A pretty, wintry day

Pretty snowy berries

My mom told me this morning that I had not posted on my blog recently. "But it's winter!" I said. "But you're still taking pictures," she said.
"True," I said. Here are today's:

Miracle of fall

It has been looking to me like this year's fall color is more spectacular than others. Maybe it's because I've gotten more interested in taking pictures of it. So the images are lingering, along with its wide color palate. I stumbled upon a site today that described the science behind fall color. To my delight, it said that fall color does vary from year to year depending on many factors, the most important of which are moisture and temperature. Here's a primer on why and how leaves change colors. And some photos from both my garden, other people's and the street. And to think I wouldn't need the word chlorophyll after seventh grade science.

Color from another perfect fall walk

Morning frost

I'm not sure what's up but I really used to find winter ugly, brown and colorless. I must have had something switch in my brain lately because I drove past these scenes this morning and thought I had never seen anything more beautiful. And look, there's frost and no leaves on the trees.

Pretty blue things

I sprayed some squirrel stopper spray on a bunch of grape hyacinth bulbs and planted them. I also gave the squirrels the stink eye. I hope they look this pretty when they come out in the spring!!

Fall color from my garden and beyond

Here's a picture of an Agastache bush outside of a coffee shop I went to yesterday. I used to have these at my house in Ferndale. They spread and came back every year without doing much to them and they look great in the fall. This is also called an anise or licorice plant. The hydrangeas get pinker as we go deeper into fall.

My ponies are in the ground!

My hilarious husband calls my Peonies, ponies.
I got my Suzie Q and my Felix Supreme in the mail this weekend and just planted them today.

Here are some photos of the bare roots and what they looked like. It's amazing to me that next spring there will be plants sticking out of the ground!!!

It will be a miracle.

I am so mad at the squirrels!

They dug everything up! I am going to put down chicken wire this week to keep them away from the remaining bulbs. I hope it works. So upsetting. I had all these great plans for a beautiful spring. Dreams dashed.

Plant paparazzi

I wondered today if I'm the only one who regularly runs around the house taking pictures of new and old plant acquisitions. Below is the front yard with its new little additions, the four new mums made to look like two new mums, and the increasingly fall-colored hydrangeas. These were impossibly white just a few months ago!

Fall color, tomatoes and Tigers

Here is some color from the neighborhood from my walk with Curly last night. Also a shot of our last tomatoes of the year and a shot of me and my husband from the Tigers game Monday. Go Tigers, beat the Yankees!

Pairing things up

One of the things that has perplexed me the most about gardening is how to pair things up to make them harmonize. I will see something beautiful at the nursery only to bring it home and have it look just hoe-hum. But the more I've gotten into gardening, the more I notice that gardening is not just about where to stick your plants (in terms of soil, sunlight, or orientation to the sun). But what you put it next to matters just as much. One of my neighbors planted a whole garden full of bright purple catmint and bubblegum pink roses. The visual was out of this world. It looked something like this:


So when I go on my walks these days, part of what I'm looking at is what people put next to what. Do you know that there are whole books dedicated to this subject? One guy wrote a whole book about pairing climbing roses and clematis!!

Here's what those combinations look like. And:


My MIL is really good at this. This year, there was a ton of blue and purple in her yard. Blue hydrangeas with blue delphinium nearby, sprinkled in between hostas. So pretty.

Fall color

Tree on my way home from work

Planting lovely new catmint

Asters and mums

North-facing lawn

The other day, when picking out my birthday peonies, I began to read about their care and noticed little annotations on the plant descriptions. What did they mean?

Could "Hardiness Zone: 3-7 S / 3-8 W," mean they do well in (Michigan) Zone 5 as long as they face South or West? Yes, it does! The North facing lawn gets the shortest amount of sunshine of the day and therefore should not have flowers that require heavy doses of sun. We have a north-facing lawn. I'll. Be. Darned.

How did I not know that north-facing lawns get the least sun? Is that why our day lillies and daisies only flower once and are done for the season?? South-facing lawns are in fact so important in garden-loving England that realtors use that as descriptors for houses in the headlines of ads!!! "Beautiful north-facing tudor," etc.

Well, it's sad that we have this ample front yard that flowers don't love, but the mystery of why we have poor-performing front lawn flowers is solved. Someone is going to be replanting those to other parts of the house and doing some research about what to put in their place!!

Here are two ideas, virginia bluebells and astilbe:

Crocuses, daffodils, tulips, irises...

A couple of weeks ago I bought some bulbs during my lunch hour with my friend Mary. There were so many to choose from. How would I know what would look best? I ended up with multi-colored crocuses, yellow daffodils, pink tulips, purple tulips, and purple bearded irises. I had been itching to plant but had not had a second to go out and dig.

Today after lunch, I gathered all my bulbs and poked around the yard looking for the perfect beds for my bulbs. After having a plan in my head, I began to dig and plant. Now my wrist hurts horribly. I also went back to English gardens and got two cat mint plants, which have done great in out front, two purple mums and two purple asters. Here are some photos of the day!

Peonies in the mail!

I told my husband I needed peonies for my upcoming November birthday and that I needed to get them now so I could plant them right away before frost. I ordered the following beauties!

Peonia Susie Q

and

Peonia Lactiflora Felix Supreme

I can't begin to say how excited I am to get these babies!!!

Up North

Gaylord skies

Gaylord tree

 Gaylord tree stump