Sunday, September 13, 2015

Flowers and a Dying Butternut

The garden is winding down at this time of year, and flowers are fading.  Days are noticeably shorter, and today it's been really cold!  And I almost missed this month's deadline for reporting on my Butternut tree, which I fear is dying.

I almost missed spotting this white Coneflower, and it's now on it's way out, like many of the garden plants.

I think the Heleniums are past their best, but they're still adding some bright colour to the garden.

The sedums are bright and in bloom at this time of year though.  We have both pink and white ones.

We have a couople of sprawling mums, also looking a little faded now.  We thought we'd lost this one, so at least it's survived.

All the Sunflowers were eaten by the critters that do battle with us, but this one popped up from under the Zuchinni this week, our only Sunflower this year.

We've got a big patch of pale mauve Vervain.  But what do you do with plants that get tall and overgrown and fall over in all directions?

The Phlox are almost over, but this purple one is my favourite colour.  It's growing in the shade, so doesn't put out many blossoms, but it's a pretty colour.

And the raspberries that have been struggling in various locations over the nearly 15 years since my wife brought the bare root stock home, have finally got a good crop of berries for the very first time!  We've started enjoying them, and will have quite a bit of picking we can do yet.

Then there are the weeds that I've been neglecting, like this bright thistle that escaped my attention until it was 3 feet tall!

But my Butternut tree is not doing well.  Even though the leaves never turned colour, they've all pretty well fallen off now, and there was no crop of Butternuts this year.  Some years the ground has been littered with them.

It's the comparison to the other trees in the fencerow that makes me think it's dying.  All the leaves are still surprisingly green here, but the Butternut stands out as giving up it's leaves first.





17 comments:

  1. The flowers are all beautiful, but I looked for the Butternut tree, I have never heard of such a tree, it is sad that it does not look at all healthy. What kind of fruit does it have. Butternuts are pumpkins here in New Zealand .lol they grow on vines not trees.

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  2. Hopefully the raspberries will cheer you up in spite of the butternut!

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  3. I'm sorry your butternut tree might be dying. It's a majestic one and will certainly make the landscape look bare if it has to be removed.

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  4. Always sad to see the flowers begin to wither up and die...

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  5. Such a large tree to lose. Sorry to hear it. - Margy

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  6. The tree does look very sad, in fact past its best by a long way. Glennis, so good to see another from NZ here, and yes ,I wondered as well what the nuts would be like, not our kind of butternut obviously!!! Flowers still in colour, they hang on well towards your cold season.

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  7. So sorry to see your Butternut has lost it's leaves already, sometimes trees do that when they are stressed. :)

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  8. Butternuts are very similar to Walnuts, but oval instead of round, about 1.5" x 2", with a hard green outer covering, and the nut inside.

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  9. I hope it was just a bad year for the butternut and you'll see fresh buds on it come spring. I can hope anyway. I've grown quite fond of that tree.

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  11. Wait and see until next year what the butternut tree does. It got considerably cooler here too, with lots of precipitation over the weekend. I've been back in a leather jacket the last three days.

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  12. Love all those flowers...and that Vervain...I have seen those on other blogs who did not know what it was and I had no answer. Now I know!

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  13. Summer winding down but still pretty flowers around. : )

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  14. Butternuts are usually among the first trees to lose their leaves. Here in northcentral Pennsylvania many of the butternuts have already shed almost all of their leaves. But, the butternut canker is apparently also killing many butternuts and it will soon be an uncommon tree here.

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  15. Catching up with some of your posts. For past-their-prime blooms, you sure captured some beauties. Sad if the Butternut dies. Let's hope your hunch is wrong. Mm.. those raspberries look so good :)

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  16. Still a lot of beautiful flowers in your garden. I'm sorry about your tree.

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