a brief spin of a tour of the garden center: part 3.

at the suggestion of a haiku blogger, i am tossing in some short cuts of nature-made poems between my plant rantings. i do love this idea and have been pretty much having a ball with it.

stubby fork prongs gone

pink, dianthus, you tap your 

way toward sunlight

the pond by the barn is finally shoving some flowers upward from its lily pads. at the water level is duckweed, a viciously spreading groundcover for pond surfaces, and some hornwort, an oxygenator.

amethyst falls wisteria climbs up this miniature wooden trellis. wisteria has a vine habit but with much meticulous effort on the part of a gardener can be trained into a tree. i've seen one near steinmetz road and swamp pike in limerick, and it always looks like fluffy lilac-hued grapes are dangling from the shaped tree.

people often come in and ask me why their wisteria did not flower. usually the culprit is having pruned them back too hard. it's safer to wait until it blooms to then prune it instead of prior, or you might cut off the sections ready to bear the flowers. jeopardizing the blooms by early pruning just doesn't seem worth it ! patience and late pruning is more likely a helper. 

chionoides is a white-flowering rhododendron.

yellowed freckles in 

a powder crawl out of plush

shade-pulling moments

nova zembla is a deep&dark pink-flowering rhododendron, thriving vibrantly in acidic soil and limited shade exposure.

stoplight coral bells are a unique throw of color compared to the usual purple and bronze-y more common coral bells. they are tinier from the start with blood-like soaked-looking centeral veins, but bright and definitely a quick seller as yet another shade lover.

iris lately remind me of floppy, ephemeral drinking-ware.

these iris i deem as cupped with sunlight.

this is either coppertina or centerglow ninebark. i can't quite remember which. a spring flowering shrub, it spills bright brownish red foliage throughout the season in a nice, heaping mound that usally reaches 5-6 feet if not closer to 8 feet high.

some euonymus is perched around an abandoned mailbox by the front of the barn since a newer but still ancient mailbox sits across the street in regular usage. the barn is from 1811, so just think of how sturdy that stone has been since then. it's almost unreal pondering that those who made it have been gone from this earth for so long. picturing anyone crafting a building centuries ago just baffles me, but it draws my respect for the workers' efforts just as well.

here glows the underside of a copper beach tree.

mohave pyracantha, a firethorn shrub, thrusts out little white bubbles of blooms in spring and later produces bright orange berries that contrast suitably against the leaves later in the season. they are also fabulous for keeping children out of your yard, or out of certain areas, as they are full of pickery thorns. ouch ? firethorn, hm.

a red barberry (pickery as well) of some cultivar, but again, i'm not sure which. 

an opposing-hued yellow-y green barberry thrives on the more abandoned side of the barn cozied a few feet to the left of that stone-crawling euonymus . 

while pulling wild honeysuckle out of the low-running bamboo around the pond, one of our weekend workers discovered a robin's egg nest hidden in the mess of invasive plants. awh !

nest-nuzzled speckles 

soaked into bits of ciel-

shell-- salut, small eggs

i haven't seen the beautifully decorated shells of robin's eggs since i was a little kid. they are an eye-delight still.

until another installment !