Dogwood seeds

This gardening season has been a learning experience for me. Having been sick for a few years, I was out of the gardening loop. Due to lots of medication over those years I found that I had not retained all my gardening as I would have liked. Since I had not let my plants go to seed in a number of years, it was like doing it all over again for the first time. Many of the varieties I had no problem with as I had so many seedlings coming up every year. Some plants were more difficult as I had not had seeds from them in the past or had not paid attention to that part of their growth.

As one of my gardeners had requested that i take photos of all of the plant stages, I worked on it all season. I just didn't have the time to post them due to time required in the gardens. It is a process I will be working on over the fall and winter. I have thousands of photos that I took during the season, and I will be sorting them to get them posted to this blog.

So by now most of you should know that I mistakenly gave out what I thought were Red Dogwood seeds in the spring. They were only the barren flower bracts that had come down in a heavy rainstorm. This is a branch from the Red Dogwood out front showing how its berries are ripening.



They turn red as they mature. You can see there is a berry below the one in this photo that has split open. It was opened by birds trying to eat it.




Here is an opened berry in plain sight. The flesh is yellow, making it a great contrast to the bright red skin.



And this photo shows a slew of berries on the ground under the tree. When the berries were at their ripest we had continuous swarms of all different birds feasting like there was no tomorrow. And what a mess they made!! Berries all over!!




Strewn all over the path. Tossed haphazardly around the gardens.




Even falling under some fall colored poison ivy. Who knew it could look so pretty in the fall? I usually get it all out early in the season. but , due to such a wet summer, it was coming up all over throughout the season.



This is what the berries and seeds from within look like.




Berries get harvested in November for planting for seedlings which will start coming up next spring. I have swept all the seeds on the path into the gardens so that they can start coming up for anyone to have next year!!