Sunday, May 20, 2007

New Template and More Plant Shame

As you may have noticed, I tweaked my template. I'm not sure if I like the background color yet, but I think that the title/header turned out great - featuring a picture of my very own "Princess Irene" tulips. Love them!

And here is another of my favorite tulips - "Blue Parrot". I know, they don't look like parrot tulips since they are only slightly frilly; but that is what I like about them. They are one of the most feminine looking tulips I have ever seen. Very delicate looking, yet TOUGH! They are growing in mostly shade under two pine trees - and still blooming every year!


The oak tree that I moved last Sunday is still doing well. I am not calling it a success yet, but I am less worried about it now. I still have not identified it. Here is a picture of the bark (isn't it cool?) and the leaves. Does anyone know what it is? My best guess is a burr oak, but I can't find any pictures of the juvenile leaves and bark.

And now on to the shame...

I killed the delphinium that the nursery guy gave me. I feel awful. It was in a small pot and dried out overnight. I really should have re-potted it as soon as I got it home. I almost cried. What could I do but vow to have the best damn looking delphinium bed this year?

SO, I went to another nursery today with the specific purpose of buying delphinium. I left without any since their stock looked a little iffy, but did manage to purchase 7 clematis!! And they weren't cheap - but I had to have them. They had "Blue Ravine". My early readers may remember the pictures that I posted of my "Blue Ravine" clematis - simply STUNNING! But I killed it last year. Noticing a pattern here? I was trying to straighten what it was climbing and *snap!*

I didn't get ALL Blue Ravine. My gazebo has 6 legs and I want to plant a clematis next to each one so my gazebo will be covered in clematis. I didn't want it all covered in one color though - that would just be overwhelming. I chose another clematis to alternate: Comtesse de Bouchard. The Blue Ravine is a repeat bloomer, blooming May-June and then again in August. Comtesse blooms June-September. I think this will be perfect since they will most likely only bloom together in August. Comtesse's selling point, besides the blooming time, was that the vine takes on the look of shiny copper wire as it ages - just beautiful!

So six legs, seven clematis. What was the seventh clematis?
Well, we fell in love with this one and just had to have it:

It is "Betty Corning". We loved the way that it resembled a trumpet lily. The foliage is very fine and delicate looking which makes this a very feminine/lacy looking plant. We really don't have a clue where we will put it either. *Sigh* I have to quit going to nurseries.

13 comments:

Wondering Woman said...

That definitely looks like a burr oak.

Sylvana said...

Wondering Woman, welcome to my blog! And thanks! I was really hoping it was a burr oak. There is a yard on my way to the grocery store that is full of very old burr oaks and I just love them!

Diana LaMarre said...

Your new header looks great.

A gazebo covered in clematis sounds wonderful. I've tried to get clematis to grow up my arbor, but I've only gotten one to last two years. (It was Comtesse de Bouchard). I finally gave up because as you said, they are not cheap.

I hope you have better luck.

Unknown said...

Sylvana, your new layout looks great! I love those tulips in the header.

The garden is looking good, too. Those tulips are so beautiful that it's hard to believe they're as tough as you say. :) (Not that I don't believe you, but you know what I mean!)

kris said...

Hi - I came over from Perennial Passion. You have a great blog! And you sound a lot like me - last year at the Arboretum sale, I bought 8 roses - it took me all summer to finally get them all planted - hello, I don't have that much sun!!! Your tulips are great - and I like the header on your blog. I have clematis planted around my gazebo too - I love it. Think one I have is Comtesse de Bouchard even. I'll be back...

Anonymous said...

Your garden is lovely, I can see you have been working very hard.

OldRoses said...

I love the idea of a clematis covered gazebo!

Sylvana said...

Zoey, I hope they grow well too. It sure will beat trying to remember to plant morning glories every year. The only clematis tip that I know is that they like cool "feet", so you should grow something to shade the base.

BlackSwamp Girl, it was hard for me to believe too. I was actually considering moving them this year to get them out of the shade, but then I saw how great they were still doing.

Kris, welcome to my blog and thanks for letting me know how you found me! I have probably lost enough plants just from not finding them a home in time to make a whole new garden!

Becky, welcome to my blog! Thanks, I love my work ;)

OldRoses, well, we'll see how that works out. I still have to clear the gazebo area, level and set the feet (something I didn't do since we threw the gazebo up at the last minute before my graduation party), and prepare the planting area for the clematis. I hope they don't go the way of the delphinium!

Haddock said...

The new header looks great and show does the colour. I'm a bit partial to the colour green :)

Sylvana said...

Haddock, thanks. I'm partial to green too.

LostRoses said...

A gazebo covered in clematis, heavenly! I like your new template. I've been playing with mine but can't get the header picture right. It's either way too big or too tiny (as it is now). How did you do yours?

Sylvana said...

Lost Roses, I changed the margins and padding in the HTML. If you are not really familiar with HTML, it's hard to do. I just kept playing around with different margins and padding to see what worked. I took a look at your HTML and you will most likely want to mess around with the
"#header-inner" and "#header h1" sections. Make a copy of your template and save to NotePad before you start doing anything with your template - you can use this as a replacement if things go really wrong. Make one change at a time and then preview to see what change was made. If it didn't do what you wanted it to, put that measurement back to the way it was and try another one.
I hope that helps. It took me a awhile to do mine.

LostRoses said...

Sylvana, I figured since it looked so good it may be hard to do! Thanks for the help, I'll try to figure it out some evening when I have a lot of patience. Considering how easy it is to do most of the blog stuff, you'd think they would have made that easy too.