Category: garden.

to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.

another rainy garden tour.

Published on by Quandie9 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

Or maybe I should say good morning from a garden, because this garden is not my own.  Today I’m sharing Longwood Gardens located in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

As you’ll soon be able to see, we visited Longwood Gardens on a rather rainy day on our recent trip to the Brandywine Valley.  But you know what?  I actually don’t mind visiting a garden in the rain.  It was raining during my visit to de Hortus in Amsterdam, and during my visit to the Munsinger and Clemens Gardens in St. Cloud.  I think you can get some of the prettiest garden photos on a rainy day.

So … Longwood Gardens … have you heard of them?

USA Today recently named them the no. 1 best botanical garden in the U.S.  Consisting of more than 1,100 acres, Longwood has pretty much everything you’d want to find in a botanical garden.  The map shows 32 ‘districts’ including a cascade garden, a bonsai courtyard, an Italian water garden, a meadow garden, a rose garden, the oak & conifer knoll, and the topiary garden shown above plus more.

The land that Longwood Gardens sits on was originally purchased by a Quaker farmer in 1700.  In 1798 his grandsons began planting an arboretum.  Their heirs weren’t interested in the project though and over the next 100 years the arboretum was allowed to deteriorate.  Then in 1906 Pierre du Pont purchased the property to save the trees from a lumber mill that had been contracted to remove them.

The Flower Garden Walk was du Pont’s first addition to the arboretum.

I loved the way the flowers are grouped by color in this area.

I think my favorite is the purple section.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to try something like this in my own garden, but I’m not sure I could pull it off.

In 1929, du Pont added a 61′ tall carillon, or chimes tower.

It has had a variety of different bells over the years, but it has been kept in running order and it was lovely to hear it chime out throughout the garden.

I took so many photos, and there was so much to see.  I don’t want to bore you guys with a million garden pics, so maybe I can just share the highlights.

There is a ginormous conservatory and this next photo might give you some indication of just how large it is.

It’s filled with beautiful things.

All of that pink?  That’s hydrangeas!

I sure do wish I could get these kind of results with a macrophylla hydrangea, but they really don’t like our cold weather.

They also had a beautiful display of blue ones too.

In case you are wondering, that tall purple flower behind the hydrangeas is a Canterbury Bell.

That’s another plant that I’ve never had much luck growing.  It’s a biennial, and I just don’t have the patience for a plant that takes two years to bloom and then dies.  Same with foxgloves.

The perfectly round globe shaped hanging planters in the conservatory were gorgeous.

This is the sort of thing you can do if money is no object, and you happen to have a greenhouse to grow them in.

Beautiful to see, but hard to emulate in real life.

There was also a fern wall in the conservatory …

and a children’s garden …

and an orchid room.

There were so many beautiful orchids (I thought of you when I saw this room Monica!).

There was a bonsai display tucked just behind the conservatory.

Some of the bonsai were 80 to 100 years old.  I can’t imagine the skill it takes to create these beautiful pieces of plant art.

I’ve saved the most spectacular aspect of Longwood Gardens for the end and that’s the fountains.

Remember the fountain show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas that I shared a few weeks back?

Well, the fountain show at Longwood is about 10 times more spectacular.

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually get any photos of the ‘show’ where the fountains dance to music.  By the time we got to that part of our day I was a bit worn out (we spent nearly six hours exploring Longwood), and the rain had decided to come down a bit harder just at that moment.  My photos above show the basic fountains while they aren’t ‘performing’.

So I guess you will just have to head to Longwood Gardens yourself to see the fountains dance.  It is definitely worth the trip.

Have any of you been there?  If so, what was your favorite district?  Or do you have a botanical garden to recommend near you?  Leave a comment and let me know.

the flower market tote.

Published on by Quandie9 Comments

Remember the wood tote that I picked up while garage saling a couple of weeks ago?

Well, I’ve given it a quick makeover.

I started by cleaning it well.  While doing that I noticed that there was some sort of oily looking stain on the inside bottom of the tote.  So I gave just that bottom two coats of Dixie Belle’s Bonding Boss, just in case that stain wanted to bleed through my paint.

After letting that dry for 24 hours, I painted the inside of the tote in Dixie Belle’s Kudzu.

And so far, so good.  No oily bleed thru.

Next I painted the outside in their Drop Cloth.  Once that dried, I taped off some grain sack style stripes and painted those in the Kudzu.

I followed that up with adding just a portion of Dixie Belle’s Flower Market stencil.

Here’s the full stencil …

I taped off everything except the “Flower Market” wording for my tote.

I then gave the entire tote a vigorous sanding to age it up a bit.  I finished it all off with a coat of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta in the Fresh & Clean scent.  If you haven’t tried this product, I describe it as halfway between hemp oil and wax.  It comes in 5 different scents, plus an unscented version.  I think I like the Orange Grove the most.  The Fresh & Clean is a little bit more subtle, and … well … fresh and clean smelling.

Next up I filled the tote with a load of lilacs.

I came home from the Brandywine Valley to find my lilacs in full bloom, and since then we’ve been having very cool weather (as low as 38° one night this week) so the blooms are sticking around a bit longer than usual which is nice.

Those purple lilacs are the Albert F. Holden variety, FYI.

But you wouldn’t have to fill the tote with flowers.  You could display lots of things inside, like pretty china and a lovely vintage floral tablecloth.

or maybe some books.

Speaking of books, I am planning to include ‘a year at Brandywine Cottage’ in an upcoming giveaway.

I just need to get that pulled together.  Some of you may know that I used to always bring something home from my travels to give away here on the blog.  But I looked back and I haven’t done that since my Amsterdam trip back in 2023.

I’m really slipping, and time is flying by so fast!

But, stay tuned.  At the conclusion of my posts about our trip to the Brandywine Valley I will have a giveaway that includes that book.

As far as the tote is concerned, I’ve put it in the pile of merch that I’m gathering for my upcoming occasional sale.  And that’s coming up awfully quickly as well!

If you’re local, be sure to save the date!

a disappointing spring?

Published on by Quandie7 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

As you may remember, last year’s gardening season ended on a bit of a low note.

First of all, I discovered that I had jumping worms, and secondly, my neighbor removed a huge, glorious shade tree and now my back garden feels like it’s baking in the sun (#stillnotoverit).

It probably hasn’t helped matters that I just returned from a trip to visit some of the most spectacular gardens in the U.S. (more on those visits in future Sunday posts) only to find that my own gardens are a hot mess.  Apparently we had a freak heat wave while I was gone that encouraged the weeds to completely take over while I wasn’t looking.

In addition to all of that, I seem to have lost quite a few plants over the winter.  It seems that little to no snow cover and sub-zero temps combined to create a winter that was quite hard on gardens.  According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the frost line was deeper in 2025 than any year since 2019.  Here in Minnesota we need that snow to protect our plants from the cold and we just didn’t get enough of it last winter.

All of these factors have contributed to what has been a rather disappointing spring in my garden.

Most of the perennials that I planted last year have bit the dust including a Lemon Meringue baptisia, a hosta Wu-La-La, a couple of azaleas, several Queen of Hearts brunnera, a Rozanne cranesbill, and some Japanese Forest Grass.  Although I have to point out that the azaleas and the forest grass were iffy propositions in our climate in a good year, so it’s not surprising that they didn’t make it.

But I also lost some things that had been in my garden for years.  One of the biggest losses was my lamium.

I had a lot of this ground cover in both my hosta garden and the front garden.  In the past it has been semi-evergreen, meaning it would retain some of it’s leaves through the winter.  As the snow would melt in the spring it would reveal mostly intact plants that were even still a bit green.

This spring there is little sign of it.  The arrow in the photo below is pointing to one tiny sprout that has managed to survive.

I’m not entirely sure if this loss is a result of the winter, or from the jumping worms, or maybe a combination of both.  However, my neighbor nnK belongs to a local Facebook garden group, and apparently many of the members are complaining about having lost ground covers in particular this past winter.  So I’m hoping it’s that.  Otherwise, I have little hope for replacements surviving in the future.

I’ve also lost a good bit of my ajuga, although it’s trying to come back.  Last year it was finally filling in …

And now it’s quite sparse and barely blooming.

I’ve also lost my gorgeous Aralia cordata, or ‘Sun King’ Golden Japanese Spikenard.

This would have been its 3rd year in my garden.  I may also have lost some of those hostas around it.  In fact, I’m quite baffled by this spot …

As you can see, it looks quite decimated.  I’m taking a wait and see approach for now, maybe those hostas are still going to come up?  Fingers crossed.

Either way, I’ve already purchased a replacement for the aralia, and FYI, I found it at Home Depot.  So this plant is definitely more readily available than it was when I first planted it.

Alright, enough of this dismal reporting on garden failures.  Let’s look on the bright side.

My Pagoda Dogwood looks great this spring.

I planted it back in 2022, so this will be its fourth season.  It’s finally tall enough to really see it above the tops of all of those ferns, so I’m very relieved that it came through the winter.

I’m also happy to see that my lilacs are full of blooms right now.

If you’ve followed me for long, you know that I’ve really struggled with this lilac hedge.

I started out planting all hybrids with gorgeous flowers, and they never took off.  I eventually had to replace all of them.  I replaced two of them with the Common Lilac, and those have grown like gangbusters.  They are over 15′ tall, and they are blooming like mad.  They had a bad case of leaf spot fungus at the end of last summer, so I wasn’t sure if that would affect the spring blooms but apparently it didn’t.

Unfortunately, their flowers are just a bit blah.  So I succumbed to temptation and added a few more hybrids on either end of the hedge a couple of years ago.  Just look at how much prettier the flowers are …

But the hybrids continue to look more straggly overall compared to the Common Lilac and I’m just not sure they are going to fill in enough to provide a screen from the unsightly neighbor’s fishing boat storage area behind us.

I’m incredibly relieved to find that all of the new Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas that I planted to create a hedge have survived.  Especially since I didn’t plant them until August of last year, so they didn’t have a lot of time to establish.  I also underplanted them with some muscari and daffodils, and they look great.

That is Muscari Valerie Finnis, isn’t it the loveliest pale blue color?

The daffodils are an all white variety called Trumpet Mount Hood.

I’m hoping that both of these naturalize (ie. multiply) and fill in all of the space under the hedge eventually.

This area is sunny enough now that the bulbs should do well from year to year.

I’m slowly starting to get over my dismay at the number of plants that didn’t make it this year.  On the bright side, this gives me an opportunity to get some new plants, right?

And as for the jumping worms, I’m going to have to learn what works and what doesn’t going forward.  Leaf mulch is definitely out, but I recently read that using cocoa bean mulch might be a good option.  I used to use cocoa bean mulch all the time, but it is difficult to find around here.  Also, FYI, it is highly toxic to dogs, so if you have a dog that likes to munch on stuff in the garden you definitely don’t want to try it.  Another study suggested that slug bait might work to help control the jumping worms.  Some of you might remember that I had to give up using slug bait because our cat liked to eat it, but now that she’s gone (#stillnotoverit) I can go back to using it.

How about you?  How has your spring been so far?  Did you have many plant losses over the winter?  Are you dealing with jumping worms?  Leave a comment and let me know!

you win some, you lose some.

Published on by Quandie4 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

My gardens are slowly but surely starting to wake up for spring, but while I wait for that to happen I thought I’d report back on some of my over-wintering experiments starting with those gorgeous rex begonias.

You may remember that I planted two different varieties of rex begonia in my front window box last year.  I think you can get a feel for how small they were when I purchased them in this next photo from last May.

I really wasn’t sure whether or not they would do well for me in that north facing window box, but as it turned out they loved it there.

Last fall I decided that they were too fabulous to just discard, so I potted them up to see if I could save them indoors over the winter.

I also took some cuttings to root in water.

Both cuttings developed nice roots within a couple of weeks, and ultimately I potted them on for winter.

In the end, one of them dried up once it was in the soil, but the other one continued to live.  I wouldn’t exactly say it thrived over the winter though.  It was basically a single leaf sticking out of a pot of soil for the bulk of the winter and I did not have high hopes for it.  But then, earlier this spring, I noticed that there was some growth sprouting out of the base of that single leaf.

And then a week or so later I noticed that there was also new growth coming from the soil too.

Eureka!  It lives!

Now I kinda wish I’d started more new plants from cuttings.  But that being said, the two original plants also did well over the winter.

I may have lost a little bit of bulk, but I’m sure that as soon as I get them outside they are going to take off again this year.

I think I will give both of these a little hair cut and see if I can root up a few more cutting before planting these out in mid-May.

Since I typically spend around $200 on annuals to fill that front window box, it would be nice to save some of that money by keeping rex begonias going from year to year.

That brings me to my 2nd overwintering experiment, the succulents.

As you may remember, I planted an antique newspaper roller with succulents two years ago.

I overwintered them in the roller the first winter, but it took up quite a bit of space in my window sill, and it leaked all over when I watered it.  That’s OK for an outside planter, but not so great on a window sill.

So last fall I decided to pull the succulents out of the newspaper roller and put them all in a pot together.

I placed the pot in a south facing window for the winter, and here is how it looks now.

As you can see, not everything made it.  Particularly that lime green sedum in the front, and that one succulent on the right.  But other things really thrived, like that rather spindly sort of succulent in the back right.

I don’t plan to put these back in the newspaper roller this year.  I never really did have a good spot for displaying it.  We’ll see what I can come up with for a unique succulent planter this year.

Finally, that brings me to my massive over-winter gardening failure, the bulb lasagna.

If you’ll remember, I found some half price bulbs at Home Depot quite late in the season last year.  Too late to plant them outside really, so I decided to try planting a bulb lasagna.

I filled two pots with a couple of layers of different spring blooming bulbs.

After watering them in, I placed the pots on my front three-season porch and I wrapped them in blankets.  I set a reminder on my calendar to give them just a little water once a month so they didn’t dry out completely.  Then as the weather started warming up this spring I uncovered them and set them in a sunny spot indoors.

And …

Nothing.

So I waited.  One week.  Two weeks.  Three weeks.  Still, nothing.

So I thought maybe they had to be outside at this point and I put them on the deck.

Still nothing.

So I decided to dig into the soil to see if I could find the bulbs and sure enough I found a bunch of rotted bulbs.

In hindsight, the porch must not have been a suitable location for them.  It probably got far too cold even though I’d protected them with blankets.  Or maybe I gave them too much water (although I really did only give them a very small amount).

Regardless, it was rather disappointing to get zero results.  Maybe a bulb lasagna just isn’t for me.

How about you?  Have you tried growing bulbs in pots?  Did you have success?  Have you got any tips to share?  If so, be sure to leave a comment.

desert gardens.

Published on by Quandie5 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

I’m so happy that gardening season is nearly upon us.  Here in Minnesota there is only so much we can do this early in the season, but I’ve pruned my hydrangeas and I’ve top dressed my gardens with some Espoma Plant Tone.  Now I just have to wait until after our last average frost date to start planting my annuals which is usually around mid-May.

My scilla are up and blooming …

but that’s about it.

But to tide my garden loving readers over until spring has truly sprung for us, I thought I’d share a couple of gardens that I saw on my recent visit to Las Vegas starting with the Ethel M Botanical Cactus Garden.

If you aren’t familiar, Ethel M Chocolates has a factory in Henderson, Nevada (which is the suburb that my mom lives in).  It’s around 10 miles away from the Las Vegas strip, so if you are visiting Las Vegas without a car, it won’t be practical to get to.

But if you do have a car, it’s definitely worth a visit.  Especially if you’re planning to drive out to Hoover Dam since it wouldn’t be too far out of your way to stop here too.

I recommend visiting in the spring when quite a few of the cacti are blooming, but it is pretty all year ’round.

I used to think that desert landscapes were boring, but spending so much time out visiting my mom since I’ve retired is helping me gain a new appreciation for them.

Entrance to the gardens is free, as is entrance into the factory where you can see how they make their chocolates.  You can also purchase chocolates in their gift shop, but I’ll warn you, they aren’t cheap.  A box of 24 chocolates will run you around $55.

I’m not a huge chocolate lover, give me a bakery item over a chocolate any day, so I tend to not buy anything when we visit.  The garden is well worth a visit whether you love chocolate or not though.

One of the most unique things in the garden are the saguaro skeletons.

Have you heard of these?  They are the dried out ‘ribs’ of the saguaro cactus that remain after it has died.  They are highly valued for their unique sculptural look.  I think they are a little bit spooky, but still quite beautiful.

Now for a completely different look, let’s head to garden number two.

As I mentioned last week, we stayed one night at the Bellagio on the strip last week.  I mainly picked this hotel and casino because I wanted to visit its conservatory.

Now, you don’t have to stay at the Bellagio to see the Conservatory, anyone can walk in.  That being said, it was massively crowded from about 10 a.m. onward.  By the afternoon it was literally wall to wall people.  But I got up at 6 a.m. to pop down there and see it before the crowds descended.

It certainly is a beautiful display, but it was fairly obvious that not all of the ‘flowers’ are real.  Certainly that purple vine was artificial.

It reminded me quite a bit of the Flower & Garden Festival at Disney’s EPCOT where they also add artificial plants to create specific looks that would be next to impossible to maintain with real plants.

That being said, there are quite a lot of real flowers to admire as well including lots of spring blooming bulbs like these hyacinths …

and plenty of tulips.

They completely change up the display with the seasons, and it takes them about a week to switch it up during which time the conservatory is closed.  So if you’re planning a trip to Vegas, be sure to check the Bellagio website for the dates the conservatory will be closed.  For this year those dates are 5/18/2025 thru 5/23/2025, 8/24/2025 thru 8/29/2025 and 11/9/2025 thru 11/14/2025.

The Bellagio Conservatory is definitely worth a visit if you’re going to be on the strip anyway, but I’d definitely try to time your visit for the very early morning.  I’m not sure it would be worth battling the crowds later in the day.

It will probably be several weeks before I have anything of interest to share from my own gardens, but not to worry, Mr. Q and I are heading out east in a week or two and I’ll be visiting both Longwood Gardens and Chanticleer Garden.  I’m looking forward to sharing both of those with you soon so be sure to stay tuned!

the year in review.

Published on by Quandie15 Comments

Happy New Year!

At the close of each year I typically like to put together a blog post sort of summarizing the year.

Unfortunately, I suspect that it comes across as one of those annoying holiday letters that some people send out.  You know, the ones where they talk about all of the trips they went on, and how great their kids are doing, and how much they love their new winter place in Aspen.

You know what I mean, right?

But in all honesty, this particular blog post is more for me than for you.

I like to have a summary of the year to look back on later.  I often go back and read  previous year’s posts to remind myself of things that I have done from year to year.  There is a common theme to all of these year end review posts; that I feel like I haven’t really accomplished much this year, but discover upon review that I actually have.

So if you’re annoyed by those holiday letters you may want to stop reading here and just come back later in the week for a less boring post.

But if you’re sticking with me, let’s review 2024 starting with the elephant in the room … a.k.a. furniture painting.  Yep, in the beginning this blog was mainly about furniture painting.  But I have been moving away from that for a while now.  I did do a few furniture pieces in 2024 though.

Well, OK, literally just a few … or well … like maybe 4.

I’ll admit, I mainly did this one because I wanted to use that gorgeous transfer from I.O.D.

I did a couple of other very simple makeovers of pieces that I found really cheap (and/or free) at garage sales, like this bookcase.

But overall 2024 was not the year for furniture makeovers for me, unless you count the miniature ones.

I have been having way too much fun with those.

There is much less heavy lifting involved in painting dollhouse furniture.

I also retrieved my dollhouse from the in-laws, and gave it a makeover on the outside (plan to see more of the inside in 2025).

Once again, 2024 saw lots of toolbox refurbs with the northern grown toolbox being one of my favorites.

I also really loved how the duchesse’s toolbox turned out.

And just to prove I don’t always paint everything in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth, I went green with the st. patty’s toolbox.

I have to admit, 2024 wasn’t a spectacular year for garage sale finds.

I did bring home a few goodies here and there though, including this haul from the Tangletown sales.

That little mirrored cupboard was one of my favorite makeovers in 2024.

And remember this guy from the Bryn Mawr sales?

He was an awesome find.

But speaking of sales, 2024 saw the return of the Carriage House Sale!

That was a biggie.  It had been 8 years since my last sale.

It went rather well, so I’m tentatively planning to have another sale in 2025.  This time I want to schedule it a little earlier in the season, late May possibly.  Don’t hold me to that though, we’ll have to see whether or not I can find enough inventory by then.

I did manage a few home improvement projects in 2024 starting with redecorating the q branch.

In May, I painted the shed …

and the fence.

I’m still quite happy with my decision to go with a black stain on the fence.  It does exactly what I want it to do, which is recede into the background and become nearly unnoticeable.

It was lucky that I got both of those projects done early in the season, because the summer ended up being so rainy that I was barely able to find three sunny days in a row to recoat the sealer on our deck.

On a rainy morning in July I finally got around to painting the sections of wall in the dining room that I’d stripped the wallpaper from more than a year ago.

Speaking of all that rain, 2024 ended up being a tough year in the garden.  It started out great.  Things were looking really good.

I initially thought the rain was a good thing for my plants.

I never had to water anything.

But then there was a hail storm.

It did a fair amount of damage, especially to the hostas.

Then the wet weather started to cause other problems like the leaf spot fungus on my lilacs, and a massive earwig infestation on the hostas.

The super wet summer also led to a jumping worm population explosion that I’m going to have to figure out how to control going forward.

And then there was the loss of my neighbor/handyman Ken’s tree.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m struggling with this one.  I can totally blame this loss on the rain as well.  We had numerous storms that led to trees coming down all over in our area, and Ken was worried that his tree would be next.  So he had it cut down instead.

I’m still not over it, and I don’t want to talk about it so let’s move on.

It did lead to me planting a hedge of Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas though, so it will be fun to see how that turns out (hopefully better than my lilac hedge).

Although I did manage to go on a few trips in 2024, they were mostly repeats.  My sister and I went to Disneyworld for the Festival of the Arts back in February.

I visited my mom in Las Vegas in March, but didn’t find anything fabulous at her local Goodwill.

Then I went back again in April with my sister …

and again in October with both my sister and my niece when the three of us also took a side trip to Disneyland.

And we visited the Clark Co. Museum for the first time.

Finally, I also went to Mexico with my neighbor nnK’s family in early December.

Mr. Q and I plan to visit a couple of places that are new to us in 2025, so be sure to stay tuned for that later in the year.

Once again writing this annual post has reminded me that I did get a few things done in 2024.

I totally recommend this exercise for all of you too.  Rather than making a list of New Year’s Resolutions for 2025, take some time to acknowledge the things you’ve already accomplished.  Just get out a pad of paper and make a list of everything you got done in 2024.  You might also be surprised to see just how long that list is.

a tropical morning walk.

Published on by Quandie4 Comments

Good morning from the garden.  Well, sort of.

This morning I thought I would share a few of the tropical flowers I came across while in Puerto Vallarta a week ago, like this one …

Is that a Bird of Paradise?  I believe it is, but I’m used to seeing the variety that has a purple and orange flower, and this one is red and orange instead.

As I mentioned last week, my sister was invited along on the trip to Mexico that we took with my neighbor nnK’s family this year.  It was nice having her along because she is more of a morning person.  We got up early every morning and took a walk around the neighborhood before everyone else got up for breakfast.

We saw lots of lovely flowers during our walks, like this pretty pink one.

I’m pretty sure that’s a bougainvillea, but I’d never seen one in that color before.

I’m used to the white ones, or the typical bright magenta colored ones.

I think if I was planning my own tropical garden I’d go for the more subtle pale pink variety.

I saw a few hibiscus, which I think of a classic tropical flower.

When I first started gardening in Minnesota, it was hard to find hibiscus hardy enough for our climate.  I did a little research online while writing this post and discovered that a hibiscus hardy to zone 5 was developed in the 1950’s, and a grower in Japan started hybridizing other hardy hibiscus in the 70’s and 80’s.  These days you can find lots of options for hibiscus that are hardy to zone 4, including the Summerific line from Proven Winners.

Personally I find them too tropical looking for my cottage style garden, so I’ve never been tempted to grow them.

I wouldn’t classify all of the plants I saw in Mexico as tropical, for example there were these gorgeous blue hydrangeas.

I’m fairly sure that those plants are just temporarily tucked into that flower bed though.  They were probably forced to bloom in a greenhouse, and when the blooms are done, they’ll pull them out and put something else in that spot.

I saw quite a few flowers that I didn’t recognize at all, like this pretty little one.

The flower has an orchid-like appearance, but it’s growing on a vine.  Aside from a variety of orchid that grows on a vine and has yellow flowers, I couldn’t find any info online about any other vining orchids.  Maybe you know what this flower is?  If so, leave me a comment.

I also had no idea what this next flower was, but that combination of red and white petals really caught my eye.

So I did a bit of googling and I think it’s a Bleeding Heart Vine, or Clerodendrum thomsoniae.  It’s only hardy to zone 9, so it won’t be making its way into my garden any time soon.

I also saw some old favorites of mine at our resort including the Blue Sky Vine, or Thunbergia grandiflora.

And this year they also had a white version, Thunbergia grandiflora ‘Alba’.

They also had a few water lilies that were lovely.

Water lily?  or maybe these are Lotus?  I’m not really sure.

We did spot one other rare sight on our morning walk in Puerto Vallarta that you don’t find here in Minnesota anymore.

A pay phone!  I haven’t seen one of these in ages.

Now that I’m back in Minnesota, I won’t be spotting pay phones or tropical flowers on my morning walks … or much color of any kind really.

Unless you count the vivid green of the moss on this stump.

Or the occasional bright red berry.

But that’s ok.  We have a different kind of beauty here in the winter, not as flamboyant, but lovely in a more subtle sort of way.

And I’m OK with that.  How about you?

everybody’s doing it.

Published on by Quandie6 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

OK, if you’ve been paying attention you know that I’m not in my own garden this morning.  I’m in Mexico!

This will be my 3rd visit to this resort with my neighbor nnK and her parents (and this year my sister is joining us as well).  I’m sure that I will be enjoying the gorgeous landscaping around the resort this week.

But before I left I whipped up a quick bulb lasagna to share here today.

Many of you are probably already familiar with a bulb lasagna, its seems like just about every garden YouTuber out there has shared the concept recently.  But just in case you don’t know what it is, it’s basically spring bulbs planted in layers in a pot, sort of like the layers of lasagna.

If you plan it right, the layers come up and bloom in succession.

I wasn’t initially planning on creating my own bulb lasagna, but my sister and I were in Home Depot last week and their remaining stock of spring bulbs were 50% off so I couldn’t resist buying some.

I grabbed some Persian Blue allium because I’d never seen this color before, and it sure looks pretty.

I hope it really does look like that!

I also purchased the new Proven Winners Golden Meadow blend of daffodils.

I quickly got the allium in the ground last Monday before our weather turned really cold, but I didn’t get the daffodils in.  Within a few days, with lows in the teens, our ground was getting pretty frozen so I decided it would be far easier to plant the daffodils in a pot.

And while I was at it, I could go back to Home Depot and get some of the spring blooming iris I saw there to add to it to create a bulb lasagna.

OK, so … simple concept … plant your bulbs in layers choosing bulbs that get planted at different depths and with different bloom times.

Since this is my first attempt at a bulb lasagna, I decided to keep it very basic.  The daffodils get planted at 6″, and they bloom in mid-spring, so they went in first.  I filled the pot with soil until it was about 8″ from the top, and then added my daffodil bulbs.

As you can see, I really packed ’em in there.  Since I’m only doing two layers, that should be OK.  However, if you do three or more layers you need to leave about 2 fingers of space between your bulbs so that they all have room to grow up through the layers.

My Iris reticulata are supposed to be planted at a depth of just 3″, so I added 3 more inches of soil over the daffs and then planted the iris.

I left a bit more space between the bulbs in that layer so the daffodils can come up through them.  The irises should bloom first in early spring, and then the daffodils will come up and bloom in mid-spring.  Theoretically.

I added a final 3″ of soil over the iris bulbs, and then watered my pot thoroughly.

I ended up with one spare packet of 10 iris bulbs and I was going to just pop them into a planter outside, but the soil was frozen solid.  I swear it happens overnight!

So I pulled out another pot and just planted them up by themselves.

But now comes the tricky part, where to put them for the winter?

These bulbs have to go through a cold period of somewhere between 10 to 16 weeks, and my online research tells me that the cold period should be at temps between 35–40°F.  Hmmmm.  I was planning to put these pots outside, but our winters are definitely much colder than that.  We’ve already had overnight temps in the teens, and this coming week they’ll be in the single digits.

Further online research tells me that the bulbs can freeze and rot in a unprotected pot left outdoors in our climate.  So that option is out.

Some suggestions given online include putting them in an unheated garage or shed.  I could do that, but in Minnesota even those spaces get much colder than 35–40°F.  I’ve also seen the suggestion to put them in the basement, but my basement is quite a bit warmer than that.

So I’ve decided to opt for my front ‘three-season’ porch, or as I like to call it in winter, my walk-in fridge.  It is unheated, but since it’s attached to the house it stays a little bit warmer than the shed or carriage house.  It can also be quite sunny though, so I’m going to put the pots under a table and cover them with some old sheets to keep them in the dark.

You also have to keep the container from drying out, but also don’t let it get too wet.  So I’ll be putting a reminder on my calendar to check it about once a month and add water if necessary.

It seems like there are a lot of things that could go wrong with this little project.  Too little cold, too much cold.  To little water, too much water.  Too much light.  I’m beginning to wonder if this was such a great idea after all.  But everybody seems to be doing it, so hopefully it’s as easy as they say it is and next spring I’ll have a lovely pot of daffodils and iris.

Have you had luck with a bulb lasagna?  Leave a comment and let me know, and be sure to share any tips you might have!

copper and gold.

Published on by Quandie14 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

It’s been a while since I brought you a Sunday morning in the garden post hasn’t it?

So far we’ve had a rather mild fall.  There have been a handful of nights just below freezing, but nothing really cold.  As a result, I still have some plants that look pretty darn good in the garden, like this Alexander’s Great brunnera …

and my Hakonechloa, or Japanese forest grass.

Up until a few nights ago I could also have said that some of my hostas are still looking great as well.

Except they no longer look like that.  Every last hosta that was still green was chomped down to stalks by roaming deer a couple of nights ago.

I really only seem to have trouble with deer in the early spring when they come and eat all of my tulips, and now apparently in late fall when they turn my hostas into a salad bar.

I’ll count my blessings since they don’t bother my garden in summer.  Knock on wood.

But today’s post isn’t about the deer, or what still looks good in the garden.  It’s about my front window box.  I’ve shared it here many times, but for those who may not be familiar it’s quite large at about 12′ long.  One thing I didn’t really think about when we made it so big was how much it would cost to keep it filled with annuals in the summer, and evergreens in the winter.

Unfortunately I don’t really have anywhere that I can go to forage for free evergreen cuttings so I have to buy them, and they aren’t cheap.  So last year when I went to the Bachman’s after Christmas sale I picked up two lengths of faux evergreen garland for 75% off.  They were originally priced at $79.99 (egads!), so I got them for about $20 each.

I think it looks realistic enough from the street, and no one really gets any closer than that except me.  And now I have a nice, full base to start adding further embellishments to.  Plus I’ll be able to use this over and over for several years at least.

I still have all of the faux red berries that I used in the window box last year.

But I wanted to try something different this year.  That being said, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on all new embellishments.

Plus, I put in a little extra effort in early fall drying quite a few flowers from the garden, like this Astilbe.

And of course, lots of hydrangeas.  So I wanted to use those.

But I didn’t want a ‘brown’ color scheme, so I decided to add a little bling with some metallic spray paint.

I took advantage of some lovely fall weather this past Friday and set up a work area outside to spray paint the flowers.

They hydrangeas look amazing, but I’m not as impressed with the painted astilbe.

I also didn’t love the copper paint as much as the gold.  I chose the matte metallic copper and this is one time when I should have gone shinier.

I had also dried a bunch of allium, and they are awesome painted in gold.

As are the handful of dried poppy seedheads from nnK’s garden.

After tucking all of the painted flowers in with the faux evergreen garland, I decided that I needed to add a few items with a bit more impact.  So I pulled a few different elements out of the workshop and gave them a spray of gold too.

Now, I’m sure that a few of you are wondering how well the painted dried flowers will last.  The answer pretty much depends on our weather.  If we get a heavy snowfall, it will inevitably crush them and they won’t look so good after that.

But hopefully we’ll just get the light and fluffy stuff between now and Christmas.

Fingers crossed!

Are you a fan of the more subtle copper and gold theme this year?  Or did you prefer the pop of red from last year?  Leave a comment and let me know.

saving the rex begonias.

Published on by Quandie10 Comments

Good morning from the garden.

This year the Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a first frost date of October 10 for us in the Twin Cities.  It seems a bit hard to believe since it has been in the mid-80’s and humid for the last two weeks.  But I’m heading out to California, and then Vegas, next week and I won’t be back until after the 10th.  So, I decided I’d better pot up my rex begonias and bring them in the house just to be on the safe side.

In case you don’t remember, I planted two really gorgeous rex begonias in my front window box this year.

They did amazingly well in there.

In fact, this has been one of my favorite combination of plants (here’s my post about what all I planted out there this year).

Here’s how everything looked when first planted it in May.

Not terribly exciting, I know.

But here’s the look when it filled out.

As expected, the Blackie sweet potato vine grew like mad.

The white caladium took a while to take off, but once we got some hot and humid weather it filled out nicely.

The Charmed Wine oxalis ended up being overtaken a bit, and the white New Guinea impatiens were almost totally crowded out in the end.

But overall I was very happy with the 2024 window box.

That brings me back to saving those begonias.

There are several different options for overwintering a rex begonia.  First, you can let them die back after the first frost, clean the soil off the tuber, and then store it in a warm dry location over the winter.  I have tried this method twice with caladium and failed miserably both times.

Another option would be to propagate new plants from leaf cuttings, and then nurture those over the winter in pots.  They would be a more manageable size if space is limited in your windowsill.

An even simpler method is to cut a stem off the plant, pop it into a jar of water, keep the water topped up and wait for it to grow some healthy roots.  Then pot that up for the windowsill.

My original plan was to just pot them up and try to keep them alive as houseplants over the winter, but as I was re-potting them I did a little pruning and then decided to put some of those stems in water too.

I admit I’m a little nervous about the houseplant thing after reading this advice from Proven Winners:

“Rex Begonias are a bit more of a challenge for indoor growing, but with a high humidity level can be gorgeous with bright filtered light. These plants like constant moderate moisture, high humidity, and regular fertilization. They do not go dormant, so never allow them to dry out. They are very sensitive to dry roots and quickly decline if not cared for.”

My house is definitely not humid in winter, so I’m going to have to work on that.  My plan is to place them in low tray filled with pebbles and water, sometimes called a humidity tray.

But first I had to pull them out of the window box and pot them up.

And let me tell you, I really had a tough time convincing myself to pull them out.  They looked so good, I hated to mess that up.

I was surprised to find that neither of them had established very deep roots, so I googled it and sure enough rex begonias have shallow roots that prefer to spread outward rather than down.  Which means I have provided the wrong kind of pot for them.  I should have put them in large shallow pots, rather than deep pots.

Well, strike one.

But I got them potted up and for now they look pretty good.

The one on the left is a tad droopy so far, but the one on the right is standing up perfectly.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

While I was at it, I also decided to re-pot the succulents that were in my newspaper roller for winter.

I overwintered succulents in this container last year and it was a bit of a hassle because I couldn’t water it without making a mess.  Plus it took up a lot of valuable real estate on my window sill.  I have to fit those rex begonias in that spot this year too.

I have to admit that I don’t usually get great results overwintering plants.  I usually do really well until around January, and then I get tired of taking care of them.  I’ve tried overwintering pelargonium (a.k.a. annual geraniums), scented geraniums, oxalis and those succulents last year, all with very limited (or no) success.

I did do well with the streptocarpus last year …

only to kill off all but two of them this summer when we had so much rain.

To be honest, I’m not really sure it’s worth the effort.  It’s far easier to just buy new plants in the spring.  But I’ll give it a shot with these rex begonias and see what happens.

Now, how about you?  Are you planning to try and overwinter any plants this year?  Or do you have experience with overwintering things in years past?  Leave a comment and let me know.