Archives for 2008

Glass Gardens

December 28, 2008 by lynncoulter

It’s cold and rainy here today, and since there’s nothing in my garden to look at, I dug up some pictures I made a couple of years ago at the Missouri Botanical Garden, in St. Louis. This is a pathway into the garden (I visited when it was raining there, too.)

I happened to visit the garden during a display of Chihuly’s work. Dan Chihuly is a fantastic glass artist, in case you haven’t heard of him. Some of his pieces are surrealistic, but all of them are beautiful and colorful. For example, the picture below looks like giant onions, but these are actually huge glass orbs floating in the reflecting pond at the MBG.

Here’s a Chihuly “flower” that looks like it belongs in a tropical rain forest, but it has an other-worldly feel, too:

These are neon-green mushrooms—or maybe more flowers–“sprouting” from a bed of green foliage:

Maybe I’ll buy a gazing globe or some kind of glass ornament for my garden, too. They’re really bright and colorful, especially in the rain.

Filed Under: gardening Tagged With: Chihuly, gardens

Autumn butterflies

November 10, 2008 by lynncoulter

I’m about to doing some flying of my own, to Indiana, for an interview about my book, Mustard Seeds. It’s for a morning television show called Harvest TV. The program airs on DirecTV on Wednesday, Nov. 12.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

October Owls

October 12, 2008 by lynncoulter

“Listen, the wind is rising; the air is wild with leaves.
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!”

Look at these orange eyes! We saw this owl at the raptor show at Georgia Southern University, in Statesboro, GA. He’s a permanent resident there, probably because of some injury that doesn’t allow him to live in the wild anymore. What a beautiful and unusual creature–most owls have eyes of yellow-gold, but his are actually as orange as pumpkins (you might not be able to tell from this picture, but trust me on this. I saw him up close.)

Now that it’s October, I’m really feeling the fall spirit. Colors are changing fast around here, like those small pieces of glass in a kaledioscope. I noticed our hydrangea is showing hints of lavendar and purple on its leaves, and the berries on the dogwood trees are bright red–as red as the cardinals that like to wash them in my birdbath and eat them, leaving the seed pits for me to clean out.

Today the wind is whistling around my house like mad, throwing leaves into the air, and it’s cooled off nicely. Listen closely tonight, if you live in the southeast. It’s time for great horned owls to hoot into the woods, searching for mates.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Fall for Roses, Even in the Fall

October 1, 2008 by lynncoulter

Are your roses looking pretty sad and dreary by now? Here in the Atlanta area, the bushes and climbers are just about finished. Black spot has done its dirty work, making our roses drop their leaves and slowing their flower production. There’s not much we can do to perk them up again. The first cold snap is coming soon, and it’s too late to fertilize. We stop feeding our roses in August around here, because we have to discourage any new growth. They need the next few weeks to harden off for the coming dormant season.

But ahhhh….we went to Statesboro to visit our son, who goes to college there, and found that their roses still in beautiful bud and blooms! Of course, the climate south of Atlanta is much warmer, and there have been some recent rains that encouraged the plants to put out a fresh flush of blossoms. Hope you enjoy these pictures, which we made during out trip. We didn’t see any identifying labels on the plants, but you can oooohhh and ahhhh just the same.

I recently did some research on how to care for roses for a magazine article I’m writing, so I’d like to share some tips with you. If you crave a rose garden for next year, start planning for it now. You’ll need to select a spot that gets nearly full sun all day, although your plants will appreciate a bit of light afternoon shade, when summer temperatures are at their hottest. Otherwise, the sun can scorch your rose leaves and fade the colors of their blooms.

Dig your soil deeply, and add amendments like compost or peat moss to help loosen any heavy clay. You can also add these materials if you have sandy soil, to help the ground hold precious moisture, since sand drains fast. If you can build raised beds and fill them with good organic material, that’s great, too.

From late fall into very early spring, go ahead and buy bare root roses for your new beds. You’ll find the bare root plants sold either in cardboard cartons, or in long, narrow, plastic tubes stuffed with moistened packaging materials. I’ve had good luck with both mail order roses as well as those sold by local garden centers and nurseries.

Before you plant the bare root roses, give them a nice soak for a few hours in a tub or bucket of tepid water. This will help any shriveled canes and roots plump back up again.

Pick a day when the soil isn’t frozen to plant (of course–otherwise, your shovel will bounce off the rock-hard ground!). Refill the hole with a cone-shaped mound of soil, and put the plant on the of the cone so that its roots dangle loosely down the sides. Finish filling the hold and water well.

When the temperatures start to warm up again, and new growth appears as tiny, green leaves, it’s time to add some fertilizer. I like the kind with a systemic insect control mixed in, to help prevent damage from black spot.

Water deeply and regularly, and watch for your beautiful blooms to open as spring progresses. Roses and springtime…how can you beat that combination?

Filed Under: gardening Tagged With: fall, gardening, heirloom roses, roses

Late summer flowers

July 20, 2008 by lynncoulter

By this time every summer, my hanging baskets look pretty tired. I guess they can’t take the heat, combined with the daily waterings that leach out all the fertilizer. It helps to cut back the petunias and other fast-growing annuals, because they’ll usually respond with another flush of blooms before fall. But they seldom look as perky as they did when they were newly planted in the spring.

Oh, well. At least I’ve got my pictures from my trip to Taos to look at. Aren’t these hanging baskets gorgeous? I like to make photos when I’m traveling, not just as a reminder of a trip, but to use as inspiration when I’m gardening next year. I’d always heard that the light in Taos was spectacular, and it’s true. You can see why so many artists and photographers did such great work there; the sunlight is bright and the skies are usually clear. Hope you can click on these images to enlarge them and see how really beautiful the flowers are!