Saturdays in the Greenhouse

The Flower House

The Vegetable House

The Cold Frame

The two new greenhouses at Rutgers Gardens went into production this year. Gone are the days of not enough room to work, not enough room on the mist table, not enough room for all the plants. The old, small greenhouse is now used to house tropicals being overwintered while the new, larger greenhouses are used to raise plants for sale or for use in the various beds around the Gardens.

With more space available, we are able to grow more plants. This year’s Spring Flower Fair will be our biggest plant sale ever.

Photos taken with my Blackberry Storm

Spring Surprise

I started out my wintersowing with a lot of containers, a lot of seeds and a lot of good intentions. But life has a way of happening and I always seemed to be too busy to plant containers. I finally threw in the towel during the last week in February. I had planted a grand total of “only” 56 containers.

March came in like a lion and we had snow last week. This week has been much warmer but still too early for anything to have sprouted. Or so I thought. Just for fun, I peeked into the containers. And saw green! I got out my spreadsheet (no one is surprised that I have a spreadsheet, right?) to see what was coming up:

Tall Fernleaf Fiddleneck

Heirloom Poppy

Valerian

German Chamomile

Verbena bonariensis

Wallflower

Stock

Plants For Shade

Hush! Don’t tell my boss, but while I spent six nights at work with no lights and no heat, I kept myself awake by writing about plants that grow in the shade. I published the results on Hub Pages.

Busy as a . . .

Random cosmos picture. I just liked the color.

Chanticleer

I have a new favorite garden. Chanticleer. Not sure what to expect from a “pleasure garden”, it was love at first sight. The gardens were enchanting despite the gray skies and intermittent downpours. If the gardens are this lovely this late in the season, then I can’t wait to see them in the spring and summer.

Photo of the Day
Dahlia in the Cutting Garden

I’m slowly being won over to dahlias. For many years, I’ve resisted them because of the work involved digging them up each fall and replanting them in the spring. The more I see of them on blogs and in person, the more tempted I am to try them.

I just loved this little spring house, photographing it from every conceivable angle and distance. It’s what I’ve been trying to do for years with the ugly shed in my backyard. The advantage here is full sun. My yard has mainly shade.

There were so many gorgeous trees.

Two views of the same garden.

You can see all of my photos of Chanticleer on Flickr.

Hageman Farm

I was invited to participate in an apple pie contest today (more on that in my next post) at the Hageman Farm, a nineteenth century farmhouse preserved by The Meadows Foundation as part of their first annual Fall Festival. While waiting for the judging to begin, I wandered around the site taking photographs.

I could go on and on about the wonderful restoration work that has been done on the farmhouse and is going on in the cow barn, but instead I found myself drawn towards the structures and parts of structures that hadn’t been restored. The hand-hewn beams, stone foundations, old tools and ironwork called out to me as if begging to tell their stories of the people who had built this place and used these buildings and tools.

Those stories weren’t all recorded well today. I am still struggling with my new camera. Each shoot shows more of what it can do and what I need to learn to get more out of it. One story did come out well resulting in the Photo of the Day:

Here are a few more of my favorite shots from today.

This shot would have been in the running for Photo of the Day if it had been straight. At first I was disappointed by the intrusion of the tree branches but after further consideration decided that they added rather than detracted from the picture. I love the geometric patterns and the wonderful blue of the sky. It is a blue that you only see in the autumn.

I’m going to have to start carrying around a cheat sheet of settings for various lighting situations. I know that there is a way to have photographed this with more light in the room and the ugly scenery in the window blurred. I’ve lightened this up a little in Photoshop. It was a gorgeous setting.

Fellow Straw-hatter, “A”, pointed out this grasshopper to me. Too bad that the flower he was resting on wasn’t more attractive. The zinnias in the borders along the walk were incredible. I hope that the caretaker of the property will tell me what mix he uses.

You can see all of my photos of Hageman Farm on Flickr.

September in The Gardens

Look up the word blowzy in the dictionary and you’ll find a picture of the Display Gardens at Rutgers Gardens in September. Still colorful, the formerly neat beds overflow onto the lawn. Once straight stalks are now bent under the weight of a summer’s worth of flowers. There is color everywhere. It’s as if the entire garden is desperately trying to hold off the inexorable march of the season towards the killing frosts of fall.

I brought my camera with me today to try and capture the glory of the gardens in September. After I had done some much needed work on my plot, of course. The cleome, now gone to seed, was removed and the cosmos, calendula and marigolds deadheaded to prolong their flowering for as long as possible. Then it was off to enjoy and record the late season beauty.

First, I give you the Photo of the Day:

Lion's Tail

I love the strong verticals set off by the horizontal leaves. The flowers haven’t opened yet so their vivid orange is just a splash of color amongst the bright green of the foliage.

Backgrounds are a big problem for me at home where my yard is enclosed by an ugly chainlink fence. Because my property is so small, it’s virtually impossible to take photos without the fence making an unwelcome appearance in the rear. When I am shooting in a garden other than my own, I have a bad habit of overlooking the background when concentrating on a particular plant. Today, I made a point of experimenting with various backgrounds.

Not bad, but the background is too busy. Let’s try another angle.

Nope, that looks lopsided. Too busy on one side.

Okay, that’s better although I’ve lost the emphasis on the grass. I do like that background.

Another assignment that I gave myself was to avoid photos like this:

I caught that one in time to be able to take another one without the offending branch:

I missed this one:

But caught this one:

Last week, I checked out a wonderful book on digital photography from my local library, The Betterphoto Guide to Digital Photography. I’ll do a full review of it when my own copy arrives from Amazon.com. While I’m waiting for it, I tried some of the techniques I read about.

Turn around. The author recommends when shooting, turning around to see what’s behind you. In this case, I always shoot this arbor looking in towards the Log Cabin. Today, I tried shooting it looking out from the Log Cabin.

My first photos included the branch as a framing device, another recommendation. I wasn’t happy with the result, so I moved forward to eliminate the branch.

My subsequent photos used the path to draw the viewer into the scene as suggested in the chapters on composition.

On my way in to The Gardens, I saw stands of golden rod along the entry road. On my way out, I spent some time photographing them using different apertures, focal lengths and shutter speeds.

You can see all of the pictures I took today on Flickr.

Garden Visitors

Normally I don’t like the harsh light of the afternoon. It washes out the colors of the flowers that I am trying to photograph. I much prefer the softer light of the morning. Today, I discovered that bright light works really well when photographing critters.

Whenever I do a large shoot, usually at a public garden, but occasionally at home like today when I took over 50 pictures, there is always one photo that really grabs me. It’s not usually the one that I think will be the best when I am shooting. Rather, it’s more likely to be one that I took quickly without thinking too much about it. And it’s not always just one. Sometimes I find two or three really good photos in the batch. I call them the Photo of the Day. And each year, of all those Photos of the Day, there’s always one that stands out. It becomes the iconic photo for that year.

This photo of a Delaware Skipper on my butterfly bush is definitely in the running for best of the best. When I took it, I didn’t think that it was going to be any good. He was near the top of the bush (which is taller than my shed), the light was bright, and the wind was blowing. I liked the way he looked silhouetted against the sky and took a quick shot. It wasn’t until I uploaded it to my computer and did a little cropping that I saw how great this shot is. Somehow I managed to get him with his proboscis fully extended, the light just right and minimal wind. Perfecto!

Here are some visitors to my Eupatorium:

Is that pollen or mites on him?

Too bad it was so breezy. This would have been a candidate for Photo of the Day if it had been in better focus.

This is the first time that I’ve been able to get a picture of a Silver Spotted Skipper with its wings unfolded.

A Blizzard of Flowers

The Doctrine of Signatures says that a plant’s appearance tells you for what it can be used. My observation is that some plants predict the coming season. For instance, the bright colors of crocuses foretells the riot of summer color. The warm yellow of the daffodils foretells the increasing warmth of the sun’s rays. The exquisite perfume of roses foretells the fragrance of summer blossoms. In the fall, the airy white flowers of the Eupatorium look just like the coming snowstorms of winter. At least until the advent of Global Warming.

Eupatorium is a native plant which is just a polite term for weed. Now that I have a healthy clump of it established in my yard, probably courtesy of the birds, it is popping up all over. This is a good thing. Not only do I love flowers that readily self-sow, but its umbrelliferous flowers attract beneficial insects.