September!

I apparently took an unintended summer vacation from the blog, oops. It’s still technically summer, though, and the recent return to high temperatures proves it. It was really weird having such mild weather in August, but it was also rather nice — especially last week, which was sort of like a little fall preview. It was awesome. Of course now it’s back to 90 degrees with 80% humidity, but that’ll only last so long, at least.

So! Goings-on of late:

• Went to the first weekend of the fair, ate unhealthy food, and looked at bunnies.
• Wrote a post for the NaNoWriMo blog; it’ll be up soon!
• Something else??? I feel like I’m forgetting something.

In the yard, the flowers are winding up for the year. The echinacea and rudbeckia are mostly done, which the goldfinches have been appreciating. The yellow rose bush is really big again, but the flowers have mostly been extremely insect-damaged, so it’s not much to look at. The orange rose bush is still tiny, and only has two or three flowers at a time, but they’re still super-pretty when they first bloom.

Oh, and the hydrangea actually bloomed! It only had one bloom, but it was a pretty dark pink.

I didn’t end up planting sunflowers this year, so the only plant out there for most of the summer was the one I posted a picture of back in April. It got huge, but I’ve been cutting off the blooms once they’re dead and the seeds are mostly gone, so right now it’s not very tall, and just has small flowers. But! There’s a bird feeder outside one of the windows (entertainment for the cats) and it turns out that the birds planted their own sunflowers.

There’s four or five plants; I decided to leave them alone and see what would happen. They’re not very tall, because they started so late, but the tallest one has a big pretty bloom on it. And I’m sure the birds will appreciate the seeds regardless!

Fall is my favorite season, and my birthday is in a month and a half, so I’m looking forward to the next few months. (Although, to be honest, I have mixed feelings about the birthday.) I’ve been a bit too casual about my business over the summer, so September and October are all about really working hard and getting some new clients lined up — and then in November is NaNo!

I’m not sure what I’m going to write this year; I really want to work on something I’ve already started but that’s against the rules. I have two other unwritten ideas I could pick from, but I’ll have to see if either one of those really grabs my interest by November.  I could try to come up with something new…but seriously, the last thing I need is yet another novel idea. (I should really actually finish one I already have first.)

That’s all for the update! I’ll have a post on Thursday…about the fair, maybe?

Monster echinacea

I don’t know if this image fully captures it but the echinacea is tall this year. It’s awesome.

 

On the right there’s one of the not-exactly-red-hot pokers (the other plant isn’t even red at all; the flowers are yellow!), and at the bottom is some rudbeckia. This pic was taken last week? Some of the rudbeckia is just about to bloom now.

Garden close-ups

Quick post today, because once again I forgot I was supposed to do a post today until way late, and I still have client work to do! So have some close-up garden pics.

A wild sunflower appears!

Okay, it’s not exactly wild, but it is the first self-seeded baby sunflower I’ve spotted this year. Isn’t it cute? They start out so tiny but they get so big so fast.

Of course, it’s in a completely inopportune spot — in the middle of a lawn area (I say “lawn” ’cause that obviously ain’t grass), too far from anything to be staked to as it gets bigger, and on the south side of the tiny orange rosebush, which means if I let this grow here it’ll eventually block sun from the roses.

So, it’ll have to get moved. (It’s the first one of the year, and I hate pulling out plants anyway, so yes, it’s definitely getting moved, not done away with.) I’ve transplanted plenty of baby sunflowers before and they always do fine. I wonder what the flowers on this one will look like!

I found this little guy yesterday (I think?) but today I found some more surprises in the front yard. The sad, clearance-sale hostas I planted way too late last year made a comeback!

Cats and plants and dogs, oh my

Well, just one dog.

This is Lola:

She’s an almost-5-year-old black German Shepherd Dog (with lots of white dustings, and in this picture a stray white hair stuck to her nose), and she is very cute. You will be seeing more of her in future posts.

As promised, here are some pics of growing things — and also a few cats, because they like the nice weather, too.

First up is Logan, who at almost 15 is the oldest of the pets (or varmints, as I like to call them). He also is very into catnip, so this is his favorite place during his brief trips outside:

Visiting chickens

This is a picture from last year of one of the neighbor’s chickens. They have two, and since their yard isn’t fenced in, the chickens like to go exploring. They’re pretty friendly, and I’ve gotten to pet one of them, although they’re much more interested in any food you might have for them. (And yeah, I totally feed them if I can find something when they stop by.)

My dog, Lola, sometimes ignores them completely when she sees them, sometimes watches them, and sometimes (namely when they come up on our front porch) she barks and barks and acts like she wants to rip them apart. I really want to get two or three chickens myself this year, so it’s going to be a fun process teaching her to leave them alone.

Short post today! I’ll try to remember to get outside with my camera tomorrow and take some pictures of growing things. Or of Lola. Also tomorrow is the first day of Camp NaNoWriMo, which I am signed up for and will be attempting to use as motivation to make some progress on a novel draft. (Another thing I’d really like to do this year is actually finish a draft!)

The garden of yesteryear

And by yesteryear I mean last year.

This is a snippet of the flowerbed last June. The echinacea (coneflower) was blooming, and so were the poppies that had self-seeded from the year before. (I’m hoping they come back again this year!) The spiky-looking plant on the left is a red hot poker that was just starting to bloom, I think. You can see a bit of red on it. There are two of those in the bed, although I can’t tell in this picture if you can see both of them.

To the right of the red hot poker is some self-seeded rudbeckia that wasn’t blooming yet. The year before, I planted two of those, I think, and neither one made it through the winter but tons of little fuzzy plants started popping up from the seeds, which was cool.

There’s also some marigolds in there, and the upper left is a sunflower with its giant leaves. The other side of the fence has more sunflowers, and there’s a yellow miniature rose bush in the flowerbed but not in the picture. (And pay no attention to the fact that I am terrible at weeding.)

So this is about what things will look like this summer! The echinacea is already starting to come back, the rose bush has new growth, and I’m pretty sure the little fuzzy baby rudbeckias are popping up again. I’ll keep an eye out for the poppies, and I definitely want to get some spring-blooming perennials in there this year.

A few more leftover pictures from last year:

The crocuses are blooming, the crocuses are blooming!

Okay, to be fair these particular crocuses are no longer blooming, since this picture was taken over a week ago. But four others have bloomed since then (in a cute little row), so the title is still accurate.

(Also, while in this photo they look blueish — or is that just my computer screen? — the flowers are actually a very pretty purple.)

The story of the crocuses:

They were originally planted over a decade ago, as part of a flowerbed that was eventually overtaken by lawn again. (Probably the following year, actually.) But the crocuses persevered, and a few would pop up again every year in bright spots of purple, before the leaves were unceremoniously mowed down the first time the grass needed cutting. I intended to transplant them but never got around to it, and once the leaves were gone it was impossible to find them anyway.

Two years ago, I dug up the area around the crocuses again for a new flowerbed. After looking up how to transplant the things (and learning that they don’t have bulbs, they have corms), I divided up the corms and replanted them along the edge of the new flowerbed, and hoped they would come back the next year. They did! Last year a bunch of little green leaves sprouted up along the brick edging — and more than a few here and there in the middle of the bed, too. I’m guessing those are the ones I missed when I was digging up the bed. But, unfortunately, none of them ended up blooming; they just grew long pretty leaves.

So then I was hoping that maybe they were just storing up for next year, or something, and they would bloom next time. When these little purple guys popped up earlier this month it was super-exciting. They’re so cute and happy! Of course, the rest of the bed is still rather desolate right now, although it won’t be in a few more months. I need to look into finding some other spring-blooming plants so the crocuses won’t be so lonely next year. Or at least something with nice spring foliage.

In other news, like the crocuses, this blog has returned once more (and I promise I didn’t even think about that metaphor until I was writing this post). Let’s see if I can keep to a schedule this time! There’ll be plenty to write about as I get the garden beds going for this year, at least, and as the weather warms up maybe I’ll actually get out and go somewhere worth a post. There’s no shortage of stuff to do in Louisville in spring, that’s for sure.

The first sunflower (and the first post)

This is the first post on this blog, so I figured I’d start out with a pretty picture of the first of the blog’s namesakes. I’ve planted sunflowers for the last two years or so, but this year they started popping up even before I’d put any seeds in the ground, just from the seeds that had fallen last year. The picture is the first flower to bloom on one of those self-seeders.

The picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, a few days after the flower bloomed. All its petals are gone now (and the birds are quite happy about the seeds it’s developed), but plenty more flowers have taken its place. Six or seven of the self-seeded plants have started blooming; a few more aren’t big enough yet. Neither are the seeds I actually planted this year, but they’re getting there. They were from a packet of mixed types, so it’ll be fun to see what the flowers actually look like.

About the blog

My current, very casual aim for this brand-new blog is to share fun or interesting things in Louisville. Since my amateur gardening efforts take place in Louisville, and since planting things and watching them grow makes me happy, plant updates will probably be a regular thing for a while. I’ve got lots going on besides the sunflowers, and I’ll be posting pics of some of the rest soon.

Other posts will feature cool stuff beyond my backyard: shops & restaurants I visit, events I attend, whatever I happen to do that’s actually interesting enough to talk about. (There will also probably be lots of pictures of my dog. It’s okay, she’s really cute.) Tomorrow I’m going to a tea tasting at Louisville Tea Company, so I’ll post about that and cover the blog’s other namesake.

That concludes the first post!