I have a problem with the end of summer: It's too long. It stretches right on into winter, and then without any warning, BRRRR!!! it's cold and snowy! Why can't the summer season last at least until spring? I'm not saying that we couldn't have a rest period of no gardening; I'm most surely ready for a rest from gardening come September. But to have to suffer through almost six months of freezing weather before anything green is seen again is absolute torture.
What sustains me from November through March? Houseplants. I can't remember a time when I didn't have at least three or four pots of something or other. And that's the thing with my houseplant gardening - sometimes I don't know what the something or other is, and I don't really care. It's green and that's all that matters to me.
I do know what a few of my favorites are, and I might suggest that you find a few favorites too. It gets stuffy in my house during winter, and houseplants do a great job of filtering the air. My rubber tree (Ficus elastica) rates high as one of the best air filtering houseplants. It's also one of the easiest to care for, I have mine in a large diameter (15" inside diameter) plastic pot, and when it's outside it sits on the back porch in a corner, out of direct sunlight. Before I bring it in, I set it out in the yard, hose it down with a gentle spray, let it dry, bring it in and set in a corner of the living room out of direct sunlight, but next to a large south-facing window. I've had it over 20 years and to me it's an old rubbery friend that helps me pull through these god-awful northeast winters.
A word of caution about watering houseplants: don't overdo it. I let mine get almost dry before watering. Use the finger test to see when it's time to water: stick your finger into the potting soil about an inch or two, if soil sticks to your finger when you pull it out, don't water.
You know what? I'm kinda tired of hearin about "outdoor rooms" in the garden. When I'm outside I want to feel like I'm outside, and when I'm inside I want to feel like I'm inside. I think the term "outdoor living space" has outworn its usefulness.
I don't know, it just seems odd that you'd want "hallways" in your garden instead of grassy paths leading from one flowerbed to the next. I've seen garden "rooms" with free-standing glass windows and have a hard time understanding the concept of looking outside while standing outside.
I never really got into the "outdoor room" craze that a lot of landscape designers and home gardeners had, and still have. Some of these "rooms" don't look like a garden at all, what's the point? I mean there's
real furniture in some of these "rooms."
But I reckon since we're all unique we each have our own idiosyncrasies. Several years ago I saw a garden down in Louisiana (or was it Mississippi?) that featured a tree with bicycles hangin from it. Makes you wonder about some folks don't it?
The dog days of summer take their name from the ancients who used to gaze at the stars in the night sky during summer, connecting the "dots" to form shapes of animals and highly regarded entities. A few of these images (i.e., constellations) inlcude a bull -Taurus, bears - Ursa Major and Minor, and dogs - Canis Major and Minor.
One of the brightest stars in the night sky during summer is located within the constellation Canis Major (Great Dog). It was so bright back in the day that Romans thought it provided some of the earth's heat. We can thank that famous ancient astronomer Ptolemy for giving us the first 48 of the modern day 88 constellations, Ptolemy included the Great Dog in his intitial discoveries of the constellations during the 2nd century.
Early July through early August is often used as the time frame for the dog days of summer - a period of hazy, hot, and humid weather. But does the Great Dog actually provide extra heat during those dog days? It is certain that Canis Major rises and sets with the sun in summertime, the same as it did back when Ptolemy was connecting all those dots. However, the “precession of the equinoxes” (a gradual drifting of the constellations over time) means that the constellations aren't situated in exactly the same spot as they were in ancient Rome.
Of course we now know that it's the tilt of the earth's axis that brings the added heat during that stretch of time known as the dog days of summer. But if you want to give this dog its day I suppose several of them during the summer gardening season will do just fine!
