Gardening

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Our Rose of Sharon(s)

This is our Rose of Sharon shrub, otherwise known as Hibiscus syriacus.  Given that the shrub is over 10 feet tall, it is on the mature side and has been in the backyard garden since we moved to Glen Road.  The shrub itself is actually four shrubs that grow together to appear as one shrub.  Our little optical illusion.  In the Winter, you can see all four individual shrubs, but in the Summer they appear as one.

The two shrubs in the front of the cluster are the traditional pink Rose of Sharon variety.  The two shrubs in the back of the cluster are actually Rose of Sharon in a white variety.

The value of a Rose of Sharon shrub is its late-summer bloom, usually beginning around the start of August.  The Rose of Sharon is not a true rose and doesn’t grow like one.  There are a number of varieties in shades of pink, purple, blue, lavender, red and white.  The flowers are usually 3 to 5 inches in diameter.  The Rose of Sharon is a tall, bushy plant reaching as high as 15 feet.

Plants should be set in while still young and protected with mulch until they are well established.  Until they are mature like the ones we have, you have to be careful as they are susceptible to winterkill.  They grow in sun or part shade and they like moist, humusy soil with good drainage.

Pruning need only be done if you prefer a smaller plant.  You should cut back stems to laterals to control size and produce vigorous growth.  Remove dead or damaged wood when discovered.  Prune in the Winter in mild climates and in Spring in colder ones.

We’re very happy to have such a late bloomer in our garden.  We are a little surprised at how gorgeous the shrub has flowered given the hot temperatures it has had to live in over the last few weeks.  I have read that the Rose of Sharon is guaranteed to attract a hummingbird to come and feed on its blooms, but so far we have not seen any.  😦  Lots of bees feeding on it, but no hummingbirds.  What’s blooming now in your neck of the woods?

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words – Attack Of The Never Ending Tomatoes

This is a new cluster of heirloom cherry tomatoes growing in our garden.  See the morning dew on them?  With eight tomato plants in the garden, getting enough tomatoes has not really been a problem this Summer.  Better yet, they just keep producing.  How has your garden been growing this Summer?

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A Plant I Like

This is a plant that I like named Cornus Sericea. It is better known as a red osier dogwood. During the Summer months, the leaves of this dogwood are a beautiful green and white color. The white color is so light it is almost like silver. In the Winter months, this plant has so much appeal. The twigs actually stand out against the dark colors and snow in a reddish blaze. It is nice to have a plant with so much Winter appeal. Everything looks so barren during the dark Winter months and this red osier dogwood’s branches give a little pop of color to an otherwise bleak landscape.

The red osier dogwood is a pretty easy plant to grow and is also widely found in nurseries with an even better low price. This plant transplants readily from a container, ball and burlapped or even bare root and they adapt well to most soil types and are also great plants to grow in area where you fear that you might have erosion issues, like a sloping area in your yard. Red osier dogwood does best in full sun to develop the blood-red stems.

Clusters of tiny white flowers appear in the Spring and will continue to bloom sporadically through the Summer. The flowers are attractive, but do not make a dramatic display. The fruits are white and usually go unnoticed. This dogwood has a purple to red fall color, but can be variable.

They grow pretty rapidly and are best trimmed in February or March by going in and cutting out the older, thicker twigs (which are darker in color than the newer ones) close to the base of the plant. They grow around six feet in height and are an excellent addition to any garden. What are some of your favorite plants in your garden or yard?

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More What’s Blooming – A Virtual Garden Tour

This is a shot that I can’t even believe I took.  Even with temperatures stuck in the high 80s and many times in the 90s, a dragonfly still has the energy to fly over and enjoy the bloom of a butterfly bush in our front yard.  Even better, the dragonfly waited around long enough for me to get a couple of shots with my camera.  It doesn’t usually happen like this for me when I’m out taking photos.  Most things fly away faster than I can aim, focus and snap a picture.  Yes, Summer is here.  Temperatures are high, rain is scarce and there is a lot of humidity.  That doesn’t mean that flowers and plants aren’t blooming here on Glen Road.  To the contrary, a number of plants are in full bloom even with the harsh conditions.  So we hope you take a few minutes and enjoy a virtual garden tour of what’s blooming in our garden right now.  Here is what is happening:

We hope you liked our little virtual garden tour.  It is amazing that there can be so many blooms given the temperatures we have been dealing with here in Connecticut.  It just goes to show you that there is always a flower of some sort for every season.  All of the plants in this tour require very little water and still show off a dynamic and beautiful display of blooms.  What, if anything, is blooming in your neck of the woods given the hot temperatures we have been having?

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A Toad’s House Or Did We Buy Some Bad Real Estate?

This is a toad house.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  Neither had we until someone commented on Acorns On Glen that I should buy this guy a house.  Remember our little half-inch toad friend?

So we are told that these little guys like a house built for them that they can live under and not worry about predators likes snakes to eat them up during the night.  We guess we understand…who wouldn’t like a house built for them when they are born or when they get married?  Even more, would you like to get eaten during the night by a snake?  The little ceramic houses also protect them from the elements….sun, rain, etc.

So if all thing go according to plan, we should have a toad or two living in the two apartments that we constructed in a very short amount of time….one in the back yard and one in the front yard.  This is what we hope our happy toad family looks like in their new home.  Think ‘Extreme Makeover, Home Edition’ for toads.

Let us know….good idea or a huge rip-off?  Each house cost $13…not a huge investment and if it is successful, how great would it be to see where our toads live and be able to point it out to all of our city friends.  If it doesn’t work, can’t you buy plastic toads at the garden supply store and try to trick all your friends into believing they are real?  We’ll keep you posted on how they are received by the toad community.  I’m off to buy an ab cruncher and a few knives off the television.  Aren’t they guaranteed for success as well….just like the toad houses?  What do you think….will toads move in or will we have a vacancy all the rest of the Summer?

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words – Dragonfly Dreams

This is a little dragonfly warming up in the early morning sun.  They always look so magical and mystical.  Friends with the faeries and gnomes that live out in the woods or so my little five-year old neighbors like to tell me.  Makes me want to curl up and lay in the sun all Saturday as well.  What are your plans for the weekend?

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Summer Update….Warts And All

This is a Summer update to some of the stories we have posted earlier this year on Acorns On Glen.  Can you believe it is the middle of July?  It doesn’t seem possible until you go outside and the hot sun beats down on you while you are gardening or messing around on the patio.  Time goes so fast.  I am remembering a saying that seems to hold some truth for us this year–the older you get, the faster time flies.  That sums up 2011 so far for us even though I am not admitting to getting any older.  On Sunday, we posted a virtual garden tour on what was blooming in our garden.  While we were walking around the garden, there were so many times we stopped and remembered that we had done a post on a certain flower or a certain plant earlier in the year.  So we came up with the idea of doing a post to show what has happened since we first posted the original garden or everyday life story all those months, weeks or days ago.  Some of the stories show progress and some show a different picture.  In the spirit of open and honest communication, we are going to share the good with the bad.  It’s what’s going on at Glen Road….warts and all!

In June, we posted an article entitled “Another Post About Legal Pot“.  We thought the title was funny as the post was about potting plants that we had purchased from White Flower Farm and not about the happy weed that most people would think about when they read the title.  Can you believe that it is one of our most visited posts?  We get it, it’s not the gripping story that unfolded, but the provocative title.  In our story, we show two collections of annuals that we received and planted in pots around our pool.  At the time we wrote the post, the pots looked pretty empty with the little plants placed in them.  Here are the pictures that showed the planting of the ‘Sunny Summer Annual Collection’ and the ‘King Tut Annual Collection’.  Pretty meager to say the least.

Well, we hoped in our post that our two collections would take root and grow and grow they did.  We have been lucky to have some long spells of sun interrupted by a few days of rain and this has been the perfect trick to grow our two collections into some impressive potted displays.  Here are the same two pots still sitting around the pool, but look at how well the plants have filled in.

Sometimes your best intentions in the garden turn out to be disappointments.  Take our story in April on Grace Kelly coming to see us on Glen Road in the post entitled ‘Grace Kelly Moves To Glen Road‘.  If Grace Kelly visited or moved in that would be news to us because we missed it.  Our post was about a tree rose where a Grace Kelly rose bush was fused to a tree trunk and the small tree would bloom with Grace Kelly roses all Summer.  Here are a few shots of the tree rose that we planted and placed on our patio.  So full of potential at the time!

So to be honest, things looked great at the beginning of Grace’s growth.  She pushed out a few leaves on the top branches and hopes were high.  Then she just stopped, dried up and died…or so we thought.  At about the time we were ready to give Grace and her soil a final resting place in our compost pile, we noticed that she decided to change her mind and grow from the bottom of the container and not from the top of the branch like she was supposed to do.  So we have left Grace in her same spot to see what she produces from the rose branch that is growing from the base of the pot.  Do you think we will get a pretty pink rose by the time Fall comes to visit?  Look hard at the base of the pot and you can see the spindly little rose branch growing.

Remember when we were ‘Hot For Horseradish‘ and ‘Raising Rhubarb‘ in April?  We planted some horseradish and rhubarb at about the same time and we were so excited for them to grow and then come back in 2012 for some harvesting.  Well, we will have some rhubarb, but the horseradish had other plans.  Here are our horseradish and rhubarb plants from back in April.

Needless to say our horseradish patch is now a nice little track of dirt and mud.  Did the plants just pack up and leave?  Maybe they didn’t want to live by the sweet and sour goodness of the rhubarb?  Whatever the reason, our horseradish struck out while our rhubarb hit a home run this season.

There are even updates from our post on Sunday ‘What’s Blooming – Another Virtual Garden Tour‘.  In that post, we talked about our best garden buy ever, which were the long-blooming day lilies from QVC.  Well since that post where we showed two blooming varieties, a third one has opened its buds to display a brownish bloom that will last for a couple of months.  Maybe it’s the child of the original yellow variety and the coral variety that we showed you on Sunday.  Remember them?

We are not sure we remember this variety from previous years.  Can that be possible that it just came out of no where?  Doubtful, but stranger things have happened in our garden.  Again, notice the almost brown color of the petals.  As well, the dark purple middle is a killer.  So gorgeous and, best yet, long lasting.

Remember this little stunner from our trip to Christie’s auction house in June in our post ‘Lots Of Bling – Christie’s Important Jewels‘?

This little diamond ring set with an oval-cut diamond, weighing approximately 46.51 carats, flanked on either side by a pear-shaped diamond, weighing approximately 1.01 carats, mounted in platinum was estimated to go for anywhere from $2,500,000 to $3,500,000 in auction.  Guess what the final bid price was when the dust settled at the auction?  $4,226,500!!  A steal (or to steal it is the only way we would ever be able to own such a gorgeous diamond!).

Lastly, we had made a smart little comment about our Asiatic lilliums being some of the first flowers we planted at Glen Road and, while we were excited that they came back year after year, they were not the most vivid colors we had ever seen.  We tried to get out of putting them down by saying we weren’t the most vivid color either after six years on Glen Road, but it didn’t work.  Here is what we snapped on Sunday in ‘What’s Blooming – Another Virtual Garden Tour‘.

Well this morning on a little garden stroll, another Asiatic lillium had shown its face.  Guess what?  The blooms match our embarrassed faces.  How dare we make fun of our lillium tribe.  Our new bloomer is a dark red.  We may be less than vivid in our six years here on Glen Road, but don’t bring the lilliums down.  They are a diverse nation if we have ever seen one.

So we hope you enjoyed our little update of what’s been going on here at Glen Road.  The garden and everyday life are amazing and fun things.  With every great story, there is another one where things just didn’t go exactly as planned.  That’s life!  Well, for all our less than stellar performances, we guess there is always next year…or the year after….or the year after.  You get our drift.  What good or crazy things have been going on for you this Summer?

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What’s Blooming – Another Virtual Garden Tour

This is a little added bonus that we found as we were walking around looking at what was blooming in the garden.  Don’t be fooled.  This little toad was no more than a half an inch long….a baby.  When I was a little boy, my Grandma would always pull me aside when I yelled at the sight of a toad and give me the benefits of seeing them in your vicinity.  They eat bugs that devour your garden.  They save our garden.  Be happy when you see one near your garden.  So I will take her long ago given advice and be happy that our little friend is out protecting our garden.  Lot of plants are peaking in our garden right now.  Let’s enjoy a little virtual garden tour of what’s blooming.  Come with us….and Mr. Baby Toad.

We hope that you enjoyed our little virtual tour.  After a heavy rain this Friday night, things are looking pretty good and there is no need for us to haul the sprinklers out.  Let’s hope that we can continue to alternate between full sun and then some rain.  It sure makes things stay in bloom a lot longer.  What is blooming in your garden right now?

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Easy Chicken….Like Really Easy Chicken

This is our first harvest of green beans from the garden.  What should we do with them was the question?  I had an answer for that, based on a recent recipe I saw on a cooking channel.  Fresh green beans are perfect for a chicken paillard with fresh greens and beans.  We had been on such a food overload since our early July 4th party where we ate an incredible amount of food over the span of the event.  This recipe was perfect for us in the sense it wasn’t heavy, wasn’t grilled and was quick and easy.  It also called for very fresh ingredients, which is always a plus.  Even on the 4th of July, I was able to get to a fresh farmer’s market that was open for some of the other ingredients needed that I couldn’t get out of our garden.  If you are lucky enough to find a place that sells fresh, organic produce, it is well worth the price.  The fresh tastes can’t be beat.  This is the perfect Summer go-to recipe and hit the spot for our 4th of July dinner.

Ingredients (serves 4):

  • 1 pound trimmed green beans (sliced lengthwise on a sharp bias)
  • 4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (8 ounces each)
  • 3+ tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
  • Coarse salt and ground pepper
  • 32 sage leaves
  • 8 ounces pancetta (finely chopped)

  • 1 sliced red onion
  • 2 tablespoon red-wine vinegar
  • 6 cups lettuce (the lettuce is going to wilt a little because you will put a hot dressing/skillet gravy on top of it…..get some greens that can take that..romaine, red leaf, frisee mixed together work well)

Directions:

Steam string beans until al dente, 3 to 4 minutes.  Dump them into a bowl and set aside.  Slice chicken breast halves in half horizontally; pound lightly, to an even thickness to make 8 paillards.  Season paillards with salt and pepper.  Top each with 2 sage leaves.  Saute in a skillet with olive oil over high heat for 3 minutes.  Flip, and top each with more salt, pepper and 2 more sage leaves.   Heat until cooked through, about 3 minutes more.

Transfer to a platter.

When all 8 paillards are cooked, heat 1 tablespoon oil in skillet over high heat.  Cook pancetta for 2 minutes.  Add red onion; cook until soft, about 3 minutes minimum.  Make sure to scrape up all of the chicken bits that are attached to the bottom of the pan.  They have excellent flavor.

Add red-wine vinegar; stir in green beans.  Simmer for about two minutes to let the vinegar cook down a little and to heat up the green beans.  Toss with lettuce.  Serve over paillards.  There is a lot of greens and beans as you can see.  You can barely see the chicken under all of this salad.

Simple and quick.  We were not in the mood for crazy and difficult. Very tasty and hit the spot.  The warm dressing on the slightly wilted lettuces was a nice touch.  The pancetta, onion and vinegar had a nice mix of flavor.  Believe it or not, the chicken also kept its sage taste which surprised me given that I thought the flavor would be in the olive oil and not the chicken.

This is absolutely a new go-to Summer meal when we need something in a jiffy.  When it’s 100 degrees outside, who wants to spend all day cooking in front of a hot stove and oven?  Not us, that’s for sure.  What is your favorite go-to me meal for the Summer?

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words – Bee Nice

This is a Stewartia bloom with a bee enjoying a little bit of its pollen. If you look close, you can see the bee covered in pollen on its top and even down its wings. Bet he’ll be popular back in the hive. We have often thought about buying some hives and becoming real life bee keepers. Sounds a little dangerous, but fun. Do you or someone you know keep their own bees?