A Walk in the Neighborhood

Last night was cool and no air conditioning was needed. It made for good sleeping. Didn't know it would motivate me to take a walk today in the early morning before it started to warm up. Waited too late and by 11:00 it was warm, but not unbearable. Walking after work every day used to be a part of my daily routine until arthritis in my knees caused me to stop. I feel the difference physically since stopping and have promised myself that I would start again even with pain. Walking is slower and painful but it is what it is. I love walking and looking at the houses and store fronts. I was pleasantly surprised to see that most stores now had some type of container planting or their hell strip was planted. Each one looked similar so maybe the same company did each store front. It's really nice to see and makes me feel good to finally see this in my neighborhood. Although this is the norm in suburbia and in Center City many neighborhoods have not come on board.

There were so many beautiful things I would have liked to photograph but I found you can't just take pictures of what you want. Many things are private property. Hopefully I will get to share some pictures in the future of some of the old Victorian homes and how pretty plants have been added to porches and sidewalks. For today I chose to be careful especially if someone was walking or outside. I can feel fall in the air and really look forward to walking more when the weather starts to get cooler. My plan, get up earlier so I can get out and back before the heat. Rain is fore casted the next 2 days and after that temps in the low 80's with low humidity. This should make for great walking.

This picture and the next 2 were taken last October. Didn't see a need to repeat them. The outside of the buildings look the same.

Look at the apples on the ground. I wonder why they were not picked? I tried to get a better picture but had to stop when I realized that children were out there for summer camp.

The wisteria is still doing well although I have lived in this neighborhood for years and have never seen it bloom.

Grumblethorpe's Planter

A sidewalk view of the old church I took a picture of last October.

On to the neighborhood community garden.

Hollyhock

Sedum and obedient plant.

Obedient plant. Would like to start some of this from seed next season.

Fig tree. Didn't see any figs.

I think these are flowers from the hollyhocks. Really pretty.

Yarrow

Daisy

Holly hocks, zinnias, daisies, iris, and looks like some type of onion.

I think this is phlox.

Theses zinnias were at Grumblethorpe. I didn't see a lot of zinnias this summer. My sister normally has a flower bed full but this summer the sunflower seeds took over her flower bed and the zinnias didn't come up. The community garden had a huge bed of them last year but this year very few.

Black Eyed Susan's and  looks like Elephant Kale

Lots of Tomatoes

Zinnia and Small Coneflower

Is it a scallion or something in the onion family?

The House Plants

With the approach of fall I decided to repot some house plants.  I took several tiny plants from my mother's kitchen window in May, small but in health. They haven't done well since they have been at my house and look near dead. Because they were hers and she took care of them, I would love them to live. Her larger plants are still at home and doing well with watering. There are several large amaryllis that I plan to repot and bring to my house this fall. Hopefully they'll bloom. The leaves are large and green. I'm not sure what to do with them at this point. I guess I should start doing some research on how to get them to bloom again. 

My attention to anything since she's passed has been limited. Having the summer off has really helped. Some day are good days and so aren't.  It's nice to stay up as late as I want and wake up in the morning when I get ready. That's not usually late. Getting up when the air is still a little cool outside and sitting on my porch and reading, listening to the birds sing, and having coffee is nice. A bag of potting soil purchased had gnats inside when opened. How horrible. What do you do? I decided to bake the soil in the oven as I do for seedlings to kill any gnats or larva. I took the soil to the yard and put as much in a foil pan as it could hold and covered it tightly with foil. Looks like this will need to be done to all soil I purchase in the future. Forgot to moisten the soil but it came out looking good and the texture felt normal when finished. 

I had compassion for the tomatoes in the yard. From the window they looked bad and wilted as they do every afternoon. I finally went into the yard to water them. They are thirsty vegetables. Why do I plant veggies when I don't like to water them? The cherry tomatoes taste really good but the leaves look poor. They're loaded with tomatoes. I may pull them when I take the tomatoes off. We'll see.

Poor clivia miniatra. Will repot again and put in a clay pot for some support. The tiny plastic pot is no support for the weight of the plant.

No roots yet. Never spend over thirty five dollars on a plant that you have not had success with. Purchased at the Philadelphia Flower Show last March. It didn't look good after blooming so I lifted it from the soil and was shocked to see it had no roots. I removed the browned leaves today before repotting again for the second time. It looks healthy. Don't know how it's living without roots. It's in the amaryllis family and even amaryllis have roots.

Looking much better.

Inserted in a plastic zip lock bag to hopefully keep in moisture and help it root. If I put it in the bag months ago it may have roots by now.

I didn't replant the cactus on the right it is well and growing. That little nick knack was my mother's. It sat in her window with the small plants.

The soil was real dry but other wise it looked okay. I pulled off browned or dying leaves and repotted it deeper since it had a long stalk but no leaves lower than the top. Lets see how it does. My mother kept it in her kitchen window and it thrived. I may move it to my living room table under the light. I would have thought that direct sun in the window should have killed it but it didn't. It didn't do well in my kitchen window.

Maybe they're done for, but I will try. I didn't repot the succulent. I had a plant in my office at work near death. While on Christmas break the school was closed and the heat turned off. My tropical plant looked near death when I returned. My coworker told me that it needed water because all the leaves were laying down. I told her it was watered and I planned to throw it out. She said no. It's still alive. She said she doesn't throw out any plant but nurses it back to health. That's the opposite of me. Normally I would throw these out.

Neon philodendron. It's healthy just needs fresh soil. The soil in the pot looks depleted of nutrients and hard even with watering. She will have to wait until more soil is baked.

My mother was rooting this. In spite of the old leaves it has new growth. I potted it up and put inside a clear sealed plastic bag to hopefully help it establish good roots. There is hope. It was green and unblemished when it came to my house.

Alcohol and cotton balls to wipe off pruner between use. The dish garden on the left will have to wait for another day. These type of groupings of plants are pretty but will die if plants with similar requirements are not together. The plants will usually outgrow the container. Two died immediately. I want to pull up their roots and I may actually put 2 more in. I like punishment don't I. Will be upset if they don't live.

Split leaf philodendron root bound in too small of a pot.

Loosened the roots so it has a chance to grow.

My camera can't capture how huge the elephant ear has grown.

It actually has another new leaf.

The squirrels didn't come back after digging up the first set of plants. It's growing nicely.

I have several cucumbers. The blurry picture was not retaken, mosquitoes. 

The leaves are huge on the cucumber plants and because I didn't stalk them they are growing everywhere. I need to come out and clean dead leaves from them and the tomatoes but not today. I made the mistake to go out and water them in the evening still light out though. The mosquitoes attacked me badly so I took a few pictures and went inside.

Nice to see that black eyed Susan lived and might return next year and multiply.

Lazy, Hazy, Days of Summer-Out Front

It's hard to believe summer is almost over, and fall my favorite season is approaching. As for me, these are the lazy hazy days of summer as I haven't felt motivated to do much on my list of things to do while off this summer. Loosing mom changed everything. Outside the plants are thriving with periodic watering from mother nature. Pollinators love the flowers, with prolific visits from bumblebees, praying mantis, grass hoppers, and all type of flying and crawling insects. Several mornings ago I opened the door to the porch. Horror gripped me. On the porch window was the largest grasshopper I have ever seen. 

Didn't he know that he was supposed to be outside not inside? With no help from my visiting nephew who is also afraid of insects, and lots of squealing screams from me as I tried to get it to leave the porch with a broom, the grasshopper flew off the porch. My neighbors had to think I had lost it. If that grasshopper had flew on me, I would have died. He could eat a lot of leaves and that's how he probably got on my porch drawn by the containers on the step and eventually hopped onto the porch to see what edible delectable plants were there to munch on. I try not to kill certain insects.

I like the variegated canna.

All in bloom again after judging from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Would have been nice if they bloomed 2 weeks ago.

Finally some action on the trellis.