26 Degrees

The first freeze of the season. It was 26 degrees overnight. 

But everything survived nicely, even the annual lobelia and the Profusion zinnias. The Vermillionaire cuphea is fine. I did bring the David Verity cuphea into the house after cutting it down as I get ready for winter.

The day dawned cold but still, and the hot sun quickly made things pleasant. A lovely fresh feeling day with quiet sunshine and cool air.

There are no more freezing nights for the next 10 days. Just warm days of sunshine in the 50s and 60s with little wind and overnight temps above 32.

I had unhooked the hoses but did not drain them or bring them into the garage. Now I'll have to hook them back up to do chores and water some things over the next weeks.

Cutting Back

I don't think I can bring the David Verity cuphea into the house to winter over as I planned unless I cut it way back. It's just too big and leggy. I tried it in the bathroom and in front of the sliders where winter sun would be good for it. But it's too much.

I did find an article that says potted cuphea can be brought inside, but to cut it back first. So I did, although I hated to sacrifice all the pretty flowers it was still putting out.

The only flirtation with overnight temperatures of 25° - 29° is one night next week, and then it rebounds to above freezing nights and beautiful warm days well into early November!

Will that one overnight freeze be enough to zap the cuphea? 

Assuming it might, I cut it down to just a few leaves at the base of the stems and put it next to to my laundry hamper in my bedroom.

It had gotten so leggy because I watered it too much. 

I did the same with the potted Windwalker Red salvia and the Black Adder agastache. Their leaves got so shriveled in the summer sun if I did not water, but the extra moisture made them tall and spindly.

The salvia was actually cut back in summer and it regrew quickly into tall stalks with vivid blooms at the tips.

I need to figure out how to keep these potted plants happy without over watering. 

The red salvia may go in the ground next spring, in a spot where there is no emitter. It needs water to flower well, and maybe I can keep it hose watered but leave it drier in between waterings.

Despite the continued lovely weather, I did cut back the tickseed that had gotten raggy looking, to get ready to put it in the garage. 

Still full and green and even putting out a few flowers, but it was time. What a performer it was all summer long, constantly in full bloom. 

In spring I will divide it and use the divisions in other locations. Maybe in pots, maybe I'll put one in the ground.

The Blue Ice amsonias are a nice yellow now in the corner by the guest room window. 

They are a cool, lemony yellow, bright and eye catching. I can't wait for the new ones I just planted to fill out around the circle garden and produce this elegant foliage and color in fall. It will take a good 3 to 4 years, though.

Some trees have lost leaves, the Virginia creeper is brown and kaput, but it's still so warm and beautiful.

Simple Switch

I switched two garden decor things and I like it better. For years, ever since we moved in, I have had the Relax sign up against the wall between the two big windows on the east side.  My metal peacock, more recent, has been in a couple locations in the back yard.

I simply switched the sign and the peacock.

The peacock adds a little more presence than the sign in the dining room window garden, and it was a bit lost in the back yard. 

I had it in the open on the deck at first, but tucked it into the potting bench curve where a blank spot was. 

The relax sign is just enough taller and looks better rising above the stuff along the empty wall in the potting bench curve.

The peacock is fuller and more visible in the dining room window garden, and I can see it from inside the house.

Both of these empty spots needed something and I was struggling to think what to plant that would fit the spaces and be tall enough to see. 

But I don't want more plants, I'm trying to edit down. And neither of these empty places has an emitter right there. 

So rather than plants, I need hardscape or decor items to tuck into empty places, without getting too cutesy or over decorated. 

These two metal sculpture things, switched, seem to work.

Raydon's Favorite

Blustery, windy and cloudy all day today, with periods of spitting rain and some harder rain. 

It's the remnants of a hurricane off the west coast of Mexico that are now straggling up from the southwest. Not a lot of rain for us, but chilly, unsettled, agitated weather in northern New Mexico.

This will go on for a few days. Still no frost forecast.

Raydon's Favorite aromatic aster is finally, after many years, looking full and flowery. More magenta pink than I remembered from when I grew it in CT. It had been a deeper purple for me there I thought.

So I checked old photos, and boy did it grow for me back east. I remember now how huge it was and how I had to cut it back and tame it.

It was a soft blue purple there and it formed big round mounds, so lush.

The difference is the climate and the moisture of course. But why the difference in color? Soil chemical and composition?

Anyway, my tidy little aster, blooming mostly at the top and tucked in by the sumacs along the garage wall is nice.

Not what I remembered or grew before, but nice.

Forecast

It's closing in on mid October and there is no frost yet, and none forecast for the next 10 days, only flirting with a low of 37° by the 19th. This is unheard of for fall in the southern Rockies!

I got out on these mild days and cleaned up a bit -- tossed the petunias, cut back some stalks. 

But with more weeks yet of nice weather, it's still too soon to do much else. Too soon to shut off the irrigation and too soon to bring pots into the garage to overwinter.

After a wet summer (12 inches since April 30, most of it gentle and soaking) we are expecting more rain next week, over several days. 

Wet, mild, and so unusual. 

Every year since we have been here, a hard freeze comes quickly and everything gets zapped by now. In some years the garden is done for by late September. Not this year.

The Virginia creeper vine is a nice red on one side, although it never gets that bright red on the long stretch in front of the patio.

On that side it usually just quickly browns with the typical early frost, but this year it hasn't crisped yet, it's just bronzy and dark. 

Not the brilliant red advertised and not the bright red of the vine on the other side by the Rose of Sharon.

I plan to bring the David Verity cuphea into the house for the winter, then plant it out in the white bowl next year.

I'll put it by my sunny bedroom slider. It needs a hard pruning in late winter -- it's gotten a little leggy. 

I'll have to see how it works to overwinter it, and whether we can go away in January (to CA) and again in March (to Tucson) and leave it unwatered for a week or more then. 

It is supposed to have water reduced and dry out while indoors, but it will need some.

This way I'll have a larger, mature plant to put in the bowl next spring, rather than waiting all summer for a small purchased plant to get any size and fill out -- which both David Verity and Vermillion didn't do until late August, really.

But with our mild damp fall and an extended forecast of more, it's still too early to bring this cuphea in. 

The forecast is making me antsy for fall tasks!

Thunder and Rain at Night

Thunderstorms woke us up in the wee hours of the morning and rolled through with hard rain. The patio cushions got soaked -- I did not get out of bed quick enough to bring them in. The kitchen flooded, not bad but a puddle spread out to the rug under the sink, and with tiny bits of mulch washed in.

The total was three quarters of an inch of rain. It's so rare to see anything over a quarter inch in that rain gauge from any one rain event and this year truly measurable rain has been frequent.

In eight years I've never seen a monsoon season like this one. We're now at almost 12 inches since the beginning of May. 

Technically monsoon runs from fourth of July to the end of September, but we've been getting so much rain for almost 6 months now.

More is forecast.

Half an Inch While We were Gone

Apparently it rained a half inch on the 28th, Sunday, while we were in California. I came home to see it in the rain guage.

Of course this was the first time I hired someone to come over and water the pots every day. I'll still pay him, of course, but half an inch in the 7 days took a lot of pressure off to hand water.

The pots are root bound and I guess it has been sunny since the rain event, so some things dried out quickly. And I think he missed the David Verity cuphea behind the deck, it looked pretty shriveled. I watered it as soon as we got in. It revived. Thank goodness for the half inch of rain it got during the week.

The week with grandkids was fabulous -- a birthday party for two year old TJ, swim lessons, grocery shopping, dinner at the other grandmother's new townhouse, movies, the library, the park, play time, running around, reading books, snuggling, and . . .

 . . . . mornings in bed with Grammy.

Now I miss those two something fierce, but I'm also glad to be back to my normal, quiet routine!

Going Away

This time when we go out to California for a week I am having someone come to the house to water all the pots. No more setting up an elaborate sprinkler on a timer with all my scattered pots gathered into one space to be watered automatically.

In the past that worked, kind of, but I don't have an open space big enough for the sprinkler to reach everything when gathered together in one spot. The sprinkler actually overshoots too wide an arc, and it's hard to adjust it down without losing coverage. And the timers are a pain to set.

So I've hired Tommy Tapia, a handyman in the neighborhood, to come every day and hose water everything. It will cost $20 a day.

I offered to move all the pots to one central location, but he says not to, he'll go around and get to each where  it is (there are a couple small pots tucked in the garden, I'll move those out for him). If anything in the ground looks wilted he'll water those too.

This is better than asking a neighbor to do it as a favor -- I really need daily watering even this late in the season (especially this late, the big plants are potbound).

The Table By The Door

💧More rain again last night. 

Just a quarter inch but it was a gentle soaker and it arrived overnight, keeping the soil moist for hours.

The arrangement of pots on top of and around the table looks good. There's a cascading effect as everything has grown in. 

The visual composition is nice with the tall blue door framing the fall of blooms next to it.

But I keep thinking I'd like a simpler look. It feels fussy.

Maybe move the metal scroll trellis next to the garage door and make it the focal point as you look down the yard?

It's hidden behind the redbud, although it fills the blank wall, especially when the redbud's leaves are down.

If I moved it over by the garage door, I'd grow a Major Wheeler honeysuckle on it. The one I have below the railroad ties is lovely but in too much shade to bloom well or fill out.

I'd keep the new little cardinal penstemon in front -- the honeysuckle needs something to hide its bottom bare stems, although that would be a red flowering vine + red flowering penstemon together, too much? I'd keep the blue container of deep purple bush clematis at the foot of the trellis as well.

But the trellis is rusted out and there is only one prong to set in the soil, the other is propped up with a haphazard pile of stones and a brick. 

That supporting mess is shielded by the thick sumacs, but would be visible right at the garage stoop. 

So I don't know. . .  

The composition at the door seems too busy, and yet I keep saying I want a lush, complex, mixed garden look.

The redbud needs to get some height to rise up above all the pots and the sumacs below. That will help, so everything isn't at the same level.

Ehh, I don't think the trellis will work all that well. 

It's okay where it is, and is surprisingly stable even though it's precariously balanced among rocks.

Cumulus Clouds

This summer we've had such unsettled weather with plenty of rain. Wow. 

But the thunderstorms that pop up in the afternoons aren't the violent kind we've gotten in other summers. Mostly they deliver a bit of noise and flash and a steady soaking rain. 

Gray and black clouds hang over the mountains often.

But this week there have been the most incredible cumulus clouds billowing up over us. Everywhere I looked there were giant poufs of marshmallow white. 

The skies looked unreal, like an overly exaggerated painting of a western sky dwarfing all below. The sky was brilliant blue, the clouds dazzling white, the shadows in the folds deep silver.

No real storms, just giant cottony ballooning puffs. What a summer.

Dining Room Window Garden

Planting under the cottonwood tree on the east side of the house was probably a mistake. The cottonwood sucks up all the water, smothers plants in dropped leaves and it's been hard to get anything going with the root competition.

But those windows dominate the whole east side of the house and they are positioned low, so the ground level area under the cottonwood is visible from inside the whole length of the dining room and den.

So I planted.

Now, in late summer, the ground is getting covered with early leaf drop. Later there will be way, way more.

The groundcover plumbagos at the front of the garden and the rock swale are completely smothered.

This should be the plumbagos' season. They should be visible, thickly massed, deep green with vivid blue flowers. Other patches in other gardens look lovely now.

Mine have light green foliage, a few sparse flowers and are not really visible at all. And it is still summer really.

The tall Woods rose at the back stands up above the mess of leaves and the taller plants like the Texas betony and Icicle veronicas are vertical enough to still be seen among the leaf litter.

But I should probably do something about the plumbagos.

I originally wanted this garden to be a shrubbery with greenery and texture, not really a flower garden. 

I still do, but getting shrubs going in the root competition wasn't working. The shallower perennials took. At least some did.

The plumbagos have been spreading over the years, but like all my plants, the individual clumps don't touch, don't mass together. They are nice enough edging the rock ditch, but I have seen such rich looking groundcovers elsewhere, and this patch doesn't look like much.

I guess at a minimum I need to get the blower out and regularly blow the area clean. So many more leaves to fall, though . . . 

Thyme Does Not Creep

The creeping thyme under the white bowl has not spread one bit this year. It's green and healthy, but not filling in any bare spots where I had removed perennials last fall. 

Perennials got overrun by the creeping thyme

When I had tried to grow perennials -- blanketflowers, sages and blackeyed susans, obedient plants, dwarf agastaches -- in the carpet of thyme surrounding the birdbath, they failed. 

The thyme overwhelmed each, growing right over each little emerging perennial every spring. The creeping thyme completely choked everything out.

So I removed the plants, letting the thyme spread where it will.

But.

No action at all this year. I replaced the birdbath with the white bowl. I watered in the bare spots all summer, added compost, encouraged it. It hasn't spread anywhere all summer, not even an inch.

All summer it has looked healthy but has not spread

Why did it spread so quickly and aggressively before but has stopped at its existing boundaries this year? I'm puzzled.

Rose of Sharon Needs "K"

August 2022

Ever since the big Spanish broom was removed in 2021, the Rose of Sharon that had been strangled behind it has done better and better. 

I pruned it way back in the winter of 2022, and it formed a nice shape and bloomed pretty well the following summer. Here it was in August 2022. →

Actually it bloomed okay even hidden behind the broom with little sun. In 2018 it was badly affected with aphids, but since 2019 it has been getting a winter soil drench from Coates and aphids have not been a problem. 

in mid August 2020

← It bloomed pretty fully in 2020 as it reached out from behind the Spanish broom to find some sun.

But now, four years after clearing out the broom, the Rose of Sharon continues to have a nice shape but just isn't blooming much. 

In August it had flowers and buds but they seem scattered oddly and sparsely. Pretty enough, but nowhere near as densely flowered as other Rose of Sharons I see, and not even as flowery as it has been in the past.

What's going on? Same issue with the butterfly bushes this year.

August 16, 2025

I gave it extra water all spring and summer and a couple applications of 2-8-4 fertilizer when I watered. It has irrigation emitters.

But somewhere I read the following:

Many flowering plants prefer plentiful phosphorus -- the middle number in the N-P-K ratio -- but Rose of Sharon and its hibiscus relatives favor potassium (the K) instead. 

Citrus & Avocado fertilizers of 5-3-4 are formulated to provide greater potassium, and hibiscus needs iron and magnesium too.

The leaves are not chlorotic, but inability to take up iron is an issue in my soil. And I guess I needed to use a citrus fertilizer or something with higher potassium?

The individual flowers look nice. A close up shows that. I've inspected for insect damage, but all the buds and flowers look fine.

There just aren't very many of them.

A Tour Around the Circle

I've liked a lot about my garden this year, and the wet monsoon season has helped. But I still struggle with getting "the look" I want for the circle around the white bowl. While some things are filling in and I need to be patient, other plants are just too tidy by nature. I want a looser, less structured appearance.

Let's take a tour around the circle ----

• Take out this small clumpy sage (Blue Profusion) and pot it up for somewhere. Replace it with Black Adder agastche, which is larger and loose and spiky (divide the Black Adder agastache in the pot by the deck). Have this

• Add another blue mealycup sage to this little group of 3. Need to buy

The red Mexican sage between the two will get large

• Add one or two more orange agastaches to make a bigger stand with the others in this spot. Need to buy

These orange agastaches struggled and may bulk up next year, but add more

• Divide the tickseed in the terra cotta bowl and put one between the grass and the tiny dwarf purple agastache. Have this

• Bulk up the tiny sulphur buckwheat and the little Electric blue penstemon by adding more of each to form a grouping of each. Need to buy

• Unpot the Widwalker Red sage and put it where the annual gomphrena is (next year grow gromphrena in a pot and put that by the deck.) Have the sage / Need to buy the gomphrena

This is the most unresolved part of the circle, needing more plants and the bigger sage

I like the idea of mixed plants all around the circle, but need a much less restrained composition. As I've complained before, all my plants shrivel and none touch. By planting multiples together I hope to get the look I'd like while waiting for some growth and fullness to emerge. Maybe?

And Another

Another rain event last night -- this time not the hard downpour and no kitchen flooding, but a drenching rain that delivered .75 inches.

That makes 2.25 inches over the last two nights. That's a lot.

This morning is gloomy, wet smelling and cold. All my plants look full and upright and perky but I worry they are getting too soggy now.

What a monsoon season this has been!

A Hard Rain

The last rain we got was a third of an inch on August 1, and the month has been so dry since. Lots of clouds rolling in and storms all around almost every day, but no rain for over three weeks.

So I went out and watered last night even though big threatening clouds surrounded us and, as usual, the mountains were getting rain but none down here in the basin.

And then right after I came in it rained. Hard.

A real downpour that flooded the kitchen and totaled an inch and a half overnight.

I mopped the kitchen and turned the irrigation off.

1½ inches from one big storm is very rare here. This summer's monsoon season has been an intermittently wet one. Lots of rain, but not spread out consistently. Since May we've had 8.5 inches of rain, the most ever since we moved here.

These Things Are Nice

Despite my laments about skimpy plants and sparse flowering of some things this summer, there are some nice sights to see too.

The Mexican sage, just planted this year, has started to fill in and the first blooms are vibrant red.

Salvia darcyi Vermillion Bluffs - newly planted this year

The second year for a little dwarf goldenrod is looking good. Not sure how big it will get, but it is filling in somewhat and blooming well.

Solidago Little Lemon

A purple agastache in a container by the deck is great. It has been blooming all summer on upright stems  along with the yellow tickseed nearby. I did cut the agastache back by a third in June before any flower spikes had appeared.

Agastache Black Adder

The whole grouping of containers by the deck looks nice and the wild hairy goldenaster is even starting to bloom, flopping into and around all the other plants.

My Prairie Pot Garden

So there are sights that please me in some places!

This Summer's Lament

This summer was a wet one for months. August has been drier, but monsoon season started early and was generous. BUT . . . I lament. Things don't look right in my garden this year.

The butterfly bush is so scrawny -- both the purple one in the corner and the Honeycomb in front. It blooms at the top but it had a lot of dead stems this spring that I had to cut out and although I like the upright vase shape, it's too sparse and thin. 

A short walk around the neighborhood revealed caryopteris shrubs that were dense with flowers and butterfly bushes that were fat and full of blooms.

Not mine                                                                       Mine

I'll do rejuvenation pruning this winter and cut it all the way back. And my Rose of Sharon, leafy and green, has fewer buds and sparse flowers this summer. The similar one in Newman's parking lot was immensely, spectacularly full in July.

Nothing in my gardens touches. The veronicas and geums and zinnias are all stunted. They grow, they look healthy, they are fertilized and well watered, but they are tiny. The pretty gaura withered and produced long arching flower-less stems. You can't even see it here, somewhere next to the sundial.

Could these plants be tinier?

By the way, here it was last year. The gaura was pretty and bobbing and just isn't anywhere to be seen this year. What is wrong this year?

Last year looked so much fuller

In the ring that circles the white bowl, well irrigated, watered, and fertilized every 10 days, I have 3 inch plants. All of them, just three inches across and two inches tall, stranded in mulch, some new but most well into their second or third year. What is going on with my perennials shrinking?

Lots of tiny stunted things in the mulch

A row of blanketflowers between the bench and the white irises never made it past three inches of healthy looking foliage. 

No show blanketflowers

I planted some new Amber Wheels blanketflowers and there are some of the older aristata gaillardias, but none of them did anything.

I don't fertilize those, as they grow best without amendments or inputs, and I made sure they weren't watered too much. 

But nada -- all of them just produced some nice green short foliage and sat there.

Blanketflowers are supposed to be the easiest of all, needing no care. What happened? I grew them around the birdbath in earlier years and they were tall and dramatic flowers.

(The white irises behind the blanketflowers had nice foliage but only two or three flowers this year. The year before I got a full stand of crystal white irises.)

There are some successes in my garden: the Grow-Lo sumacs thrive and have gotten big, the crabapple is leafy and getting bigger. My yellow peony is a nice size, the Karl Foerster grasses under the kitchen window are tall but very thin, and the rosemary is too big for its spot. 

This is as big as the clematis gets each year
(after seven years)

Other things look nice enough, although nothing is big or full. My pots are okay, but no plant that I have put in the ground touches another next to it. All stay safely apart even if a robust nursery plant has to shrink to three inches wide to prevent touching. 

Clematis vines produce about six or seven flowers but stay delicate and skinny and about three feet tall. The plants under the Venosa violacae don't touch -- I've added some potted things in between.

This summer seemed a godsend with the rain, but I am baffled about plant size. And not just a struggler or two, but mature easy to grow shrubs and reliable perennials just look so skimpy.

Next year I will try using higher nitrogen fertilizer rather than bloom booster fertilizer. I'll cut the butterfly bushes and caryopteris plant way down. 

I don't know what else to do.