best mail order bulb supplier for southern heirlooms. period.

www.southernbulbs.com

I've got my mind on Oxblood lilies. Besides a cool name, these amaryllids will perform past the dog days of summer well into the swelter of September when nothing else wants to bloom.

they are old-fashioned and tough and pretty... who wouldn't like that. And I promise, you won't find these at Home Depot.

a new wildlife garden at SDG

Ironweed, in bloom this week at the Sarah Duke Gardens Blomquist Garden and along roadsides and overgrown right of ways all over Durham County.

There is a new feature in Sarah Duke Garden’s Blomquist Garden for Native Plants. It is a small “Wildlife Garden.” I’ve been watching the work on it for months now. It is very close to the main entrance of the Blomquist Garden (off the perennial alee). Check out the website for a useful plant list. Now is a good time to get ideas for fall planting.

great recession garden update: late summer

So... if basil and cherry tomatoes were all I needed to get through the summer, then I'd be set. I still have a good many large heirloom tomatoes on the way (I lost the tags, so I am unsure which kind they are). My 20 ft. long pumpkin vine is looking to give us two cantaloupe sized jack-o-lanterns: one for each of my kids. The butternut squash is laying out about a half-dozen small gourds and one large one. But given my "input costs," I would stand to lose money if this were an agricultural business. But thankfully it's not. And like the man at Stone Brothers and Byrd said, "keeping a garden is a lot cheaper than a paying a therapist."

Rosehill Avenue garden

I was very fortunate to run into John Schelp the other day while cruising Old West Durham for front yard gardens. He was tending to a lot that has been a large garden for over seventy years. He came into ownership of it last month and gave me a brief tour.

Look for the newest issue of the Skywriter to make it back to the presses this month or next. My short piece about this garden should appear under the "Garden Shed" column.

plants and policy?

I heard this NPR story on the way to work yesterday. It was about one suburb of Milwaukee and their town policy against planting in the public strip between the street and sidewalk. No veggies allowed. In fact, no plants over four inches allowed?!

This is a shame for a lot of reasons. I love seeing folks take over public spaces and front yards for a garden. Sometimes you just need to make use of the best sun you have. And sometimes you need to personalize a garden with more than grass, nandina shrubs, or mulch. If you drive around some of the older neighborhoods in Durham you will see some pretty cool front yard gardens. The Tuscaloosa-Lakewood neighborhood is always a good place to hunt for examples. On my way between James and Kent streets, I've seen corn stalks and canteloupe vines near several front walks and mailboxes. Brave, smart, efficient, however you want to describe their green thumb decisions-- those gardeners have made it easy for me to drive slow by their house.

my washtub runneth over

I've been lucky with this container. I wish I could say that it was a well planned arrangement of tropical and low maintenance pass-along plants, but the truth is that it is mostly just a happy accident.

The old galvanized washtub was in our home's basement when we moved in five years ago. I lugged the tub outside and punched holes in the bottom for drainage. The trailing purple heart and the bronze canna lilies overwintered in this same spot last year. I thought I had moved them both in the spring. I must have left a few pieces of roots/tubers behind.

Pink geraniums are not usually my favorite choice, but a quart of them were marked down to twenty-five cents on the quick sale table in May, mostly because they looked dead. And lastly, the amaryllis (which are the strappy green things that haven't bloomed) are gifts from a neighbor. These are spending a summer enjoying the sun and moisture afforded here. The clumps will surely grow too large for the washtub so I will put them into my perennial border this fall. Since it hasn't flowered, I am not 100% sure that my amaryllis is not really a pineapple lily or crinium. I should check with my neighbor (who couldn't remember the bloom type when he forked these over last March). That's pretty standard fare in the world of plant swappers.

The morning glory vine that is reaching up the rain barrel is kind of a nuisance in other parts of my yard and garden. Every dropped seed from the summer before seems to prosper. But I will let this one slide. At least for this year.