Flowers and Plants

Autumn’s Cathedral

I took Dorothy to take the SAT this morning. The sky was amazingly dramatic as I was coming home. I picked up my camera and went out into the neighborhood. It was a beautiful day with the trees and shrubs all of beautiful hues.

This view, which is not as dramatic in the photograph as it was in reality, brought to mind a cathedral built of trees, reaching as high and much longer then the largest cathedral I’ve ever seen.

Bare Tree and Fall Colors

The autumn has proceeded fairly slowly this year. There were individual trees and bushes with significant and sometimes brilliant color but in general, the woods have remained mostly green The last day or two, however, has brought out the best in the fall color and, unless I’m very much mistaken, you’ll be seeing a few pictures of it here over the next few days.

This picture is taken from a window in my building, just down the hall from my office. This morning it was overcast and the diffuse light brought out the red of the tree in the background to an amazing extent, contrasting wonderfully with the grey of the naked branches of the tree in the foreground. Later the sun came out. It’s still quite striking, I think, but less so that it was earlier in the day.

Willow Oak

Outside my office windows, in an island in the parking lot, stands a willow oak (Quercus phellos). It isn’t a particularly healthy tree, which isn’t surprising when you consider the limited space for its roots. The top and outer ends of the branches have mostly lost all their leaves by now, but the central part of the tree is a beautiful, golden color. Particularly in the afternoon, when the sun hits it, it lights up like a torch and is quite lovely.

Rose ‘Perle d’Or’

I’m really happy with this rose bush. I don’t know that there has been a time since May when there wasn’t at least a rose or two and right now there are more than a dozen. It’s the last week of October and we’ve had a frost and it’s still blooming. It hasn’t really gotten bitter cold yet and I know it has to end soon but for now, I’m still enjoying the fragrance of roses when I come out my front door.

How awesome is that?

Floating Leaves

These leaves are floating in a bird bath on our back patio. The colors are so intense, partly because of the late afternoon light. I really like the intensity of fall colors. In the spring I like pinks and pale yellows as well as anything but in the fall, it’s the zing and pow that I’m looking for. Sort of nature’s fireworks. It’s finally gotten cold and we’ve had frost on the ground the last couple days. To me, the temperature and the colors go together perfectly.

Oakleaf Hydrangea

I really should have more than one of these. I think it would make a nice, open screen along the front edge of a portion of our yard. Oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) is a native to the south-eastern United States and does quite well here. The large, lobed leaves are attractive all year and are particularly beautiful when they turn a deep claret (or bordeaux, if you prefer). They bloom, but their flowers are not particularly showy, at least not compared to some of the other hydrangeas.

Amur Honeysuckle

On Wednesday, September 25, 2013 I took a photo of Lonicera maackii, the Amur honeysuckle. As I mentioned at the time, it’s an invasive weed and not something that needs a lot of encouragement. Still, it has sweet smelling flowers followed in the fall by wonderful red berries that, I assume, the birds enjoy. As the days start to shorten and get cold, the leaves also start to turn a deep red-green mix that is quite lovely. So, here’s another dose of Amur honeysuckle, Lonicera maackii, berries and leaves.

Mushroom

Our back yard has a lot of mushrooms right now, mostly in a ring around the trees that were taken down this summer. I assume this means the roots are rotting nicely. The mushrooms are certainly happy enough. This is one of them from an ant’s eye view (or I suppose a bird’s eye view, if it’s a small bird and it’s standing on the ground next to the mushroom). I like the light from the afternoon sun shining through the top of the mushroom.

Dahlia

Back on Memorial day weekend Cathy and I visited the wonderful Heritage Rosarium in Brookville. Nick and his lovely wife Roseanne share their garden but it’s also about visiting with them. For a while now, in addition to Roses, Nick has been growing dahlias. This year, they had packaged up some dahlia tuber and gave each of their visitors one. Cathy planted ours out back and it is starting to bloom. This picture was taken in the evening, so the light is not terrific, but as you can see, the flower it a wonderful, rich, saturated red.

Phalaenopsis Orchid

We’ve had a few orchids for a long time but they were not doing all that well. They got watered irregularly and probably not often enough. More recently, since early this year, I think, I’ve been watering them regularly, every Saturday. I put the four that we currently have in the kitchen sink and fill it up, letting them soak for about 20 minutes or half an hour. They seem to like that and are all growing and looking pretty healthy. I think that having the trees down in the back yard has helped, as well, because there is more light in our kitchen, which is where our houseplants are gathered. There is a fifth that was nearly dead when I started paying more attention to them and it has two small shoots, although if it is growing, it is growing very slowly and it may not recover.

This is the largest of the plants and it has been in bloom for about a month now, which is very nice. I suspect it had a variety name but if it did, it’s long since been lost.

Begonia Flowers

This afternoon I was sitting on my front stoop enjoying the fine afternoon. The roses, which have been battered a bit lately by the rain, were filling the air with a wonderful sweetness. It was a wonderful place to be. There is a little pot of begonias sitting on a concrete bench opposite the door and, since I happened to have my camera with me (aren’t you surprised?) I took a few pictures. They are not so showy as the roses and they don’t have the heavenly fragrance but they were pretty and deserved some attention. As Dorothy and I would say, “sometimes we should love the little dome.”

Willow Oak Leaves

I like the colors of fall, and that generally inclucdes the less showy colors of the brown leaves collecting in corners of the yard or against the curb in a parking lot. There are willow oaks (Quercus phellos) planted in the parking lot at work and their leaves are starting to fall in significant numbers. The leaves on healty specimens turn a lovely yellow but because of their constraints on their roots, these trees are not particularly healthy and their leaves mostly turn a simple brown as they fall, somewhat prematurely, to the ground.

Camellia sasanqua

My third post for October 3 is of some camellia flowers in my mom’s yard. This is a sasanqua and it is almost big enough to be called a small tree. Kids probably couldn’t climb in it, so I’ll still call it a large shrub, but it’s pretty large. The flowers, of which there are many, are such a pretty pink and having them out this time of year, when everything else is starting to turn brown is such a wonderful thing. This is why I planted a Camellia sasanqua ‘Cleopatra’ this spring.

Maple Leaves

A week ago the leaves on the maple tree in our back yard had just started turning red. Now they are almost completely red. I’d say this tree is ahead of most in the area, but it’s quite lovely, particularly in the afternoon light. When I got home today it was nice to look out back and have the evening sun shining through the red leaves, turning them a shade brighter. It is somewhat difficult to capture, though, because the dynamic range of our cameras aren’t nearly broad enough for the brightness of the sun back-lighting the leaves. So, you’ll have to make do with this shot, not quite in the direct sunlight.

Mushroom Gills

I’m not much good when it comes to identifying mushrooms. I’m also not particularly interested in trying. I don’t know about my brothers but the memory of “the night of the mushrooms” still affects me, I think.

Dad used to pick mushrooms on the lawn at NIH where he worked and mom would use them in her cooking. Dad had identified them as safe and we ate them many times without any problem (so it wasn’t the mushrooms’ fault). One day he got to work and the grounds crew was mowing the grass. Since that would chop off the mushrooms, he picked them in the morning and kept them in a fridge at work. We never found out what happened, really, but have always assumed that the lawn had been sprayed with something before the mowers came. That night, after eating the mushrooms as part of our dinner, we all spent pretty much the whole night throwing up. It isn’t something you easily forget. I think most of us were a little put off mushrooms for a while. I’ve gotten over that, but eating wild-picked mushrooms, particularly those growing in cultivated lawns, is still something I’m hesitant to do.

In any case, this large mushroom, probably 5 inches across, came up over the site of one of the trees that was in our back yard. It looks like the squirrels have been nibbling on the edge of it. They are welcome to it. I’ll stick to store-bought chanterelles, porcini, morels, and shiitake (although I did grow my own shiitake mushrooms for a while).

Lonicera maackii

These are along the edge of the woods behind my building, next to where I park most days. I’ve been meaning to take pictures of them for a week or so but I’ve been busy at work and by the time I leave, I just want to leave. Today I made the effort and here you are. This is Lonicera maackii, the Amur or Bush Honeysuckle. It is an invasive species and is fairly common in the Eastern United States (and in one county in Oregon, according to the USDA). In general I’d recommend pulling it up anywhere you find it. I do like the red berries, though, that come out this time of year (but they are poisonous, so don’t try eating them).

Rose ‘Jaune Desprez’

With the cooler temperatures, our roses have all decided it would be fun to bloom a bit, so we have quite a few flowers opening. It isn’t anything like the first spring flush, but it’s a nice autumnal bonus. This rose is called ‘Jaune Desprez’, a Noisette bred by Jean Desprez in France in 1835. No one is going to rely on me for French translation but ‘Jaune’ is ‘yellow’. It is a vigerous, climbing rose growing on our back fence and while it doesn’t bloom heavily all summer, it does have at least a few flowers on it most of the year.

Maple Leaf

We have fewer trees in our yard than we did even six months ago, to say nothing of when we moved in. There are still two rather ratty maple trees of the five that were in the back yard when we moved here. The three that are gone were considerably larger. Two of the three large oaks along the front are still here. The middle of those oaks, which all belong to the county, was nearly dead and we had them come cut it down. Because of that, this promises to be the lightest raking year we’ve had since we bought our first house in 1993.

The leaves are starting to turn as they days have been cool and pleasant. This leaf isn’t as red as some but I like the way the light shines through it, lighting up the colors and giving them real life. Fall is certainly a pretty time of year and I’m quite looking forward to it.

Sticking to my theme of approaching autumn, there are a few autumn crocuses blooming in our yard. They were planted along the edge of the pachysandra in front of our sidewalk but it has spread a bit and now they are a bit engulfed. They’re not really tall enough for that spot. Also, something has been nibbling on the petals. While Colchicum is extremely poisonous to us, it doesn’t bother slugs in the least.

Black-eyed Susans

I posted a picture of a drying out black-eyed Susan the other day and you get treated to another today. This really captures the feel of our back yard right now. There is still significant color but it’s starting to change from bright yellow, pink, and purple to brown. It’s actually a very pretty time of year, especially as the leaves begin to change to brighter colors, before making their final transition to brown themselves. It’s been cool and wonderful, just as it should.