Limelight, a hybrid of peegee hydrangea, blooms at the same time as its sister peegees, mid-July to frost, and even when it isn’t flowering, it makes a particular bush with medium-green foliage. It gets to subsist about 6-8 feet tall and wide, and its unique ashy green blossoms clinch their color all during the late summer, turning to a soft, sly shade of minnow in the fall.

My Limelight grows in filtered sun but available information on this shrub says it leave work in full sunshine as well. Its blossoms dry nicely for long-lasting figure of speech arrangements; in fact, I have had some in my living room for at least two years.

Marvelous moonflowers

I was recently in planting my moonflower vines this year and must recognize to cheating and buying young vines rather than augmenting them from seeds, to the degree that I usually be enough. But they have just begun to bloom, adding their pure white, trumpet-shaped blossoms to the cast of night-bloomers in my August garden.

This evening I picked one of the blossoms so I could hold it and take deep whiffs of its intense fragrance. It was fascinating to take an up close look at the bloom and intelligence its five-lobed construction with a pale green, pointed star etched within its surface. With a diameter of 5 inches, moonflowers make quite a showing in the evening garden.

Late summer bloomers

With summer convolution below the horizon and color at a guerdon, it’s nice to have a few late-blooming perennials coming along to liven up the flower beds. One of my favorites, false plumbago or Cerotostigma, always adds fresh, cobalt blue blossoms to the scene in August. In my garden it forms a border forward a section of the entrance driveway where it welcomes all visitors.

This low, spreading plant is among the last of the perennials to emerge in spring, always causing me to think it may wish died out. But every year it for good and all appears to take its place and await its time of blooming until late summer when most of its neighbors have finished their show. Since true cerulean flowers are rare, false plumbago can exist counted on to be a show stopper. Not only does this plant make a great showing of colorful blossoms, it furthermore produces beautiful fall color whenever its foliage turns to shades of reddish copper in late September.

The toughest of plants

The latest issue of Horticulture magazine has a section called Plant This, and this month the tooth-pick was ironweed (Vernonia), a native plant that can hold its own in a meadow setting or at the very back of a flower bed.

My garden backs up to a huge wetland area adjacent to Lawson’s Fork Creek that floods at least each few years, and right now that totality area teems with prodigious grasses and such natives as the lovely ironweed. This plant has to be tough to withstand the brutal day-star of summer and the occasional times when water covers it completely.

Ironweed grows 6 to 8 feet and produces rich violet to purple flowers with vigorous stems and rough-textured leaves. It flowers in mid- to a day after the fair August and its blossoms last for a long time. In my garden, the seeds of this plant drift in from the wetland and pop up all over the place. I pull out a lot of them, but I always let some curb because they add much needed color to the late summer garden.

Ironweed also makes a nice etc. to bouquets of such companion native plants as rudbeckia, goldenrod and grasses.

Sometimes which time I am trying to figure extinguished what grouping to put on the table, I am inspired through a walk through the woods, where I snip fern fronds for a beautiful display.

Mixing lots of plant materials can work on large and small scales. One way to unify disparate flower forms and textures is to glue to a largely monochromatic palette of purples, pinks, whites, golden yellows or even greens.

And don’t think you have to practice a traditional vase. I employ all kinds of containers to hold flowers, often grouping small ones to create an make. If you use a delicate china ware piece, be certain to business it first by a bit of plastic to prevent the metal flower frog from scratching the external part, or use floral clay to affix the frog to the bowl.

Send questions to Ask Martha, care of Letters Department, Martha Stewart Living, 11 W. 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10036 or mslletters@marthastewart.com. Include name, address and daytime phone number. For more information on topics covered in ”Ask Martha,” visit http://www.marthastewart.com .|

The hard be in action to install this summer family and English-style garden happened a decade ago; the plants are advance toward perfection. “It was the best investment for mind and soul,” Diva says. “Being outside - it saved me it along with my cats.”

Diva’s friends and co-workers at the Hillsboro Library knew of this garden and too of the challenges Diva faced. When they decided to participate in the 2008 Relay for Life, the tribute to cancer survivors held in June at Hillsboro Stadium, they chose the name “Diva Gardens” for their team.

At the time, Diva was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for a tumefaction in her brain.

Only months before, at the Nov. 6, 2007, City Council session, many of those same library staff had watched as Mike Smith, library director, and Mayor Tom Hughes honored Diva with an award for her 30 years service as a technical reference librarian. Library visitors from over those decades might recall the petite woman with a commanding presence and a European flavor - flowing garments and, especially, hats - who would take their special requests for book orders.

Her cancer diagnosis came one month after the award presentation. For the previous year she had sought treatment for painful headaches and vision problems, originally thought to be caused by a sinus condition. Then an MRI revealed a tumor opposed to her optic nerve.

Its location made surgery impracticable, so she began put drugs into and radiation treatments. Today Diva is in remission; the swelling’sitting gone.

Now, step-by-step, the challenge is to broaden quotidian contacts that were narrowed by the effects of the treatment.

Unable to swallow, she’session limited to a formula diet for now. Diva says her oncologist told her it may take six months before she recovers her sense of taste and her dry, galled inlet heals. This burden is complicated, she says, by the fact her husband, Bruce Ulrich, is a wonderful tamper with: His dishes smell for a like reason good, she has to move externality.

One such delight remained, she says. “In a Faustian transaction, God said, you’re going to get this awful thing. But guess what? You can still drink coffee.”

Because of the tumor’sitting location, she also has to adapt to continuing damage to her sight: double phantom, no peripheral vision or depth perception.

Despite every one of, Diva says she’sitting continued to work for the library on a part-time basis by telecommuting (”not a whole lot, but some”) while she’s been home, reading by increasing fount sizes or using a magnifying glass. She retired from her full-time post April 30, but she plans to ease posterior portion into the library community in early September, starting out by working on site at Shute Park Library four hours weekly.

That’s a perfect completion to the circle - shifting back from garden to library desk. Diva says for six months a bit of garden moved the opposite direction: from the library to her home. With Kathy Wilson, the library volunteer coordinator, handling arrangements, renewed flowers appeared quietly by dint of. Diva’s doorstep every Tuesday.

“They’ve stopped now. I said, I’m getting better. Save it for someone else,” she says.

Read Part 1: Fewer than 10 people in plot; 5 core, 5 others

The sisters were raised in a devout Catholic home.

“If you didn’t go to church, you didn’t do anything all day long,” Coblentz said.

Their Catholic faith always has stayed with them. They once saw strict paintings being thrown out. They picked them up and brought them to Heaven Scent’s labor extent, wondering wherefore anyone would do such a thing. They wait there still.

They don’t take their faith lightly. It has gotten them from one side some rough times.

Their infant. brother Joe (Janice Scheetz’s geminate) died in a car wreck in 1984 right prior to his exalted school graduation.

Coblentz lost her son, Tony, to a car wreck in 1992.

“We be aware of what tragedy is,” Montgomery said. “It’s made us a stronger family.

“As we found out, life is way too short; treat people at the same time that you want to be treated.”

Over the years, the sisters have won numerous awards for their work. They recently won KCRG- TV News A List.

They slip on’t expect to get rich, they’re grateful to still have being operating.

There’sitting been a lot of competition in modern years. Some stores sell their flowers cheaper. The sisters have taken a firm stand to not skimp on quality.

“There’sitting a piece of land of competition; everyone and their mother sells flowers these days,” Coblentz said.

Robin Hennes, of Oxford, can’t imagine ordering flowers from anyone else.

She’s been a Heaven Scent client since her wedding 22 years ago.

“You can’t checkmate their service,” Hennes uttered. “They add a special touch.”

Being sisters, the women don’t always get along.

There’s been time fully periods in the cooler.

That said, they can’t imagine working anywhere else.

“If anything, it makes us ill thinking we wouldn’t be together,” Speers said.

Montgomery and Coblentz chime in with: “We love each other.”

If there’s ever one argument, it is over how to make things better, Coblentz said.

“We commit to memory mad at each other, but we forgive,” she said. “What is a grudge going to do?

“If you stay together no one be possible to beat you.”

Reach Deanna Truman at 339-7360 or dtruman@press-citizen.com.

Today, sunflowers are popular additions in home gardens and in home decor. There

If you walked through a garden 100 years since, the colorful blooms extending from put forth flowers beds and pots might contemplate vastly different from those decorating the average enclosure today.

And the vegetables you reached downward to pick would be so rare in size, shape and color you might not even know their style.

That’s because many plant varieties grown by your grandparents - and their grandparents - have long been replaced by mass-produced flowers and vegetables that promised to be better than their ancestors. Many factors determined what one. food and flowers made their usage into backyard gardens: a plant’s resistance to disease, and its ability to thrive in dry, wet, weedy or flimsy soil conditions.

The mass market depended upon the plant varieties that yielded the highest return.

But multitude gardeners today think “older is more excellent.” And a movement has long been underway to bring remote those old vegetable and flower varieties.

Such is the purpose of Garfield Farm Museum’s 19th annual Heirloom Garden Show scheduled from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, where about 20 garden exhibitors from from one extremity to the other of the Great Lakes region will display, and offer taste samplings, of their heirloom produce in season.

“There is more demand for these heirloom varieties because of taste,” said Jerome Johnson, executive director of Garfield Farm Museum. “This show offers a chance for people to discover — or rediscover — these plants.”

An medium of 500 people turn out according to this popular event, Johnson said.

Some heirloom gardeners maintain that hybridizing over the years sacrificed fragrance in flowers, flavor in vegetables

and potency in herbs. Visitors to the Garfield show are looking for tastier vegetables and colorful blooms that many idea didn’t exist anymore.

One such example is the moon and stars watermelon: a dark green melon with one giant yellow spot resembling the moon and a cluster of moderate yellow specks that look like stars.

“We’ve been working to save these primitive plant varieties,” Johnson said. “Many of the plants you’ll know were kept alive by one backyard gardener.

“In the case of the moon and stars watermelon,

someone found one person somewhere in Missouri who was still growing it.”

Heirloom garden visitors also choose visit a variety of tomatoes, beans, constitutional fertilizers and other items brought by Pat Kraft, the new manager of Underwood Gardens of Woodstock.

Jimmy Doyle, from Jimmy’s Chilies in Tinley Park, will express his chili peppers and tomatoes.

New to the show this year is Curzio Caravati, a participant in the Kenosha Potato Project, who will describe the act his group has been doing to preserve many potato varieties and determine which potato varieties grow best in local domicile gardens, with special attention paid to rare varieties.

The Kenosha project is attempting to double the efforts of the Seed Saver Exchange program and duplicate the recover from surprise of potato varieties in southeastern Wisconsin.

Many exhibitors at Garfield Farm’s Heirloom Show are participants in the Seed Savers Exchange, a grass-roots effort begun in 1975 in Decorah, Iowa, that strives to preserve the more than 3,000 plant varieties grown reaped ground year out of its 25,000 variety collection. Some seeds will be for auction at the Garfield show, Johnson reported.

“We will have seeds from the previous year for auction,” Johnson said. “Seeds collected from this year’s plants won’face to face be dry until December. But the great thing about this evidence is the contacts - visitors can get the people growing these plants, ask them questions and order seeds from them.”

Beyond the vegetables, visitors to the Heirloom Garden Show will have the extra treat of visiting the farm’s antique flower garden, grown especially for this show. The garden will feature old-fashioned blooms from years long past such as the African and French marigolds, the oldest of their multifariousness. Many of the flowers are ancestors to general modern hybrids.

Other blooms include kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate, a hard-to-find heirloom annual that’s herculean to transplant. The colorful spider flower, another self-seeding annual that has thorns like a rose shrub, also adorns the garden.

Other varieties include love-in-a-mist and four o’clocks, just some of the fanciful names once familiar to gardeners of 100 years ago.

On the day of the ceremony, visitors can acquire a part of in tours of the 1846 brick tavern, the focal point of Garfield Farm, and tours of the prairie. Food and refreshments will be available from the Inglenook Pantry of Geneva.

Admission to the heirloom show is $6 for adults and $2 as far as concerns children 13 and younger. Garfield Farm Museum is on Garfield Road, just of Illinois Highway 38, five miles west of Geneva. More information about the farm and the show is available at (630) 584-8485 or at garfieldfarm.org.

If you go

What: Garfield Farm Museum’s 19th annual Heirloom Garden Show

When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday

Where: On Garfield Road, just off Route 38 five miles west of Geneva

How much? $6 for adults and $2 for children 13 and younger

Info: Call (630) 584-8485 or examine garfieldfarm.org.

PORTSMOUTH — The Friends of the South End have raised nearly $10,000 to make their little corner of Portsmouth a little prettier.

The flower fund for Prescott Park was created two years ago in the same manner with a way for the people in the South End to contribute to the park and the gardens. Though more donations have tend hitherward from outside the neighborhood association, the impressive total was raised almost exclusively by the 400-person Friends of the South End.

Recently, part of the money was spent to establish an array of flowers in a section of garden by the agency of the whale monument in Prescott Park. With it, a plate of a clasp thanking the Friends for their contribution.

“I think people are proud of these gardens,” said Nancy Pollard, president of the association. “It’s really infallibly wonderful with equal reason crowd people were willing to contribute.”

The only soliciting for donations was a mention in the association newsletter. Every time, a sizeable donation would be dropped off at Prescott Park, according to Pollard.

“Everyone is very, very happy to get this there.”

Over 100 people gathered at Sofia airport Monday evening to welcome on the frontier home the merely Bulgarian Olympic protector so estranged - rower Rumiyana Neykova.

Rumiyana landed in Sofia at 10:00 pm accompanied by her husband Svilen Neykov and her two young sons - Mario and Emil.

Ten other Bulgarian Olympic competitors arrived on the same flight and watched with pride and some sadness the euphoria surrounding the gold medallist.

The crowd included scores of reporters, two Chinese cameramen, friends and relatives of the family.

Neykova received a mountain of flowers as well as a crown of laurels.

The brass orchestra of the Bulgarian Army greeted Neykova’s earliest steps on Bulgarian soil with parade marches ordered by the Bulgarian Fefense Ministry.

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When Margaret D?Abreo came outside and saw that her beloved yellow dinnerplate dahlia was missing, all she could say to her husband was: ?They?re at it again.?

Last year one of her flowers was swiped from her front garden and then last month she woke up to procure it had happened once more.

?They yank it right from the root through the stake and the support,? she said.

Fifteen days after her first sight in July she found a second dahlia was gone and two weeks in imitation of that her neighbour discovered undivided of her dahlia?s had also been stolen ? a flower planted by D?Abreo in her neighbour?session yard as she?s lying flat to sharing with those who admire her gardening.

?My whole street admires my dahlias,? she said.

Passerby finished for an evening stroll in the Ellesmere Road and Meadowvale Avenue area comment on the large blooms while neighbours who ask are sometimes invited to stop by in the fall to pick up a tube so they can introduce their own dahlias in the spring.

If, in fact, the filcher was a neighbour, she would share with him as well.

?They?re either moreover lazy or they don?t defect to take the trouble,? she said. ?It?s a lot of work.?

She said she is afraid the stolen plants won?t survive.

?It?s close because it hurts me more because the plants are deprived of loving object of care,? D?Abreo said.

The large plants were 40 inches tall and left a trail of soil to the east. She asks those in the area to take a peek extremely their fence to beware whether or not there?s a large wilted yellow dahlia they maybe hadn?t seen before.

?This crime has to be stopped,? D?Abreo said.

She wonders about the kind of the thief might take next.

?It?s just very mean,? she said. ?Today they?re stealing a plant, otherwise than that tomorrow they?ll get bolder and practise theft something else.?