Garden Journal: September 13, 2009

Cool cloudy days have given us a welcome relief from summer heat and humidity. Fall is definitely in the air as mums begin to show color and bloom, and perennials rebloom, and some Johnny jump ups appear from self-sown seed. My garden is now looking its best from a distance as many perennials fade and even the annuals are showing signs of decline. This is a week of vistas.

The formal garden is square with 4 entrances, one in the center of each side. There are borders on all four sides separated from 4 parterres by grass pathways. The color combinations change; blue is present throughout but is paired with pink, crimson, scarlet, orange, golden yellow, lemon yellow, and finally white respectively and the white blends back to the pink. The silvery foliage of various Lamb’s ears and artemesias help transitions as well as provide unity to the over all design.

The main entrance is into the pastel border where pink dominates.

Pink deepens into crimson.

Crimson gives way to scarlet and then  orange.

Golden yellow picks up from the orange.

Lemon yellow blends into white.

A long bed of white foliage and flowers blends back into pink.

A fence nearby has finally been consumed by moon vine (Ipomoea alba) sporting its huge white flowers in the evening.

The buds of moon vine are equally as pretty.

The bog garden has flilled out nicely over the summer.

There are hundreds of sundews (Drosera sp.) that can only be seen close up.

The horsetail (Equisetum hyemale) is finally looking better but is not the vigorous thug that it was in my previous garden because I keep it in a pot in the bog so it can’t spread.  Unfortunately the pot has also cut down on the production of new shoots.

A couple of weeks ago both black swallow tails (Papilio polyxenes) and yellow (Papilio glaucas ) were visiting my garden and this week we saw the results; the young of the black swallow tails on the parsley in the herb garden near the house.

Take another look at those yellow horns. They are a gland called an osmeterium that protrudes when the catapillar is threatened (I nudged him) and produces a foul smelling substance to frighten off predators.

He was rather ferocious looking head-on.

A search of the parsley foliage revealed a pre-caterpillar, an early instar.

My parsley will soon be completely denuded but it will grow back, lush as ever, and in a couple of weeks or so and I will have a new black swallowtail in my garden. A garden is an endless source of interesting things!