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| Our Butterfly Bush at the end of our table. |
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| We never expected to see a butterfly on it?! We live in a city! |
| Here's the whole bush! |
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| Can you see the butterfly near the blossom under the table? |
| We were so excited... |
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| that we took several pictures as this Red Admiral Butterfly roamed our garden. |
How do we know it’s a Red Admiral Butterfly? We found it on this butterfly site. Well, we tried finding it, but couldn’t, so we thought
we found a rare butterfly for our area. We wrote to someone connected to the site, only to find that the Red Admiral isn’t
rare for our area at all – just rare for our back yard! We haven’t seen any butterflies since that day.
| Spearmint usually grows upward... |
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| but, since the tomato took upward, it grew outward! |
| "Mint is very invasive!" |
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| That means it takes over in the soil. Now we know how! |
Learn more about why we grew spearmint in with our tomatoes, in Our Shelter. But, for now, we just wanted to teach something about plants
that we learned. You probably know that roots grow, so plants can suck up water and nutrition from the ground. (Nutrition
is a gardening word for food, but, since plants like strange things for food – nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium –
we don’t want to confuse it with the food we like, so we call it “nutrition.” Kehehehehe) You probably know
that fertilizer gives the soil nutrtion, so the plant can soak it up. What we have trouble understanding is which fertilizer
for which plants. It's beary com..comp-la-caked, so we found a good place to learn more!
Plants need their leaves for nutrition too. They convert sunlight into energy with them. It’s called “photosynthesis.” Since they need sunlight to do this, they’ll grow
out of shade anyway they can, even if it means growing down, instead of up. That’s why we took this picture. We think
that’s cool!
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Teddy Bears' Garden
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Our Garden Gems
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| The Garden Gals meet the Garden Bears. |
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| The two patriotic bear's names are Doodle, in red, and Yankee, in blue. |
Gardens
are fun to see as a whole or close up. As a whole, our garden looks like a multicolored green crazy quilt, but close up, there
are surprises everywhere. You’ve been seeing our whole garden, but here we want to show you the little things –
the Garden Gems.
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Leaves
are needed, but different plants have different kinds of leaves – some are plain, some are pretty, some are striped,
and some aren’t exactly leaves at all, like pads on a cactus.
| Our Prickly Pear is prickly and edible,... |
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| but is not a pear. This is the only cactus that grows throughout North America - no desert required! |
| We think this is the Job's Tear we sowed. |
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| We sowed many kernels, but this is the only one to grow. |
| It's related to corn. Can you tell? |
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| It's busier then cornstalks though. We like the striped leaves. |
It’s
named Job’s Tears, because its seeds – kernels – look like tears. (Job is the guy in the Bible that Satan got to
torture.) We’ll show you some, if they appear. The kernels have holes through them and are beary hard, so they are often
used as beads for bracelets or necklaces. We’re still hoping to make something from our kernels, but it’s such
a pretty plant, we won’t be upset if we never get any.
We
bought the Clematis to trail up our trellis, even though it will take him a few years to do it. We named him Clem. Clem and
all Clematises need ground cover, because their roots need to stay cool and damp. The Bugle groundcover is a hybrid, which means plant breeders crossed what they liked the most from two or more varieties to make one variety
with everything they like on it.
What do you name your plants? Bmail us! We'd love to hear from you.
| Look what we found!!! |
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| Clem has three flowers now, and Tine finds a surprise! |
| See the Carpet Bugle around us? |
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| We grew the Bugle, which is nicely invasive, but won't strangle Clem's deep roots. |
| Blue flowers up top, white below. |
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| The blue flowers and violet leaves are hybrid. White flowers aren't meant to show. Cool! |
| We wanted a purple and blue garden. |
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| Look at all the purple around us now!!! |
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| Dee and Tine like climbing. |
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| "What do you see, Tine?" asks Dee from above. |
| Look at this Passion Flower! |
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| Is there any prettier flower in the whole wide world? |
| Here's a close up. |
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| Want to know why it's called a "Passion Flower?" Click this picture. |
| A passion vine or May-Pop vine, close up. |
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| The tentacles curlicues to find someplace to wrap around. |
| Dee and Tine climbed high on another day. |
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| Tine is on the Passion Vines. Dee is on the largest bird seed plant. |
| Fan Flowers look like they have flowers all around |
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| ...but they only have flowers on one side. They like to cluster together. |
| A tiny tomato up in the middle. |
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| The tomato is the same color as the plant to hide it. |
| Our gnome says he painted the purple. |
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| A great cut flower that springs two spirals up for every snipped stem. |
This
variety of snapdragon continues to grow in the vase and starts rooting by the time you think about throwing the old bouquet
out!
| Close up of our dyed flowers. |
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| They're just really pretty, so we want you to see them! |
| After the Heat Wave, many plants withered. |
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| This is the only whole petunia on this plant. The rest are dying or eaten. |
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