The new alstromeria color that I saw at Trader Joe’s is absolutely awesome: a creamy white with a green center stripe and pale yellow spots: yet another reason to love the unloved alstroemeria. And at $3.99 a bunch, I bought two and will have awesome flowers for at least two weeks!

I know that getting flowers from someone you love is wonderful.  A public declaration of their love for you. But honestly, of the 10% of guys that actually give flowers, probably only 2% are giving them for a good reason (and not as an apology). The solution to this problem?

Buy them for yourself. You are guaranteed to get nice ones, no strings attached! Even though I am poor now, I still buy flowers every time I go to the grocery store. It makes me feel civilized.

And nothing cheers up a bedside or dining room table (if I had one) like fresh flowers.

The key, to me, is getting long lasting flowers…carnations (above) or alstomeria, which will last at least two weeks.

Even when they don’t last, they are still wonderful to have around. Just like some of those flower-bearing guys. (And even those without flowers.)

I have adored Southern U.S. gardens for years- and am particularly enamored of crepe myrtles.  I love their gorgeous bark and great blooms.  I had always assumed that they should be pruned like lilacs, after bloom and sparingly.  Au contraire!

My new Southern Correspondent corrected my assumption tonight with “Nope– trim in the winter.” So y’all who have those gorgeous crepe myrtles in your yard: get out there and prune the darn things.  I’ll have to amend the post later once I figure out how you actually prune them: hard? a light trim?  I vaguely recall that you can do a full pruning- all the way back to the crown… but I have no idea why you’d ever do that: it’s the bark that makes me so covetous of the darn things!

Maybe my new gardenlessness will result in my moving to a warm place where I can grow those gorgeous crepe myrtles!  Stranger things have happened.

Even though I have lost my garden during this tumultuous fall… some things in my life are still beautiful. And blooming for the first time in years… my ladyslipper!

Res ipsa loquitor.

This year's pathetic lavender bouquet

Have I not mentioned how much I love the smell of lavender? I’m semi-obsessed. It never grows here as well as it does further south, so I end up cutting it back every year and bringing the cuttings into my office and my closets and everywhere else. I’ve been most successful in places with great drainage- like along the driveway that has that terrible fill under 1 inch of topsoil.

Terrible soil must be the crucial reason why there are so many lavender fields in France. A very good friend who was just there told me that the smell was incredible and permeated everything.

Yet another reason to head back to France!

In my last post, I mentioned my front garden through the years… here is my hot colors garden- this year is its finest ever.

Beets.

I have planted Bulls Blood Beets every year for absolutely ages. For the first year ever, I actually got gorgeous, delicious beets that look like a heart when you peel them. Ultra-red and surprisingly sweet, we’ve eaten them on salads and tonight I decided to pickle the leftovers. Yummy- I’m finally a vegetable gardener! (After all, tomatoes are a fruit.)

A wheelbarrow full of mistakes

Even experienced gardeners make mistakes. Good Old Bindweed. I could have sworn that it was the morning glories (heavenly blue, of course) that I planted from seed this spring. It grew up right at the base of the trellis, I thought for sure it must be. But no, it was bindweed.  I thought (foolishly) that for sure this would be my best year ever for morning glories.  Not quite.  They look similar- the key, of course, is the flowers.

Bindweed on the left, morning glories on the right

Grandpa Ott's on the ground, I'm holding the blasted bindweed

 Only thing to do is rip it out and hope it didn’t reseed for next year.  Yikes!

hostas in the front garden with hydrangeas

Annuals

Over the years, my front garden has evolved from perennials to annuals and back again. I hope you enjoy my photos from this year’s front garden.