The Garden Worm blog

October 25, 2011

Filling the Frame?

Filed under: Contests,Fall,Flowers,Travel — Judy @ 5:40 pm

A new photo contest over on the Gardening Gone Wild blog site has captured my interest. I always find them intriguing. So many beautiful photos are posted to the contest and it is fun to see how others interpret the various themes. I wasn’t quite sure (and still am not) what the theme “Filling the Frame” by Saxon Holt meant. He offered more explanation in his post a few days ago and so I am going to venture to enter the contest.

I have two pictures in mind that I recently took on our trip to the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh. The first one is an interesting one of different stripey leaves right next to each other in the Tropical Forest Conservatory. All the different colors of green were beautiful by themselves, but I liked the way they were juxtaposed against the red-browns of the blocky wall.

The second one is the one that I have decided to enter in the contest. These Strelitzia flowers (aka Bird of Paradise) remind me of a mama and her baby. The sun was streaming through the conservatory roof at just the right angle and really lit up those wonderful colors. How do you like the little bugs crawling around on the mama? Never saw them when I was taking the picture!

The contest’s theme has certainly made me more aware of how I compose a picture. Not sure I have done this very effectively in cropping these two pictures, but I really enjoyed the journey.

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October 9, 2011

Letchworth

Filed under: Fall,Parks,Travel — Judy @ 9:41 pm

With the promise of a great weekend weather-wise in the making, an adventure outing was called for. My sister and sister-in-law were rounded up, lunches were packed, and we were off to Letchworth State Park last Saturday. About an hour south of Rochester, this 17 mile long park is known as the “Grand Canyon of the East.”

Genesee River gorge at Big Bend area in Letchworth State Park

The park covers over 14,000 acres of land along both sides of the Genesee River. The walls of the gorge rise up to about 550 feet and expose shale, sandstone, and limestone layers mostly from the Devonian era.

Genesee River gorge near the Big Bend area in Letchworth

The fall colors were not at peak, but you could get a sense of how spectacular they would become in the next week.

There are three major waterfalls (the Upper, Middle, and Lower Falls) of the Genesee River that cascade down the gorge, many smaller tributaries along the gorge walls, and many miles of hiking trails. Our family has been going to the Lower Falls area for many decades – for birthdays, reunions, parties, swimming, rafting, hiking, whatever – so we chose to make that our starting point. (more…)

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September 27, 2011

Caution: Winter approaching

Filed under: Fall,Flowers,Grasses,Our gardens — Judy @ 3:52 pm

The air has been soft and warm these last few days and the pool warm enough to swim in, BUT time to be outdoors in shorts and tank tops is getting short before the snow flies. The signs of winter approaching are getting more numerous. The fall grasses are starting to throw up their plumage.

The Virgina creeper in the trees is starting to color up, and a few of the early maples already are turning red and orange. Some yellow is peeking through on the birches and the ashes and, with a little bit of rain, the last roses of summer are pulling out all the stops and blooming like crazy.

Rosa 'Cuyahoga'

Rosa 'Morden Blush'

The sweet autumn clematis is putting (Clematis terniflora, formerly C. paniculata) on a spectacular show this year with, it seems like, millions of tiny flowers.

The ‘Nikko Blue’ and ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangeas are pinking up.

The crabapples

and the seedheads on the coneflowers and rudbeckias are ripening, soon to be devoured by the hungry birds.

But the Autumn Joy sedum is still pink and the Amsonia hubrechtii is only just beginning to turn yellow.

Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and Amsonia hubrichtii

This is one of my favorite fall plant combinations – their glory is still to come! Maybe there is still time yet!

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September 22, 2011

Oregon

Filed under: Miscellaneous,Travel — Judy @ 9:11 pm

Oregon. Ok, that is somewhere out to the west, says she, waving her arm over in that general direction.

The other day I was checking out YouTube, pondering whether it would be a possible direction in which to expand. You know, adding videos of important gardening topics to my business website like . . . well, important stuff. Lo and behold, my business name of Just the Gardener was already taken! What? Why? How? Seems that a boy named Isaac from Oregon was posting some Lego videos he had made under the same name. If you have a mind, go and check them out – pretty clever!

Those of you who know me are probably questioning why I would even think of making videos. Ha! ha! Momentary lapse of sanity, I assure you. Anyways, there are plenty of pretty good gardening videos on YouTube – and some pretty bad ones too – so I decided to save myself from going down that route.

Back to Oregon. My friends at Oriental Garden Supply tell me that they make buying trips out there. I know that Al has some terrific stuff so maybe it’s the climate. Apparently, Oregon has two climatic regions separated by the Cascade Mountains. The Cascades serve to block the warm, moist winds coming from the Pacific Ocean and cause relatively heavy precipitation and moderate temperatures in the western part. The eastern part has relatively little precipitation and more extreme temperatures. I’m going to guess that the western part is home to some great nurseries.

I’ve never been there, but it would seem like a great place to visit – Crater Lake,