Studiology

Good-bye August

And what a lovely August it was. The garden still looks fabulous, how often can you say that? I spent the morning taking pictures of leaf edges, something I could spend an entire day doing.

The Zinnia 'Benary Salmon' is still my favorite zinnia of 2013, and here it is with Agastache rupestris, which is the only agastache I have managed to keep as a perennial.

My Peony obovata's seed heads have opened. How many peonies do you grow for their display of seeds?

May we remember this August as the best one ever, not something we say too often. 

Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend.

Lectures this Fall

I have a busy season this fall with lectures at various locations. Here is the run down of dates, titles and times. Links are highlighted to take you to registration or blogs by fellow lecturers. 

September 7th  - Merrifield Gardens at the Merrifield (Gallows) location 10:00 AM "Fabulous Fall Containers" - free, no fee or registration required

I will load up the Community Hall with plants, containers and accessories. This will be a lecture with a slide show and demonstrations.

current containers in the perennial section at Fair Oaks

September 14 - Merrifield Gardens, Fair Oaks location 10:00 AM "Annuals and Perennials for Fall" - free, no fee or registration required

The second biggest season of the year is often ignored. It may become your favorite season after you see the many wonderful plants and fall combinations.

September 28th - Merrifield Gardens, Gainesville location 10:00 AM "Photography and Flowers" - free, no fee or registration required

A little slide show that illustrates some basic rules of photography and gives you some "out of the box" ways to take pictures of your gardens and plants. 

October 19th - Green Spring Gardens 9:00 AM "Revamping Tired Landscapes" - registration required, $75. for Fairfax County residents, $90. for out of county

This is an all day symposium with three speakers. I will be joined by Holly Scoggins, associate professor at Virginia Tech., and Jessica Walliser, a blogger, author and bug lover. The topic covers the many ways you can rejuvenate your landscape, ideas that help you crystallize changes for the better with a landscape or garden that has aged and needs help.

 October 31 - Green Spring Gardens 1:00 PM "The Dark Side of Gardening" - registration required, $18. for Fairfax County residents, $20. for out of county

Yes - a return of "The Dark Side" and it just gets better and better. Might I add that Halloween day is the bomb! So plan on joining me for a fun lecture, you will laugh till your cheeks hurt!

November 8th-10th - The Nature Visions Expo. "The Creative Hand of Man" - I will be lecturing on Saturday, the 9th at 9:00 AM. Registration is required for all events, the fee for my 2 hour lecture is $35.

I will be teaching various techniques on transferring your photography to different surfaces. Some examples include transfers to wood, cracked plaster, fabric and acrylic sheets. I will also show how to work with encaustic (wax) and your photographs. There will be a handout to help with techniques which will also include a list of suppliers. 

In the August Garden

The garden is exploding, thanks to the great weather and great compost! Here are a few photographs from the garden, it's just dreamy!!!

 

It's Carex Time

As each year passes, I find that I like the ornamental grasses more and more. One group that I am particularly fond of are the sedges or carex. Not true grasses, but actually a form of cypress or of the family cyperaceae, the primary difference lies in the structure of the inflorescence or flower as most sedges have both male and female flowers which are often produced early in the year rather than late.

In comparison to the true grasses or members of the poaceae family, the sedges take a back seat in sheer numbers but are still well represented with 1,500 species. Natives of the temperate and subarctic zones, little else pulls them together in the commonality of foliage, habitats or methods of spreading. A good number of them display a high degree of variegation, a few have brown foliage, and many prefer shade over sun. 

Gardeners constantly seek perennials that are ornamental, evergreen, deer resistant and drought tolerant, all qualities you can find in the sedges or carex. One of my favorites, Carex oshimensis 'Evergold' forms a dense crown, growing 16 inches in height, the foliage is cream to white centered, edged in dark green. A native of Honshu Island, Japan, it grows in dry woods and rocky slopes which translates to dry shade. Carex sidersticha hails from the same geographical region and offers a reverse pattern of variegation with a broad green middle and thin white edge. On first seeing this sedge, I thought I might have been looking at a hosta with its oversized, wide foliage. Of particular interest for its bright yellow foliage is Carex elata 'Bowles Golden', a native of swamps and riverbanks all over Europe. This one can be placed directly in water, up to 5" deep.

 Carex 'Evergold'

There are many green leafed carex cultivars. Carex muskingumensis is an elegant garden plant with tapered leaves that radiate from lax stems. The stems and clustered top leaves elevate themselves through summer and eventually grow to 2 feet. Commonly known as the palm sedge, it is named after Muskingum County in Ohio. A native of low woods and wet meadows found all over north and central North America. Great at pond or pool side, offering a quiet charm. In contrast Carex caryophyllea 'The Beatles" produces masses of slender leaves that resemble a dense mop of hair that sits flush with the ground. Gently moving with the slightest breeze, one can imagine how it earned its name (plus it's a native of England). Carex caryophyllea resembles our Carex pensylvanica,  a native of New England and the southeast, the foliage is narrower but in its own way, resembles a small clump of fine hair, swirling around. Maybe someone should select one and name it Carex 'Lynyrd Skynrd' or C. 'Tom Petty' (shorter hair).

A little quote circulates amongst gardeners that helps us remember the differences between sedges, rushes and grasses. "Sedges have edges and rushes are round. Grasses are hollow from the node to the ground". If a sedge leaf is cut, a cross section will reveal a tiangular shape. When holding a leaf between thumb and forefinger, you can feel the edge.

I'm convinced that a few sedges planted in your garden will lead you to desire more and more.  

 

Award at Lorton

I have once again won a "People's Choice Award" during the second Saturday open house at the Lorton Workhouse. My piece, titled "Fern Glade" won second place. The image is painted encaustic. The orginal photography is black and white, in this case captured with a camera that is converted so it only takes infrared pictures. This print is mounted on a wood base, painted over with wax and then colored by painting with oil paint on the wax surface.

 Thanks to all that voted and if you want to see this and other works, visit the Lorton Workhouse, Wednesdays to Saturdays 11:00 t0 6:00 (second Saturdays of each month till 9:00) and Sundays 12:00 - 5:00. I am with the Associate Artists in gallery 902 (the same building as the museum). 

 

Flower Popsicles

As  many of you know, I have been freezing flowers for years in order to photograph them. Since I have the big show this December and a lecture at the Nature Visions Expo in November, I have continued this exercise all summer. I have learned about working with a block of ice when it's warm and humid outside, in the past I did most of my flower freezing in the winter. I also have a new way of working with the flowers in water and that has helped my technique a lot. 

As an example, here is a block of ice with 2 roses in it, photographed in May. 

This is the same block of ice, photographed today, some 3 months later.

Here are seed pods of nigella after a 15 hour freeze.

The same block 1 day later.

My lecture for the Nature Expo is on working with photographs to alter them to various surfaces. I will show you how to do transfers to wood, acrylic, etc., but I will also do a little overview of freezing flowers because they work so well with my other techniques. Registration is now open and I would sign up for anything you might be interested in because some lectures will sell out. My presentation is November 9th from 9 to 11. Here is a link for my lecture which is titled "The Creative Hand of Man".

The August Garden

As August goes, this one has started out on a high note. Our high temperature the other day was 74 degrees, how often can you say that for August? Not to ignore the rain, which has been steady and regular, this will be the summer we talk about for years to come. We might forget that the weeds were delighted with the weather too, that will be something we forget as time goes by. But for now we know it, it seems like an everyday challenge. Not to complain, I will gladly take the weeds if it means a summer like this.

My granddaughter Felicity came out to pose with the corn, which must be 9 feet tall.

This is the garden corn, the field corn is even taller and we have had to keep the chickens locked up because the fox(s) can run out of the corn and grab them in an instance. Our house is surrounded by field corn, so it's been hard on the guineas and we lost 3 chickens to a fox. I'm thinking the chickens won't be freed till the corn is harvested.

My raised beds have been remarkable, I mean super wonderful! The acidanthera is blooming, all 100 of them. The fragrance at night is heavenly.

 I also have datura and brugmansia, all perfuming the night. This brugmansia is 'Frosty Pink', in the evening it's pink and white, by morning the flower is completely white. 

Every year I plant Zinnia 'Benary' seeds and then debate over my favorite color, this year it's 'Benary Salmon'.

The teddy bear sunflowers are almost at peak bloom. 

The asclepias tussock moth ate all of my Asclepias curassavica, they found every one of them, not a monarch in sight. Indeed this has been a very sad summer for monarch sightings. 

We must all continue to plant ascelpias or milkweed to help them. It's the primary diet for the monarch caterpillars. 

In the evening I go out and breath in the saturated night air. I am joined by sphinx moths who fly too fast to photograph. They drink nectar from deep within the flowers, choosing the night fragrant flowers over all others. Almost the size of hummingbirds, one repeatedly fluttered at my face the other night, not sure if I was good or bad. It felt so odd, the flapping of big moth wings. 

Yes, the August garden is good, who would have thunk it!?