The West Chicago Garden Club

As summer is winding down and the coneflowers, daisies and day lilies are fading, we’ve been dead heading, but leaving some seed heads for the birds.  Many flowers are still brightly blooming including sweet pea, moon flowers, black-eyed susan, caryopteris and sunflowers.  The hosta Royal Standard, planted last year, produced numerous white blossoms that are incredibly fragrant.

Double False Sunflower

Double false sunflower (Heliopis hilianthoides ‘Asahi’) a mid-sized,  bushy clump of dark green leaves and golden yellow fully double daisy flowers; height 24–36 inches; soil – moist/well drained; blooms July, Aug, Sept.

Check out this sunny specimen located between the tool shed and the pond.

Monarch Butterfly

This Monarch was spotted mid-August in the garden.  Did you know in their larval stage, monarch caterpillars feed almost exclusively on milkweed and as adults get nutrients from the nectar of flowers? Monarchs that live east of the Rocky Mountains will migrate to Mexico while monarchs that live west of the Rockies migrate to southern California.  The number of monarchs has significantly declined, so please help protect these beautiful little creatures and plant milkweed in your gardens.

Weeding

Angie’s philosophy of weeding is “when in doubt, toss it out”.  Billie prescribes to the rule of “use your soil knife to dig out the root”.  Kerry is learning not to micro-manage weeds, but to be ruthless – dig them out!  Tom’s favorite gardening tool is a sharp hoe that works well for weeds with very shallow roots. The best time to remove weeds is when the soil is damp and moist.

Lively Conversation

As we tend the Kruse garden, conversation goes in all directions or down many paths.  Pulling pig weed led to recalling a TV episode of Julia Child guiding a pig through the woods searching for morel mushrooms.  Then, Tom was reminded of the phrase “even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while”. That led to the derivation of curious expressions.  Join us; not only is weeding fun, but the chatter is too.

A Rose is a Rose is a Rosa

A frequent debate among gardeners is whether we should call plants by their common name or their botanical names.  A plant’s botanical name is its only positive identification.  Master gardeners use the botanical names or what some refer to as real names.  Have at it…it’s fun to learn new languages, especially the language of flowers.

-Kerry, Billie, Angie and Tom