Bogturtle's Garden- July 1-15, 2025

 

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Crocosmia 'Diablo'. Becoming quite an expert at what plants deer will leave alone, at least here. And, of course, a starving deer would eat anything it could. Full time concern whether the plants have been sprayed, and now we have recurrent rains that wash it off. Crocosmia seems not a choice of deer, even inexperienced fawns. 

A local market sells veggies and fruit at a reasonable price, in quantities not practical to me, and from all over the World. All Nationalities are shopping there and finding familiar food I never saw before. This is a Daicon Radish the Japanese grow, and I think its the first time I tried to grow it, myself. They probably eat the greens, also. I am surprised how well it grew. My vegetable garden, with too much shade, is not great. I probably could have bought this cheaper than it cost to grow, and definitely with much less labor. And with less strange satisfaction. 

Interesting to see the occasional, all summer long, blooms from plants that, typically, have one main flush of flowering. This is the fragrant bloom cluster of the Honeysuckle Lonicera periclymenum'G.S.Thomas'.

Crocosmia 'Lucifer' in another location. In among the perennials in the main garden just in front of where we park. Between the parking and the pool.

Many a Buddlea has been introduced here, over the years. Extremely easy and adaptable shrubs. Yet only this, Buddlea 'Honeycomb' is still here. 

The bottlebrush Buckeye, Aesculus parviflora. The bottlebrushes, or candles are hardly small, as 'parva' implies. The namer must have been referring to each individual bloom of the many on each candle. Predictably, the candles are not all neatly upright, and we had extremely heavy rain, last night. Still, quite a show. I didn't see a distinction, I may have seen in the past, between two races, an earlier and later blooming clone of this species. And a good many young are sprouting, as these individual plants also physically spread into a colony. The buckeyes are poisonous. At least to people.

The Chaste Tree, Vitex negundo, perhaps, of the named sort 'Shoal Creek' is in full bloom. I have no idea if it smells good or bad. Once again, the flowers are not grayish, but a fine, bright lavendar blue-purple. I had put the camera on 'party' setting, to bring out bright color. May try the usual 'flower' setting, to see if results are more true to life in color. 

Deer all over. Two fawns jumped into the woods a few hours ago. Beautiful, but really pests. As I said before, I will have to wait until next year for some flowers to bloom, that bloom once a year. The Deer liked the buds. I repeat myself constantly, and I say NJ does not have the reputation one would suppose, if you lived here for a while. Really wild acres here.