Friday: Garden highs and lows

Thought I’d get back to doing this, since I enjoyed last summer having to narrow all my garden experiences down to just one high and one low… give or take a couple!

Garden high:

Definitely Black Scallop Ajuga.

Deep, dark, and it totally glistens… brand-new, but it’s already starting to spread, and it flowered just a couple of days after I planted it: how obliging can one plant get???

Here, you can see it pitted against its stalwart opponent: the backyard dandelion. Who will win? Whose shade of green reigns supreme???

Garden low:

Seems like the leaf miners have found my columbines… again.

Their burrowing doesn’t really harm the leaves, and I read in a gardening book that some people pretend their distinctive burrowing trails through the leaves’ innards are just a special kind of variegation.

This summer, I will pretend I have a unique, super-special variegated columbine. Or, as Elisheva says, with just a bit of a lisp, ’peshal.

Sneaky highs that don’t count because I have already listed my main one!

The scent of heliotrope – everywhere. Tiny, tiny plants, with great big smell.

The view from under a tomato:

And… last but not least: the gaura came back! A couple of weeks ago, but now it’s totally ticking along.

This one’s Siskiyou Pink. I went totally gaura-happy at both Plant World and Fortino’s Garden Centre today and am now the proud owner of TWO more. The Plant World one was something like $2.99, and I stuck it front & centre in the front bed among the irises.

From Fortino’s, “Whirling Butterflies,” a white form that I plan to use in a container arrangement, was $4.99, but it’s a big plant that is already ready to pop in & go.

Lovin’ me the gaura… way underused in gardens here; you just never see it. This picture isn’t mine… photo courtesy of wikimedia. I read before I bought mine, and it’s totally true, that photos cannot capture the beauty of this plant.

Resisted buying another fuchsia today at Plant World. All of a sudden, I am loving their absurd bulb shape, but I want to see if I can keep the one I have (it’s a dwarf - encliandra “Lottie Hobby”) alive before I branch out.

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