A Comedy of Tomatoes

"What did the zero say to the eight?"

"Nice belt!"

What's Blooming Now?

It's well past Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, but I wanted to post some of the beautiful things that are blooming here at Our Little Acre. Some of them are the same as last August, but there are some new ones as well.

The gardens are looking tired and dusty, due to the heat and lack of rain. Large cracks in the soil quickly soak up any moisture that comes their way and any watering we do seems to be just a drop in the bucket. Yet, somehow the plants pull from deep within themselves and produce lovely blooms.

Coral Drops (Bessera elegans) are new to the garden this year. Once they put up the tall flower stalks, it seemed to take forever for the buds to form and then even longer for them to open. They hang down, so you have to lift them to see what's inside, but it's worth the effort. They're pretty when viewed from above, too. They aren't hardy to zone 5, so I'll need to lift them late next month.


Veronica spicata 'Royal Candles' has been a non-stop bloomer. I've deadheaded it part of the time, but it's also gone for several weeks without me touching it. It alway looks good, no matter what I do or don't do.

Rudbeckia 'Prairie Sun' , interspersed with Heliopsis 'Loraine Sunshine' just keeps popping them out there. I grew both of these from seed last year.


Clematis 'Mrs. P. Robert Brydon' is in its second full year here and it has really shot up. While it's considered to be a bush-type clematis, it's grown to six feet tall already. Once the blooms are finished, it will have puffs of fuzzy seeds where the flowers once were.


Shasta Daisy (Leucanthemum superbum 'Aglaia') is new to the garden this year. I love the frilly pom-pom daisies and would like to get 'Ice Star' if I can find it.


Tropical Hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis 'Carolina Breeze')


Zinnia 'Profusion Apricot' and 'Profusion Fire'


Everlasting (Xeranthemum annuum) is an easy-to-grow annual that I grew for the first time this year, from seed. The foliage is silvery-gray and the flowers are white, pink, and purple.




Celosia argentea var. plumosa 'Kimono Red'


Lilium 'Black Beauty'


Canna x. generalis 'Lippo'


Oriental Lily 'Sumatra' is planted next to 'Black Beauty' and the colors echo each other. The fragrance is out of this world in that part of the garden.


Geranium 'Rozanne' and Blackberry Lily (Belamcanda chinensis 'Hello Yellow'). You can also see Coreopsis 'Zagreb'.

Dianthus 'Siberian Blues' isn't really blue, but it is a really unique shade of purple.

Zinnia 'Envy' I planted these with white Cosmos this year, but neither is blooming very profusely yet and 'Envy' isn't nearly as green as it was last year.

Helenium autumnale

These are in various shades of red, yellow, orange and a combination of those colors. They are loaded with beautiful blooms, as usual. Last year, they got so tall and flopped badly, so I moved them this spring and put them up against the split-rail fence. No flopping!

At Least They Weren't Toadstools

Though I've not yet made a purchase from Annie's Annuals, I enjoy receiving their catalogs and their regular e-mails. The one I got today amused me so much, I just had to share it:

You know how you get those sticky burs caught on your sweater when gardening or hiking? Well, I get A LOT of them and it takes a really long time to get them off of my wooly sweaters, so I just keep wearing them, burs and all. But, last week I decided to wash this blue sweater of mine with all the burs still on it, hoping some of them would fall off in the wash. Yes, I admit I am domestically impaired! I was in a rush when I took the sweater out of the washer and just threw it on the laundry table for a few days. When I checked back in on my sweater it was none too happy with me and its moldy smell was ummm, you know, prominent. So I washed it again and this time hung it up to dry in my dark garage.

Several hours later I went back into the garage, turned on the lights and whoa! There were little wiggly whitish looking things all over it! Upon closer inspection, I could see that those pesky burs, which are actually seeds, had sprouted all over my sweater. What a sight! I had never heard of such a thing.

Now the best part of the story is that these particular little burs had come from a plant called Cynoglossum amabile, the seed of which we often have lots of trouble getting to germinate in our greenhouse here at the nursery. I related this curious event to Anni Jensen, our head propagator. And in a very Anni type gesture, she put a thoughtful finger to her cheek and with a sparkle in her eye said, "Hmmm, I will have to think about that!"

I've had that happen when I inadvertently left a plastic bag with seeds in the pocket of my jeans and put them through the wash. A couple of days after I removed the wet packet and laid it on the dryer, I had sprouts in that bag, but this sweater thing just made me giggle.

And that, in turn, reminded me of a story that our older daughter Kara had told several years ago. She was in college and dating a young man who shared a rental house with several other guys. I don't have to tell you about the housekeeping habits of a bunch of college guys, do I?

Well, she was visiting John and needed to use the restroom. It was carpeted. You're starting to picture this, aren't you? A bunch of college guys with a carpeted bathroom. While we can imagine the condition and cleanliness that might be present, Kara was still shocked when she sat down and her gaze fell upon toadstools sprouting from the carpet in front of her. I think she said that was the last time she ever used the bathroom there.

Plants want to grow. Unless we want them to, of course.