One hollyhock plant came up among the pole beans and kale in our vegetable garden.
It started blooming last week.
Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is the 15th of every month. To see what’s blooming today in other bloggers’ gardens, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly our whole life would change.
—Buddha
I had a good harvest today of my alpine strawberries, which I grew from seed. (O.K., the bed is less than 4 ft.x 4 ft.)
I’m actually pretty bad at raising things from seed, but I’ve succeeded in three gardens with alpines. I sowed the seeds for these plants right into the ground.
Their taste is wonderful, more perfume-y than commercial strawberries (maybe I’ll even share the next handful). They also make nice small edging plants in flower beds.
To-morrow it will be the same:
Cakes and strawberries. . .–Amy Lowell, from “Interlude“
Last week, in our garden.
Click on any thumbnail above to enlarge it.
Mt. Kigali, Monday evening.
I’m a bit late, but I did want to show off my 25 rosemary plants (on the left, below), which grew from cuttings that I took from a single big old plant that was in the garden when we arrived here.
(Especially since the gardener expressed grave doubts at the time that they would root and grow.)
The photo above shows the passage between the vegetable garden on the left and the cutting garden on the right, walking toward the south end of the upper lawn.
By the way, that huge, dark green tree in the upper left corner is what your potted weeping fig would look like over time — in the ground, in a constantly warm climate.
I started the cuttings about 18 months ago.* Now the plants are 2′ to 3′ tall,
except at the very end, on the left above. Those plants — which will finish out the row — are about 6 months old.
Above, on the left, is the mother plant. Just to the right of it is a little patch of alpine strawberries, which I grew from a packet of seeds.
I divided them recently, so they look a bit skimpy. The tiny fruit does have a more pronounced and almost perfume-y taste, compared with larger strawberries.
As I am giving you a couple of my success stories, I should also show you the flip side — above.
This is the one Rudbeckia hirta or black-eyed Susan to germinate out of an entire packet of seeds — a plant that has a reputation for generous self-seeding. I have big hopes for it, though. It’s a pretty showy native American plant.
Thanks to Pam at Digging, who hosts Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up on the 16th of every month. Click here and see what’s happening in other gardens.
*I cut pieces that were a little or not quite woody, stripped the ends of leaves, and stuck them in a slightly sunken, slightly shaded place. Then, I kept the ground there damp for a few months. After I transplanted them, I was also careful to water the new plants almost daily for a few weeks.
enclos*ure 