Fortnam Gardens: July 2013

Thursday, July 25, 2013

A Visit to Howard's

My friend Howard Frizzell owns a lovely nursery Frizzhome Gardens in Bedford NH. Yesterday, I decided to take a break from the gardens here and visit my friends Howard and Jody (Jody works for Howard and is his only full time employee). I like to putter about the plants and see if there is anything new I hadn't see earlier in the season and just chat about plants for a while. I brought my camera along because there have been a lot of hummingbirds around lately. Well I didn't get any hummer pictures, the little guys just wouldn't cooperate, but I did get some shots of some lovely clearwing moths and various other things that caught my eye.

Snowberry Clearwing Moth

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth

Song Sparrow on a nest she's made in a pot on the benches

Baby Songsparrows

Black-and-Yellow Argiope (Argiope aurantia)

Silver-Spotted Skipper Butterfly on Liatris

Silver-Spotted Skipper Butterfly

American Toad

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Blue Pots

I've been collecting containers for more years than I care to count and am especially fond of blue ceramic pots. They've made their way all over the gardens over the years but I never made a point to collect them in one location. My friend Sue from Idyll Haven has a fabulous collection of blue pots and displays them on her patio. It's a visual treat. To that end I decided I'd collect and display the blue pots on the driveway this year and am pretty happy with how this is turning out. Thanks for the inspiration Sue!

Love this one with the swirl design. A keepsake from our Idyllunion trip to Long Island in June

A peek through to the tropical border on the other side of the front lawn.

Just scored this pot from Home Goods for $25!!! The C. Thailand Giant was over in the tropical border
but was fighting for space with the A. Portodora so I decided to liberate it. the plastic pot it was growing in
fit perfectly in the new one. It was meant to be!

The blue glass piece was a gift from a gardening friend and has a solar collector and light.

The little variegated agave is a pup from Sue's plant and is several years old now.

My nosy kitty Rahjii has his 'Cranky Face' on. He normally follows me around the gardens when I'm working outside or taking
pictures. When I process the photos it's like "Where's Waldo" the cat usually shows up in half the frames.

So I have a triple wide driveway. I imagine I could collect quite a few more blue pots before run out of room.... Hmmmm.... wonder what Doug will think of that.

Friday, July 19, 2013

The Break of Dawn

The weather over the last week has been unbearable with temperatures in the middle 90's for the last six days. By mid afternoon the gardens and container plants are all looking a bit worn around the edges with lots of wilted and unhappy flowers and foliage. I've been making the watering rounds three times a day and giving everything that's wilted a good misting every time I go outside and brave the blast furnace temps out there. (Today is 99 degrees) I know this is business as usual for folks in the southern tier of states but I'm in New Hampshire for crying out loud. Jeesh! Hydrangeas and fuchsias are simply not equipped for this. What is a big surprise to me is how well the plants recover at night.

When I work through my first round of watering for the day the gardens and container plants are actually looking pretty good if you don't look too closely. The fuchsias flowers are still burned and the rose blossoms are crispy around the edges but overall there is a lot of color out there. The fried daylily blossoms are replaced with fresh new ones every AM so they look pristine in spite of the weather. The other interesting happening is that the oriental/orienpet lilies are opening blossoms at record rates so there is a lot of color out there. Downside is there won't be any lily flowers left by the end of next week but for now it's a kaleidoscope of color.

I went walkabout with camera at 6AM today to catch the morning color. There is nothing quite like the misty, scented air in the gardens before the sun breaks over the horizon.