Mish-Mash Seed GROW

This post is a mighty mish-mash of miscellany: my monthly Seed GROW post, an OOTS (public plantings) post, a seed swap update, and my favorite Dearborn Garden Walk photo revealed. Deep breath and we're ready!

Seed Grow: Nasty Mish-Mash
It's time for the August post for the Seed GROW Project. (August? How can it be August?!)

Well, things aren't looking so great. I admit I'm just not used to watering plants unless they are veggies. Which, incidentally this corn is, and I did water it, so I'm not sure what's up.

The two nasties are making a little progress up the trellis. Yeah, the hops in the center isn't looking so hot, either. They need more sun and more water, methinks.

The close-up of one of the flowers, with the cute little raindrops, is however, I'm sure you'll agree, noogie!

Out on the Streets — Because Late is Early!
I've lost track of when the official Out on the Streets is, but VP likes us to show public plantings in our area and I've been collecting a few photos.

There are always plenty of wonderful public plantings in my "adopted" (wish I lived there) city of Chicago.

See?

Nice aquatic plants at Trump Tower...

...and regular planters as well. This could change my entire attitude to Mr. Combover.

This photo is purely gratuitous, showing a scene from the Transformers movie being shot in Chicago.

Back in Ann Arbor, and practically in my backyard, is this 15-acre wetland preserve in Mary Beth Doyle Park. It was created two years ago to help reduce flooding and improve water quality in Malletts Creek (into which it flows). It's also aflutter with wildlife.

The wetland has a large central basin that can hold up to 15 million gallons of rain and water runoff during storms. This prevents flooding and reduces phosphorus input from Mallets Creek into the Huron River by a third. Native plants (flowers and grasses) are planted along the edges, and their long roots help clean the water. It's been fun checking the water level whenever I bike by. It's about half full in this photo, though you'd have to see the edges to really tell.

Gray-headed coneflowers (Ratibida pinnata) in Doyle Park.


This traffic circle in Pittsfield Village (Ann Arbor) is well maintained.

Washtenaw Community College where I teach has a few nice planters.

Michigan Avenue in downtown Ypsilanti has nice planters, too. Other parts of town have hanging baskets with ornamental grasses.

This photo is purely gratuitous, showing the Ypsilanti Water Tower, right across the street from my alma mater, Eastern Michigan University. They done teache'd me to write real good.

Had to stop for this bus stop in Westland (south side of Ford, just east of Wayne). It's so out of context with the surrounding area. I suspect the owners of next-door Thrifty Florist planted and maintain it. Good for them!

Save Your Seeds for the Swap!
I know it's early, but start thinking about what plants to save seeds from, to get ready for my third annual snail-mail seed swap in early January (for us winter sowers, holla!).

Favorite Photo — Kew Knew?

Cheryl came closest to guessing that my favorite photo from the Dearborn Garden Walk was this weathered Kew sign. I like the other photos you guessed, especially the stairwell and metal edging (but not those shoes, so not those shoes!), but the Kew sign is by far my favorite. I greatly enjoyed a visit to Kew Gardens in 1999 and it remains one of my all-time favorites. Aside from that, I love mass transit and the sign is in the style of the tube logo. Plus, I love the beat-up, forgotten look, with even the vines covering it being withered. And how even though the sign has holes in the corners, it wasn't even nailed to the fence, just stood up against it.

Plus, the houses on the tour run about $6 million and no expenses were spared in garden design. I'm sure many vignettes were created by professional designers (not even gardeners!), so this forgotten little sign, in an otherwise meticulously cared-for garden, really appealed to me and totally made my day.

Are you still awake? Thanks for stopping by and slogging through this mammoth entry!

I'm growing Nasturtium 'Spitfire' for the GROW project. Thanks to Renee's Garden for the seeds.

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The Mystery of the Missing Sunflower

This is what the most of the sunflowers in the garden look like right now. Beautiful bright yellow being explored be a swarm of big black  happy bees.  They are coming along nicely although not as huge as the ones that grew last year.  If all goes well I should be able to get a couple a bags of seeds out of these, but there is a problem.  The problem, besides me being able to take a properly focused photograph, is that something is eating or in some way destroying the freaking flowers.  Where are they going?  There is not a pile of flowers on the ground around these stems.  At least seven sunflower plants look the same way.  Right at where the flower would meet the stem it simply ends in a frayed mess.  Are they all going to disappear?  The only positive is that I think I could use these for make shift paint brushes for the kids to play with, but there gonna say "Hey Dad, where did the flowers go" and the best answer I got is maybe big foot at them.  Nature would be great if it wasn't for all the bugs and animals and stuff.

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Amy's Musings: Belleville Garden Walk

After grudgingly (kicking and screamingly) accepting the fact that blog posts are never going to write themselves, I decided the next best thing is to con unsuspecting real-life friends into writing some guest posts.

Today, Amy Bruhn (avid gardener, master gardener volunteer since 1996, and fellow cat fancier) takes us on a Garden Walk she attended on July 18 in Belleville, Michigan.

Last Sunday, the Garden Faerie chose to go all the way to Chicago on a fancy-schmanzy Dearborn Garden Walk instead of driving to the local Dearborn (Michigan) and going on a garden walk with me. Shows me how I rate, eh? But no worries, I asked Tonja, the new president of the master gardener group I belong to and who I don’t know very well yet, if she’d like to go along with me and she said yes. And then the Garden Faerie said I could write a guest blog so she could see a little bit of what she missed. Let’s just say it was a lot different than the garden walk she went on.

The garden walk was in Belleville, a rural community that is the halfway point between my house in Dearborn and the Garden Faerie’s house in Ann Arbor. This was the fifth annual garden walk hosted by the Belleville Area District Library. The theme was “Country Gardens” and the five gardens on the walk were all very large. The smallest was just over one acre and the largest one was on ten acres. Fortunately they gave us a map and Tonja brought her husband’s GPS to help us navigate the back roads, many of which were dirt.

Since I didn’t know I would be doing this guest blog at the time, I didn’t take a lot of pictures and just enjoyed strolling through the gardens and relaxing in their beauty. But there were some things that called out to me and insisted that I take their picture, such as some of the antiques that were tucked into of the beds in the first garden.

I loved this small chair used as a plant stand. No, it’s not a full-sized chair, because could you imagine how huge the Hosta next to it would have been?

And I think a bird cage such as this would look fantastic hanging in my weeping cherry tree. Looks like I need to start hanging out on eBay again…

This garden had so much stuff tucked everywhere that it almost made my head hurt. I think they must have worked for a paver brick company because they had more brick than grass. I understand the concept about reducing the size of your lawn, but they went too far with so much hardscaping (in my opinion, at least).

I liked that they added a blue heron statue next to their pond. I wonder if it keeps the other blue herons away? We have a blue heron here in the suburbs who preys on all of my friends’ ponds, so maybe they should try a blue heron scarecrow.

See what I mean about all the brick pavers? In addition to the bricks there was an over abundance of rocks and statues, which threw it all out of balance and overwhelmed what greenery they did have. (GF: The views expressed in this entry are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the right to sue me. Please direct any correspondence directly to NotMyProblem@neenerneener.com.)

This bed was larger and didn’t have quite the high ratio of statues and other objects in it, but I still didn’t find it to evoke a relaxing or peaceful feeling, which is what I want out of a garden.

But what I did really like was this guy in the tree in the photo above. Here’s a somewhat blurry close-up. I swear he’s the spittin’ image of my friend Judy’s husband! (GF: You know I have at least three regular readers--what if they know Judy?!)

I thought of the Garden Faerie at the next house. I don’t think she actually has a little fairy garden, but don’t you think she should? (GF: She doesn't. But she was under the impression that fairies are woodland creatures and is amused by the lighthouse. And by referring to herself in third person.)

And I loved the scarecrow in this vegetable garden. The garden was huge and probably could have used an entire family of scarecrows. Mom, Dad, Junior, Sissy, and there’d still be room for Grandma and Grandpa!

And whenever I see chairs or benches in a flower bed I stop and wonder if gardeners actually ever sit down in those chairs or benches. Do any of us ever get to really take a break and enjoy the product of our gardening labors? I need to learn how to do that because on the rare occasion I do sit down, I always see flowers that need dead-heading, bushes that need pruning, beds that need weeding, and others that need mulching. But I must enjoy it, or I wouldn’t keep doing it, right?

This garden was lined with long flower beds and also had large island bed plantings. Each of them was bordered by annuals – petunias in the sun and impatiens in the shade. I couldn’t imagine planting all of those annuals and assumed they must hire help to plant them and also to keep everything so well-manicured.

Here’s a closer view of the darling fountain and one of the planters on a pedestal.

They had beautiful planters interspersed throughout all of the flower beds, but they were classy and enhanced the beds and didn’t overpower them. Along with planting all those annuals, I couldn’t imagine watering all of those planters. (GF: Lazy Water-conscious gardening rules!)

This was perhaps my favorite statue. (GF: My friend Nita, who may be conned into guest posting on native and prairie plants, has the exact same one!) It gave me an idea… maybe if I gave Shadow or Faith a shovel they would help me in the garden. For some reason I doubt that would ever happen. Perhaps the Garden Faerie would have better luck with James and Fiona. (GF: Ha ha ha ha! If I could train James to spray on weeds, that could work, especially now his output is radioactive!)

Whenever I go on a garden walk I see plants that I know I should know the names of, or that I once knew but have forgotten. And I often take pictures so I can show them to the Garden Faerie and have her ID them for me. But I never do. (GF: Which saves a lot of time in me needing to admit I don't know them!) But this time, since I’m writing a guest blog, I can sneak those pictures right into the blog!

I love the shape on these purple flowers and this would make a great replacement for the loosestrife that I’m still trying to eradicate from my flower bed. So what is it? (GF: I had to cheat tweet to find out this is a perennial lobelia, Lobelia siphilitica--thanks to all the tweeps who responded. It is a cutie.)

And while I hate grasses, I really like the shape of this one. I know the Garden Faerie told me the name of it when we were in Columbus last year, but I have since forgotten the name. Help! (GF: It's Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola'). And what? You don't like grasses? How could I not know this about you?! Thud! That's me falling over. My Little Blue Stem and I are going to pout for a good 20 minutes!)

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What's pink or green or silver all over?

About a month ago my friend Amy and I checked out Fabulous Flamingos: A Whimsical Garden Display at Matthaei Botanical Gardens. As you probably recall, I'm crazy about pink flamingos (or maybe just crazy), so this was a delight to see. (For proof, here's Pinky, one of my own flamingos.)

The flamingos were decorated by community members, students, and Matthaei staff. You could vote for your favorite, and this creative dragon was mine. It's made of the handyman's secret weapon (duct tape, holla Lisa!) and I liked its smile. Maybe the red protrusion is a flame, but I like to think of it as a tongue!

There were a lot of flamingos to admire.

In all kinds of decorations.


Yes, I'll be making Pinky ear muffs this winter!

Many creations were well matched to their surroundings.


I love the pink flame. Rawwwwr!




I'm rough and tumble from previous fights. I keel you.

♫ One of these things is not like the others... Does provide a kind of shared context for the dragons, though!

Of course we walked the rest of the grounds, too. I love the Alexandra Hicks Herb Garden.

Such a peaceful setting, and people do sit down there.

Delphinium, ahhhh. A plant that hates my garden, so I'm reduced to stalking it elsewhere.

You just know I'm gonna say it: Noogie! I mean, seriously.

I love Nicotiana, especially 'Lime Green.'

The edges of these stringy-petaled Echinacea pallida almost look like they were cut with tiny pinking shears. (Hands up anyone who is amazed I know what pinking shears are.)

Of course we had to go in the conservatory as well. I just love pitcher plants. I think this will enlarge if you click it.

Loved the sentiment on this t-shirt hanging outside the gift shop (or perhaps that's shoppe), but was of course too cheap to buy it!

I hope none of you have suffered stress-related injuries from the shock of my recent frequent updates!

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