Garden of random notes

This lily could not be more out of place in my garden,



which otherwise looks like this:



I can't remember where I got the lily, but it's not 'Stargazer'. I remember the catalog I got it from billed it as bizarre and extreme. Sounded good at the time. In fact, it makes me a little queasy. It has to go. It reminds me of something I'd find in a tacky beauty salon. I smell nail polish and nasty hair treatment chemicals.

Lilies in general can be dicey. I like the martagons with small flowers. Everything else, I'm not sure.

Speaking of dicey, we are crawling with garden spiders.







Usually I cannot tolerate spiders, but for whatever reason these do not bother me. They look harmless. I guess it's the more malevolent-looking spiders that arouse my arachnophobia.

Leaf-cutter bees are depriving me of fall color again this year.



Grrrr!



I only bought those vine maples (Acer circinatum) for fall color and I have been denied for three years now. I am loathe to spray any pesticides. Maybe I need more spiders.

At least I have the grape vines.



I have three grape vines, but only one big one. I added the other two this year and last year.

The Keckiella cordifolia's red display winds down about now, but not before bidding adieu to certain visitors.



I spent a couple hours planting out foxglove for next spring.



Most of the foxglove I planted out last year I planted out too late to bloom this year. So it's all still there. Now I'm adding more. 2011 should be a big year for foxglove.

Have you tried any Digitalis beyond purpurea? I wasn't very happy with D. ferruginea, but there are others to try. I think I'm going to let other people go first, and then steal their ideas.

I sometimes get the impression that people think I go for the exotic or rare, but that's just not true. I enjoy all the classic garden flowers--foxglove, sunflowers, cosmos, daisies. In fact, I'm growing Shasta daisy from seed right now & will plant those out soon.

Anyway...it was another cool, cloudy day...a good time to plant.

A good day for purple?



Or yellow?



I have a lot of yellow. Some would say too much.

Chocolate-scented Tithonia diversifolia doesn't usually bloom this early. I don't expect it until January, but it has three flowers and lots of buds. I hope it will still make flowers in January, otherwise I won't have very much.



This is some kind of Rudbeckia, perhaps triloba. I grew it from seed a couple years ago but I thought it didn't work out. This lanky plant came out of nowhere.



The sun finally came out around 4, just when it leaves my garden for the day. I got a few pictures before it went away.



The light is definitely changing.



I enjoy it when I can.