Garden Project
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I like that. Those finely dissected leaves and the color make it fade into the grass you can see behind it. Having something contrasting like the light colored tall rock makes it stand out more!
I do this all the time...I fall in love with something at the nursery and then bring it home. At some point I think I've made a mistake and that it doesn't belong in my yard. Then I move it around to a bunch of different locations until I have an "Aha!" moment and I know I've found the perfect place.
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Here are some pics of my neighbor's oakleaf hydrangea. Thought they'd give you a good idea of what a healthy mature specimen looks like. They are not gardeners, so they never water. We're heading into a drought right now, as we haven't had any rain for quite a while.
The blossoms started out white, then went to pink, and are now brown. Leaves are uniformly green, except for a little brown on the edge of the leaf in the foreground. I think it’s starting to think about a fall color change.
Fall color can be lovely, and when the leaves fall off and you get some snow in winter, the shrub with the brown flowers and shaggy bark are quite striking.
Seems it's the sad looking leaves on your shrub that you're not a fan of. Like I said, I think that is from stress. But if you don't like the brown flowers in late summer, then maybe the oakleaf isn't the shrub for you. You could live with it for a season and see if it grows on you, or if it leaves you cold, and then decide next year.
I’ll post pics of it this fall and winter so you get the year around picture. It is one of the later shrubs to leaf out in spring, btw.
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Final placement. Now I need something to put in the blue pot
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https://share.icloud.com/photos/037duHs71M8Gew-Qme1Yy76mw
Ha! The video works!
The fountain stopped working -probably a connection in the pump pit. Jack wanted to help fix it and nothing would dissuade him. “Fine”, says I, “First you have to move all of the rocks out of the way. “
Darned if he didn’t do it - in stocking feet! I’ll not be sending this video to his parents. Sharon wasn’t thrilled either, especially with the mud on his face.
What good is the enthusiasm of youth if you can’t get any work done? He had ball and I think he’ll sleep well tonight.
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Sweet! I saw the video before you added the text to your post, and I was wondering how things came to pass...
Good job, Jack!
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An excellent youngster. He will be a hard worker.
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Pulled a few weeds. Jack helped for a while but he really only wants pull the big ones; - proclaiming each to be “the biggest weed he’s ever seen!”
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@Steve-Miller My wife just bought a cart like that and was also pulling some weeds today until the heat became too much for her to work in.
She used to pull weeds in a large feed bucket, but it would get too heavy for her to carry to where she needed to dump it out. This cart's tipping capability is a good solution.
Big Al
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It’s been a really good cart. It’s rated for 600 pounds!
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I finished the landscape lighting today. I like it!
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The first red leaf on the new little maple. If the whole tree turns this color it should be spectacular!
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I have a Bloodgood Japanese maple. The leaves are not finely dissected like yours. It's a reddish color all summer and then it turns a brilliant burning red in the autumn.
Can't wait to see yours in its full autumnal glory!
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@wtg I also have a Bloodgood. It hasn’t even started turning color yet.
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Not yet here, either. But it's very reliable. I can't recall a year when I didn't get great color out of it.
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Found another little tree on sale. It’s a dwarf Horstmann Blue Atlas Cedar. Slow growing to about 8’ but I’m going to keep it at about 4’ and open up the center over time.
Been watching Bonsai videos and I think I’ll give it a try.
Maybe like this:
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That looks like a sweet little tree.
Dwarf conifer collecting can become an addiction. There's a woman about a mile from here who is a garden designer who uses them extensively. Over the years her dwarf conifers have become not-so-small. I have to say that for me, her yard is too densely planted. It looked nice maybe 15 years ago when the trees were small but now they are all crammed in and it's hard to appreciate the uniqueness of the individual specimens.
I had to cut down a dwarf gingko because it was getting much too large for the space it was in. Broke my heart. But the adjoining Swiss stone pine looks absolutely glorious because it now stands on its own. The gingko was behind it and the two trees kind of blended into each other.
I was kicking myself for not saving some branch tips from the gingko to see if I could propagate it. It's a dwarf with a beautiful shape. It's called 'Butterflies'. I have a place where that cultivar would look great.
I didn't have the stump ground out and, lo and behold, it's sending up shoots from what's left of the trunk!
The propagation experiment will begin next spring.
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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It is unbelievable how many people plant cute little pine trees in a small space, usually way to close to the house, never thinking about how everything will look in 15 years. We have a problem with that in our yard. Crowded trees all together. They made it much worse by topping and shaping everything - the pine trees, the aspens - it’s insane - now they all have wierd branching at the top and at some point there will be issues with them splitting and breaking.
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@wtg said in Garden Project:
There's a woman about a mile from here who is a garden designer who uses them extensively. Over the years her dwarf conifers have become not-so-small. I have to say that for me, her yard is too densely planted. It looked nice maybe 15 years ago when the trees were small but now they are all crammed in and it's hard to appreciate the uniqueness of the individual specimens.
Here's the property I was talking about, at the intersection of N Beverly and E Miner. You can "walk" up and down both streets to see what she's done. The two houses to the north of her corner lot are the ones that she's also worked on. These pics are from 2018 and those two properties are relatively bare...I'll get some updated pics when I go for a walk sometime this weekend.
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It looks like no lawn mowing is required at that house.
I don't know that that was the intention, but it certainly is the result.
I did something similar on a back corner of my property that fell off steeply. I didn't like mowing it, because it felt rather unsafe on that slope. I planted enough small trees that they first shaded the grass and eventually eliminated it.
Big Al
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I went out Thursday morning to find that my Japanese White Pine tree had a ton of yellow needles. I, of course, panicked.
Made a post on Reddit/arborists for advice. Big mistake - it’s like searching Google for medical advice. Lots of replies, a few correct ones but mostly predictions of death, destruction and the coming Pine Tree Apocolypse.
Ended up searching YouTube, particularly my favorite Bonsai channel - Herons Bonsai out of England. Peter Chang is a seasoned veteran of working on pine trees both Bonsai and full size trees.
A few of the Redditors were right. It’s what White Pines do every year - shed all of the three year old needles. Red Pines do that too but it’s less dramatic. Black Pines don’t shed needles all.
Whew!
So I pulled off all of the yellow needles and got a tree that looks nicely architectural. Watched Peter prune a tree in his yard and did what he showed - mostly small cuts to open up the interior. The idea is to see through the tree. I didn’t prune much, thinking that baby steps are the way to go. I can always prune more later.
I’m pretty happy with it.
