Foliage Follow Up August 2014

The in-laws are sill here so once again I'm rushing out a post without proper ID of the plants.

Technically not foliage but I love the way these Asclepias seed pods look 

Purple Basil 

Another houseplant? This Calathea is enjoying a summer outside and looks GREAT. She's going to pout when she has to come back inside for the winter, I just know it. 

Heuchera cinnamon curls 

Elderberry Black Lace (Sambucus) 

Cornus Garden Glow. If you ever see this for sale and have room in your garden I can't recommend it enough. Be forewarned, though, it gets bigger than the growers claim. 

A nice Heather 

Healthy foliage on Meadow Rue 

NOT a houseplant. I used a couple of Palms in pots in the garden this year. They got a little sunburned but they look nice.

[Palms in Pots is the name of my next 50s retro band - THIS meme is from John Scalzi and has nothing to do with plants. Normally]

Thanks to Pam at Digging for the Foliage Follow Up meme

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day August 2014

I was hoping to get this done before my in-laws got up this morning but I didn't get it done quite fast enough so you'll have to excuse the poorer quality of plant identification. It's partly that I don't have time to check my plant inventory database and partly I need coffee.

Hope you enjoy the pictures. If there's something you're really curious about put in a comment and I'll try to get to it next week when we don't have company (I have a tomato garden post planned, too, I didn't miss the questions about my tomato harvest this week!).

The Agastache are almost done but the bees are still finding some food. 

Reblooming on an Asclepias 

Buddleias are peaking 

Technically not a bloom but this fern is in reproduction mode 

Seldom is the wind still enough to photograph Gaura so I'm really thrilled with these photos 

The trellis is there to prevent the dogs from digging up the Joe Pye Weed before it gets established 

The bees and I are both happy with the meadow rue this year. It's the second year and it's much stronger and more floriferous. 

I usually only post houseplant blooms during the winter but my snake plant is very happy to be outside

Society garlic 

We tend to forget them but yes, grasses do bloom.

Thanks to Carol at May Dreams for this meme

Wordless Wednesday

Highlights from my garden this week.

 Coreopsis Red Shift

A gorgeous, large dragonfly, I haven't identified it yet 

Echinacea purpura 

Allium tubersum (garlic chives) 

Hydrangea, purchased as Lady in Red, but I'm not confident in the label 

Hydrangea lostustagus 

Lots of people up here didn't get good blooms on their hydrangeas this year. It's not a problem for me.

Santolina chamaecyparissus (Lavender cotton) 

Growing in the hellstrip and threatening to eat the sidewalk 

Liatris spicata Kobold 

Thalictrum (meadow rue) 

This plant is taller than our deck - probably 8 - 10 foot tall 

Monarda fromneighborii 

Buddleia nanho purple with Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus)

Tomato Tuesday

Harvest day.

I'm harvesting more tomatoes than we can eat so I've started freezing tomatoes about every other day.

Yum.

Crazy "Vacations" of Biologists

I'm a Biologist.

I'm not normal.

Last week I went to Down East Maine for a week long course on aquatic invertebrates.

Down East Maine (the coastal area north of Acadia) is one of the most beautifully scenic places I've been. It's not easy to get to and it doesn't have a big tourist infrastructure but if you don't mind going without Starbucks for a week it's a nice place to visit.

Unfortunately most of my time was spent look at stuff like this:

This is a larval stone fly in the family Perlidae. Not that you probably care...

I did get to enjoy some of the local (mostly native) plants.

Solidago, a not-so-great picture of a great plant for native pollinators

Wild Maine Blueberries, growing just outside of the building our classroom was in, easy to sneak out and have a snack during lecture. 

Bunchberries (actually a low growing dogwood - Cornus canadensis) and a small conifer in a bed of moss. Moss grows everywhere in this area.

It is just the start of fall mushroom season. That class starts this week.

There are also lots of interesting lichens. These were found on a rock outside our classroom building.

And there were LOTS of fuzzy caterpillars like this one. Those spines tell me Don't Touch.

My days didn't leave much time to appreciate the local environment, though. A typical day was breakfast followed by lectures until lunch, followed by a collecting trip, then time at the microscope identifying what we had found, followed by dinner and another lecture.

Notice the free time? Yeah, I didn't either. But I learned a lot.

If this sounds like fun to you. You're crazy. The place I stayed is called the Eagle Hill Institute and they have classes all summer on all different aspects of natural  history.

Not all of them are as intense as the class I took.

Now I need to take another nap.