 |
| Before Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma |
I am not complaining. Really. I did not have to paddle a canoe to the grocery store this morning so I do not have any problems. However, since I am in lower middle Tennessee, we were hit first by the tail of Hurricane Harvey, then a week later by the tail of Hurricane Irma. This month's blooms will be brief, and depressing, but, I have a roof over my head; I will not grumble.
Yesterday afternoon the rain stopped, finally, and I sloshed through the yard looking for something, anything blooming worthy of being photographed. I found some marigolds. So what. Boring old store bought marigolds.
 |
| Boring, boring, boring. |
 |
| Variegated Zinnias |
My Beauty Berries looked great so I took a bite. Normally they are mildly sweet, but today they were flavorless, watery.
 |
| Beauty Berry |
My sedum, Autumn Joy is happy. Well of course, with a name like "Autumn Joy" they have to be cheerful.
 |
| Autumn Joy, Sedum |
I was about to give up when I spied bright golden yellow, glowing in the afternoon sunlight. Wild Goldenrod was hanging over the fence from the field into my flower bed. I claim it as being in my flower bed! At least I have something beautiful blooming that I can share in this month's Garden Blogger's Bloom Day. So today I will click on the links and enjoy other people's pictures of their gardens from around the world while I wait for mine to recover.
At least I have Scooter to show off. He will be glad to pose so Nana will be happy when she sees his picture. At least something will turn out well today.
"Scooter dear, please stop sniffing the bug and smile for the camera. The world is watching, don't embarrass me." I politely asked.
 |
| Sniff, sniff, sniff. |
NO! SCOOTER! NO! NASTY! BLEAH! How disgusting!
 |
| Lick, smack, munch, gulp. |
"Hello, world. I will be glad to smile now." snickered Scoter.
 |
| Tee hee hee. |
I am in northeast Mississippi, and we are indeed fortunate that all we got was a lot of rain from the two hurricanes.
ReplyDeleteLove to Scooter
Happy Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day!
Good morning Lea, we may not be that far from each other. I too agree that we are fortunate to have only gotten a lot of rain. I will be going to your site to check the pictures of your garden and see how you survived. GBBD is so much fun.
DeleteScooter will appreciate the love from you.
I have never heard of anyone eating Beautyberries. I leave mine for the birds to eat
ReplyDeleteAgain, Happy Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day!
I suppose the nice thing to do would be to leave them for the birds; well, this year I will since they did not taste good. Leaving something for someone else because it isn't good, still isn't being very nice.
DeleteThank goodness you are safe and your roof is still where it should be. It's a shame about the flowers, but there is always another season to look forward to. It's great to see the plants that stand up to the rigours of wind and rain - the successes will be useful for anyone living on a windy site. Scooter's only doing the hugely important job of pest control... it's lovely that he's so happy in his work!
ReplyDeleteSarah my roof is fine and my family is safe. That is really all that matters.
DeleteScooter as pest control, now that is definitely optimistic! I will congratulate him on his new job promotion as soon as he returns from the kitchen where he is begging for Pack Leader's breakfast.
Those beauty berries are really beautiful. In Germany we call them
ReplyDeleteLiebesperlen (love pearls). They are a garden highlight in fall and winter.
BUT,- as far as I know they are slightly toxic (stomach pains).
Not when only few berries are eaten. But children should be warned
and for dogs and cats they could be dangerous.
Well, that is what I know. Maybe you can get more information.
Christel
Christel, I searched again and discovered some people do get stomach aches when they eat them. I do not; but have never eaten more than a few as I walked past them in the garden. I know nothing about children or dogs becoming sick but I plan on taking your advice and keeping the berries all to myself. Why risk it?
DeleteI'm still laughing at Scooter. I appreciate that you are remaining positive despite your bad luck with weather. There's always next year.
ReplyDeleteYes Joanna, I will look forward to next year but it is so far away. Right now I am planning my winter garden and it seems I have once again, planted too much. Time will tell.
DeleteYou may laugh at Scooter all you want; he is a sweetie and does not mind it at all.
It's funny you call the Zinnias "variegated". There are some variegated plants I don't like because I think they looked diseased.
ReplyDeleteNext year my zinnias will not be diseased because I plan on putting them in full sunshine only. I will not have to pretend they are really healthy. I hope my plan works.
DeleteIt is good to know that you are safe from the storms and it looks like some of your blooms have survived. Your photos of Scooter are so much fun!
ReplyDeleteLee, we are all safe and my flowers will rebloom, thank you. Scooter is fun, most of the time. He has been known to get in trouble.
DeleteScooter is a STAR!!!! Also, I had never heard of beauty berries before today. I learned something new, thanks! :)
ReplyDeleteMargaret, let me guess what you learned today from my brief post. You learned Scooter likes to eat bugs! My blog is a wealth of valuable educational information. Do visit again.
DeleteYour before and after pictures look like much of my garden, but it will recover in time. The blooms you have left are lovely and simply remind us of how tough Nature is.
ReplyDeleteDorothy, I did not get 24 inches of rain like you did and I agree, both of our gardens will recover. I can't imagine all you are feeling with so many friends devastated by Harvey. If smashed flowers is all I have lost, I am doing fine.
DeleteYes i agree with you, better that the garden suffers from the storm, be thankful that you still have your roof and no flooding. hehe. Like here there are places where flooding always accompany typhoons or just continuous day rain. Thanks for visiting my site.
ReplyDeleteWe are on high ground because my husband checked the maps before we bought the house. I will not grumble, we are safe.
DeleteSo sorry to see your sunflower toppled by the storms -- everything else looking resilient and strong is good! - Kathy
ReplyDeleteThank you Kathy, my husband drove a stake into the ground and tied the sunflower back up right. We hoped it would survive but it looks pitiful. Next year will be better!
DeleteI love the garden pictures. At least you can look at your sunflower's picture before it got smashed.
ReplyDeleteI am getting a little tired from picking and taking care of the garden, but am very thankful for all we got picked this past weekend.
https://beckyathome.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/saving-money-and-weekly-update-fall-is-arriving-september-17-2017/
It's getting to be time for it to end, for me, though. Pretty soon, I will enjoy opening jar after jar, and getting packet after packet out of the freezer, and have my convenience food! It's worth it to me, even though it takes a lot of effort to grow, and preserve it all. I also have quite a few things in my fall garden this year. I succession planted them in places where I pulled up the earliest crops. The very last batch of snow peas are now blooming, and the last batch of lettuce is about an inch high. I'm debating whether to plant one more batch of lettuce or not. Now that we are getting our first soaking rain since last spring, I will see if it even dries out enough to plant any more this fall. Right now, I'm just enjoying the rain!
What about planting spinach? You said yours died and you were undecided about planting more. Is it too late now for you to plant?
DeleteAnother question, you pull up your carrots and store them in the camper refrigerator, have you ever tried leaving them in the ground and harvesting during the winter?
The few times I tried leaving them in the ground were not successful. That wasn't here, though, it was at another home. It rains so, so much here in our part of Oregon that the ground was always either completely soaked and muddy, and they were hard to get or rotted, or it froze, thawed, froze, thawed, etc. and they rotted from that. Another time, the moles chewed off all of them under the ground, so they were goners, too. And, true confession time..., I've had times where I tried, and just ended up not using them because it was so hard to come into the house covered in mud from head to toe, freezing cold, with my boots encased with a 2-inch coating of mud......I usually had quite a few unruly children to come back to at the time....it scarred me for life:) From winter carrots. I guess not from children, though,....we just kept getting more;)
DeleteThe crop we got will easily be gone by Christmas. The pictures on my blog make them look much larger then they really are, since I never got around to thinning them. Got to love that close-up phone camera! So, I basically have 5 gallons of pretty small carrots to peel and peel and peel. They sure are good, though. I've already started in on them.
Thank you for explaining, it makes so much more sense. I have left mine in the ground but there is usually a day or two where I can go out and dig a bunch. Our ground usually does not freeze solid until January. The tops will die back, then they will sprout again in the early spring. This year I am going to try and put a hoop house over some. That is the plan right now, but we will see.
DeleteGardening is a treat, isn't it? You never really know what will do well and what won't from one year to the next.
ReplyDeleteYear to year??? Denise, I don't know what will do well week to week! It is always a surprise when I walk out to the garden.
DeleteI'm sorry your garden got beat up by Harvey! You've got to love whatever survives the periodic brutality of Mother Nature, whether that comes in the form of floods, heat or snow. Your beauty berry and sedum are wonderful. I hope the storms now brewing in Atlantic deliver only gentle rain.
ReplyDeleteI agree Kris, and hope there are no more hurricanes for at least a decade. We have had enough.
DeleteI'm so glad to hear that the hurricanes didn't do more damage. We are getting the much needed rains from Irma. Don't you just love Goldenrod? It's so bright and cheery.
ReplyDeleteOh, Scooter, no face licks for you for a while!
Goldenrod signals Fall is here and winter is not far behind.
DeleteI forgot to ask.....Beauty Berries are edible? I have a bush that gets loaded with berries.....
ReplyDeleteThere is confusion over whether or not they are edible. I eat them when I walk through the garden and they are normally mildly sweet. Christel, in the comments above said she has heard they are not good for children, dogs and some people who get upset stomachs.
DeleteI have found both opinions on the internet. Some people say don't eat them, other people have recipes for jellies and pies. You must decide for yourself.