Happy June

NOW THERE’S YOUR PROPER JUNE BORDER, above. A little ahead of time, as is everything in this accelerated spring. Peonies; irises; columbine; foxgloves and phlox on their way. In front of a very proper old house, below, on Long Island’s North Fork, where I was on Saturday.

It’s all happening now: the farmstands, the wineries, the traffic. There are lots of greenhouses, large and small, selling vegetable starters and annuals and overflowing, ready-made hanging baskets.

I was there to visit my cousin Susan and check the progress of her garden beds, which we planted, I think, three years ago. Two years ago this month, the full-sun beds at the end of her driveway looked like this:

The evergreen shrubs and day lilies were already there. We put in dianthus, lamb’s ear, ladies mantel, catmint, and yarrow.

This past weekend, the same bed, from a different angle (pre-weeding), looked like this:

And the one on the other side of the driveway like this:

Catmint is the best. So is June.

The Good, the Bad, and the Mystifying

AT TWILIGHT YESTERDAY, I surveyed my 4/10 of an acre. Now that the bulk of the wisteria and weeds have been cleared away, I can see what I’ve got here, though I can’t identify all of it.

Love those rhodies

There’s a lot of damage; what the wisteria didn’t strangle, the deer ate.

You were so generous with your cottage color suggestions, I thought I’d pick your collective brains once more. If anyone has thoughts on what I can do about these garden challenges (on a shoestring budget, remember), please let ’em rip.

Got a $2600 quote for an 80' gravel driveway lined with Belgian block but i'm in no great hurry

Normally I avoid photographing unsightly automobiles, wires, disarray or ugliness of any sort. But in this post I’m going to show you the crappiest areas of my garden, just begging to be transformed.

Arborvitae(?) with a large chunk taken out of it. Anyone know if it can it be pruned into something more shapely?

And if anyone can ID any of the many plants I can’t (plain English is fine), I’d be very grateful.

Close-up of the foregoing for ID purposes

Sad hinoki cypress, bottom half gobbled up by deer - and right outside the back door. What to do?

Something more elegant is definitely called for in the way of a path

The circle around the cherry tree in the area where the demolished shed used to be is 30 feet wide. How to transform bare dirt into a circular garden room on a mini budget? Wood chips for starters?

I'm sure I can do better for edging

A rustic arbor on its way down, with a vine I cannot ID - no sign of flowers

Love this "picnic area" with a bit of scrubby lawn and a backdrop of juniper, a tall droopy evergreen, a blue spruce, and a couple of specimen conifers gone wrong

This one looks like something out of Dr. Seuss

Big-leaved something (what?) amidst lily of the valley

Talk about unsightly: crook of the amputee cherry tree. Could become a....?

Nothing like an electric meter to add class to the front deck

This one confounds me most - there's lots of it, it's a perennial (brown remnant from last year). Don't think it's phlox - help!

Mud Now, Flowers Later

Just a few more weeks: daffs and peach tree, below, bloom in April

MARCH IS MUD SEASON in the Hudson Valley, raw, wet, and long. If I lived here full-time, I’d probably have to shoot myself right about now, but for remembering what’s to come.

After gardening on this property for seven years, I know it’s not long before brown turns to green, and then to an outrageous floral extravaganza.

In the meantime, I sustain myself with pictures from prior seasons (the small ones were taken Tuesday).

If those are globe alliums, above, it must be May

June: catmint, ladies mantle, threadleaf coreopsis, and daylilies, above

The island bed in August, above and below, with rudbeckia, sedum, boltonia, and more

Above, Coneflowers in late summer

Gowanus in Bloom

Have you ever driven up Union Street between Bond and Nevins in the summertime, and been startled by the sight of an exuberant cottage garden blooming out of the sidewalk against a backdrop of graffiti?

Well, I have, and I’ve been moved to take pictures — and once, I saw a young woman watering with a garden hose, and stopped to chat. She told me she grew up in Vermont, and that the black-eyed susans and pink phlox and other cottage-y perennials came from her mom (as did her gardening talent).

I didn’t get her name, or find out how she came to garden on concrete. I didn’t even know you were allowed to grow flowers out of New York City sidewalks.

I just hope she’s still living nearby and will be back wielding her hose this season, because she ought to win an award for single-handedly brightening up the neighborhood.

Here’s what the spot looked like last week:

And here’s the very same scene in mid-summer.  I see white alyssum in abundance, and yellow day lilies. The orange flowers, I think, are also day lilies; the purple spikes, I’m not sure.

In the shot below, I can make out nasturtiums in the foreground and yellow…snapdragons, maybe?  Toward the back, those tall black flowers might be delphinium.  Anything else?  Those large leaves in the left foreground?

In any case, it’s an urban wonder.