The student, who was born in Italy, called into question our assumption that foreign plants are aggressors by asking who determines what belongs where.
While watering, you can find interesting things in your gardens. My husband was pleased to see that a Monarch caterpillar was enjoying our newly planted butterfly weed.
Lee looks forward to Dewey Hall's Third Annual Dahlia Festival that takes place in the coming days and focuses on the variety of flowers all belonging to the single genus of dahlia.
Landscape trees and shrubs have been showing heat stress, but the daylight has decreased as well. Deciduous plants slow chlorophyll production now in preparation for winter dormancy.
We are funny animals. We acclimate to intensely warm weather and become surprised by cool temperatures. I encourage you to embrace the change and think about the future.
August and September are an ideal time to enjoy native grasses. They hold soil on sloped areas, have attractive and easily controlled clumping qualities, and look beautiful in autumn.
Evening temperatures have been lovely and rain scarce. Visit your garden in the twilight (or rain if you are lucky). Our gardens look different throughout the day and after rainfall.
Currently, the U.S. spends as much energy cooling and heating our homes as the continent of Africa expends on all electrical usage, so maybe a few trees could supplant some of our energy usage, should we be so inclined.
The European import but non-invasive “Queen Anne’s Lace,” or wild carrot, has started blooming everywhere. Although not native, these European, alien imports do offer a local benefit.
Like Holly Golightly’s mean reds in Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the mean greens are a generalized sense of angst and perhaps panic, not about one’s life, but about the state of one’s garden.
