Hot Summer Days

As July draws to a close, things are really getting hot here in the middle of the country. Some of my flowers are giving up on blooming (and the grasshoppers are getting fat on the rest). My beautiful pink primroses are basically stalks standing bare. I'm busy deadheading and pruning back some of the spring plants, but the purple cone flowers and black eyed susans are flourishing in the heat. The daylilies add bright spots of orange and the old fashioned tiger lilies add a big burst of orange with black spots. I love the way the garden transitions from one view to another as the season progresses. If I keep the faded flowers deadheaded - which I have to admit, I get rather lazy about - then there is a continual show of colors right into fall.
Besides the mums and ornamental grasses which will soon be ready for their show, I'm thinking of other ways to dress of my garden for fall. I think some colorful plants in containers with dried wheat or sorghum heads or even some interesting branches might make some great ways to dress up things when the summer flowers are finished. I'll add some pics when I get them together.

Welcome Guests With Flowers in Recycled Pots

I'm an incurable collector of junk pile finds and I love to find ways to incorporate them into my garden. The top arrangement is made up of an old rusty rake that I found and hung a welcome sign on the tines. I found the old rusty galvanized bucket in a ravine in the neighbors pasture and carried it home to use as a planter. I set it on the step going up to the front door.





This planter is by the back door. Don't know what the rusty old pot was used for - I found it several years ago. It doesn't have a bottom, but I just dug it down into the earth a little and I usually plant moss rose in it every year. I found the old hoe tool with a short handle here on the farm, and it was a simple matter to paint "Welcome" on it and stick it down into the planter. The rusty hen doorstop was a gift from a friend and adds a little charm to the arrangement.


Of course, these rustic arrangements fit right in with a 140 year old farmhouse, but they would look good in just about any garden. It's fun to come up with some pretty ways to show off your flowers in "recycled" containers.

My Mulberry Tree

I have a big, old mulberry tree in my yard. Not only does this tree make a great place for a shade garden, but with a bench addition, it's a great place to enjoy all the birds that nest in this tree. Among my favorites are the Western Kingbirds, a Mockingbird, and Orioles. Of course, the usual sparrows and blackbirds love the tree too. I also spot a lot of Bluebirds perched on the branches looking for insects.

The only bad thing about this tree is all the mulberries dropping all over the place right now! They are yummy and the birds love them, but there's more than enough for all as evidenced by the mess all over the ground. Don't dare sit on the bench without brushing them off of it!

Since the ground under this tree tends to be dry, I have to find shade plants that tolerate the dry conditions. I started some creeping myrtle a few years ago and it is filling in nicely. A couple of Coral Bells look really great this year and I plant some annuals in pots for added color. The annuals seem to do better in pots where I can keep them watered more regularly and the tree can't steal the moisture!

To read more about my mulberry tree check out my Squidoo Lens called Under The Mulberry Tree . There's more facts about the birds and a great Cherry/Mulberry Crisp Recipe.

Simple Water Gardening

Well, between the Kansas Tornado and then a trip to Kansas City to help my sister prepare for my neice's wedding, my prairie garden has been a bit neglected. The beauty of a garden planted with native plants is that it really doesn't take much care and other then a few weeds (not native beauties!) needing to be removed, it's really looking good. Of course, a wetter than usual start to summer has helped, too.

I've added a few simple water features to my garden and the one to the right is right outside my front door where I can hear the sound of the fountain inside the house. This was a really simple feature to set up. I found a long flat rock that fits across the back of the pot and holds the turtle spitter. In order to make a place for the plants to stand and hold some rocks I set a concrete block on its end in the pot and then used the front cage from an old fan that didn't work anymore (I'm an avid recyclyer, did I tell you?) and laid it face down on the concrete block. It's just a simple matter to place rocks inside the fan cage to cover it and to help anchor the plants.

The plants were pretty simple, also. I purchased a small chameleon plant and the other two reed-like plants were dug up from around the edges of our farm pond. Now, I know not everyone has a farm pond to dig up plants from, but if you live in an area where there is water and you would have access to water plants this is a great way to put plants in your feature. I put a small clump in a clay pot with some rocks or gravel in the bottom. When it's time to put up your feature for the winter, you can just dispose of the plants and save the pots for next year. You can also purchase water plants if you like.

You can overwinter your water plants if you have the space for a flat, under the bed type plastic storage container. I place it in a sunny window and set the plants into it and keep about 3" to 4" of water in it all winter long.

I also like to add a couple of goldfish to my water feature to help keep algae down and besides the grandkids love to feed them when they are here.

Use your imagination and look around for things you can use to set up your own water feature and enjoy the sound of the water during the hot summer months to come.

Kansas Gardening-with Wind, Hail and Tornado

"Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his spendor was dressed like one of these."
Luke 12:27


Yesterday was one of those gardener's nightmares. The wind blew about 30-40 mph out of the south all day. I'm glad I'm going native on a lot of my plantings. Even though they were bent over and whipped all day long, they just pop back up and keep on blooming!


Last night the storms rolled through. I took this picture of the sky around 8:30 or 9:00. It was like the clouds were rolling in long separate rolls out ahead of the storm. The first tornado warning came about 10:30 - right after I had gone to bed. It wasn't in the form of sirens - no such thing out here! - it was a call from mother-in-law saying the sirens were going off in Abilene. That got my attention!


Spent the next couple of hours going from window to window and door to door with the radio going, listening to all the sightings from all around us. When it started hailing, I started praying. We only had a little pea sized hail and as bad as that sounded, I would have hated to listen to the baseball sized hail reported around us!


I look around this morning and can honestly say that I need to count my blessings. We had no damage here on our farm - even my delicate flowers look pretty much ok.


I wish I could say the same for other areas. We are about 12 miles from Chapman, Kansas and that small town was nearly destroyed last night. I grew up in this county, went to school at Chapman High School, my kids and a lot of my nieces and nephews attended that school. I haven't been able to go there yet, but they say the High School is heavily damaged, the Middle School is gone and many other familiar places are destroyed. So far no one that I know was among the injured.


Yes, I am blessed. We'll be heading to Chapman later today to see what we can do to help. Please keep all the people who have lost their homes in your prayers today. Thanks for letting me vent and share today.

"The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble, He cares for those who trust in him." Nahum 1:7

Creating a Prairie Garden

The largest single ecosystem on the North American continent was the prairie. Nestled between the lush forests along the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and stretching from southern Texas to southern Canada, America's prairie was a virtual sea of grasses sometimes taller than a horse. Closer to the ground, a carpet of wildflowers of every color and shape blossomed. Under it all was the rich, black soil that settler farmers tilled and planted into wheat, corn, beans and other crops. The eastern part of the range had more moisture and supported taller grass and a large range of colored flowers. As the region moved west less rain fell and there was more mixed grasses and less flowers. Only about 1% of the continent's original prairie still exists. There are many efforts underway to reestablish and protect prairie habitats.

I live just about right in the middle of that great grassland. Other than the fenced in pastures and the fact that you can still see for miles and miles in any direction, it is hard to imagine what it must have looked like 200 years ago.

I have a lot of traditional flowers in my gardens - things planted by past generations that have adapted well to the prairie and seem as though they were probably always here. Things like the peonies which are blooming magnificently right now, the iris, the tulips and daffodils, and annuals like petunias and zinnias.

However, sometimes it can be a challenge to keep some of those plants protected from the wind and watered enough and so a few years ago, I started collecting and planting native flowers in my gardens. The purple coneflowers nearly take over as well as the pink Missouri primroses. I have started a False Indigo plant that I dug up from our pasture along with a pretty little grass with little white flowers called, simply, white eyed grass. Some wood sorrel started a couple of years ago has started filling in nicely and last year I found and planted a beardstongue which is just starting to bloom. Even some patches of Little Bluestem Grass planted amongst the flowers adds to the beauty of it.

Below are some pictures I've been taking of some of the flowers I have blooming this year. I have identified most of these through the website http://www.kswildflowers.org/ This is a great resource as the flowers as listed by color as well as by name, so it makes it pretty easy to find and identify flowers that I find.

Beardstongue - dug up last year while it was blooming. I was really happy when it came up and bloomed so well this year.

Pink Primroses - always beautiful and very prolific - actually can be rather invasive, but I just fight them back into the areas where I want them and they don't seem to mind - just keep blooming for weeks.

This plant is called Moth Mullin. I found a few of them blooming in the pasture when I was checking calves last spring. Couldn't resist the pretty little white flowers with purple centers. They shoot up about 2'-3' tall and the flowers are about 1" across. It starts blooming at the bottom and the buds above open later - rather like a hollyhock. I found out that this one reseeds itself quite well and have had to be a little ruthless about taking out seedlings so that it doesn't choke out everything else. Growing in the pasture, they are contained by native grasses, etc., but in the garden where they could have free range, they come up everywhere! They're worth the extra work now that they are blooming.

Growing Grandma's Iris

I really love iris. I have always had a few iris in any garden that I have had anywhere. A lot of them were the old fashioned kind that were planted many years ago by some former gardener and they are still coming up and blooming every year. I like the idea that my iris will continue to live and give people enjoyment long after I am gone.
I now live in a farmhouse that my husband's grandparents had lived in. When I moved here, all the old flower beds were gone and nothing of his grandmother's flowers had survived. Or so we thought. It seems that she had once had some really beautiful irises growing out by the road, but after having been neglected and mowed off for many years none of them were left.
A few years ago, the local phone company laid all new lines (so we could have DSL internet) and had dug trenches along the ditches all down our road. One day, the next spring as I was mowing along the ditch, I looked down and there were little iris plants coming up! Well, of course, I stopped the mower and dug up those little plants. I transplanted them into my flower beds and these lush yellow iris in the pictures are the result of that project.
I love the fact that these hardy little rhizomes had lain deeply buried in the ground for years surviving until they were brought to the surface by the trencher. Every year when they start to bloom I think, "These are for you, Grandma!" Even though I never had the chance to know her, I think she would be pleased!