Foliage Friday (July 31)

I am working on all of the fun stuff still--a badge, the little function that allows you to include a link to your post in mine, etc.--but the lack of those bells and whistles just doesn't seem like a good reason to let Foliage Friday fall by the wayside!

I am also running out the door right now, on my way to work at the garden center for the afternoon and early evening. I'll be back later tonight to see what foliage has been highlighted around the garden blogosphere (explain why I'm still at the garden center in late July!) but I will leave you with a few things that have caught my eye in the backyard this morning.

A lovely (and untagged, when I brought it home from the garden center at the end of last year) hosta, which absolutely glows when backlit by the morning sun:


The luscious leaves of 'Key Lime Pie' heuchera, dotted with droplets from last night's rain:


Both of the above are in the "currant bed," which is the first thing I see when I step out my back door. As I round the corner of the house, the Japanese bloodgrass always catches my eye. This is my first view of it during every trip to the backyard:


As I continue into the backyard, I stop to admire how both it and the Russian sage behind it pick up fresh, chartreuse-y green tones when the sun comes streaming through them:


As I round the corner of the bed, the bloodgrass colors flatten out a little bit once the sunshine is more "in their face." I still love the contrast between the grass, the cascade of woolly thyme behind, and the sedum cauticola 'Lidakense' at its base:


I think that foliage combinations are even more necessary to add interest when the floral show wilts in the heat of midsummer, don't you? What kinds of foliage combinations do you have featured in your yard? I could use some more inspiration for a few particular areas in my gardens... so I'm looking forward to seeing your foliage posts when I return tonight!

Currant Events

While weeding and mulching the side bed this week, I made a fun discovery: It was time to harvest my first currants!

Last year, I planted two 'Red Lake' red currant bushes in the bed directly across from my side door. Currants were supposed to be able to take some shade, and could be trained to be fairly compact... both key for that area, and I was excited to be able to add some more fruit production in that kind of space. I didn't let them flower or set fruit last year, but this year I did get quite a few strands (my word for them, not necessarily the right word!) of currants from the smaller of the two bushes:


Once they were harvested, it was time to figure out what to do with them. I removed the berries from the stems, rinsed them, and dried them in the open air. Then I went online to search for recipes and figure out how to use them.

This was a harder search than one might think, as what we usually think of as currants is really the dried fruit of the Zante grape. Red currants are an entirely different fruit, and are most often used cooked (because they are so tart when they're fresh--I can vouch for that personally, because I tried one raw) in jams, fruit soups, tarts, etc.

I had really wanted to make jam, but since my harvest was not exactly bountiful--I only had slightly more than 1 cup of fruit to use--I decided to try to make a freeform tart instead. The recipe I cobbled together used pie crust, sugar, cornstarch, a pinch each of cinnamon and salt, and all of my crushed currants. Here is the final result:


Looks really pretty, doesn't it? It's tasty, too, but as you can see at least half of the currants managed to jump ship and escape the tart crust! They bubbled and baked on the outside of the pan, turning into a tart/sweet jam of sorts on their own. I used some of the crust to scoop up extra filling as I sampled it.

Next time, I will leave these freeform tarts to the sturdier fillings (plums, apples--anything that holds its shape better) and instead make a smaller pie out of regular crust or maybe incorporate them into a cobbler or crisp. Ideally... well, ideally I'll just have a larger harvest next year, and plenty of currants to use in multiple recipes. But as always, we'll just have to wait and see what next year's gardening season brings!

Foliage Friday

This month, Frances combined Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day with "Weed Wednesday," an idea she got from The Home Garden blog. That got me to thinking: If Weeds get to have their own day, then why wouldn't we also have a special day to celebrate some of the prettiest greenery? (And yellow-ery, and silver-ery, and blue-ery... you get the idea!)

I'm a foliage gardener in general anyway, so here's a post in celebration of Foliage Friday. First up: Golden Creeping Jenny, Lysimachia nummularia 'Aurea', pictured here in my shade garden.


Many people see this plant grown over the sides of containers, and for good reason. Its cascade of gold is a wonderful effect as a "spiller" in many different color combinations. I like to grow it in my shade garden, though, where it rambles nicely around and sometimes over plants like miniature hostas and dark-leaf ajuga (above) and ferns, 'Jack Frost' brunnera, and broadleaf sedge (carex platyphylla) below.


A word of caution: Golden Creeping Jenny isn't as aggressive as her green-leaf cousin, but she does spread. I have a very dry garden, however, so the lack of moisture here really keeps her in check. The photos above show her at her height of spread, and in a few weeks I'll go out, rip her out from around anything she's really choking out, and then ignore her again for the rest of the summer.

So... anyone else care to join me for Foliage Fridays? I would love seeing the interesting foliage combinations that you all have going on! Just leave a comment in the notes to direct me over to your place to see what you've posted.

And if I ever get all of this weeding done in my own yard, I promise to put up one of those cool "add your post link here" widgets like Carol has on the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day posts. Just... um... don't look for that any time soon. (Back to weeding, ASAP!)