Onion and Garlic Chives

Today I made a quick run to Lowe's to see what they had on sale in the garden center. This time of year is perfect for scoring loads of deals on perennials. They may not look their best but come next year you will be happy you only paid a fraction of the full price.

I have both onion chives and garlic chives planted in my garden. The onion chives are doing great and are multiplying. The garlic chives on the other hand seem to be slow growers. I've been looking for three more plants to fill in but garlic chives are harder to come by. Today was my lucky day. I was able to get three very healthy plants to fill in my garlic chive plot.

Garlic chives have a flatter leaf and a white blossom which blooms later in the year.

Garlic Chive

Onion chives on the other hand have leaves that are tubular and have a light purple or pinkish flower in the spring.

Onion Chive

Onion Chive Blossom

I also bought several dark burgundy leaf sedum to plant between the Autumn Joy that I planted earlier in the year.

I also scored two Pink Double Delight cone flowers. They rang up $14.95 each. Egads! They were pretty ragged looking so I asked if they were on sale. The cashier called over some one who had the authority to verify prices. She took one look at them and said "ring them up at 4 each." Now that is more like it.

It kind of reminds me of a cross between a pincushion flower and a cone flower. Now I just need to find a place to plant them.

There's Fungus Among Us

Mr. Frost was trimming his large magnolia tree and cut off a limb that had shelf or bracket fungus on it.This shelf bracket fungus was bigger than my hand.We also had shelf fungus growing on a log we were saving. Earlier this summer while my husband was cutting up the dead trees we had cut down he came across a limb that had been hollowed out by a bird (probably woodpecker).Look at how smooth the bird was able to carve out the limb. Amazing.

Miniature Hostas

I couldn't resist the urge to snap a few photos of my miniature hostas. Some were in bloom but all were cute as a button. I placed a quarter in the photos so that you could better gauge the size of these miniature plants.

This is my newest miniature hosta acquisition....Teeny Weeny. The quarter is that round white disk in the bottom right corner.
This one is called Dragon Tails. This plant is 3 years old and was started with a single eye.Rock Princess....rocks...don't you think?The next two photos are of unusual hostas that are in my garden. The first photo is Praying Hands, a small upright hosta.
The next one is Fire Island, a small yellow hosta with red stems.Here's an up close photo of the stems. From far away it appears that the stems are solid red but up close you notice the stems are covered with red dots.
I have no ideas why this particular hosta has holes in the leaves. None of my other hostas have this affliction.

Butterflies and Tomatoes

In between, running off trespassers and spectators from the Buick Open urinating in my bushes, we were able to enjoy one male Tiger Swallowtail and three Monarch butterflies.The Tiger Swallowtail was easy to photograph. I stood there for at least 15 minutes as he went from flower to flower. The Monarch butterflies were more skittish but at one time three of them were flying around my head.

If you are interested in Monarch butterflies visit the Monarch Watch site. This site is loaded with all sorts of interesting Monarch info.

Any day now we will have more tomatoes than we can eat. But today we finally got a small taste of what is to come.
The Brown Berry heirloom tomato was listed as a cherry tomato but I think it is too big to be classified as a cherry but it is also too small for a small tomato. When you slice it, it reminds me of a Black Russian style tomato kind of dark green in the center. Taste was so so.

Lordy lordy.....I just noticed I spelled heirloom incorrectly on the paper plate. How embarrassing. I would take another photo but we ate the tomatoes. Sorry my paper plate didn't have spell check.