The Pleasures of Gardening: Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day August 2015

I have been spending every free minute gardening this season and enjoying myself thoroughly. I focused first on getting all plants into the ground as soon as I acquired them, and then switched to weeding. Only another gardener could understand the pleasure to be had from setting a bed to rights, especially if the soil is moist and the weather is pleasant. To non-gardeners, weeding is a chore, not a way to declutter one’s canvas to see what’s needed to improve it. That’s why you haven’t heard much from me this summer–I’ve been gardening.

There’s plenty more maintenance I could do. I feel like I’ve just been working on the bare minimum needed to keep chaos at bay. I could be staking those ‘Black Beauty’ lilies, or finding a place with more sun in which to grow them. I can’t think of a place I’d rather move them to, but I might stake them next year. Might. I kind of like the curves the stems make as they lean, a kind of casual elegance.I planted the phlox near this ‘Lemon Cap’ daylily last fall, without either of them being in bloom, and was quite satisfied with the color combination this August. Too bad my camera didn’t capture it accurately.All of these plants except the cannas are sample plants from Proven Winners. I thought the bidens would be more of a mounding plant than a weaver, but I still like the effect.‘Yelloween’ is a hybrid of Oriental and trumpet lilies. It has the wonderful fragrance of an Oriental lily. I got it from Longfield Gardens.Perhaps you have summer snowflake (Leucojum aestivum)? This is in the same genus but the flowers are much smaller, a fact I didn’t grasp when I first ordered and grew it. The leaves look like grass and I may have weeded at least one of them out before I realized it. I planted it in my cabin fever bed, but it is so small you really can’t see it from the window–which is the point of the cabin fever bed. It is better suited to a trough or container where it can get close inspection.In general, wherever a foxglove decides to sprout, that’s where I leave it. The Forever & Ever Blue Heaven hydrangea is supposed to be blue, but somehow doesn’t quite make it. In one of gardening’s happy coincidences, they are blooming together, and every time I round the corner, I smile. And then vow to make the soil a tad more acid for the hydrangea.When Walters Gardens sent me ‘Mighty Chestnut’ daylily last year, I really didn’t think I would like the color. But I do. However, I think I’m going to move it out of the apricot-lilac bed and into the brightly-colored parking pad bed. Or maybe I should pair it with Coppertina ninebark. Something to ponder over the winter.Yes, cyclamen can grow in upstate NY. No, they are not the same as the ones you buy at the flower shop in the dead of winter. These are much smaller, about the same size as those autumn snowflakes–the size of my pinkie nail. Fall-blooming Cyclamen purpurascens is said to be the hardiest variety, but I also grow the spring blooming Cyclamen coum and it’s come through two winters so far. I just love the intricate variegation of the leaves.

Those are some of the highlights of my August garden. I know so many of you have been having an exceptionally dry and hot summer, and I wish you a wonderful fall.

Inspired by the words of Elizabeth Lawrence, “We can have flowers nearly every month of the year,” Carol of May Dreams Gardens started Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. On the 15th of every month, garden bloggers from all over the world publish what is currently blooming in their gardens, and leave a link in Mr. Linky and the comments of May Dreams Gardens.