Category: our garden

Bloom Day in November: dill(flowers) and sunflowers

Cindy at enclos*ure10 Comments

The quiet flowerworks in the mind of God . . .

— Howard Nemerov, from “A Sprig of Dill“

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

A dillburst in the flower borders.

During the summer, I transplanted a lot of small dill plants from the vegetable garden to the yellow areas of the flower borders.  Unfortunately, dill really doesn’t like to be moved, and it really doesn’t like it during the dry season.  So all the little plants just remained little.

But lately, after six weeks of rain, they are growing and a few have begun to bloom.

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ureI’ve always thought that dill is a nice ornamental plant.

Eventually, that variegated ginger — of which you can just see a bit  above and below — will be huge and dominate this area (and there is another very small one hidden to the left of the dill bloom below).

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

In the meantime, I’m hoping that the dill and Missouri primrose will self seed here as long as there is space.  (I will help it along, and I’ve also been sprinkling about Verbena bonariensis seed.)

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ureI was pleased to get the picture above.  The yellow of the primroses is usually too intense for my camera to capture any details.

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ureAbove, the dill blooms/seadheads are beautiful even as they fade to tan.

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ureIn our vegetable garden, the dillworks continue. . . .

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ureIn the background are blue-green Russian kale.  Some of the next batch that I grow will also go into the flower beds — like these at the Smithsonian’s Butterfly Habitat Garden.

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

This Bloom Day, I also got interested in the after- blooms of our sunflowers.November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

Below is what one of them looked like at the end of summer.

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is the 15th day of every month. To see what’s blooming in other garden bloggers’ gardens, please visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

After the rain

Cindy at enclos*ure1 Comment

Pink rose in the rain/enclos*ure. . . this morning.

In my Autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses;
Alas for that last rosebud that uncloses
To Autumn’s languid sun and rain
When all the world is on the wane!

— Christina Rossetti, from “An October Garden”

Back here in Kigali. . .

Cindy at enclos*ure13 Comments

We have orchids in the acacia tree.
34 orchids

1c orchids

These two clumbs of orchids came out of the big old Norfolk pine that used to grow at the entrance to the terrace. (It was cut down a year and a half ago when it was clear it was dying.)

1 orchids

When we wired them onto the acacia, the gardener said the flowers were yellow, but I really didn’t think I’d ever see them bloom.

1a orchids

1b orchids

5 orchids

Another change: at the end of the long lawn (below), we have added two tall pots to set off a trio of pine trees.

10 pots

I will plant something tall to the right of the trees/pots grouping.

12 pots

At the other end of the lawn, I placed this single tall pot. I will enlarge the planting area at the base of the traveller’s palm and add some stones to make a level base for the pot.

13 pots

And finally, I faced the fact that my stepping stones and grass arrangement (below) on the right side of the entrance to the terrace just didn’t work. (The aforementioned Norfolk pine used to fill this area.)

Before

We (meaning the gardener mostly) took up all the grass and stones . . .

21 front

and we replanted (meaning me) with the same plants that are in the borders around the driveway:

front circle

Mexican sage, small pink shrub roses (like ‘The Fairy’), datura, lambs’ ear, and yellow day lilies.

23 front

I’m still working on the placement of the pots. Please stay tuned.

October Bloom Day: home again

Cindy at enclos*ure5 Comments
View from the living room.
A double variety of Rudbeckia laciniata.
Graptopetalum in bloom.
Americans in Kigali: purple coneflowers grown from seed.
A Crassocephalum (vitellinum?) native to Rwanda.
Unknown shrub rose in the pink border.
An unknown white rose — our only scented rose.
The sunflowers bloomed while we were gone.
The cherry tomatoes waited for us.

We returned from three weeks of travel on Saturday night.  Not a minute too soon, as a steady trickle of water was flowing from below the master bathroom sink and probably had been for a couple of days.  The bedroom floor and two carpets were soaked — welcome home!  Thankfully, the furniture and the rooms below were fine.

Until that moment, however, it had been a great trip — especially since I was able to visit Loi of Tone on Tone and his beautiful shop of Swedish antiques in Bethesda, Maryland.  And in Madison, Wisconsin, Linda from Each Little World and her husband, Mark,  not only took us on a tour of their lovely garden, but gave us lunch.  We had very interesting conversation about art collecting and Wisconsin politics.

I was also able to go and pull invasive weeds at Dumbarton Oaks Park in Washington, D.C., and meet the great Ann Aldrich and some of the other weed warriors of the DOP Conservancy, which is supporting the National Park Service in restoring this Beatrix Farrand’s masterpiece.

Back at home, about five weeks into the rainy season, our grass is green again and there are a lot of flowers.   Being away, however, has opened my eyes to a number of problems that daily familiarity was hiding, so now back to work. . . .

To see what’s blooming in other garden bloggers’ gardens this October 15, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.