Category Archives: General Gardening

Fall festivals are in full swing. One of my favorites is SPARKcon. It’s a citywide festival of the arts.

Each area of art is named with the suffix “spark” such as fashionSPARK, circusSPARK, artSPARK, and musicSPARK. 

So much to do!

http://www.sparkcon.com

It all culminates in a street festival downtown with stages and blocks of vendors and artist.

I love circusSPARK which includes European-style acrobatics:

     

 
And fashionSPARK:

   
    
 
And artSPARK: street painting

  
And, of course, food trucks!

  
A beautiful clear day became a beautiful and clear night!

I had intentions of some major yard work and cleaning but It has rained off and on all weekend. As a result I have been hanging out a Cup a Joe on Hillsborough Street with all the NC State students and hipsters!

None the less, there are a few Fall bloomers  which are decorating the garden!

Hurricane lilies (lycoris)

  
 They are unusual because the flowers appear in the Fall with no leaves but once the flowers die the leaves appear and persist until Spring than die back. There are several species and now hybrids in colors from red, to yellow,pink, and white.
Also, the colchicums are blooming! They are like a giant Autumn crocus a foot tall!

And, of course, I love ginger lilies!  

So fragrant! And they are enjoying the cooler nights!

The annual perilla has grown into a purple thicket where I have allowed it to reseed.

Spikes of purple flowers will follow.

I will leave you with white beauty berry

I am enjoying the change of seasons!

It has been so hot and humid! When the nighttime temperature finally dropped to 69f the other night I almost broke out the blankets to keep warm!

The garden is signaling the impending change of seasons, too!

The annual poinsettias are blooming.

The large pots of fibrous begonias on the front porch have gone crazy and this is without any routine watering!

And Turtlehead (cleone)

And the Rose of Sharon:

  

Rose-of-Sharons are wonderful large shrubs or small tree in the hibiscus family which bloom late summer until frost. The flowers are shades of white, purple, or burgundy and with or with-out a red throat. The single flowered varieties reseed to the point of becoming weedy! The flowers are only about three inches wide but if you don’t trim the plants they grow in a vase-shape to about 10 or 15 feet here in the Piedmont region on North Carolina.

The large beds of lirope blooming are another signal of the change of seasons.

 The large beds of this grass-like plant in the lily family run along the fence and around the patio. I am lucky that the original owners planted these. They begin blooming in late August and are followed by black berries. The birds eat the berries but the seeds pass through their digestive tract unharmed and germinate throughout the garden.
Another reason I look forward to the cooler temperatures? I hate coming home to this every evening:

And the corresponding water bill!!

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