Garden Up-dates

Let's start with a revisit to the native azalea now that it's in full bloom. As I've considered it more, I think this is actually a member of the Rhododendron family. Yet, isn't it also just edibly delicious?










Here's a close up of the Wild Geraniums that are now blooming beneath the native azalea. They can be found in three others areas of my gardens and all are progeny of the one that I brought form my old Kentucky home when I moved to Takoma Park back in 1994. The original plant was given to me by one Mrs. Crouse and president of the Wilmore, Kentucky garden society back around 1990. Who knows where she got her first one from? True gardeners are generous people. I'm to the point of developing an annual plant mart of my own. I have distributed celandine poppies, phlox, lysimachia, helleborus, and even mayapples. Perhaps it's time I cultivated this and made a little change off it?

I filled the bed beneath the kitchen window with pansies and violas back when it was mostly just dirt. Now they rise and compete with the thick and voracious colony of yellow Moon Flowers, as well as, an amazingly robust group of Japanese Anemone. And the effect is way more interesting than the dirt that used to be there!

I will end this post with a revisit to some of the ferns in the lower woodland bed. Here are the three Tassel ferns that I planted last August back with a real gusto. They are so full and vibrant, I can hardly wait for them to begin colonizing. The fern at the bottom is the native Christmas Fern that I obtained from a friend's property in southern Maryland a decade ago. And here it is looking as healthy and verdant as it ever has. Amazing and delighting me every time I visit it.

I conclude this visit with the newly forming bed of Ostrich ferns. I bought two of them last year and planted them here; now, I have nothing short of 13 unique mounds. I couldn't be happier, but I will tell you this: I purposefully selected the two original ferns not based on size, but by the number of runners that they appeared to be sporting. I figured that size was an attribute of nurture, while proliferation had more to do with innate genetic disposition. I can feed them, but I can't make them spread if it isn't in their inborn nature to do so. Was I right? I don't know, but I am pleased!