I love the intense colors of the morning glory assortment outside my office.
Morning Glory Color
Category: Plants
Purple Cayenne Peppers
I love the deep purple hue of these cayenne peppers, still abundant as the autumn harvest from my garden draws to a close.
Persicaria
This plant blew into the garden from somewhere a few years ago and is now well established. It appears to be a member of the Persicaria family, probably P. maculosa, “Lady’s Thumb,” a member of the knotweed family.
Some sources report that P. maculosa produces a yellow/green dye (with an alum mordant), although one source says red/brown.
Mixed Tomato Harvest
Harvested a bunch of tomatoes off my windowsill planters.
Evening Primrose
Cheery yellow bloom.
Silver Ragwort Returns
I had initially thought that silver ragwort (aka “Dusty Miller”) was an annual, but it turns out to be winter hardy, and several of the ones I planted last year survived our gentle winter and have continued to provide an unusual bit of contrast in the garden this season.
Daffodil Invitation for Neighboring Buildings
Nominally, anyone can perform tree-bed care activities — such as cleaning, cultivating, watering, and planting — on any sidewalk in New York City.
However, it seems to be generally accepted etiquette that the people who live in a building have “first dibs” on the adjacent tree beds, and thus I am loathe to do much digging unless it’s clear that the people who live or work in that stretch have no interest in doing so.
In hopes of mustering some buy-in from my neighbors, I’ve posted letters in a couple of nearby building, inviting them to join me in planting daffodil bulbs in their tree beds.
Daffodil Bulb Pickup
I was very pleased to be able to pick up a large supply of free daffodil bulbs today for planting in the garden and around the neighborhood. They were provided by New Yorkers for Parks as part of the NYC Daffodil Project.
Their distribution site was in Union Square, where bags were set out for people who had registered online. I had missed the registration cut-off date and was relegated to the wait-list line for leftovers — but thankfully, this year they had expanded their program and had many thousands of extra bulbs, so I was able to get as many as I could carry.
Each of their shipping crates was estimated to hold about 550 bulbs, and conveniently fit into one of the large reusable grocery bags I had brought with me. After filling my jumbo shopping cart with three crates’ worth — a hundred pounds of bulbs — I bumped them down the stairs to the Q train and headed back uptown.
Now it’s time to tackle the next project — planting them all!
Signs of Fall
The first indications of autumn are cropping up in the garden, as the grapevine starts to show some fall color.
