How to grow Chocolate Cosmos

Written by Linda Paquette


Love Chocolate? Here’s How to Grow Chocolate Cosmos

Chocolate cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguinea) is both nose and eye candy for your garden. When it’s in full bloom, mature blossoms on long, slender stems look like candy kisses on a stick and fillrepparttar late afternoon withrepparttar 113291 sweet scent of vanilla tinged chocolate. New blossoms hugrepparttar 113292 foliage ofrepparttar 113293 plant, nearly concealing it with their numbers! Add to thatrepparttar 113294 sweet chocolate fragrance and you end up with something very special.

Although chocolate cosmos is endangered inrepparttar 113295 wild, transplants are easily found at most nurseries and garden centers inrepparttar 113296 spring. However, gardeners who are inexperienced in how to grow chocolate cosmos may overlook what seem to be small, messy tangles of miniature dahlia leaves, unaware that once established, prolific blossoms nearly concealrepparttar 113297 foliage. Once in bloom, chocolate cosmos blossoms continuously throughoutrepparttar 113298 summer intorepparttar 113299 first frosts of autumn.

If you’re planning a gothic garden, chocolate cosmos isrepparttar 113300 plant for you. Sometimes referred to as black cosmos, dark maroon blossoms are so deep in color that they appear brown/black in late afternoon and evening.

The Sundial - Garden Ornament or Exotic Timepiece?

Written by Graham McClung


Most of us regard a sundial as an attractive ornament for a park or garden. Their effectiveness as time keepers is highly variable

That's unfortunate, because it is not at all difficult to ensure that your garden sundial will be an accurate timepiece, provided, of course thatrepparttar sun is shining.

But that will be covered in another article. For now, let's see what a sundial is, and what it is capable of.

Sundial History

We forget in this modern age that accurate, affordable watches and clocks have been around for much less than 200 years.

Before then, sundials were one ofrepparttar 113290 few ways to tell repparttar 113291 time with reasonable accuracy.

Shadow clocks dated at 1500BC are known from Egypt, but repparttar 113292 first dials appear to have been Babylonian. The Greeks adaptedrepparttar 113293 idea,repparttar 113294 Romans developed it further, and by about 100BC had perfectedrepparttar 113295 horizontal sundial (and placed it in their gardens).

Even in ancient days some people had schedules to keep, and both agriculture and religion required knowledge ofrepparttar 113296 seasons andrepparttar 113297 movement ofrepparttar 113298 sun to determine planting andrepparttar 113299 timing of ceremonies.

The sundial was an important means of providing that information, and considerable advances in mathematics, geometry and astronomy were made while it was perfected. The knowledge gained forms part ofrepparttar 113300 foundations of modern science.

Types of Sundial

There are four reasonably common types of sundial.

They all have two things in common. Each consists of a raised structure, calledrepparttar 113301 gnomon (silent "g") which casts a shadow onto a plate calledrepparttar 113302 dial. The dial is divided into hourly or shorter time divisions and may also show other information.The part ofrepparttar 113303 gnomon whose shadow indicatesrepparttar 113304 time onrepparttar 113305 dial is called repparttar 113306 style.

The most abundant form isrepparttar 113307 horizontal sundial, happily sitting on its pedestal or column and adding beauty and interest torepparttar 113308 home garden.

Related isrepparttar 113309 equatorial sundial, with its dial oriented atrepparttar 113310 same angle asrepparttar 113311 latitude. It works slightly differently, and is easier to use when properly calibrated.

Thirdly, there isrepparttar 113312 vertical sundial, ideally located on a wall facing due south inrepparttar 113313 northern hemisphere, and north inrepparttar 113314 southern hemisphere. The principle is muchrepparttar 113315 same, butrepparttar 113316 sundial only occupies a semicircular area. Vertical sundials displayedrepparttar 113317 time torepparttar 113318 public, and were used to correct unreliable public clocks.

Andrepparttar 113319 most elegant of all,repparttar 113320 portable sundial. George Washington had one - at that time pocket watches were most unreliable. Modern examples can be a work of art. They combine a compass with an adjustable dial. The dial is tilted to correspond to local latitude, andrepparttar 113321 compass defines north. Pretty neat!

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