landscape – Page 134

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day: Evolvulus ‘Blue Sapphire’

March 15, 2013April 13, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure16 Comments

The green of life requires blue. . .*

At the front of our house, in two curvy planting beds, the Evolvulus ‘Blue Sapphire’ is thick and blooming heavily — in the morning.

By early afternoon, the flowers close up, and I’m left with just a small-leaved, grey-green ground cover — which is still pretty nice.

(Above: that’s a pink-blooming crape myrtle tree to the left, doing so-so — I’m going to give it a light pruning pretty soon and see if it will fill out a bit.)

I planted out little sprigs of the evolvulus last July. This open area used to be occupied by a large Norfolk pine. However, it was dying (see here; sixth photo) and had to be cut down.

I’m not very happy with the grass and stone arrangement on the left side of the center planting area (below). It looks rather ragged. One of these days, I plan to remove the turf grass (I really like to have a wee bit of Round-Up) and plant mondo grass between the stones — as well as take up a few stones and add a two or three mounding plants.

Below, the blooms of Evolvulus ‘Blue Sapphire’ are a true blue. It is a tropical plant, hardy to U.S. zones 8-11.

(Click on any of the photos to enlarge them or on ‘Continue reading’ below to scroll through all the bigger images.)

Below, I’ve also used it to edge the planting border along the upper lawn in front of the terrace. (A plan of our garden is here.)

Below is the same border from the other direction, standing at the center steps. (The red-flowering shrub/vine at the end is a Mussaenda erythrophylla.)

Below, the border continues on the left side of the steps. The tall yellow flowers are double Rudbeckia laciniata.

Below, the zinnias in our cutting garden (from last month’s GBBD) continue to be beautiful. The tall grass in the back is lemongrass.

To see what’s blooming in other garden bloggers’ gardens today, check out May Dreams Gardens.

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is the 15th of every month.

*by Robert L. Jones, from “Blue.”

Vintage landscape: painting the cherry blossoms

March 13, 2013April 13, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure8 Comments

“An artist seen painting the Cherry Blossoms along the Tidal Basin,” Washington, D.C., by E. B. Thompson. The photo is undated, but was possibly taken in the 1920s. Via D. C. Public Library Commons on flickr.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., will begin next week on Wednesday, March 20, and will continue through April 14. Click here for more information on events and local accomodations.

The National Park Service is predicting that peak bloom (70% of the flowers open) will occur March 26 – 30. The average date for peak bloom is April 4.

[ADDENDUM: The Capital Weather Gang blog at The Washington Post is departing from the NPS prediction. They believe that the peak bloom will come between April 3 and 7.]

Here’s another lovely hand-colored photograph of the Tidal Basin from about 1920.

The photographer is unknown; the image is via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The cherry trees along Washington’s Tidal Basin were a gift from the Japanese government 101 years ago, so they would have been about 10 to 15 years old at the time of these photos.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

— A. E. Housman, “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now“

Vintage landscape: nice March day

March 10, 2013April 13, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure5 Comments

. . . for a baseball match between the Republican and Democratic teams of the House of Representatives, March 10, 1926, presumably in Washington, D.C.

I like it that they are all playing in suits and ties.

Photo via National Photo Company Collection of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

— Charles Dickens, from Great Expectations

Ready for action

March 5, 2013July 20, 2017 Cindy at enclos*ure7 Comments

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow. . .

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, from “The Snow-Storm“

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Ford Motor Co. snow plows, ca. 1910 – 1925, possibly in Washington, D.C., National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

“Most sources seem to agree that the basic street snow plow (not horse-drawn or built for trains) was created in 1913,” according to the blog Landscape Management Network.

“The first street snow plow, however, wasn’t patented until the early 1920s. At the time, a New Yorker by the name of Carl Fink was the leading manufacturer of plows mounted to motorized vehicles. Today, the company is known as Fink-America and its plows are still on the market.”

Current snow reports: here and here.

Continue reading “Ready for action” →

The way we live (green) now in Rwanda

March 4, 2013April 13, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure4 Comments

This Kigali pharmacy has taken the city regulation for flower pots to heart -- with clipped weeping figs in the ground and then more pots behind them. — This Kigali pharmacy has taken the flower pots requirement to heart — with clipped weeping figs in the ground and then more pots behind them.

The city of Kigali has a requirement that all shops must have flower pots at their entrances. I learned this yesterday from our local newspaper, The New Times.

According to the article “Kigali City residents bemoan KCC* policies,”

[a business owner,] who deals in hardware business, . . . especially criticized the policy of flower pots at the front of every shop. All shops are supposed to have flower pots in front of them, a policy that was established in 2011.

“We are struggling with paying taxes which are high on top of that they are asking us to buy flower pots which cost between Rwf 15,000 to 20,000. Not all of us love flowers,” he said. “Every time I see these flower pots in front of my shop, I feel like it’s making my shop ugly because I would prefer something more artistic other than a flower pot but then I also can’t have two decorations at my door.” . . .

Last week, during an inspection, a few shops were locked up because of not having flower pots outside their shops.

I don’t know how many or what size pots are required. Rwf 15,000 is about US$24.

Back on January 19, I was also diverted by the article “Eleven arrested smuggling plastic bags:”

The police have arrested 10 Burundians and a Rwandan found smuggling 400 cartons of plastic paper bags and marijuana into the country.

The suspects were arrested in Kibungo town. They were travelling by bus heading to Kigali, from Kirehe district.

Police said the suspects had smuggled the goods through one of the most notorious entry points on the Burundi and Rwanda border in Gahara sector.

Rwanda banned disposable plastic bags in 2005. The ban was effected in three years later. However, Rwanda, which replaced the menacing bags with paper bags, is the only country of the five EAC member states with effective policy on plastic bags.

The initiative was a response to the plastic’s negative environmental impact, amid extensive physical presence of bags across the country.

Supt. Benoit Nsengiyumva, the Eastern Province Police spokesman, said the suspects would be charged as soon as investigations are complete.

“Rwanda is now entering its fourth year with a nationwide ban on all plastic bags. This is what we are guarding; as Police and we won’t rest,” he said.

Nsengiyumva said the suspects would also be charged with illegal entrance into the country and trafficking in marijuana, an illegal drug.

Note which crime is emphasized in the article.

Rwanda takes its restriction of plastic very seriously. Passengers arriving on international flights are warned to leave behind their duty-free store bags, and once, returning from Pretoria, I had to pull off all the security plastic wrap from my suitcase before I could exit the baggage area.

While I could go either way about storefront potted plants, I do like this plastic bag prohibition. I remember how the last place we lived in Africa — Niamey, Niger — was just inundated by this particularly obnoxious form of trash. The bags are such a plague on the continent that a common joke is to refer to them as the national bird, seen nesting in the trees and fields.

But they are extinct in Rwanda.