When I arrived home from the airport around mid-night, the first thing I did was examining my garden! :) Of course, I really could not see things clearly in the dark, but overall I knew the garden looked fine in my absence. After a good night sleep, I headed back to the garden again the next morning. All I can say is my garden just gone wild!
All ornamental sweet potato vines grew so much that extended to the ground beyond the container or the bed border, even I trimmed them to almost the base before I left!
I have love and hate relationship with these sweet potato vines since they do add very nice color and textures into the garden, and very good to fill the blank space too, but meanwhile they sometimes could get out of control. However, they are very easy to trim, so I think I still love them more than hate :)
The dwarf Allamanda just had several buds before I left, now they are in full blooming. Obviously I planted the lantana bush next to the allamanda too close (no surprise to this gardener) that lantana is not growing very well.
This devil's trumpet (Datura) was just two feet tall before I left, now it doubled the height, and already had about five blooms. Too bad those blooms are already fading, but I see several more buds there, so I guess I will not miss the beauty when they are in their glory peak. I started the devil's trumpet early this spring from the seed, and once it sprouts, it just took off so fast like weeds! (Speak of weeds, do I need to mention how many weeds I found in my flowerbeds?)
Here is the zinnia that my younger son gave to me, which I showed to you before I left. Now it is really thriving. I love the color, and especially because it is coming from my boy!
This is another type of zinnia that came from self-sown seedling of the last year plant. This type has larger size of the flower but not as prolific as the small type.
The marigolds also spreaded so wide that almost took over my Agaves/Bulbines flower bed. The below picture is just one marigold, which will give you an idea how big this plant could grow, and I planted five of them in that small flower bed! I need to do lots of trimming to recover the agaves and bulbines hidden under them.
Rudbeckia 'Tiger Eye Gold' is still growing nicely, although some dead-heading is needed...
Several more flower clusters showed up on my Agapanthus africanus...
I do have several casualties though...
Two pineapple plants that I started from store-bought pineapples last year died from crown rotting. I think the water coming from my daily sprinkle system in addition to the rain was just too much for them. Well, it is okay for me since I always can buy more pineapples and plant the heads again. For some reason, pineapple is always so easy to rot, these are the forth and fifth pineapples died on rotting even long after they were established.
My only daylily also died (sobbing...). Actually it was not looking good even before I left. The leaves turned brown, but now the leaves are completely gone. I am not sure if it is normal summer dormancy, or it is real dead? Anybody can tell me?
I have been doing lots of trimming and weeding in my garden these three days, and now the garden looks back into the order, with some empty space left. I also have been to the garden center twice, and bought six new plants already! ( I will show you later.) Since I could not buy any plants in China (it is illegal to bring plants oversea), I just could not wait any longer to visit the garden center! Then of course, I won't come home empty-handed :)
I am glad that now I am back to my garden. It just felt so good when walking around my own garden even I have visited so many beautiful places in China. Nothing can be compared to my own garden. I know that you all understand this statement, don't you?
Big "Thank you" to my friends who hand-watered my plants that sprinkle system can not reach or the sprinkle turns out not sufficient!
Thanks for all the comments that you made to my three auto-scheduled posts during my vacation!
I have taken lots of pictures in China, and will make several posts when I get my life back to the normal.
Have a great weekend!
