soaphouse's Blog

My favorite time...
Nov 6, 2008 | 4:42 AM PST
Tags: camelia , cedar , cypress , fall , spinach , kale , onion , brussel sprouts , juniper , redbud

Well, its been over a month since my last post, but I have been busy enjoying my favorite time of year! I just love fall...for many reasons, but mostly all the gardening. There is something so refreshing about cleaning up the garden and getting it put to bed in anticipation of another growing season!

My camelia bush has been in full bloom for the past few weeks and is just beautiful!

I think this is the best it has ever looked.

I have also been enjoying the White Muhly grass that I ordered online last year and wasn't sure what they were going to do...

I suppose next year it will get fluffier and start to look more "cloud like"

what fun!

The first frost has come and gone in late Oct, so I also have had some fun with the pruners and cut the laurapedalums and junipers way back in the front. unfortunately, the junipers have a lot of dead wood in the middle (as I know junipers are prone to do) so, I am hoping that the pruning will help.

It felt good to get things opened up a bit.

We also limbed up the redbud a bit and I had some wonderful help from my hubby

<
p>I also had a fun fall shopping trip to the nursery the other day and got some things that have been on my list for a long time. We took out a wayward growing maple last winter in the back yard and I wanted to put some sort of conifer there instead. well, i hemmed and hawed and finally settled on a deador cedar.

Doesn't
look like much now, but I understand these have a decent growth rate. The chicken wire is to protect it from our 3 puppy dogs until it gets well established. I have great visions of what it will look like one day :)

I also picked up a threaded cypress that i have been wanting for a while. I would like to add more, but only got one for now:

It went in in the front of the deador cedar and is surrounded by autumn joy sedums and some grasses. It also crossed my mind to replace the junipers in the front with these if the junipers don't bounce back nicely from the pruning. we'll see...

And I also picked up a cripii (?) cypress that said it took shade and gets  8 or so feet tall, so I put it at our property corner back by the creek and I think it will anchor that nicely.

You can't even really see it in the picture yet...its so small :)

Here are some shots of the creek area as of late:

<
p>The green giants are doing great...so far so good! I think this winter when i cut back my ornamental grasses i am going to divide some and plop them around the creek area.

And, finally...my latest edition of garden art:

The mirrors on either side of the tree trunk...a rescue from the dumpster at hubby's job. My hope is that the ivy will grow up the chain link fence and surround the edges of the mirrors and they will look all nestled in like they have always been there.

In the veggie beds, the spinach, brussel sprouts, sugar snaps peas and onions are germinating. We finally dug up the sweet potatoes and i made a big batch of them in the oven and didn't even need to add sugar, they were so sweet! I don't know if i will grow them again as the harvest yield was quite small for what i paid for the starts. but, it was fun none the less :)

I still have kale, bok choy, romaine lettuce and parsely to sow once hubby goes to get more dirt.

This weekend will consist of more cleaning, pruning and straitening :)

Enough rambling for now...have a great gardening weekend everyone!