My Half Acre of Paradise

Our “everbearing” strawberries are now producing their second wave of berries! Just in time as the raspberries have finished their production for the year. It’s nice to have these waves of sweet harvest first from strawberries, then cherries, then raspberries, then the strawberries again. It makes for some good ice cream eating!

I also like the fact that strawberries don’t need any pesticide, at least here they don’t. They are ready to pop in the mouth right as you pick them. I love that.

I think this is hilarious! What a funny idea — I just read about these tree faces in a post on GardenWeb.com. Check them out here.

I’ve found a few maple seedlings in my yard, especially lately, and I’ve put them in pots so I can raise them in a protected place until they’re big enough to plant in the yard.

This one I’ve had since last summer or fall. I’m not even 100% sure it’s a maple, but I’d like to find out what it is. Perhaps I can get someone on GardenWeb to identify it for me.

Last week, I dug up about five of these from my shrub bed over by the nectarine tree. They all look like the same species (definitely maples), and I was wondering where they came from. Then, I had this vague recollection that just MAYBE I threw some leftover Bigtooth maple seeds over there after I couldn’t get them to germinate in my basement. But I’m not sure I did. I say Bigtooth maple, because the leaves look different than my Rocky Mountain maple that I grew from seed, which is now about four feet tall. I gathered a bunch of maple seeds up in American Fork Canyon, and I’m sure some of them were Bigtooth and some were Rocky Mountain.

I have this small row of five Hibiscus syriacus shrubs, and one of them has been growing funny the past two years. It doesn’t grow much, and its leaves and flowers are unusually small. It looks a little pale compared to its neighbors, too. Here are some photos:

See how short it is compared to the others above. But it has lots of flowerbuds, and although the leaves are slightly dull, it’s not that bad in terms of color. Doesn’t look cholorotic to me.

But see how the leaves are so much smaller than the normal leaf from the neighboring shrub? And the flowers are much smaller, too. The flowers look the same, just miniature, so I think it’s not a different variety of Hibiscus.

Anyway, I’m posting something about this on GardenWeb.com to see what answers I can find.

I’m really enjoying these Ruby Meidiland roses — they seem brighter and heavier blooming this year than they’ve ever been. Maybe it’s the lingering effects of the horse manure I fed them two years ago? Anyway, aren’t they a perfect Fourth of July rose? This photo was taken on the Fourth of July, and they go so well with the flag. I’m also enjoying that my Shasta Daisies are in full bloom right now. Maybe I should have some of these out front near the flag, too.

And finally, here is a nice photo of the front yard flowerbed. I’m surprised the winter crop of pansies is still blooming fairly well, even with nearly a month of 90°+ temperatures. I’m also happy to see the California Poppies are growing well; these are seed from last year’s pink ‘Summer Sorbet’ planting, and I’m hoping they weren’t pollinated by any of the golden ones from the backyard. Hopefully, these come out with the pink flowers in a nice mass of color. Also see how well that big annual Rudbeckia (Black-Eyed Susan) is doing. I love the mass of yellow flowers. And below that is the maroon-colored semi-short Gaillardia plant that just showed up all by itself. I need to propagate it by cutting, since it’s such a cool specimen.

The photos above are flowers I planted this year. On the left is Verbena x hybrida ‘Imagination’ with some Delosperma iceplant foliage in the background. These Verbenas are doing pretty well, and I hope they produce good amounts of seed so I can grow them again next year. On the right, you can see some red Dianthus deltoides ‘Brilliancy’ along with my cutting-propagated Gaillardia with the mostly yellow flowers, as well as some of the Verbena (pardon a few weeds in there, too!). The Dianthus has also been a great plant, flowering the first year from seed in a short time.

These are just a few shots of my north flowerbed in the backyard. I really like the texture and color blends in the photo on the right. You can see Lavender, Coreopsis grandiflora, California poppy, and a little Mexican Evening Primrose, which I’ve generally tried to kill but I’m letting a few spots bloom before “shovel pruning” them. They’re so invasive that I just can’t handle keeping them around.

My purple and white coneflowers are blooming very well now. They’ve been going for a few weeks and are probably peaking now. The white ones were started last year from seeds gathered from a plant I raised a few years ago from seeds off my mother-in-law’s plant. I think it’s ‘White Swan’ but I can’t be 100% sure. This is only the second year in my garden for the white ones. The purple ones are partly from plants I bought five years ago and also from seeds scattered by those plants.

My hostas are blooming right now, and the groundcover, Lamium maculatum, still has scattered blooms, but not as well as when it first bloomed in May.

I’m quite happy to see my Rocky Mountain Maple doing so well, too. This was grown from seed in 2006 and it’s just leaping in height this year!

I’ve had a little trouble with my ‘Autumn Blaze’ maples. The one on the left above had chlorosis pretty bad last year, and it even lost most of its leaves in August only to grow back young leaves in September that got killed by fall frosts while still tender. I worried that it might not recover this spring. But it did show signs of life, and I implanted four Medicap iron supplements into the trunk in April. It has recovered quite well, with generally good green leaves. I hope the Medicap treatment lasts a few years.

The one of the right has been healthy in the past, and it still looks vigorous, but you can see that it’s a little yellow this year. These trees were supposed to be resistant to iron chlorosis, but they don’t appear to be as good as expected.

There is a third one that’s not in the photos, and it’s always been quite healthy. It also is one that gets sprinkler watered, while the other two get drip irrigation that is probably insufficient. Every two or three weeks, I run a sprinkler on the other two for four or five hours.