side garden. My favorite greenhouse, Jung's had a great sale on roses at 50% off. So I figured if I lost half of them to winter kill, there'll still be some flowers next summer. Right now the new flower bed is starting to look filled in - yay!

While I was working, sweating and basically being eaten alive by the 'squeeters, I had several humming birds come to the new flowers I had just planted. And right after that, butterflies arrived. And that made it all worth while in my book.

Below is a shot of the same flower bed, right after Todd built it in May and after we put in four new Arbor Vitae. Since then I've slowly been added other flowers as you can see in the photo above.

Garden Improvements

So I told you earlier that last weekend, Todd had an epiphany as to how the back yard could be changed. On Saturday, during my planned absence, the master gardener ripped up the lawn and created a bunch new gardening areas. Now I like it, don't get me wrong, but dang I wasn't expecting to do so much yardwork this year.... Above is the new framed-in garden section of the lawn. I think the goal being to reduce mowing to about two strips around the yard.....

On Sunday, Todd and I went to our favorite nursery to get some new arbor vitae for a privacy screen on the left side of the yard. Shown above are the 5 foot arbor vitae and my new Candymint crabapple tree stuffed into the back of the Element. As you can see in this photo, Todd has continued the line of arbor vitae down the side of the yard. In about 20 years, they will provide some nice privacy, I should think. In the mean time, they do add some nice vertical lines in an otherwise horizontal landscape.

It will be fun to plan out the garden. We are going to mix in vegetables, perennials and baby trees that we'll start here and take up north in a few years. I'll keep you posted!

November blooming Delphiniums

Imagine my surprise to find late blooming Delphiniums in the backyard today. They bloomed in June of this year as well. This is the second year this plant has given us two blooms within one season. Cool.

Garden Close-ups

Here's some pictures I took last night of the ripening garden. Below is a nice close-up of the golden cherry tomato plant. Notice the hairs on the stem. The actual size of this tomato is about half of what you are looking at now. I had super-macro going on the camera.
Next we have one of seven basil plans (genovese, thai and curly) growing in the garden. There will be a lot of pesto to be made made this fall. Let me know of any freezing ideas for basil leaves by leaving a comment.

And finally, a wonderful shot of a cantalope that is about two weeks away from eating. Not the greatest producers these vines, lots of flowers, good vine growth but only three maturing melons. Not sure if this is normal or not.

My, how your garden grows

So the garden has started producing, yeah! We've had a few problems with the peas (burnt) and the brussel sprouts (something is eating the leaves) but the tomatoes, peppers and beans are coming on strong. Above is a photo of the garden from our deck and below is the most recent harvest. The large tomato is an heirloom variety which will work great with BLTs.

Tomatoes anyone?

We built up a nice raised garden bed on the side of our house this month for vegetables. By July we are going to have tomatoes coming out of our ears. As per the course with Todd developing the project, the small little garden for my three plants is now 15 meters by 6 meters and I’ve been hauling wheelbarrow loads to fill the damn thing up and still haven’t made a dent on the mountain of soil the delivery men plopped in my front yard two weeks ago.