Fall Color 2

I only agreed to children for the cheap labor.

Don't laugh....in this house the first settlers had 12 kids for just that reason, and then the second owners had 11. The first section of this house was pretty small and the woods were totally untamed.. really impressive. Lydia (first wife here) had a child every other year for 25 years......hard to fathom!!!

What will you pay me not to forward this dialogue to the authorities?? ....without the context, of course!

My Mom is the last of 15 kids! My grandmother actually had 18 pregnancies but three were miscarriages. Cannot even imagine that!

Groan!! I can't even imagine having 15 kids!!! Your family gatherings must be held at the Garden!!

My Dad was one of 7 but only 3 lived. His younger brother had 13 kids and he had 9, 7live births....me being the youngest. When I was little, it was nothing for 21 of us to be sitting down to Sunday dinner together. It was wonderful! (grin)

I have a dining room table that was custom made by DSIL to hold 14 comfortably, and 18 with a little effort. It gets used daily by the 'core family' of seven, but every other weekend there are 14 to 18 around it! It's a tradition we began years ago ~ family dinner night!!

I am the oldest of six kids myself, so I remember what sharing is all about!! (That's when you grab what YOU want first and then encourage the others to help themselves. Right?)

Reminds me of my first husband's family - his grandmother had 18 children!!! Guessing there wasn't much else to do living in "potato country" (northern Maine) :))

These photos are all superb. Beautiful colors on your trees and shrubs.
You NEers are SO lucky to have all that natural beauty to enjoy.

Stupid question here...from a West Coast city dweller: Why do they call it a milpond?

Because there was a nearby watermill powered by the moving water.

Thanks, Victor. You say there "was" a watermill there...I assume it's no longer a working one?

Were it not for Liquidambar trees, some Crepe Myrtles and a few ashes, we don't get much fall color here...unless you want to consider brown dried up palm fronds "fall color" !

That's correct, Victor.
I'll try and get outside and take a photo of the mill's foundation.

If you've never seen the PBS episode of Odyssey called 'Ben's Mill', please try to rent it or find it. It's about one of the last operating mills in NE and it's simply amazing what this guy was able to do.

Here's a photo of the mill foundation. In the foreground is now all scrub brush. That's where the original outlet from the lake ran from, so that there was water power to turn the wheel.

The big white house in the background is where I live. It was originally built in the late 1700s to house the millworkers, hence the name "Mill House", which us what it is still known by, like a local landmark.

Yes, we have ghosts!!

Cool - start a ghost story thread!

Today was a misty morning and I got this shot of the multiflora berries and the early fall colors around our pond.

Great shot bebop!

Lovely, Bebop!! You have a great eye for photography! This should be entered in the DG photography contest!!

JasperDale - Welcome to the NE forum..... here there really are no stupid questions....that's what makes it a nice stop on the DG road! Yours was a good question. The only reason I knew the answer was because we also have the remains of an old waterwheel from one of the first mills in town in the 1700s a few steps from our house. My DH remembers the waterwheel still standing when he was a child. The mill foundation fascinates me. The stone work is beautifully done.

Candyce - I love the photo of your foundation and your house......it looks so interesting! We have good ghosts in our house too. I think happy people lived here.

Welcome, good buddy, JD! You're brown palm leaves do not qualify for fall color in the glorious Northeast - sorry! Your gardens, however, qualify as Paradise.

JasperDale - please post some pics of your gardens........Pirl's a good reference that we all listen to!! Thanks!

DonnieBrook...pirl is being very kind, but my garden (tiny as it is) doesn't hold a candle to hers or of what I see pictured from the East Coasters. It's far from paradise, but with her help and the DL's and JI's she's sent me, I'm getting there little by little...(i can only hope ! )

You guys have all the good perennials we can't grow here, but I am rapidly becoming a zone pusher !

I'm an abyssmal failure at trying to post pictures...but I'm getting closer to configuring my program to let me do it. (Don't hold your breath ! ) I know zilch about computers.

We don't have very many "old" features like the millpond featured above. Old houses and apartment bldgs., yes...and old business bldgs. and churches. The beach here is basically a pond...there is no wave action due to a breakwater they built and off shore oil drilling rigs.
(Which they have, thankfully, "dressed up" and landscaped and are lit up at night.)

Palm tress can get pretty boring after a while.

Sounds to me like you're being very modest, JD!

He is!

My garden is very small...only 2500 sq. ft. It would fit in pirl's vegetable plot ! The lots here are miniscule to the properties you all have back there...so we are greatly limited to what we can do with our spaces. The outlying areas have bigger properties so they can do a lot more with them.

We have to squeeze in as many things as we can in a small place...which is extremely challenging, to say the least. Real estate prices here are completely insane. You should see what you get for a $300,000.00 "fixer upper'. It's ridiculous.

I live "vicariously" through pirl's gardens !

He's always helping me and my gardens would never be as nice without JD and his advice on Delphiniums, tropicals and our mutual fondness for many perennials. Here's the daylily I named for him:

That's lovely, Pirl!

Jasper, we spend our winters in zone 10 in Florida, and I will be interested in hearing what you include in your garden. We have bouganvillea, bottle brush trees and citrus so far, and I do lots of vegetables in containers, but I will be adding some more plantings down there this winter. Do you have gumbo limbo trees? We started some from limb cuttings before we left in April, so I am anxious to see how they are doing. Because we aren't there for the summer months, we have to be careful to limit what we plant somewhat, but I love suggestions for that zone. I'd especially like to know of any daylilies that do ok in Zone 10. Know any?? Thanks!

I just hope it does as well here as it does 3000 miles away ! It sure looks beautiful !

I think the last two posts crossed.

Ditto - but I figured out what Jasper meant.......I want to know if that beauty of yours, Arlene, will grow in my southern garden!!!!!!!

I wouldn't have the slightest clue. The long time friend who lived in Florida didn't garden so I've sent others to the Flagler Beach and Daytona areas but none south of there.

DonnieBrook...is there a botanical name for the gumbo limbo trees? I'm not familiar with the name. Is it a type of Eucalyptus?

Florida is much more tropical (or so I assume) than we are in this Zone 10a...but I think we get pretty much the same(?) amount of humidity...especially recently...or darn close to it.

As far as DL's go, I'm very much a "newbie" to them. Until I joined DG and met pirl, I never knew they came in any colors but orange and yellow...as those 2 are very common here. I had the token "Orange King" and "Lemon Yellow" which are very common evergreen varieties, and rebloomers here. They're nice and all, but there are so many others that are better ! They do bloom for a long period of time...probably 9 months out of the year...at least here they do.

"Russian Rhapsody" is a very nice tall, (mine get about 36") deep purple one with a yellow eye which grows extremely vigorously here and is a prolific rebloomer. It would probably do equally as well in Florida.

I got infatuated with the pink flowering ones, (still am) as I had never seen one before, except in pictures. Pirl was kind enough to send me some fans of one called Becky Lynn (you probably know it) and it is BEAUTIFUL. It bloomed 8 huge scapes within the first year she sent it to me. It was all the rage when I had my place on a garden tour last May. Numerous people commented they had never seen a pink DL before. I guard that plant with my life !

Last November I ordered several DL's from a grower here in Calif. named Amador Flower Farms. They are still quite small, but they have all bloomed at least once and seem to do well in this zone. Little Monica is a nice pink one. I am very pleased with the ones I got from them.

I only have 34 DL's, so it's a miniscule collection to what the avid DL gardeners here on DG have.

Due to my limited space, I formerly stuck to the evergreen DL's...but pirl has introduced me to a whole new "world" of the dormant ones...which I have been able to integrate into my garden.

I'm also heavy into the red ones now, too.

I'm not real "into" tropicals, because that's what I grew up with and were very commonplace around here...not that there's anything wrong with them...I just wanted some thing different.

I like the various Phormiums...they do extremely well here.

Also have a "rare" (for here) weeping pink bottlebrush.

When and if I ever get the photo posting thing figured out, I'll post pictures.

Sorry this is so long !

What would happen if I took one of my DLs from here that just finished blooming, and planted it down there? Would it have its bloom cycles all screwed up? It may not make it through the hot summer. Anyone have any thoughts on that??

Jasper - your response is very exciting for me........it sounds like I may just be able to put in some DLs. I, too, love the pinks and purples, and it would be so nice to have a longer bloom period there. What the heck, you've convinced me to give it a try! Thanks!

By the way, my bottlebrush trees are also the weeping variety, but the blooms are red and they attract lots of birds. Here's a shot of one of them we planted last year.

Thanks for your informative response!! I'll keep you posted on how it goes this winter!

I'm probably the last person to give DL advice...but I think there are some regular posters from Fla. in the DL forum who could advise you better than I can. !

Thank you, Jasper!

Here's a little color from my yard today.

Very nice Celeste. The shrooms are plentiful, aren't they?

Really seems to be alot of them the last week or so.

Beautiful, Celeste.
I love looking at your photos.

Celeste - your collage is very artistic! Unusual combination that looks very nice together! I panicked on Saturday when Molly ate a mushroom in the yard near my garden before I could stop her. Thankfully, she didn't get sick from it. I know that some can be deadly and I don't them well enough to tell the difference. She has never done that before, so it took me completely off guard.

Oh my, Louise. I'm glad that Molly is OK. What a fright she must have given you.