Garden panoramas

Well, I've taken the end of August panorama and I thought I'd show off the progression of the back garden through this spring and summer.

April

I didn't have the idea of doing the panoramas at first, so the mid-April pictures are actually two sets that didn't overlap enough to allow them to be stitched together.

Mid April left side of hill

Mid April right side of hill

The early daffodils really stand out against the red mulch.

Late April

Beginning to see where the bigger elements of the garden are returning to the spring garden.

May

Mid May

Beginning to see the Azaleas in the center show their color.

Late May

By late May there has been a lot of growth and filling in, even the vegetable garden on the far right is showing growth.

June

Mid June

In June we started seeing the Primrose and the Rose Campion - bunches of yellow and pinkish red.

Late June

July

Mid July

By mid July we were seeing a LOT of the green spikey plants all over, but particularly in the center - blocking our view of the butterfly bushes..

Late July

I made a decision that the green spikey things were weeds - they were taking over and growing so big that we couldn't see much else. - except the mutant tomato bushes taking over the vegetable garden.  There are only 3 tomato bushes in that garden over there on the right.

August

Mid August

It was a very mild August, very few days in the 90's and none that I can remember in the 100's. Everything continued to thrive, but we don't have much blossoming out back in the late summer.  We had a very healthy hibiscus in the front yard, but those pictures are in other posts.

Late August

August has continued mild (a little hot this week, but nothing to complain about.) The mutatnt tomato plants are still going strong - we're getting between a pint and a quart of cherry tomatoes almost every day.

September and October

There will still be plenty to do and more tomatoes to harvest, but the major flowering and gardening for this season is winding down.  I'm already making plans for next year, but this project has given me a longer perspective on the cycles of the garden through the Spring and Summer months.  I need to find some more late blooming plants o help fill out all the greenery of August and September.

Mid July Panorama and Bloom Day

I'm cheating a little, I decided to take advantage of a Sunday afternoon for my pictures and blog post for Mid July instead of trying to get lucky on weather on Tuesday evening after work.  We've been getting a lot of afternoon thunderstorms over the last couple of weeks, but today is bright, sunny, and hot.  So I'm taking advantage of the sun, and the excuse to sit in the air conditioning and post on the blog.

First, the mid July panorama:

There's a lot of green, but not a lot of color - but it's there if you look.  We talked to our neighbor about the tall spikey growths in the center (and all over really) and couldn't decide if they're weeds or not.  I'm willing to give it some time and see if it flowers and what any flowers look like.  Here's a closer look.

Against the back fence we are just in the last two days getting blossoms on the butterfly bushes.  There are four of them back there.  And with the blossoms I was able to get some pictures of a white moth checking out the blooms.

Over in the vegetable garden, we're still getting blooms as the vegetables are continuing to come in.

Tomato buds.

Zucchini blossoms

And inside the fence at the far right (over by the holly trees) we have a flourishing patch of phlox.

And there are still just a few of the June bloomers, the rose campion and the yellow primrose.

And we have a visitor who is growing under the fence from our neighbor's yard - a day lily.

I know that the lily is potentially poisonous to the dogs, but I haven't wanted to pull it out.  I've accepted that despite my professed intent to create a totally pet friendly garden, I'm not really ready to pull out all the plants I would need to.  It would mean getting rid of the big cherry tree, the azaleas, and enough others that I had to come to terms with my goal.  I will continue to try not to add any hazardous plants, but in 4 years here we haven't had any problems with the dogs chewing on the plants (running them down - yes; eating - no) Maybe I'll need to refocus and work on rescuing the garden from the dogs. 

The Garden Bloggers Bloom Day page is at http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/search/label/garden%20bloggers%20bloom%20day

June 29 panorama

I am continuing my project of taking panorama shots of the back garden at the turn of the month and at the middle.  Since June is ending on a Monday. I went out and took the pictures today.  I spent yesterday working on the vegetable garden, taking off the bird netting and putting in supports for the plants. Today I did some weeding, so the garden was ready to have it's picture taken.

TaDa:

I was talking to our neighbor, Pat, last night (we had her over for a barbecue) and she said she doesn't remember a summer when the plants got so big.  So these pictures may not be typical, but they do document the stages of growth and change through the summer. At the end of the summer I am going to put together a couple collages showing the development of the garden and print them off on photo paper and put them into my garden notebook.  So I'll have a record of the garden (as it is this year) and what blooms when and where in the garden. 

As I mentioned, yesterday we took the bird netting off the vegetable garden.  The tomatoes and cucumbers were growing through it, so we figured it would be more a hindrance to us being able to harvest anything than effective protection from the birds.  (We've already started getting zucchini, and cucumbers, and the lettuce is done for the season.  Tomatoes are very close.)

So, I was saying (twice now) we took down the bird netting.  What I didn't realize was how much the plants were using the netting for support.  Once I had the netting free, everything fell over.

That's a big pile of tomato and cucumber plants that's too heavy to support itself.

A trip to Lowes and a couple hours later we have this:

It wasn't quite the plans I had for the afternoon, but now the tomatoes and cucumbers are supported and have more room to grow.  We can also see and reach the tomato plants on the inside of the box. We found another ripe zucchini and Gloria made zucchini tots to go with the grilled chicken and pasta salad for dinner.

Now I'm just hoping that the raised bed is high enough to be out of reach of the bunnies.

Bloom Day

Last month I came across an interesting blog post.  The May Dreams Garden blog invites people to take pictures of what is blooming on the 15th of the month and write a post and share a link to show what's going on in the garden.  This month's post is at Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - June 2014.  So, I've taken some pictures (what a surprise.)  It also fits well with my project this summer to take panorama pictures of the back hill at the beginning and middle of each month to keep a video diary of what blooms and when.

So I'll start with a panorama of the back garden from pictures taken yesterday afternoon.

The flowers in bloom right now are Yellow Primrose, Rose Campion, and Cucumbers, Zucchini, and Tomatoes. 

I'll let the Primrose go first since they are the flashiest.

They are all over the hill, but they're so pretty that I'm happy to see them.  They are also accompanied by Rose Campions.

It's taken a couple years, and some help, to identify what the Rose Campions are, but now I know what they are so that I can call them by name.

Over on the far right of the yard (in the big square planter) is the vegetable garden. This is our first year planting vegetables so we're excited to see all the blossoms and nascent vegetables on the vines.  I didn't get pictures of the zucchini blossoms or the tomato flowers, but here is a picture of some cucumber flowers.

We've put bird netting over the vegetable garden to try and protect the veggies until we can harvest them.

And it wouldn't be a celebration around here (Father's Day this weekend) without food.  I butterflied a chicken and rubbed some garlic herb butter under the skin before I grilled it. We also had corn on the cob, roasted veggies, grilled pineapple and (not shown) cowboy beans, bread and brie, and a bottle of Far Eastern Shore wine - Lotus.

And some no sugar added blueberry pie for dessert.   It was a good day to enjoy the flowering garden and family gathered for dinner.

Creating a photo log of the back hill

By far the biggest garden we have is on the hill in the backyard.  There are numerous other bits and pieces around the house, but the back hill is the biggest continuous bed.  I've been taking pictures of sections of it for years, but last summer started stitching together some of the sequences to create panoramic scenes of the whole hill.

This year I'm taking the panoramic scenes a step further and creating a series of pictures over time to show the garden as it grows through the season.  So far I have three pictures and have put them together in a sequences collage.

 The top picture is mid-April right after I had spent a weekend putting down the mulch.  I was not very careful in overlapping the original pictures, so the stitching did not work well.  It's actually two different stitched images placed next to each other.  The center image is late April, and the third one is mid-May (then there is room for several more to be added later.)

Here are the images separately - to see more detail.

<-- 2 pictures Mid April

 Mid April 3 pictures ->

Late April

And today (mid-May)

Since I'm still learning what I'm doing out there, this will give me a chance to see what is blooming when. So next year I'll have a quick reference guide that is very specifically tailored to my garden.

Now I am going to ask for help.  I have several plants that I don't know what they are (so I'm not sure what to do for them.)  Here is a gallery of pictures.  If you know what these are, please leave a comment and tell me. I'll group them by numbers to make it easier to keep track.

Plant 1 - along the garden path in several spots - getting to about 12 -18 inches tall

Plant 2 in the center left of the hill - lots of sun

Plant 3 - at the far right on the hill - plenty of full sun.

Plant 4 - ground cover - mostly behind the crimson barberry in the center behind the arbor. 

If you know what these are - please leave a comment and let me know so that I'll know how to care for them.