gardens by the lake: Solomon's Seal

Friday, September 7, 2007

berries and seed pods

Cooler and drier - what a lovely autumn-like day we had here in the Twin Cities. My gardens received a much-needed inch and a half of rain last night. I put mulch down on another garden section this afternoon AND mowed the lawn. Roasted two more batches of tomatoes - I'm caught up now until I go out and pick again. Yup, pretty productive day.
(In Minnesota, we say cooler and drier and mean less humidity - the inch plus of rain has nothing to do with the drier part! Likewise, I would describe this summer as extremely hot and dry - which has nothing to do with the very, very humid conditions each and every day. Everyone here would know exactly what I'm talking about.) :)

Yesterday it was hot and super windy. I noticed that the ornamental grasses were really pretty blowing in all that wind. So went out and took a video. Here's the good news - my voice actually sounded like me - this is old-hat now! LOL The bad news is there was so much wind noise you can only hear about half of what I was saying. Also found out my camera shuts off after 3 minutes. I was standing out there talking away for at least 5 minutes AFTER it had shut off. (you can go ahead and be relieved that I only get to do 3 mins at a time - imagine sitting through 8 minutes of me yakking away and showing you grass blowing in the wind!!) Anyway, I'll try again on a less windy day - it is kind of fun to do.

Today: plants are thinking about next year already. Here's a collection of berries and seed pods in the garden today.

Solomon's Seal

false Solomon's Seal

Jack-in-the-pulpit
(yes, Kobie & Tess, please do explain why it's laying on the ground instead of standing up???)
(oh, and look at some of the ZILLIONS of acorns that have fallen this year - do you think maybe we're going to have a horrible winter??)
The cool part of this photo is that you have to have both female and male plants to get seed heads or berries. I adore the bright red color - and the fact that I'll probably have some baby plants next spring!

false indigo
I love how these rattle in the wind.
Has anyone had any luck growing plants from these seeds? I have several people who would like seeds, but people who have taken them in the past have had no luck with the seeds growing.

Monday, May 28, 2007

bring on summer

What a great weekend. Hope everyone else had a good one too.

I finished all the containers I'm going to do - I'll do a post on them, but right now they all look pretty pathetic, so we'll give them a couple days!

My neighbor gave me a gorgeous purple fountain grass for my birthday. I still need to put it somewhere, but otherwise, all annuals are present and accounted for. (That's me breathing a sigh of relief!)

Pretty much just hung out here - working in the garden - reading - enjoying the nice weather. Sunday my niece, Becca, graduated from high school, so I went down to my brother's for the afternoon and hung out with my family - very fun. My nephew Tom said he thought it would be cool to see his name in my blog - so Hey, Tom! (Now I'd better see something in the comment section if you read this!!)

Lots of stuff is blooming - so here are a ton of photos: