Gardening Flowers & Foliage

Late bloomer azalea
This is a big native plant we let grow next to the beauty spot
Ya'll know what it is?
I do...

 

Those are a beautiful purple, are they Beauty Berries? (Note, actually impressed with myself that the name immediately came to mind). Never seen one of those in person, only pictures - and they tend to "touch up" pictures to make them more visually appealing to customers so I was really skeptical.

 

Yes ma'am, American Beauty Berry. They are very prevalent down here. Birds and deer love them.

 

I looked it up as I have never heard nor seen them before. Jam or jelly making but not ate raw as they can cause stomach upsets.

 

Winter berries ripened recently

 

Nice

 

It’s always amazed me how an insect of that size could cover that much ground in such a relatively short period of time.

 

Yep. And it amazes me how a hummingbird can fly across the Gulf too.

 

This is kind of a neat find. In the woods that I manage behind my house, I’ve been pulling out all sorts of undesirables over the years. In the beginning it was mostly invasives, but now with the added sunlight I’m also pulling out young trees regularly. I’m trying to keep the woods bright and open for native flowers. Today while I was pulling out dozens of yellow birch seedlings, I came across this one that looked different. I’m pretty sure that it’s a white birch. The seed that started it must’ve blown in from quite a ways away, since the nearest one growing to me is more than 1,000 feet away. Too bad it sprouted in the woods, but I may try digging it up and transplanting it to an open location. I love the look of these trees in every season.

 

The "picture this" app calls it --



Turns out the app thinks it's also---

 

I was conflicted about whether it was gray or white (paper) birch myself. I guess I won’t know for sure until it gets larger. The nearest gray birch to me is closer than the nearest white birch is, so there’s that too.

 

The times they are a-changing

Forsythia is turning yellow


The ever invasive wild New England asters.


Black Birch joining the yellow club


The spent hydrangea flowers still look nice, in an Autumn kind of way

 

And the last of my blooming plants, black Cohosh.
The bees like it for a late season visit.

 

First frost warning was for last night so I went out yesterday evening and picked the apples from my fledging mini orchard. Out of 15 apple and two plum trees in various stages of growth, 4 apple trees had at least some production. I ended up with 149 golden delicious (43 from one tree and 106 from another), 5 red delicious, and 1 lonely granny smith. Only one apple had any kind of rot. Even though these are dwarf trees, I still had to break out a step ladder to pick the top apples. Pleased with the harvest. Time to start baking. (Note: the trees that produced were 4 of the 6 oldest fruit trees I planted; they were about three-feet tall when they went in the ground back in 2020.)

 

Those look tasty!