John Andrews Gardening Thoughts

Not too many flowers in August, but here are some that I thought were worth posting. This pink blossom is one of a small handfull of bulbs that I planted by the kitchen composter. Two blooms popped open in the last few days and quickly faded away. The ants like them and you can see a few in the center of the bloom if you look carefully. The blossom is about two inches wide and about 10 inches tall. I forget the name but have it somewhere in the saved packages.

Susie, down the street gave me a big bucket of Black Eyed Susans a couple of years ago. They all got planted on the southeast side of the yard along the fence. Now they come up every spring and provide bounteous yellow blooms in the summer. There are three big areas with these yellow faces and they command the fence at this time of year.

Dahlias are interspersed with the Black Eyed Susans and keep leaning out over the lawn and getting mowed down. This little one looked nice enough to photograph. There are lots of them but this late in the season they are on their way down.

Echinacea Purpurea or Purple Coneflower also a gift in a big bucket from Susie, down the street. Ralph and Susie have an old English Setter named Lady who stays at my house and gets to roam in the big back yard when they go on vacation. Back to the coneflowers. Some of these are wierd and have things growing out of the center cone. Some have drooping petals, some have long petals. All are interesting. The birds eat the seeds. There were a couple of goldfinches in the Echinacea plants yesterday.

The big hostas hiding the air conditioner are in bloom now. I can look out the window and see a big row of these blossoms above the big green leaves.

I went out the other evening in early August, 2010 and took a few pictures of the garden as it looks now. I had just mowed the lawn and it looked pretty good. It has changed a lot, and for the better in the last few years. A lot of flowers were in bloom this spring, but now the pickings are fewer. The White Maple replaced the Bradford Pear that got the foam treatment. It is growing nicely now.

Several rabbits frequent my garden. In the spring i have to put fencing around the smaller blueberries and azaleas and young plants in the vegetable garden. At this time of year, though, they eat the clover in the lawn and that is fine. This little guy is unafraid of me and lets me get within about 8 feet before he (or she) hops a little further away.

The rabbit picture is a very long shot at full telephoto of my Olympus SP-550UZ. It has an 18X optical magnification and I cropped the picture by about 4x. The camera was braced against the doorway to the shed in the first picture.

I will post some more pictures soon.