The Garden of Live Flowers

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2010-03-06T09:55:00.001-06:00

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March: Chicago Flower and Garden Show

2010-03-02T09:59:00.001-06:00

I wouldn't say March came in like either a lion or a lamb. More like an Arctic hare; white, chilly, breezy. But signs of spring are popping all around, and not the least of these is the Chicago Flower and Garden Show at Navy Pier, March 6-14. I will be there on Sunday and probably again sometime during the week. Tickets are $17 weekends, $15 during the week. Things you should bring: good walking shoes, cash, camera, extra batteries, notebook, and a shopping bag for all the stuff you're sure to buy. My missions this year, besides having a great time (of course!), are to locate the vendor of the funny little hedgehogs I regretted passing up last year, and to buy some more succulents. I will of course be reporting on my experience and I look forward to seeing you there!

No progress yet on the Blogger migration. There's a "delay" on their end, of course. I'm still blocking comments on new posts but you can always email me or find me on Twitter.

February: Migration

2010-02-25T22:11:00.002-06:00

Nope, not bird migration, but blog migration. Blogger is soon taking away the ftp option for the six of us who still do that, so I will be forced to migrate this whole beast to a Blogger server in the next few days. Comments may get lost, links will surely break, and there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth at the McHouse while we get things fixed. I need to have the blog up and running before I attend and report on the Chicago Flower and Garden Show so the pressure is on!

I shall return. In the meantime, here are some red things to look at.

February: Snow!

2010-02-10T08:37:00.000-06:00

I wanted to post about all the repotting of houseplants I did over the weekend, or the googol of cuttings I took for no good reason, but that undertaking is not yet finished because weekends are just too darned short.

Instead, you get pictures of snow! It snowed from Monday night until sometime early Wednesday morning, and the storm was capped off by an earthquake centered between Chicago and Rockford at 4 am (which we did not feel, though others in Chicago did).

This was the sight that greeted me this morning:

The block I live on is beautiful, whether dressed in its winter or summer finery

February: Houseplant Census

2010-02-02T00:01:00.003-06:00

February 2. It's Groundhog Day! This is an important day at the McC house. Groundhog Day is our movie, "I Got You Babe" is our song. Every year TMCH and I set the evening aside to watch the movie and say the lines along with the actors. Such as:

"Morons, your bus is leaving!"
"What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't today."
"He might be okay." (truck explodes) "Well, no, probably not now."

If you haven't seen it a hundred times, you are missing out.

o o o

But I digress! According to Mr. McGregor's Daughter, today is Houseplant Census Day! At the McC house, censusing the plants is no small task. Luckily I maintain a list so it just needed to be updated. I had no idea how many plants I own, so I looked forward to learning the total.

This picture of the plant room/breakfast nook was taken a year ago. The room is nowhere near this orderly anymore.

How many houseplants do I have?

Highlights:

Only 86?! Well, that's kind of disappointing. Guess it's time to go shopping! All but a handful are in two rooms, so at least the local density is high. The total does not include various cuttings in water, or the ginger and avocado experiments, or the hibiscus overwintering in the basement. If I include those, I'm right near 100.
Most common families: Araceae (10) and Gesneriaceae (9); also Ruscaceae (7) and Cactaceae (6).
Oldest plant: No idea! but probably one of the pothoses or spider plants or the larger of the two Ficus benjaminas. We went through a bottleneck in 2000 during the home remodel and I know the ficus is one of the few plants to survive that tumultuous time.
Newest plant: Dracaena deremensis 'Lemon-Lime', purchased a couple weeks ago on clearance at Home Depot.
Favorite plant: Aww, I love all my babies equally! But I love Bowiea volubilis, the climbing onion, especially equally.
Least favorite plant: The orchids. The flowers are too fussy and overengineered, if they bloom at all. Also not crazy about the Scheffleras, although I do love the new leaves when they emerge, like tiny grasping hands.
Plant I used to hate but have learned to love: African violets. They were too frilly for my taste, like peonies and roses, but after discovering I'm good at them I decided they are worthwhile after all and now I have five. Runner-up: I have learned that I don't hate all Sansevierias, just the ones with the yellow margins. Those are so ugly. The Hahnii above, now that's a cutiepie.

So there you have it! Thanks to Mr. McGregor's Daughter for suggesting the idea, and for giving me the motivation to update that list!

ETA: It's less than a week later and the count is already up by 8, plus I spent part of the weekend taking cuttings and dividing clumps. I would worry that I'm plant-OCD but there are whole parts of the year (usually late summer) where I don't much care about plants, indoor or outdoor. It's seasonal OCD, and I can live with that.

January: Growing an avocado from seed

2010-01-31T13:11:00.000-06:00

The January/February 2010 edition of Chicagoland Gardening Magazine has an article about how to grow an avocado (Persea americana, Lauraceae) from seed. I know a lot of people have done this but I don't think I ever even saw an avocado when I was a kid, and now we don't like avocados so we don't keep them around. However, I have been known to grow things I don't like to eat, including strawberries, hops, and green beans. Sometimes TMCH eats the results, and sometimes I just like the plant. I tried to grow a mango last year, but instead I grew a nice crop of mold. The avocado will go better, I just know it!

The first step: wait for the avocado to ripen. I am using a Hass avocado, and today it was black and soft, definitely ripe. I cut through the rind and the two halves fell apart easily. The avocado fruit is a berry.

I scooped the seed out from the pericarp with a spoon and washed it with water and a sponge to get all the icky off it. The surface of the seed is beautiful, like marled wood. It's about 1 1/2 inches long and slightly egg-shaped.

I then poked three toothpicks into the soft surface of the seed, about 1/3 of the way from the top, the top being very slightly more pointy than the bottom, and suspended the seed over a glass. I filled the glass so the water is 1/3 of the way up the bottom of the seed, and wrote the date on the glass.

I put the glass in a south-facing window. It needs 6 hours of daylight a day. If it doesn't sprout roots in 6 weeks I will have to start over, but hopefully something interesting will happen soon!

January: Events in the indoor garden

2010-01-25T22:23:00.004-06:00

The snow melted over the weekend and I went into the garden to peer hopefully at places where bulbs might be. No joy yet, and today it's cold and snowy again. Luckily the indoor garden is purring along nicely. I don't use grow lights so winter growth rates are slow, but I have African violets and crown-of-thorns and two species of Aeschynanthus in bloom.

The Peperomia ferrerae > and Gasteria NOID >>, mostly dormant in summer, are putting on new growth, and the Kalanchoe daigremontiana is growing so fast I have to keep raising the mini-blind to keep above it. I will deal with that one in a later post. There will be a knife involved. o_O

My pre-Christmas amaryllis is finally starting to sprout. I seriously overwatered it during the Bt fungus gnat treatments so I hope it's okay. It's a Smith + Hawken from Target; I didn't really want another amaryllis, but I could not pass up that cool metallic pot.

Bowie, my so-cool Bowiea volubilis, is once again on its January trek towards the ceiling. The first vine emerged around Christmas Day. Then I...broke it. Oops. Luckily, a second shoot emerged on Jan. 18, and I promise not to touch it. I love this plant and am excited to see that the bulb is finally getting fat and interesting. I will have to repot it this spring into a wider, shallow pot, and give it a support less pathetic than that bit of dogwood stick.

Pseudorhipsalis ramulosa, not doing anything interesting, really; I just wanted to show a picture of it. I am developing a deep affection for the leafy-looking cacti.

January: The ongoing quest for surface area

2010-01-14T22:15:00.002-06:00

I tend to keep all my houseplants in two rooms of the house because they have the best light and I'm more likely to take good care of them if I don't have to walk a mile to water them all. Thus there are houseplants crammed onto every available surface in my dining room and the-room-that-we-used-to-call-the-breakfast-nook (now called the plant room). I've resisted the urge to cover the dining table itself with plants although sometimes one or two or five find their way there, "temporarily," and then end up on the floor if we want to do something crazy like eat at the table. (The breakfast nook table hasn't been breakfastable in about five years and we've long since given up on it.) I spend a lot of time searching for solutions to my ongoing space problem. Last week I ordered two plant stands that match the dining room furniture perfectly, and tonight I put them together all by my little self.

"But that's only two more square feet!" my readers protest. Never fear, I have a plan! I am going to scare up a nice oak board or maybe order a piece of glass to make a table top and turn these two stands into a 4.5-foot wide console table. I am excited about the prospect of displaying a photo or even un objet d'art. Or maybe I'll go plant shopping and fill the new table from end to end and find myself back where I started. This is of course according to the houseplant corollary to Parkinson's Law: The number of houseplants increases to match the amount of available surface area in the house.

December: Gardening Resolutions for 2010

2009-12-28T14:21:00.003-06:00

A quick thanks to Ramble On Rose for inspiring me to write my gardening resolutions for 2010. I dredged up my list of resolutions (gardening and otherwise) for 2009 on my now-defunct personal blog here. Let's see, how did I do?

1) Read On the Origin of Species. Um... I started it. And I acquired a second copy, so now there are two copies sitting on my nightstand. I think I'll bump this one and try again this year. I do love me some flowery Victorian writing but Mr. Darwin, your prose is turgid, my good man. Good thing I love you so much.

2) Do a talk at a scientific meeting. Check! Now to try this one again without the panic attack.

3) Bring my weight down to N-8, where N is what I weighed in Jan. 2009, and stay there through the end of the year. Would you believe, Check! I actually lost the 8 within two months. Keeping them off however is an ongoing battle, esp. with the holidays just before deadline.

4) Edge the gardens, do more planting, and essentially bring the existing gardens into neat and healthy condition. Well, I did do more planting, but I was gone or busy for much of the summer (see #2) so the rest didn't get done. I blame myself for writing such a vague resolution. More on this below.

5) Get a little brother for Foley. Check! Except it's a sister, and she is smaller but older. Her name is Lucy and she belonged to our friends who can't keep her anymore. Lucy's resolution is to lose 10 pounds but shh, don't tell her. She's shaped like a barrel!

Lucy-face!!! ... *love*

Okay, three resolutions and two partials is not so bad. So how about 2010?

2010 RESOLUTIONS

Professional stuff: Write the first chapter of the dissertation. Do another meeting talk, likely at the Evolution conference in June.

Personal stuff: Read Origin, for real this time. Bring weight down to N-10 where N is Jan. 2009's weight, and keep it there through Dec. 31. If that requires some exercise, that wouldn't be a terrible thing.

Garden stuff:
1) Grow my first edible garden. I have the location picked out, in a sunny spot against the house (where the ladder is, in the photo). TMCH will help me build the raised bed. Things to plant: green peppers, hot peppers, peas, onions, garlic. I will only plant things that we're likely to eat (no tomatoes!) and that won't take over the planet (no pumpkins!). The railing that extends out from the house will hold window boxes of greens. It's going to be an adventure!

2) Edge all of the gardens and replace the deteriorating wire border fences. Fences and edging are mostly for keeping dogs out of the gardens, and for making my otherwise random collection of plants look more intentional. Now that I have a big pile of nice bricks rescued from the crawlspace, I have plenty of edging material.

3) Thin the plants in the prairie garden and top-dress the soil. I've had terrible problems with the plants flopping over in this garden and the extension service suggested these as possible remedies. It is very frustrating to buy native plants adapted to dry, rocky soils and then have them look like they were run over by a truck in late summer when prairies are supposed to be at their best. The soil may actually be too dry and rocky (this used to be a gravel parking pad) and thus nutrient-poor and excessively fast-draining. Meanwhile, the helianthus has spread quite a bit and I have to bite the bullet and reduce the number of plants. *sob*

Corollary to #3: Take more photos of things going wrong in the garden. I couldn't find a single photo to show the flopping in the prairie garden. It's nice to take pretty pictures and all, but I need to see the trouble spots as well. This photo is from two summers ago and the flopping on the left is hard to see but is definitely there; more apparent is the neglect, which I did rectify, and the ill-placed viburnum, which is gone now.

4) Begin overhaul of the front yard garden. This is contingent on getting the broken concrete sidewalk removed in the spring; if we don't do that, the front yard can just coast as it has for years. If we do, then I have some new yardage to plan out!

So apparently I am going to be very busy in 2010. I'm already looking forward to it! What do you have planned?

December: Yay Christmas!

2009-12-22T17:47:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting in my living room with Lucy the beagle mix at my feet and Foley the greyhound lounging on the dog bed. The tree glows warmly from the dining room (it was the spot that required the fewest houseplants to be relocated), the kitchen is full of cookies (butterscotch gingerbread and "elf eyeballs" so far, more to come tomorrow), and it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Happy Holidays to you all and may the new year be filled with peace and joy and beautiful gardens!

December: 15 years and counting

2009-12-17T17:23:00.002-06:00

Fifteen years ago today, my husband and I were married. A church wedding was out of the question and the thought of parading in a frilly dress in front of everyone I know gave me the cold sweats, so we went low-key and had a private ceremony at the Sinnissippi Gardens greenhouse in Rockford, Illinois, my hometown. It was all decked out for the holidays and filled with red poinsettias, which made my wintery color palette of white and royal blue look a bit more patriotic than I'd intended, but oh well. The greenhouse housed a collection of small animals and there are a few budgies and iguanas in our wedding photos. If we were getting married now, we'd probably choose a fancier place like the Garfield Park Conservatory, but we were young and poor and nostalgic in 1994, and Sinnissippi suited us nicely. As the winter sun set on one of the shortest days of the year, the warm light filtered through the frosted glass and gave us a rare peaceful moment on that crazy day.

(can you find the budgies in this picture?)

The greenhouse was a bit run-down and underutilized even back then and was torn down this year to make way for a more elaborate conservatory. I regret that I didn't make it back in time to take more pictures before they tore it down. The place held some nice memories for me besides the wedding; I did my "job shadow" with one of the master gardeners at the greenhouse back in 8th grade, and when I was in high school the whole town flocked there to witness the blooming of the century plant. I'm happy to see Rockford get another nice botanical installation to go with the Klehm Arboretum and Anderson Gardens, but I will always feel affection for the scruffy old greenhouse by the river.

December: Belated Bloom Day!

2009-12-16T09:15:00.006-06:00

On actual Bloom Day, I was working like a crazy person on a grant application (which I submitted a full three minutes before deadline). I was inspired by other Chicago-area people to hunt for miracle blooms in the garden this morning, but alas, nothing but dead leaves and milkweed fluff did I find. Still, there's usually something cheerful blooming inside the house. They're all gesneriads but one of these plants is not like the others...

First, a gaggle of Saintpaulias...

I discovered this morning that I can set the brightness of the flash on my camera. I took a series of photos of this lavender guy and found that a setting of -1 1/3 gave the most realistic color without looking overexposed. A setting of +2 gave a crazy yellow blob of light, and -2 actually made the photo darker than not using a flash (figure that one out!). If I learn one new thing about my camera each month, in 10 years I'll actually be good at using it.

Aeschynanthus longicaulis, which blooms several times a year but sometimes I don't notice until the flowers start dropping onto the floor. The flowers are cryptic but have such a cool morphology. The stamens are didynamous, the anthers coherent at their tips in pairs, while the five petals are fused into a tube, green outside, red inside.

Not pictured: I potted up my new amaryllis ($7 at Target, with ceramic pot) over the weekend, and also bought a cheapie red poinsettia from the grocery store. I know "real" plant people scorn poinsettias but I think they're gorgeous and buy one every year. I try to keep it alive after the holidays but the best I've done so far is July. They really don't like to dry out, apparently.

As always - thanks to Carol for hosting Bloom Day!

December: Coldest day since February

2009-12-10T22:23:00.003-06:00

The greyhound puts on a lot of miles just looking for her morning pee-spot

Today we had a high temp of something like 5 degrees. I peeked out the window at the snow and remembered that I never did bring the hose in. I should do that one of these days.

Houseplant season is in full swing and I love it! Unfortunately I'm contending with more problems than ever before, possibly because I have more plants than ever before, and from more sources. The Stromanthe has mealybugs, which I've been attacking with a flashlight and alcohol with good results so far.

The Alocasia has spider mites and is also losing its older leaves just for fun. And the Clerodendrum x speciosum appears to have thrips, of all crazy things. What a great word, "thrips." One thrips, two thrips, a hundred thrips! The Clerodendrum is doing terribly and I should just pitch it but it's not a plant I see for sale often so I don't want to give up. And yet just as I typed that sentence I realized I'm being silly and it's getting tossed tomorrow. Goodbye, Mr. Thrips! (ugh...I swear I didn't plan that)

My Saintpaulia collection has recently grown from one to five plants. One thing I've learned from my fellow bloggers: if you're good at a certain plant, might as well own a lot of them.

The other major problem is fungus gnats. I've done everything I was supposed to and yet there are gnats flying up our noses, landing in our water glasses, and generally making nuisances of themselves. It's hard to believe they're coming from the plants since I don't see them on the soil when I water, and yet where else could they be breeding?! I finally sucked it up and bought a bag of Bt from Gardens Alive. First of three weekly treatments was Monday. I have my fingers crossed because the next step is a bug bomb and nobody wants that.

Tradescantia zebrina 'Red Hill' cuttings. The root hairs are so beautiful I want to pet them.

Senecio rowleyanus. I killed one of these earlier in the year but am vowing to ignore this one for its own good.

November: Chicago Architecture Foundation's Chicago Model City exhibit

2009-11-12T11:01:00.001-06:00

Mark and I went to the Model City exhibit at CAF (Michigan & Jackson) a few weeks ago but my silly camera batteries died (and hey, CAF, how about selling batteries in your gift shop?) so I couldn't take the millions of photos I wanted. Yesterday I slipped out early and returned to do the exhibit full justice.

Sunrise on the river. The lighting is challenging for photographers because they simulate a 24-hour light change and even the brightest daylight is soft, to reduce shadows.

The exhibit is a completely fascinating sight, a scale model of the buildings of Chicago from Roosevelt to Halsted to (hmm, not sure of the north boundary) to the lake. It's a lot of fun to crouch down and see familiar sightlines, and to pick out the buildings you know. It even has a replica of the Bean! I encourage everyone in town to go see it. It was scheduled to close in November but someone from CAF let me know this morning that it has been extended. So no excuses!

Website: Chicago Model City

My Flickr set: Model City

Here's a comparison: the model view from UIC:

And the same view in real life:

November: Picture This Photo Contest Entry

2009-11-11T22:01:00.003-06:00

My entry for this month's Picture This photo contest at Gardening Gone Wild. The theme is "The End of the Line," interpreted in any number of ways.

I took this picture at University of Illinois at Chicago today. The row of honey locust trees and shadows against the wall suggested prisoners grimly facing a firing line, and with a cold and windy winter coming, that isn't too far from the truth.

November: Campus goes to sleep

2009-11-11T21:38:00.001-06:00

UIC's leaves have mostly fallen and the grounds (and the students) are getting ready for a long winter, but under today's autumn sunshine the campus was putting on a show.

When the leaves fall, hidden secrets within the trees are revealed

November: The Money Pit, part 6

2009-11-10T08:24:00.000-06:00

Almost finished!

November: The Money Pit, part 5

2009-11-08T18:26:00.002-06:00

After a full weekend of work, all of the carpentry is finished.

Saturday afternoon:

A tiny issue with the roof: it was visibly not level. It appeared that the back of the roof was level to the siding and the front was level to the ground, and since the house is not level, the roof looked a bit twisted. This morning's task was to make the roof the same degree of unlevel as the house, which they did successfully. Of course, first there was much shrugging of shoulders and muttering amongst themselves in Serbian. We don't speak Serbian but "Give the client what they want, even if it makes no sense to me" sounds about the same in every language. Too bad!

Today:

Pay no attention to the woman behind the tree; Foley does not like the camera flash and bolted for the door as soon as this was taken

November: The Money Pit, part 4

2009-11-07T09:43:00.001-06:00

Concrete: done. Porch: done enough to be useable, so we no longer have to use a block and tackle to let the dog out (kidding!). Roof framing: being done even as I type. Things are progressing quickly!

Replacement post is firmly tied to original post and bolted into the concrete.

I think they cemented the coachlight a little crooked. Oh well! It won't be noticeable once the clematis covers it again (assuming the clematis survives all this ruckus).

November: Oh yeah, plants

2009-11-03T21:09:00.001-06:00

In the midst of the excitement of tearing off parts of our house and grading a genetics exam, I haven't been reporting on the plants. The garden has been put to bed, McHouse-style, meaning hubby mowed the leaves up and dumped them onto the prairie garden, and I cut back the perennials that were in the way of the concrete guys.

Viburnum opulus, fall color

Calycanthus floridus, Carolina allspice, one of my favorite shrubs, has wonderful fall color. It has developed its first and only fruit, a fig-like capsule that should persist all winter. I'll cut it open in the spring and see what's inside.

My witch hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, is blooming. American witch hazels have such cool flowers but I usually forget to look for them since they bloom at an odd time of year. They tend to have low seed set, something like 1%. I haven't found any capsules from last year's flowers.

I have two strawberry plants running wild in the lawn. I'm told that this is a bad thing but we have such a hard time keeping grass back there, any successful green plant is okay in my book! Until I start smooshing red berries onto my clothes, that is. We'll see if they survive the winter.

Foley dozes in the November sunshine. She's definitely an autumn; the earth tones suit her.

November: The Money Pit, part 3

2009-11-03T20:42:00.000-06:00

In one day, we went from this:

to this:

Don't you just long to go rollerskating on it?

The house is still supported by magic and good intentions but at least the groundwork has been laid. Now we have to let the concrete cure for a few days.

November: The Money Pit, part 2

2009-11-02T21:40:00.005-06:00

It sure doesn't take long for Murphy's Law to kick in, does it?

The pathetic excuse for a load-bearing post that I pointed out yesterday? Not load bearing. Not really touching anything at all. What is keeping this entire corner of the house from falling? The downspout? I feel like I'm living in a Simpsons episode.

Bart Simpson: Ah, I wouldn't take it down if I were you.  It's a load-bearing poster.

Maybe this explains why the back bedroom floor noticeably slants, and the walls have decorative features like this?

Anyway, the demolition is finished after one day, including the removal of the concrete. Plans have been made to properly shore up the corner of the house, and the project has suddenly become more expensive and kind of scary. However, the prospect of not fixing this problem is even scarier.

November: The Money Pit, part 1

2009-11-01T22:18:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since we've had any work done on the house, but rotting porch steps, a roof letting water into the house, and oceans of standing water on the patio have forced us to take action. We met with our Guy on Saturday and tomorrow some burly men will start tearing off parts of our house. Eep!

BEFORE

Porch steps on their last legs; back of the house, including porch and roof and crawlspace to be rebuilt and patio to be replaced (it's not really that crooked, it's just the photo angle)

Another view of the porch; a hodgepodge of concrete forms our patio

The patio, which a tree root has broken into four pieces

Roof pulling away from the house; the post that supports the entire corner of a two-story house looks like this? and we never noticed??

Outer wall of crawlspace, exposed for the first time after we removed some overgrown shrubs this summer; shingles on the roof disintegrating

Inside the crawl space (yes, the paneling is held on with duct tape, and no, we didn't do that, but we didn't try to fix it, either); another part of the patio, including a sidewalk that doesn't go anywhere

Fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong!

October: North Park Village

2009-10-08T10:40:00.001-05:00

On the advice of Mr. McGregor's Daughter, I made time in between Home Depot and Bears game last Sunday to go see some fall color at my favorite neighborhood place, the North Park Village Nature Center. Located in Chicago at Pulaski and Peterson, it is a lovely place to unwind and experience forest, wetland, and prairie all at once. I always promise myself that I'll go more often and so far this year I've done a little better. This time, I took my camera...

This praying mantis reminds visitors that smoking is bad for your health (unless you're a male mantis and your long-term health isn't really an issue); "hands" sculpture that used to be buried in the undergrowth but is now a prominent feature in the next section of woods to be restored

American basswood trees; basswood sapling in a cage (they can be vicious, you know!)

View across the wetland; more basswoods

Buck snacking on savanna grasses, I'm sure to the irritation of the habitat restorers; the female of a pair of twin fawns that were nursing until mom got nervous and walked away, leaving both fawns looking rather bereft

Again with the basswoods! Basswood leaves, just starting to turn (basswoods turn a lovely bright yellow in fall); red oak leaves

Bur oak and big bluestem - a classic Midwestern savanna

October: In a hurry

2009-10-07T16:37:00.005-05:00

What happened to my sunny, crisp October? We seem to have zipped from balmy September straight to blustery November. There is even a touch of snow in this weekend's forecast. Snow!! I try not to be a weather whiner but this is just silly. Last weekend, I had just one day to purchase and install some late-season bargain plants (and to watch the Bears game; very important). My spring fantasies of transforming my yard into a carefully planned drift of purple salvia a la the Lurie Garden by October were distilled to their most basic essence: "Home Depot has cheap salvias. Let's buy some and stick them somewhere!" This is how most of my gardening is done so I guess it's not all that noteworthy. Plan? What plan?

No, but seriously, where to put all these salvias? With daylight waning and a lot of busy weekends ahead of me, I didn't have the luxury of pondering the decision for long. I had decided this summer that I'm tired of the overgrown spireas in front of my garage, so I took action:

Instant garden space! In a flurry of activity that lasted two hours, I transformed the garage garden from this:

into, well, this mess:

But somewhere in there is the groundwork for future success: four salvias, two snowcap daisies, veronica, amsonia, and a daylily that appealed to me. Pretty much everything else was also dug up, moved, divided, or otherwise manhandled so it wouldn't feel left out. Then the sun set and the rest of the garden was spared. For now. Mwah-ha-ha.

Next year should be very interesting.

Assorted pretties from the McGarden:

Obedient plant, Physostegia virginiana - a surprise bloom, hidden under the baptisia; aster NOID

Another aster NOID, possibly ericoides; Chelone lyonii 'Hot Lips' turtlehead, still blooming happily next to the brown-eyed Susans

My one surviving mum, demonstrating just how obnoxious the spireas were getting. This knockout shade of orange makes me so happy every time I see it.

For the record, plants I installed on October 4 or 5:
HOME DEPOT
Leucanthemum superbum Snowcap Shasta daisy (1, divided)
Salvia nemorosa East friesland
Salvia nemorosa May Night (x2)
Salvia nemorosa Marcus
Veronica 'Goodness Grows'
Hemerocallis Pardon Me
Asclepias tuberosa butterfly weed (in wayback)
PRAIRIE NURSERY (wayback garden)
Eryngium yuccifolium, rattlesnake master
Amsonia hubrichtii (garage)
Ruellia humilis
Ex-aster novae-angliae
AMERICAN MEADOWS (front garden)
Hepatica
Bloodroot
Bluebells
Asarum/wild ginger
FROM GRANDMA'S GARDEN:
white irises (foundation garden)
FARMER'S MARKET (late september sometime)
Tricyrtis 'Empress' (south edge border)