Fall Arrives in South Carolina

We had a beautiful, moody day here yesterday. It was a very cloudy day, and we got rain later on (poor Halloweeners!), but when the sun peeked out, we got these views.



If you click on the picture to make it bigger, you can see the range of colors.



A blue heron visited. He comes by from time to time, but didn't seem to catch much this time. I love how the wild shrubs around the pond have changed colors. That tall plant we couldn't identify before is dog fennel. It turns wild and lush in the fall. The county extension agent told us that the reddish plants are willows.



Then the clouds would shade the sun again, and we'd get this....all within the space of a few minutes.



I think fall is my favorite season. We do get four seasons here, just not as dramatically as in more northern climes, but I like it that way. I don't care if I never see snow again...

No Fall Colors Yet But...

It was such a pretty day here today in South Carolina. Mild, sunny but not hot, and clear. Just a nice day to be alive (except for these darn allergies)...



All the local native grasses are going to seed, and it's such a lovely sight.

Choices

I was playing with my husband's camera again, and took a picture of the lantana, which got me thinking about plant issues. The land we bought was wooded, and the builder, who had planned to live here, cleared most of it for pasture. We want to replant as much as we can with native plants. We want to see bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and all kinds of insects.

However, there are some foundation plantings that are already here and thriving, including several lantana plants. From what I read, common lantana is an invasive plant, and a real problem in parts of the American south.

It's a beautiful plant...



....and is obviously thriving here. These two lantanas can't be more than 2-3 years old. They are constantly covered in bees and butterflies so are obviously nurturing wildlife.



I've even bought and planted a couple of new lantana plants. I had been thinking to myself that as long as I keep them from being invasive on my property, it was all right. Then I read a comment on someone's blog that really struck me. The person commented that of course we can't control where birds deposit seeds through their droppings.

Nothing's ever simple, is it? I still haven't decided what to do, if anything...

On a lighter note, it's a beautiful cool, misty day here for the beginning of August, and Halley the new cat is in a playful mood. I'm not sure exactly what she's pretending to be in this picture.




A race car driver?

More Happy Planting

There are few things I enjoy more than planting! As I mentioned in the last post, here are the other plants I bought at Caroliniana. The two in the pots below are Joe-Pye Weed. You may think this is odd -- and really, it probably is -- but I have been dying to get my hands on Joe-Pye Weed for a long time. It's supposed to be one of the best plants for butterflies, birds, and insects, and can used in a variety of ways. I was so excited that they had it. It's going to grow to be at least five feet tall, with beautiful flowers. I've planted it where we can see it from the front porch.

It's also an herb and is supposedly named after a native American herbalist who used it to cure fevers. (You realize that I don't actually know any of this stuff, right? I just look it up on line. Thank goodness for the Internet!)



On the left below in the black pot is another plant I've been wanting for a long time: butterfly weed. Not to be confused with butterfly bush, butterfly weed is a native plant that butterflies supposedly go nuts for. (I bought butterfly bush last year; it was ugly as sin, and I never saw a butterfly near it. In fact, I think they were taking detours so they didn't have to go near it!)

On the right is coral honeysuckle, another native vine with pretty flowers and even better bright red berries in the fall.

Off to the right, almost out of the picture, is a set of pentas. I don't think they're native, but I had them in pots at the other house last year, and the butterflies and bees were all over them. (Since the butterfly bush was next to the pentas, it looked especially lonely.)



I can't wait to be able to show pictures of these wonderful plants blooming...

Happy Day Planting

Yesterday I went to a wonderful nearby nursery, Nurseries Caroliniana, and had a wonderful time talking to the staff and owner. The owners have had the property since 1861, and the two brothers have been running it as a nursery for decades. What I really like is that the nursery is into native plants, and the staff is knowledgeable about them. Since I'm not knowledgeable, but want to be, it's a perfect match.

I'll show you what I bought...but will have to do it in two postings because for some reason Blogger only lets me post four pictures in one post.

This is Lavender Salvia. I planted it up front where we can see it from the front porch. Everything we bought is intended to attract birds and butterflies, whether in the larval or adult stages.



Up against the wall, next to the shovel, is a trumpet vine, a native vine that will have wonderful orange flowers. We planted some in our previous house, and not only did the hummingbirds love it, but it sprouted wonderful foot-long bean pods later in the summer.



This is orange fennel, which I got because the nursery said it supports the larval stage of some butterflies, plus it has some beautiful colors.


And this has no purpose (oops, I lied above) except to look pretty. It's a grass, Miscanthus Sinesis. She told me it was a dwarf grass; it's a good thing I read up on it before I planted it, since this 'dwarf' grows to be five feet tall! I read online that it's been planted as an ornamental grass in the States since the 1700's (and apparently can be invasive in some circumstances, but I don't expect that my front flower bed will be one of those circumstances).



More in the next post....

Mini Cycle of Life

The cycle of life is a funny thing. One day you're a sweet little loropetalum plant, also known as Chinese fringe flower, a very attractive evergreen landscape plant (thanks, landscaping.about.com). Someone bought you from a local nursery and planted you to bring beauty to the landscape.



A couple of years later, you're blocking a newly installed door to the man cave, and just like that -- you're out. And what do you get for those years of service?

You're goat food.



Goats like grass...but they adore shrubs.



It's not a terrible way to go. You feed the goats, who will then enrich the soil, which will provide nurture for other living things.



Geez, I hope that's not the way I go, though.

Adore Those Passionflowers

My husband told me today that I had to go down to the pond to see the latest wildflowers. They're spreading along the banks of the pond, and they're incredible.

The flower is about 2-3 inches wide...



I looked them up, and found that they're a variety of passionflower called Maypop, native to the southeast and an important larval food for a number of different butterflies. They're going to have a fruit "the size of a hen's egg."



Here's what Wikipedia has to say about them:

Traditionally, the fresh or dried whole plant has been used as a herbal medicine to treat nervous anxiety and insomnia. The dried, ground herb is frequently used in Europe by drinking a teaspoon of it in tea. A sedative chewing gum has even been produced. In cooking, the fruit of this variety is sometimes used for jam and jellies or as a substitute for its commercially grown South American brother, passiflora edulis (the fruit is of comparable size and juice yield.) The fruit can be eaten out of hand and when encountered makes a very tasty (but very seedy) snack: historically it was a favorite of colonial settlers of the South and Native Americans alike.

Native, useful to wildlife, and beautiful -- what more could we ask for? Look how beautiful and complex this flower is...

I can't wait to see what else nature has in store for us....

More Plantings....

Well, the rain is letting me get a lot of blogging done! Here's a bed the previous owner planted by the road. I weeded and mulched it this weekend, as it looked pretty sad before. I'm finding beautiful plants in it, and the previous owner told my husband to be prepared for more surprises there, so there must be a lot of perennials still to come up.







I'm trying to be careful only to pull out the invasive weeds, and leave any with flowers or berries for the insects and birds to use. I'm not sure if the poppy below is a wild one or planted on purpose, since it could be either, and it's not really planted in the bed itself. It's certainly welcome here, though!



This next bush was definitely planted, but I have no idea what it is. The flowers are wonderful.



And here's a real wildflower, which is definitely staying. My ambition eventually is to take a portion of the land and make a wildflower meadow; I've always wanted one.



A mixture of wild and domestic here: Blanketflower (gaillardia) with a wild raspberry growing around it. The wild raspberry plants are throughout the bed; they're 'weeds' but I'm leaving them because the birds will eat the berries.



Funny: I did an Internet search on 'beneficial weeds,' hoping to find some pictures to show me which weeds would be of use to the wildlife. The only articles I found were on weeds that are beneficial to humans, which I found a little ironic.

Weekend Project...

It's been raining here but off and on it stops, and I work away at the yard. The original plants consisted of a row of lorepetalum with a row of dwarf (I hope) nandina in front of them. They weren't planted by landscapers; instead the building workmen dug holes and plopped the plants in. You can probably imagine that they didn't follow the 'dig the hole twice as wide as the root ball' rule. In fact, I found one where they put the plant in the hole and didn't even bother to fill in with dirt; they just put mulch over it so no one could tell.

So I pulled out some of the original plants, since I don't expect them to do well, and planted around the rest with things I like: four varieties of ornamental grasses, coneflowers, day lilies, and lantana. In our other house, the previous owner had planted the most boring day lilies imaginable, so it was wonderful to get some variegated ones. I love the way the grasses sway in the breeze, and lantana are pretty and hard to kill. The coneflowers, though, are my passion. I can't tell you why, but I adore coneflowers. They're a native plant (though the ones I planted are a cultivar), bees and hummingbirds love them, and the plants themselves get huge and flower all summer into the fall. I've already told my husband that we are going to be planting coneflowers all over.

Below is (I hope) a 'before' picture. There should be an 'after' picture in about two months.



This gives you a view toward the porch, which is a wonderful sitting porch. The purple foreground plants are Red Fountain Grass, and the feathery ones just beyond it are Mexican Feather Grass, which is one of my favorite grasses. I planted them both in containers at our other house and put them around the pool.



And now the aforementioned coneflower. One plant will grow to be about 3 feet around by next year, and it'll have masses of these flowers. The petals drop off eventually and leave these huge, prickly centers, so it's pretty even then. It's a perennial, and needs very little care.



I planted this lantana in the other bed, right in front of where we sit on the porch so that we can watch it grow. It's one of the prettier ones I've seen. Lantana is such a common plant here in the south, but it's so hard to kill and there are so many different kinds that it's hard to resist.



I'm really enjoying being able to plant my plants directly in the ground. At the other house, the soil was what's left over in a construction site, and it was mostly clay, so it was just impossible to dig and I did containers instead. I don't know why, since this house is new construction, but the soil in the beds around the house is a clay loam, and it digs really easily. I'm experimenting with not amending the soil much, since I had read that it's really best to use the native soil. We'll see what happens...