"Hurricane" Earl? That wimpy storm was all wet. The only excitement here was watching how fast some potted plants grow. No really: I laid many of the larger and taller container plants on their side the day of the storm, and righted the last of them this morning, 48 hours later.

Some of them didn't take that lying down. Storm or not, whatever their position was that day, their mission remained, unchanged and uninterrupted: to grow up toward the sun as fast and far as possible.

Here's the very tippy-top of my brilliantaisia, a monster salvia that I've videoed on August 15.
Even then the plant was too tall to fit easily into the video window.

I knew it was a fast grower, but only after I had laid the plant on its side to weather the storm was that growth really on display.

In less than 48 hours, every branch had flexed 90 degrees upward, to face the sun once again.
And not just the very tips, either: The entire two feet of branch right in back of the tips too.

Ornamental grasses aren't nearly as interested in turning on a dime: Look at the variegated reed in back. Its canes were horizontal the day of the storm, and here they are, still just as horizontal two days later.

And when I uprighted the plants, their different habits couldn't be more on display.
The brilliantasia tips has made a right-hand turn in only hours, and the stems in back of them were (amazingly) still spry and alert enough to follow right along.

Whereas the grass had kept to its upward motion all along; you'd never know it had been looking at the sun sideways for a day.
Its world-view is, literally, unidirectional.

I expect that the brilliantaisia will "upright" itself, tips and branches alike, in just another day or two. Stay tuned for the report.

If they aren't about dried-out-and-keeled-over, September garden are about size, flowerpower, bright color, and a certain desperation on both plants and gardener: Frost comes in October, so it's now or never to reach full size, show us your fancy flowers, do what you've been saying all season that you'll do.

And then there's this quiet and industrious oddity, my thread-leaf mulberry.
It's been chugging along all season, without fainting in the heat or rotting in the rain. "Steady and sure" is its philosophy.

And thank goodness for it's persistence and consistency: If the plant itself got any weirder or quirkier or ephemeral, I don't think I could stand that additional uncertainty.

Instead, it just pours out leaves so spidery, so thread-thin, that it's hard to see how there could be enough chlorophyl in them to feed any activity at all. (True, the bush seems unlikely ever to top two feet, when a mulberry with normal leaves might well top thirty.)

And yet thread-thin doesn't mean thread-bare. The bush has it own delicate integrity and focus: No flowers and so no miserable collapse after they're through. No lolling spiky growth, no "Wow, look at me!" size either. Just leaf after leaf, mounding up inch by inch, month by month. And yet, with such leaves, inch by inch, month by month is just fine. We're forced to stop and take note—to pay respect for individuality that succeeds on its own terms. I'm envious.

What an exciting new plant! Planted just this Spring—and already in bloom. Wow do we love that in any perennial.

This is Crocosmia aurea, and what a joy. The yellow buds appeared just last week, all the sudden, just in time for this dripping-with-promise photo.
(That purplish-green leaf is Eucomis 'Sparking Burgundy'.)

What a lot of color...
...with the oldest deepening from salmon into orange while the newest still hold to yellow.

And then—kablam!—the first blossom. A surprising (to me at least) spider-like pinwheel of six narrow petals, yellow at the center and firing up to orange farther out.

And enthusiastically chatting with the terra cotta of the, literally, terra cotta to the back.

How about that sharp white spear of pistols and stamens?

Three stamens just loaded with terra-cotta pollen.
And in the center, a trio of dainty pistols just waiting to be dusted.

A sparkling show, and at a season when it couldn't be more welcome.

Crocosmias are one of the perennials we all wish were hardier. Only 'Lucifer' is reliable into Zone 5, and many of the others are Zone 7 only. (Including Crocosmia aurea, of this morning's post, with it's extraordinary spider-orange flowers.)

'Distant Planet' has the short petals and almost trumpet-like flower shape that's more typical of crocosmias.
Which is of course what makes Crocosmia aurea all the more desirable: Whatever isn't typical is almost, by definition, desirable.

'Distant Planet' is also desirable because it is especially hardy: Into Zone 5 as long as it has good Winter drainage. With Distant Planet as my sure-thing, my Crocosmia Confidence Builder, I'm hoping to succeed with C. aurea as well as others. Stay tuned for Spring.

Butterfly bushes spread such a banquet of nectar on hot Summer days, it's no surprise that a smorgasbord of critters buzz by for a feast. Last Saturday, a video of butterflies and bees.

Today a hummingbird moth inspired me to bring out the still camera.
What a Dr. Doolittle creature: A moth that is active in the day not at night. A moth with invisibly-speedy wings that work, like hummingbirds', just as well in reverse. A moth with the same darting, blink-and-you'll-miss-it flightplan from blossom to blossom. Backward, forward, upward, downward: "Whatever-ward", just as long as it's at top speed please.

And when the flower's in range, a thread-thin tubular proboscis is unfurled deep into the flower.


To honor wildlife as much as the plant life they feed on and pollinate, from now on I'll provide the Latin for both. This particular species of hummingbird moth is Hemaris thysbe—what a fun name to say, "THIZZ-be"—and it's feeding with gusto on Buddleia davidii 'White Ball.'

What a pair. What a partnership.

My golden aralia is worth every crown I paid for it: After a scorching Summer in hot afternoon sun, and with no supplemental watering either—none!—it isn't faded, splayed, tattered, scorched, or in general Tired Of The Effort.

It is, in short, just what one would fantasize every perennial would be:
On display from April through October without respite but also without complaint; smiling at the audience all the while, but without freezing into either parody or boredom.

And then, it decides that even this generously-bountiful performance is still not sufficient: So it blooms.

Interesting more than showy, true. But, true to form, energetic and enthusiastic, glad to greet you and say (in its own obscure wording, true) "Thank you, oh gardener, for bringing me into this magical new land. My goal is to please you only more, year by year by year."

To which I bow down in abashed humility. No, thank YOU dear Sun King. I am forever grateful. Please let me know whatever I can do to make your stay here more enjoyable as well as extended. Thank you. Truly.

Yesterday's Garden Short showed the sprawling problem of my Giant Pineapple Lily.
Leaves and flower-stalks that should be proudly upright—and to almost six feet!—are flopped and sprawled and splayed and blown-out as bad as flat tires.

ARGH! (And who can imagine the embarrassment of the lily itself?)

Then preparations for the inevitable dinner party inadvertently brought the tools of the solution.

1. A huge ginger-jar vase that needed filling.

2. The wheelbarrow to haul away clippings that had accumulated all over the terrace in the frantic week before.
Plus, on the sideboard, the watering can (ever-present to water all the Summer containers) and the clippers (ever-present also: there's never an end to the nipping and tucking of a garden.)

In two minutes it was done: First a couple of flower stalks were harvested and slid down into the vase.

Their prostration had put some serious kink into their stems—but this looked cool when they were reverticalized. Debility was transformed into display!

Relieved of the rest of its flowerstalks, the huge and heavy potted tangle of floppy leaves was ready to be hoisted into the wheelbarrow.


My back is still aching: the pot was maximally hydrated thanks to twice-a-day watering.

So it weighed a ton.

And there were plenty of roots out the bottom, sinking deep into six inches of mulch at the bottom of the pot.

I'd forgotten: I'd even given the plant access to this extra reservoir of moisture. Given the floppy leaves, though, it still wasn't enough. Sigh.

Trundling the behemoth around to the back-stage side of the carriage house, I grunted it back down to the gravel.
It can spend the rest of the season in peace, well watered and fertilized still, but now without anyone grimacing at the sorry to-the-ground splay of its foliage.

Back to the vase. Now holding all the stalks, it was quite the eye-catcher.
True, just as much a "Jeez, what IS that?" as "Oh my what gorgeous flowers." But it's better to be noticed for anything at all than not noticed at all—clearly, a slogan I'm living, like it or not—so of course I'm delighted with the results.

And now I have an empty spot—oh joy!. Into the terra cotta cachepot goes a standard of yellow daisy bush, Euryops pectinatus 'Viridis'...

...with three spare pots of the sensational Shield-Leaf begonia, Begonia convolvulacea, just stacked around the trunk of the Euryops. Their cascading life and heavy overlapping foliage hides their nursery pots.

That's my biggest and best variegated Elephant Food at the foot. The Portulacaria afra 'Variegata' was there all along, but the floppy eucomis leaves had just about hidden it.

A happy ending all around, then, even the next morning with the eucomis stalks in an "I'm big too, but SO differently then you, bud" stand-off with the giant purple banana.


And now to clean out all those damned votive holders.

Heat-loving, blooming in Summer? I'll do just about anything to make you happy. I'm pleasing my "red" yucca enough: It's in bloom!
"Red" yucca though? Come on, guys: take a look: The flowers are, clearly, pink at best, salmon at worst.

Whatever the hue, Red Yucca's in bloom in high Summer, so in my book, it's in.

Hesperaloe parviflora is a Southwest native, and is so happy about the home-town heat and drought there that it can be planted in unirrigated highway medians. Imagine the months of pitiless radiant heat from the paving, the completely lack of shade in that planting strip down the center of the road. And no rain for a month and more at a time.

To which Red Yucca says "Bring It On!"

The challenge with growing it in this comparatively wet and clammy New England climate is maximizing the heat and sun, such as it is, and minimizing the rot-inducing potential of all that rain.
Growing in a container is one solution. Plus keeping the pots completely dry and in a cool greenhouse all Winter.

If I had a garden that wasn't perfectly flat and with deep rich soil (sob, sob), I'd experiment with growing Red Yucca in a sloping gravel or sand bed. Or I could create yet another trough.

Red Yucca is really hardy if the Winter drainage is good enough; in higher-elevation and more northerly Southwest locales, it grows even in Zone 5. Back East that would be southern Vermont, just without the precipitation.

Red Yucca is even more on my mind since High Country Gardens came out with a yellow-flowered variety.
Now I can have a pot of "red" yucca anywhere outside of the pink garden, let alone the "red" garden. I'll post when it blooms—next Summer maybe?

Are "surprise" lilies still a surprise even when you've had them for years, blooming in August just like they bloomed last August? (Can a surprise be annual and at the same time every year?)

But this Surprise Lily is, truly, a surprise: I had thought that its tiny tuft of leaves this past Spring, no more enthusiastic than it was last Spring, meant that the lily wasn't happy and was probably transitioning over to that big Compost Heap in the Sky.

But no. All of sudden—by surprise, indeed—here was a bloom spike!

Eager, proud, ready to perform.

It was my yellow Surprise Lily, Lycoris chinensis.

The vendor said (now that I went back to read up on yellow Surprise Lilies) not to expect any action for a year or even several years.

He was sure right about that. But this Summer was The Year of Action.
Spidery deep-yellow flowers, with camel's-length eyelashes, I mean stamens. Wow!

And, of course, this being a "surprise" lily, the bloom is completely unexpected, two months after the leaves themselves had long disappeared. (The bulb-like foliage that appears to be at the base of the bloom spike in the top picture is that of a crinum lily several feet away.)

And so if this one of my three yellow Surprises has bloomed, perhaps the other two will kick in in another year or three too? Each of them would be a surprise as well.

Give this Surprise good Winter drainage, almost any normal soil, and plenty of sun anywhere from Zone 5 to 9, and it should (eventually) surprise you too.

I've posted on how I finally figured out how to grow an attractive lemon verbena, not just a fragrant one. But even a scraggly one is a joy to brush up against, let alone to pick a leaf and crush it in your cupped hands to inhale all the more of the suspiciously-powerful lemon fragrance.

The flowers, though, are entirely forgettable.

Poor thing: you wish it wouldn't even try to bloom. It doesn't get a whit more interesting when the teensy white flowers open.

Almond verbena, though, has taken up the challenge of doing something decent with its flowers.
Showy and profuse, the spikes of white flowers are a powerfully-delicate (so to speak) contrast to the larger and bland foliage.

As the spikes age, the appeal is, if anything, even greater: The older flowers drop off the spike all by themselves, leaving the newer flowers nicely exposed at the end of the still-lengthening top. It's like still photography of tiny white fireworks.


Almond verbena isn't satisfied with mere visuals, though. Indeed, it has doubled-down on its mission of having great flowers. The eye-appeal of the plant as well as the fragrance is all right there in the flowers. It's the leaves that are entirely forgettable now. And what a fragrance it is: Almond and as penetrating as if the plant were sucking in almond essence with a straw.

Why is it both of these bushes are so strongly fragrant of a plant that eacg is, so clearly, not? Lemon Verbena isn't a citrus tree. Almond Verbena sure isn't an almond tree either.

Is Latin any help? The Latin for both is Aloysia. Lemon Verbena is Aloysia triphylla (with leaves in threes up the stems). Almond Verbena is Aloysia virgata; virgata is, unhelpfully, is latin for rod, i.e., something about the plant is long and narrow. The flower spikes I guess; it sure isn't the foliage.

Is there an aloysia out there with the fragrance of, uhm, aloy? That can be itself, not an imposter? Another cousin, Aloysia wrightii, has leaves that smell so much like oregano that you can, in a pinch (so to speak) use them instead. Another, Aloysia gratissima, has vanilla-scented flowers. Aloysia macrostachya has thyme or oregano-scented leaves.

Apparently, then, NO, aloysias don't smell like aloy. They aren't "aloysiac" at all, at least as far as your nose can tell. Instead, they are each the adoring wannabe fan of some other plant: Lemon, almond, oregano, vanilla, thyme. Aloysias are a big family, and I've only introduced them. What other aloysias are out there? And what fragrant plant is each of them channeling?

So far, aloysias are easy keepers for me: they go leafless and dormant at the slightest frost, and then I hustle the into the basement for the Winter. I've a mind to collect the other varieties, so each Summer I can have a whole spice-shelf of fragrance.