Tag Archives: clematis

April 29, 2024 · 10:20 am

After the Storm 4-29-2024

We had super heavy rain in waves from about 8pm until a bit after 11 last night. We were lucky. We were under a tornado warning – with Greenwood actually mentioned as ‘in the path’ but – other than it becoming ominously quiet at one point – the bad stuff passed by us. I watched the TV coverage until I could see the yellow and red blobs, along with associated tornado rectangles, had passed us. (I need to do a harvest of the lettuce and spinach this afternoon.)

I walked around the yard this morning to see if we had any damage. I found one rose bush branch was broken off, but that was all. The garden is still looking good. They certainly got the watering they probably wanted, and then some, but all looks good so far. (The lettuce plants here are head lettuce, and the heads are forming!) I’ll bring some bungie cords to put around the supports to give the tomato plants more to hang onto.

I’m planning to go out later – weather permitting – and see what needs more support, rearranging (in the case of the tomato branches) and what needs harvesting (lettuce and spinach.)

The clematis bloomed suddenly. The blooms are looking a bit battered after the storm, but I’m hoping they’ll perk up. I’ll bring my husband out later, since these are his favorite.

And this is the first bloom of our Stella de Oro lilies. You can see there are several buds, so I’m hoping we’ll have a nice display.

My sister-in-law sent me some phone apps suggestions that might help me identify my mystery perennials. I added them to my phone, and hope to make the time to see how they work later today. She also sent me a Kindle book on flowers and veggies. Isn’t she wonderful?

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Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as after the storm, clematis, gardening, lettuce, plant apps, spinach, square foot gardening, Stella de Oro, tomatoes

May 21, 2023 · 8:54 am

Garden Update 5-21-2023

The super rainy, colder-than-usual weather has brought very mixed results thus far in my garden. In my survey a few minutes ago, the first thing was that I need to do some serious weeding in my veggie garden.

This is one of the head lettuce plants. It’s doing GREAT. I should be able to harvest very soon and give my friends a nice addition to their salads or sandwiches.

The spinach is looking ‘pale,’ not the deep green I think it should. I’m not sure if fertilizing it at this point would do any good, but I’ll try that. I’m also not sure if the paleness will affect the taste. I’ll see what information I can find.

Here’s the large tomato planter. The plants have exploded and there are lots of yellow blossoms showing. At this point, I’m not sure if I can handle the branches much, and may just need to try to contain them a bit, giving them as much support as I can.

This is the second tomato planter. You can barely see the green metal supports at the top of the plants now. I was going to try to tie the branches to the supports, but they have exploded now, so I’ll just try to do what I can to keep the plant inside the boundaries of the planter.

The bad news is that after several years now, one of the wooden bottoms to the veggie planters has given way. We knew it would happen one day, but it’s sad anyway. I hadn’t planted this planter yet, so we can leave it and decide how we’ll tackle making a new bottom for the planter, save as much of the Mel’s Mix as possible, and rebuild it.

Here is the part of the bottom that completely gave way and fell down.

To round out our tour of the yard, here is one of the healthier weeds I encountered. I’m not sure right now if I’ll pull it or celebrate its health…

And finally, here is some clematis that we have growing in a pot behind the large tomato planter. The picture doesn’t show how glorious the color is. It’s a real explosion of dark purple. Makes my heart happy.

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Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as clematis, gardening, head lettuce, spinach, Square Foot Garden, tomatoes

May 18, 2022 · 11:55 am

Clean Up Work So We Can Mow

I spend much of my time hacking things down. Our property is about 8 acres of scrubby ‘woods’ on top of a ridge line outside of town. Unless we keep at it, I think the weeds and trees would grow up over the house, yard, shop, and driveway, swallowing all we’ve done over the more than 35 years we have lived here.

This is a longitudinal view of our trio of brick planters that run between our front yard and the top of our driveway. The huge green plant is the end of the wisteria that my husband has trained to grow all the way across the ‘corner’ formed by this plant and one of our fireplace wood holders. As you can see, the plant is like a weed, taking over all we will allow for it to consume, kind of like mint in an herb garden. At this point, it’s hard to see there is a trio of planters!

Here’s another view of the same huge green wisteria plant, this photo taken on the yard side of the planters. Actually, there is wisteria and then forsythia in combination.

This shows there actually ARE planters there – just completely over-grown now.

You can see that it would be very difficult to ride a mower anywhere close to the edges of the planters. I’ll start my work on these today, hopefully. This will be a multi-day project.

Our clematis came into bloom the last couple of days. They are right behind a long brick planter where I’m growing tomatoes. It makes a pretty picture when you go out to the side yard and suddenly see all this purple. A spirit-lifter for sure. :0)

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Tagged as clematis, forsythia, gardening, hacking things down, trio of brick planters, wisteria

May 14, 2021 · 9:55 am

A Walk Around the Yard

My husband brought a couple of blooms inside so we could enjoy them in here, too. :0)

I love it that this rosebush shows all different stages of this wonderful rose at the same time. It starts out in a tight yellow bud with dark coral edges. It blooms into a bright yellow bloom with coral accents, and then finishes with the whole bloom coral.

This is a second Rio Samba rose bush. At the beginning of the spring, I cut all 3 of these bushes WAAAAAY down, cutting off 2/3 of the branches, which had gotten long and scraggly. I had no idea if the roses would come back or croak. Happily, they seem to have appreciated the hacking I did on them.

This is the 3rd bush. Right now all three are blooming their hearts out. I need to trim the all coral roses to encourage new buds.

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Filed under Favorite Things, Gardening

Tagged as clematis, favorite things, flowers, gardening, Rio Samba rose bushes

May 16, 2018 · 11:55 am

Clematis

My husband has been trying to get clematis to grow happily at our place for several years now. The past couple of years it has given us a nice display.

We used 4 half-barrels and arranged for something for it to climb on. When you look at the flowers from the house, there isn’t a lot to see.

But when you look at the flowers from the BACK, this is what you see. We’ll take it.

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Tagged as clematis, gardening

May 6, 2018 · 5:19 pm

Walk Around the Yard

We hurried to mow the grass and blow the debris off the sidewalks and driveway pad, just in case the rains would come swooping in. Tonight we’re supposed to have a chance of rain, but the day has been gorgeous. I took a break and took some pics to share with you. My husband loves clematis, and we’ve been trying to get the vines to grow up over the deck. Failing that, and finally admitting defeat, we planted some in plastic barrel halves on the east side of our property between the house and the greenhouse.

For a very short time each year my camellias bloom. Usually they are immediately beaten down by a rain storm, showering petals everywhere and giving up for another year. Right now they’re blooming, so fingers are crossed they last for more than a day or so.

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Tagged as camellias, clematis, gardening

April 27, 2017 · 2:51 pm

Flowers – Part II

I showed you pictures of the new plants I planted on our deck. I took some pics a couple of days ago of the flowers I just planted in the rest of the yard, plus a couple of others I wanted to share with you. The planting is all finished now, with the exception of nestling some hummingbird flowers seedlings into the deck pots –

My husband’s clematis. This year they’re really giving us a nice show.

On one side of the front portch, we have fuchsia impatiens, neon orange impatiens, phlox, and some iris. We have an evergreen bush on the other side of the porch in the same kind of tall planter, the fuchsia impatiens, some phlox, etc.

I did this mosaic gazing ball a couple of years ago. This pot is on one side of our driveway. I planted some periwinkles around the edge of the pot.

One of four gerbera daisies.

Lavender stripy petunias.

‘violas’ or what I call bright happy pansy type flowers.

Periwinkles in our emu planters, plus phlox and periwinkles in the pot at the bottom of the pic.

This pot is on the other side of the driveway from the one above.

The ‘thing’ at the top of this pic is an old computer. The birds like to build nests inside. The flowers are fuchsia purslane/yubi/portalaca, and then we have phlox and periwinkles in the square planter.

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Filed under Arkansas, Gardening, Greenwood

Tagged as clematis, gerbera daisies, impatiens, iris, pansies, periwinkles, petunias, phlox, purslane/yubi/portalaca, the flower planting is finished, violas

April 3, 2017 · 1:44 pm

Trip Around the Yard

My husband has three clematis plants he’s trying to nurture. This year they seem to be happy. Were walking around the yard this morning and found these.

Our purple iris are still blooming nicely in clumps around the yard while yellow iris are just now starting to bloom.

These are growing down one side of the driveway. There are a couple more ‘drifts’ further on down, but this is the main one.

This is one of our Rio Samba rose bushes. I cut them back harshly this past year because of various problems. I didn’t know whether they would live through my efforts or not. One of them didn’t, but two of them did.

And the pale yellow iris have started.

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Filed under Arkansas, Gardening, Greenwood, Mother Nature

Tagged as clematis, Greenwood Arkansas, iris, Mother Nature, Rio Samba roses

September 28, 2016 · 6:11 pm

A Trip Around the Yard

The temperatures have FINALLY gone down a bit and we can breathe when we’re outside. Another 10 degrees down or so and I’ll be in heaven. It says my “perfect” temperature about three days a year here in Arkansas. :0)

I worked in the yard a bit to celebrate the gorgeous day.