Hello, madgardener here, Just dropping by the back fence to see who's out here sweltering in the heat with me. I'm still insane enough to enjoy the dripping down the crack of me butt and into me eyes. That's yet another reason I wear the wide brimmed Wally Fart hat! Sady, Sugar chewed the really nice one that I got one year up in Michigan when she was a puppers and I've never found the like of it since....so the wider brimmed ones that the Fart of Wall has upon occasions does me fine. covers me little ears and shades me eyes and soaks up the excess sweaties....... So you heard right, I went to the local overpriced nursery and decided that what I REALLY wanted to grow was the varigated leafed pelargoniums. The white edged deep green one (yes, I have forgotten the name as the tag is at home and I'm at the library) that will have a coral flower, and to compliment it in the same pot for textural and color contrasts (I do this all the time) the tri-color one that apparently has a deep red flower. great.....the leaves of tri-color are incredible and there's that awesome familiar deja' vu smell of geraniums I associate them with anyway. I potted them up in the wrong pot when I got home because most of my extra pots are.......yep, at Karol's 48 miles away......but then located anotherpot that was much larger and that I was able to fill around both root balls more comfortably with the Black Kow composted soil that I had left and now they'll thrive for me on the front porch residing in the iron curtain plant holder I've positioned on the western side of the porch. I am resolved to find that rabbit stew receipe.......apparently I have Bugs slipping into the back yard while we sleep oblivious to their selected munchings. I have no longer bean plants.....$ %^&*( bastages!!!! every last blessed one of them gnawed to the stems.........so I replanted more (three in each hole, thank you very much) and will dust them with cayenne pepper but MY luck I will have Mexican rabbits...........or Cajun.........lol........but I WILL dust the emerging plants with ground cayenne, and hope this lights the little assholes up good. I have another blessing I didn't realize, I apparently have two trees growing close to each other and one is the hated hackberry, but the other one is a heavily loaded mulberry tree. so I will be munching mulberries and maybe making crepes for breakfast in the next two days before the grackles and other birds spot the bounty. the first pepper has dropped off, and I think it's just from being the first and too early one. No loss, although it was sad to see it go. There are now FIVE leaves on the rhubarb that James planted once he got his gift, and there are now more radish plants to shake a stick at from EVERY seed that germinated when I tossed them around the feet of the tomato's. And oh oh oh oh oh , I have tomato flowers!! Soon I will be winding the soft yarn around the stakes to gently support the vines, and I'm considering just sowing the Sungold seeds I finally located in teh many overwhelming boxes that are still unpacked here in the green bowl......... I have top dressed the daylily that has decide to forgive me my ignorance of it sitting in a pot just bare rhizomey toes, and it's started to send me a flower shoot. The Amber Waves heuchera and Lime Rickey are blooming, and I'm still in love with the many varieties of sedums and semps that I seem addicted to and plant altogether in one or two or however many container gardens. Now I need to tuck in little bulbs, and I see John Sheepers has my new address and just got the first teasing bulb fall catalog, although I love the complete one and keep it for the garden book collection as it's the most complete and beautifully photographed catalog there is on bulbs that I've seen so far. more than worthy to have for wanting to know what a bulb's flowers look like. Now I gotta get the McClure and Zimmerman company to send me THEIRS as their line drawings are awesome but they sell the more elusive wilder varieties of tulipia and narcissus........(nursery propigated, not stolen from the wild). I still need unlimited supplies of soil to suppliment the endeavors here in the historical rental house, but until I either hit the lottery for a few hundred, or get an inheritance from a passed on relative, I am resolved to hold my water until I can get to Karol's and retrieve pots whether or not the plant has survived or not...... I have also got growing burgundy okra unless Bugs has a taste for those too, and the Nose twisters as James calls then (Nasturtiums) are going great guns. and yes......I DELIBERATELY planted a zuchini plant. just one, maybe I shoulda planted three...........anyone know a source for English cukes? I would love to plant three plants of them as I adore them better than straight 8's. and my green dragon's never germinated for me at all. either the seed aren't viable or they're just stubborn. My Tithonia seeds are all germinated now and I'll tuck them into the soil out front among the pink primrose plants that came with the rental house. Anyone know if there is a variagated variety of pink primrose that has yellow spots? I don't believe this is a fungus or disease. it's not on all the leaves, it seems there might be a different variety growing and if that's the case......then it will be marked for taking with me when I move into my own house when that comes about. (in the next two years for sure). we finally purchased a lawnmower which I never needed one while living in the former faerie holler because grass refused to grow on the steep slopes but the raised beds did just fine, no grasses though unless it was ornamental ones. we got one with a bag so at least I can keep a good green supply of compost for the two bins I have working in the back yard. With the potting up of the two varigated geraniums, I now have broken the block that I had with gardening and have cut every shoot off the split leaf philodendrum (vining variety, not my bush split leaf phil) and am rooting everyone one of them for a fuller pot of viney plants. I've also combined the Brasil variegated leaved heart shaped philodendrum with the darker Nigra heart leafed philodendrum and the combination of colorations is really wonderful. I'm also tucking in the satin pothos plant in with them as well as it's a smaller leafed pothos and the silver and white-cream will contrast nicely with the other two leaves colorations. I'm always doing this with textures and colors. One thing I noticed was the faeries are more hesitant to show themselves to me right now, as I suspect that they are still miffed at me for pulling up stakes and hauling them into the city. Granted, it's a quiet place and I am seeing signs of flying dinosaurs that I feared I'd never see again here where I am currently residing (yellow finches and at least wrens!) and I might have stranded some of the other faeries that look out over my perennials.......I'm hoping they forgive me and hunker in until I can rejoin them with their brethern......I'm longing to see if my 'Ghost' fern and Japanese painted fern's have endured and survived. and I'm longing to see if my caryopteris has thrived. I had two that defied what they were capable of enduring. One loved full sun, and the other on insisted on dappled shade.......someone take up a gasoline collection! LOL I will stop here and go back to the temporaray homestead and get back to work. there's grass clippings to put into the black composter, more burgundy okra seeds to sow and potting up of pereninals that I got from Diane in Oregon Friday. luckily I have a wee bit o' Black Kow composted soil to pot them. I'd rather pot them for now and get them to living. I'm still open for any care packages of anything from my garden friends out there. Updates on tomatos and whatnot will come forth as I am able to say. Receipes for rabbit stew are welcome, but I have an old tried and true one......the squirrels apparently know better, and they recognize that Sugar would be their demise, and I'm tempted to let her stay out one or two nights to deter Bugs........
Thanks for letting me share. always listening and wondering how YOU all are.....and there's a glass of sweet iced tea for visitors, Maddie, up in the green bowl, surrounded by the Cherokee National Forest and the Appalachian mountain in historical Greeneville, Tennessee, gardening in zone 6b- 7a