From commentor Debbie:
I have lived in apartments my entire adult life, so I have no garden and I am not a gardener. Even so, I have made my neighborhood my garden!
My gardeners put great effort in maintaining my grounds. It’s a rare day when I walk and don’t see a couple of them cheerfully toiling away, even in the worst of the heat and humidity.
A couple of people mentioned how much they loved azaleas, so I thought I’d share a few photos of the azaleas in my neighborhood.
I didn’t crop any of the photos hoping it would give a better sense of scale. Some azaleas may be somewhat past their prime, but the colors are still glorious. A couple of the azaleas in these photos have been removed by new owners (bastards!), but at least I was able to get photos of most before it was too late.
Anyway, I love each as if it were my own. Spring brings me joy, and azaleas are a large part of that!
***********
These photos are so refreshing, compared to the rather drought-blighted vistas here north of Boston…
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
SiubhanDuinne
One of the things that keeps me from leaving Georgia is the abundance of azaleas (and all the other flowering shrubs and trees). Like Debbie, I have always rented and don’t have a garden of my own, but I take enormous pleasure in enjoying other people’s blooms.
OzarkHillbilly
KILL THE HERETICS! KILL THE HERETICS!
Nice pics Debbie, beautiful azaleas. I have tried to grow them in several locations here, only in one was I successful and that location eventually became my herb garden and was no longer suitable. I have a new spot I favor for some azaleas (similar to the successful location) and if time is on my side I may even get it prepped in time for planting some come spring.
JPL
The dogwoods blooming with the azaleas are really pretty. Dogwoods are a sign here, that spring is coming.
Jeffery
At its height in a good spring the Delaware Valley is awash in flowering shrubs, trees and bulbs for a few weeks.
Now I am waiting to see if the fall color of the trees will be any good this year. It’s been nearly a decade since we had spectacular fall foliage. Our weather this summer makes me think it will be a bust again. There have been periods of no rain and high heat.
mrmoshpotato
Great pictures. And bravo to making everyone else plant and maintain your garden. ?
Baud
I ignored the first paragraph and have chosen to believe you are a wealthy heiress.
Central Planning
Obligatory azalea clip from The Man With Two Brains
Raven
@JPL: Our big dogwood has been dying for about 10 years. It has a ton of English ivy on it and we have tried everything to kill it. Sometimes we think the ivy is holding it up!
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: I argue she’s a very successful businesswoman who owns many buildings and is an excellent landlord outside and inside her properties.
Her tenants are very satisfied with the upkeep and landscaping.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Love the pics, Debbie. I too have no garden of my own but enjoy the ones “my gardeners” create.
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
Ah, an anti-Trump.
WereBear
What a great way of looking at it.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: You keep that name out of here.
Ken
You’re inspiring me to organize my photos of the neighbors’ gardens and submit them. I must confess to ulterior motives, though – I don’t know the names of a lot of the flowers, especially the wild prairie flowers, so I’d be hoping for some IDs.
satby
Beautiful pictures debbie! It must be so delightful to be able to take walks around there. I can’t imagine cutting down a single one.
satby
@Ken: Oh, that’ll be fun! Sunday Morning Garden Game!
mrmoshpotato
@Ken: Do it. They’ll get ID’ed before your first cup of coffee.
MomSense
These are beautiful, Debbie.
Buckeye
Last week I transplanted about 80% of the irises that needed to be split/transplanted. Something that should have been done by either myself or the landlord several years ago. The other 20% I just need to find space in the backyard for them.
Not much gardening this weekend, though I do need to stop looking at getting even more Dutch iris and tulips for fall planting.
WereBear
@Buckeye: I loved propagating irises, who can play well with summer perennials chosen for depth compatibility.
Spanky
@Buckeye: Last year my neighbor did the same thing with his iris mid-July, then left the culls in a box on the curb in the baking Southern MD sun. After a couple of hours, I wondered by and brought them home and stuck them in a corner of the yard until I saw what the blooms looked like.
100% survival rate, though only about half bloomed this year. Still, a pretty good price for 40 iris!
MazeDancer
Such wonderful pics, Debbie!
satby
We’ve had another hot, humid spell for the last week that kept me mostly inside other than watering my newer plants until they’re better established. That’s moving out this week and so I’m planning on trying to start clearing out the weedy back beds that were partially cleared earlier. If I can finally get them completely cleared and a new layer of compost on them, then the iris that are temporarily residing in a grow bed can be moved to that permanent bed and I can mulch it heavily after laying down layers of cardboard and Preen to suppress next year’s weeds. Bad time for me to go back to working 6 days a week, but I may just drop Fridays at the market because there’s seldom customers there. The extra pay from the doctors office will balance out the penalty I’ll get for not being at the market all four open days.
donnah
What beautiful and vibrant colors! The flowers look like big blankets draped over the greenery.
I’m not a gardener at all, so I appreciate the work of others. I planted two hydrangea plants last year and they had blooms, and they came back this year and greened up but never bloomed again.
And I did have the pleasure of seeing eighteen Magic lilies spring up last week in my front yard. I love seeing them just come out of nowhere and brighten the yard. I didn’t plant them and they only started appearing about three years ago.
debbie
@JPL:
The earliest azaleas begin blooming while the magnolias and all kinds of flowering trees are peaking. It’s almost too much for my eyes to take it all in!
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
rikyrah
Beautiful pictures??
scribbler
@satby: Can I ask you again for the site you recommend for purchasing tulips and daffodils? I thought I had written it down but I can’t find it.
Geminid
@rikyrah: Good morning. They are beautiful pictures. I think the orange one is a flame azalea. They are native, and there is a stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway near the Virginia/North Carolina border where they line the road for miles, and bloom around June 1. Horticulturalists are breeding new varieties that bloom longer. Even a creeping variety. I hope to plant one of those this fall, see what it does.
satby
@scribbler: Absolutely! Colorblends is the name, it has hands down the best bulbs I’ve ever gotten at some of the best prices. I got some from another company last year because I wanted a variety not carried by Colorblends and they were ok, but not really the colors described, the tulips were red and dark yellow but sold as an “orange garden”. I’ve never had that happen with Colorblends.
Lapassionara
Thanks for the lovely photos. Good morning everyone.
Buckeye
@Spanky:
I rent next to my landlords, in a small historical district. Most everyone gardens. And there’s a lot of ‘I just split my iris/hostas/etc, and have some for free’. That, and my landlord volunteers with the county park district and is friends with a couple of small farmers, so he just brings stuff home.
Immanentize
thanks Debbie! That cheered me up. I love azaleas. I have a white azalea bush in the front of my house that produced pinned pups that I have now replanted in the back. I have hope of a big stretch of white azaleas across the whole of my back bed which is visible from my kitchen window.
But not much gardening this year — too much going on plus terrible heat and drought. There is always next year!
OzarkHillbilly
The big news from my garden is… I have melons!!! :-) I have squash bug free zucchini!!! :-)
I also have patty pan free patty pan plants. ;-(
The melons were no doubt there last week, but still too small for my unobservant eye to pick out of the foliage. Soon I will be having sweet passion for breakfast every day. I didn’t plant my squash until after July 1st because Baker Creek said that by then my personal nemesis the squash bugs would be gone. I haven’t seen any yet. Keeping my fingers crossed that that holds true. If it does I will plant some winter squash again next year. As of right now my patty pans have only male flowers so no fruit. I have seen this phenomenon before and eventually they begin to produce both male and female flowers, though I have read of plants that never do. I am going to continue to believe that that only happens to other people, less righteous than myself.
I have cucumbers brining in a crock, am making some dilly beans too. And some sauerkraut fermenting. I will be cutting up a bunch of tomatoes for the food dryer today.
The chanterelles are up and I picked a few for an omelet this morn. I’m also gonna treat myself to some bacon wrapped cheddar and cream cheese stuffed jalapenos this afternoon.
Life is good.
Gin & Tonic
I love azaleas, but the deer love them too. Is problem.
Eric U.
We hadn’t gardened in years, since my daughter was little. My dad always planted a big garden, but I never learned anything from him about it. We had two garden plots and I put in a raised garden after it became clear the bunnies were going to eat everything that grew. My wife planted squash in the oldest plot, and they grew like crazy, but didn’t produce anything until someone told her it probably meant they weren’t getting any calcium.
We finally got three squashes out of those, but the deer decided to eat them, so we aren’t getting anything. Not sure about the fate of our tomatoes, the deer were eating the plants, but that slowed down after we put some wire mesh around the garden.
I’m going to raise the other two beds and figure out some way to have fencing around them. Marking this year down as a learning year.
scribbler
@satby: Thanks! They sound amazing, and I’m motivated to try bulbs again this fall, although I will have to fight the squirrels off.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: I think KILL TH HERETICS! should become one of our snark tags for posts.
(as opposed to categories or rotating tags)
Kay
Lovely azaleas. I bought a flowering crab this year- the excitement begins early in the spring:
WaterGirl
@scribbler: All of my bulbs come from Colorblends, which I tried years ago because of satby’s recommendation. Now I won’t buy bulbs from anywhere else.
MomSense
This has been a really hot summer and even with regular watering it has been tough on my perennials and flowers. My vegetable gardens have been amazing although not as many tomatoes as I expected.
I picked herbs, tomatoes, cukes, beans, carrots, peppers, chili peppers, and a ton of lettuces and spinach and brought them up to my dad’s place. Today middle kid and his SO arrive and we will have a feast outside on the porch. The only thing I’m really anxious about is how my dog will behave towards my grand dog.
The reunion was amazing yesterday. It was our 153rd and first time via zoom. There were about 50 who showed up – and a number who sent greetings. We decided that even when we can meet in person again we will stream the reunion for people who can’t get to Maine. One of the really popular musicians in the Maine music scene is a relative and a friend of my kids. He sent a video performance of three of his songs and my kids performed a couple songs live. It was a big hit with the mostly olds in attendance who have asked for more music at reunions. A couple of the songs were about drinking and I had to laugh thinking about my great great aunt who would be thrilled her home is full of music and horrified as she was very involved in the American Temperance Society. In her day they sang hymns at reunions.
MomSense
@Eric U.:
One of my neighbors hung Irish spring soap around her raised beds and she didn’t have any problems with deer or bunnies. Now we all hang Irish Spring Soap on stakes around our gardens and it seems to work.
Boy do I ever relate to wishing you had learned more about gardening from your dad. When I was a kid I followed my grandfather around as he worked his farm and I wish I had asked him to teach me when I was older. Sometimes I sort of close my eyes and remember how he used to move in the garden and it has offered up some clues about what he was doing. You may have absorbed a few tricks if you think back on your dad and some of the things you saw him doing.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby:
Somehow I didn’t realize your farmers market was open FOUR days a week. That’s a lot. We have a wonderful farmers market in Santa Fe, but it’s open only two days in the summer – Tuesday and Saturday – and just Saturday in the winter. I hope all goes well in the eye doctor’s office, especially now that the evil manager is gone
ETA: Beautiful pix, debbie! I love “old-fashioned” flowering shrubs like azaleas and hydrangeas. Fie on those who would cut them down! We can’t grow azaleas in the southwest, but the cholla cactus dotting the landscape get nice blooms under the right conditions.
satby
@scribbler: Do daffodils then! Deer and nearly all rodent proof and beautiful colors and varieties!
Spanky
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: When I saw the title was Azaleas, my first thought was that you had sent yours in for the garden chat.
Yours is a double-white, right? (from memory, so I may well be wrong!)
I have been dreaming about getting double-white azaleas since i saw the photo of yours.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: Hmmmm… Your snark meter needs recalibrating. I wasn’t being sarcastic. ;-)
O. Felix Culpa
@OzarkHillbilly:
Interesting. My cucumbers have lavish leaves and flowers, but so far have only borne two cukes. Could male-only flowers be the reason why? And how do you tell?
debbie
@O. Felix Culpa:
Oh, man, hydrangeas! They’re very prolific this summer. Last summer, the blooms were huge (I saw a few that looked to be almost the size of volleyballs); this year, not quite as large, but so many more. And almost every house has them!
O. Felix Culpa
@debbie: I have loved hydrangeas ever since I was a kid. The grand, crumbling old manse down the street from our modest 60’s ranch (one bathroom for five people!) had them in abundance, creating an association in my child’s mind with genteel antiquity.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: We pretty much mean all of our snark tags, like:
They are separated from subject-matter areas that someone might light to search on, and the suggestion was to call them the snark tags.
I was actually serious about adding KILL THE HERETICS!
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: We’ve got several azaleas (with different blooming times), probably 30+ years old, around our house. There’s one by our kitchen window with a particular branch sticking up above the others that is a favorite roosting spot for some brown butterfly that I haven’t identified yet.
http://www.pwconserve.org/wildlife/butterflies/index.htm
It will go fly off and dance around, but almost invariably return to the end of that particular branch (long after the branch bloomed).
Never seen anything like it.
One of my tasks this fall is to start to try to distribute the azaleas more evenly. On the east side there are about 6 of them with different colors all crammed together that are strangling each other (and hiding their beauty).
Cheers,
Scott.
susanna
What a fabulous collection this morning of what your garden grows!
Lovely, all of it. Lovely.
oldgold
@WaterGirl:
Today’s heretics are tomorrow’s heroes.
StringOnAStick
I would like to putter in the landscape today but between the heaviest smoke we’ve ever seen here from fires and how hot it will be, I think an extra soak from the sprinkler is all that’s going to happen outside. The fire that has closed I-70 through CO isn’t even the biggest fire here.
OzarkHillbilly
I’ll have to look at my cukes but as best I recall there is no difference in the flowers. If so they are probably hermaphroditic (most plants are). Squash are different, the female flower has a small fruit at it’s base, the male flower does not.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: I know, but I am being sarcastic. :-)
trollhattan
We’re having a “Florida morning” in that it’s overcast (cloud? smoke?) and was 85 at sunrise. That doesn’t happen here, except when it does because we’ve been bad or something. It’s now 7:40 and [checks] 90. Hit 109 yesterday and more of same for the next several days.
Ugh.
Garden had rhododendrons and azaleas when we moved in but despite the springtime glory they do not like our dry heat and whomever once tended to them was better at than I. They’re long dead. My childhood Seattle home had glorious rhodies that reached the front balcony.
O. Felix Culpa
@OzarkHillbilly: Interesting. So much to learn about plant biology. And about the many hazards to one’s beloved veggies. I think I need to do battle with some hornworms. Time to attend to the garden before the heat rises!
WaterGirl
@oldgold: Not if they are cutting down perfectly good azaleas, they’re not!!!
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: okay, then. :: never mind ::
:-)
OzarkHillbilly
@O. Felix Culpa: The best way I have found to get hornworms is with a blacklight flashlight in the dark. They definitely show a different shade of green at that wavelength.
trollhattan
@Kay:
“Flowering crab” sounds very much like a new character introduced on Sponge Bob. Or should be.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: Tee hee.
OzarkHillbilly
@trollhattan: Sounded to me like a not very pleasant skin condition.
trollhattan
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m informed UV flashlights are de rigueur for camping in scorpion country. Suckers really glow [shudder].
trollhattan
@OzarkHillbilly:
Heh. :-) Or worst possible stripper name.
Eunicecycle
My husband is picking cabbage right now so we can start some sauerkraut brewing!
OzarkHillbilly
@trollhattan: Oh yeah, great for finding scorpions. If you ever want to freak out, shine them up on the thatched roof of a Mexican hut. Then try to go to sleep.
Aleta
Harp (wow) Goldberg Variations ‘Aria’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK7VItt-E6M
Cowgirl in the Sandi
We used to live in Gainesville FL when my husband was in grad school and every spring the town was covered with azalea. The city would give plants away to encourage people to plant more of them. It was lovely.
In other news, weird weather here in the Bay area – I woke up to lightening and thunder and rain. Very unusual for SF Bay in summer. The plants are all in shock especially since it’s 85 degrees at 8:30 in the morning!
Betsy
@Raven: Could it be at the end of its lifespan? Dogwoods are short-lived trees, and a large one may just be at the close of a natural cycle. Or, it could be getting too much sun — they are understory trees, and love to be in the filtered sun or high shade of pines or other loose canopies from taller trees.
trollhattan
@Cowgirl in the Sandi:
You too? In Sac it’s reminding me of the beginning of Speilberg’s “War of the Worlds.” We rely on the Delta breeze cooling things down after really hot days and it’s completely AWOL. Overcast, hot, muggy.
Also, lightning = fires.
Aleta
@trollhattan: worst possible stripper name
UV Flashlights
I can already see the band with that name though.