Our garden in June

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Today is Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day, hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. I don’t have a lot of flowers, but I am enjoying some orange hawkweed, which I hope will pop up in more places in the long grass this summer and next year.

Tomorrow is Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up, hosted by Pam at Digging. If grass counts as “foliage,” this is my contribution as well.

You can read more about our backyard in Stuttgart, Germany, here.

To scroll through larger versions of the pictures, click on ‘Continue reading’ below and then on any thumbnail in the gallery.

In a field by the river
my love and I did stand.  .  .  .
She bid me take life easy,
as the grass grows on the weirs. . .

— W. B. Yeats, from “Down by the Salley Gardens

 

Foliage Follow Up in September

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Our garden in Kigali, Rwanda, this morning. This is an area at the end of our front terrace, composed of mostly tropical foliage plants and shaded by a large red-blooming Mussaenda erythrophylla. Thanks to Pam at Digging for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up the 16th of every month.

imagine it as one of those survivors in the old
swamps, shadowed by the grown, light-headed conifers…

Alan Dugan, from “Philodendron

Foliage Follow Up: Eden’s curls

Our garden in Kigali/enclos*ure: the cycad's new leavesOne of our cycad’s new leaves — there’s more about this plant here.

Our cycad is a sago palm or Cycas revoluta, a species of gymnosperm with origins in the Mesozoic era.  Revoluta refers to the “curled back” leaves.

A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. . .

— Gerard Manley Hopkins, from “Spring

Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up is the 16th of every month. Check out more beautiful leaves at Digging.

The Sunday porch: Oxford, Ohio

The Flower family, probably in Ohio, ca. 1905, via Miami University Libraries Commons on flickr“Flower family on porch, ca. 1905,” by Frank R. Snyder, via Miami University Libraries Commons on flickr.

Impressive porch foliage . . . and in the photo below, by the same photographer.

Mrs. C.E. Kumler family on front porch, by Frank Snyder, via Miami University Libraries Commons on flickr“Mrs. C. E. Kumler family on front porch, not dated,” also by Frank R. Snyder, via Miami University Libraries Commons on flickr.

Snyder was a successful photographer working in Oxford, Ohio, in the early 20th century.  After his death in 1958, his family donated his archive of 4,000 negatives to Miami University.

Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up is the 16th of every month. Check out more beautiful leaves at Digging.

Foliage Follow Up: my rosemary hedge

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.

Foliage Follow Up for December/enclos*ure: rosemary(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,

Foliage Follow Up for December/enclos*ure: rosemaryexcept at the very end, on the left above.  Those plants — which will finish out the row — are about 6 months old.

Foliage Follow Up for December/enclos*ure: rosemaryAbove, 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.

Foliage Follow Up for December/enclos*ure: alpine strawberriesI 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.

Foliage Follow Up for December/enclos*ure: black-eyed susan seedlingAs 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.