Port Potager

We added a small landscaping project to our to-do list this weekend:  It was incredibly sunny yesterday, so the photo isn’t great. Hopefully you can see that Kirk added a brick edging to delineate the small flower garden in front of my office. Before, it just kind of blended into the utility yard — and that meant that tons of weeds bled over into the flower garden. Now there are no weeds at all, since Kirk took a hoe to the whole area.  To keep the weeds out of our hair forever, we’re adding some landscaping fabric and will cover the whole area with wood chips. This will make a nice surface for the area in front of the compost bins and chicken coop, and hopefully any new weeds that pop up will be easy to pull. The new little wall left some space to plant, so I moved the hosta and black cohosh that used to be along the side wall of the office to the front bed. I also added some pink snapdragons to fill in the gaps.  From another angle, yo...

Still lots of flowers to enjoy during these beautiful September days. This really is the very best time of year here in Newburyport, for flowers and people alike. Roses, snapdragons, strawflower, and foxglove

This is the last Friday of summer vacation, so it could be the last Flower Friday for some time. Good thing all of my favorite colors of snapdragons re-bloomed for (at least) one more show: Snapdragons

Glad I made it outside to cut flowers yesterday before today's downpours came and crushed a bunch of our cutting bed plants. Here's what I'm enjoying in the vase this week: hosta, snapdragons, and zinnia black-eyed Susans rose, Chinese forget-me-not, lavender, and yarrow

Today's Flower Friday is a tale of two cutting gardens. On one hand, we see the happy mayhem of just cutting whatever happens to be blooming and throwing it into a mason jar: Baby's breath, phlox, black-eyed Susans, zinnia, bachelor's buttons, penstemon, hosta, and snapdragon.  On the other hand, we see the result of some carefully controlled color selections. When I first started planting the cutting garden , I chose perennials in a range of sunset colors: orange, peachy-salmons, golden yellows, plus deep purples and blues for contrast. I also tried to choose seeds for annuals that fit that scheme this past spring as well (though looking back, I can see that some things didn't bloom). Anyway, the idea was that anything in bloom at any given time would look good together. I guess that's true of the first bouquet, but below is a primo case study of what I was going for with that sunset color scheme: Echinacea, yarrow, roses, foxglove, and Chin...

I only have one bouquet today, and this one I only barely managed to bring in before the sky opened up yesterday. It's super-pretty, though: Snapdragons, rose, Chinese forget-me-not, astilbe, and yarrow. It's a little hard to tell in this photo, but those snapdragons at the bottom are a deep, velvety red-purple, which really sets off the delicate pink of the rose. So much pink this year! It's definitely growing on me.

Unlike last week , this week I remembered to take a picture of the cutting garden before any actual cutting occurred: Yes, there's still a hole in the fence. Yes, it's gotten bigger as the kids continue to use it as a short cut to the neighbors' yard next door. Allow me to distract your eye with pretty flowers: Chinese forget-me-not, astilbe, yarrow, snapdragon, and bachelor's button. Chinese forget-me-not, astilbe, and open-faced snapdragons. Here's a closer look at those open-faced snapdragons. They grow on a spike, but are a cup shape instead of a mouth shape. I like them (though the kids don't think they're as fun), and they were pretty easy to grow from seed. Black-eyed Susan, echinacea, and snapdragons.

I introduced a lot of annuals to the cutting garden this year, and since they were all grown from seed, it took quite some time for them to finally come into bloom. But here we are in mid-July, and the cutting garden has a lot going on. I should have taken a picture of the garden itself before doing said cutting, but I didn't think of it in time. Here are some vases I threw together to bring inside: Chinese forget-me-not, echinacea (two kinds!), and yarrow. Snapdragons, Chinese forget-me-not, yarrow, delphinium, echinacea, astilbe, zinnia, and baby's breath. Chinese forget-me-not, snapdragon, delphinium, astilbe, echinacea, yarrow, and bachelor's buttons.

This week I've been self-medicating my winter depression with flower seed catalogues. We are just a couple inches away from breaking the record for the snowiest winter of all time here in Newburyport, but I've been thinking about color instead of white. My second stop for seed shopping was at Johnny's Seeds  (my favorite). These pictures (obviously) are all from their catalogue.  Florist Blue Boy Cornflower Apricot/Peach Mix Strawflower Covent Garden Market Baby's Breath Sun Ball Drumstick Flower Arena III Apricot Lisianthus Chinese Forget-Me-Not Animation Mix Snapdragons Johnny's Sublime Formula Mix Larkspur I really can't wait to get these started. It's like planting hope.

What's the best cure for the winter blahs? Flowers! Last year I didn't do much with the cutting garden because I was in Costa Rica for the height of the season, and Kirk isn't much of a flower guy. (And, to be fair, it would've been a lot to ask for him to take care of all the food and  all the flowers.) And even though the cutting garden is still under 4 to 5 feet of snowpack, I cheered myself up today by spending a couple hours of quality time browsing seed catalogues. I think this year I will try a lot of annuals instead of looking for more perennial for the cutting garden. Perennials are awesome but expensive, so going the seed starting route will be a bit more economical. Here's what I picked out from Park Seed (all the photos are courtesy of their online catalogue, by the way). The flowers are all in the color palette I have already planned for, and all were chosen for their long, sturdy stems for adding to bouquets. Chantilly Mix Snapd...

Only one bouquet to show this week, and barely anything left in the cutting garden now. The best flowers now are in the perennial border, so maybe next week we'll have an outdoor-themed Flower Friday to show them off. Snapdragons and lavender.

Ok, so there are still not all that many flowers left for cutting, but at least I found a nice new way to photograph them. The vases are set up atop the closed piano keyboard. Also, check out the big daisy that rebloomed — it's the only one to do so in the perennial border, and it's a good one! Artemisia and Shasta daisy. Snapdragons. Chrysanthemums, echinacea seed heads, and marigold.

I have to admit, there's not much left in the cutting garden. Next year I will definitely need to plan better to have some more perennials and annuals that last and/or open for the first time in the fall. And I want some deep purple, all — the last I had of that color was done months ago . What we have here are just more riffs on the same theme of all of September: snapdragons and zinnias.  Snapdragons, blanketflower, zinnias, and yarrow. Zinnias and calendula.

It's hot, and the 100-degree high in the garden on Wednesday may have confused our flowers. There are lots of dried-out zinnias and marigolds to be found out there, but I managed to find some good ones anyway this week.  Zinnia and yarrow. Tiegan's birthday present wrapped with zinnia and cosmos. Snapdragons, echinacea (flowers and seed heads), and zinnia. Hosta leaves and zinnias. Rose and hosta leaf.

This is my last Friday of summer — from here on out it's work, work, work, with gardening squeezed in between getting home and sunset and chauffeuring kids around. I'll try to keep Flower Friday going through frost, but it could be a challenge.  Zinnias and echinacea. Snapdragon, zinnia, echinacea. Echinacea and artemisia "Silver King."

I have to admit that this week's flower post is seriously lame. The kids are away at camp, and we used the time to finish the walls of our renovation. That is a dirty, dusty, terrible job, and it didn't leave me with much energy for flower arranging.  And where would I put them? The house is a construction-zone disaster, and I can't even blame the kids. Anyway, yesterday I went out and cut a handful of snapdragons and some matching zinnias for our bedroom (a safe haven from the dust). By next week the house should be back in our control, with running water and working appliances and everything — including flowers. Snapdragons and zinnia.

Not too much to choose from right now — just the late-summer annuals are still going strong. The marigolds and zinnias also last pretty long in the vase, so I don't need to replace the bouquets as often. That's good, since I'm busy dealing with peaches, pickles, and tomatoes right now. Zinnias and hosta leaves. Brown-eyed Susans, snapdragons, echinacea, and zinnia. Marigolds and zinnias.