Category Archives: what’s blooming

What’s Blooming – fall time!

The garden is really starting to wind down now, although we had some very warm days, which popped some late blooms.

My tippy pots:

This is a surprise marigold, which I don’t think I planted near here last year, but decided to grow from whatever seed LOL

Lots of mums:

Still lots of zinnias:

It’s October, so it’s time to click for breast cancer awareness! The pink picture of the day:

This is a gift certificate to a salt cave that I received and am looking forward to taking some me time to use!

We hope to get some leaf peeping in this weekend, our area is reaching peak and it’s a short window for the beautiful colors.

Have a great one!

Anniversay and What’s Blooming!

A little late with the blooming post this week! . Friday was our 22nd wedding anniversary> John didn’t get home until the evening since he was doing a show in Manchester, VT and we decided to have our dinner  out on Saturday since I would be going with him to the show.  John’s set up:

This was a higher end show, but really was not a good one, unfortunately. Live and learn. Online sales are just so much easier.

We stopped in Manchester for dinner afterwards and went to a place called Mystic Cafe. It was a cute place, kind of tapas style.  We started with burrata cheese with roasted red peppers and walnut pesto:

The burrata is a soft cheese, almost mozzarella on the outside and very creamy on the inside with a mild flavor. Very interesting.

Then we shared a toscana flatbread. Pretty much a pizza, but fresh and tasty.

Topped with smoked mozzarella, roasted tomatoes, pesto and arugula. It comes with prosciutto, but we had them leave that off to make it vegetarian.

Here’s to at least another 22 years!

It was a long weekend. We were able to drive back and forth each day since it is an hour and 15 minutes to get there, but that does make for long days. The show finished Sunday. He probably won’t do that show again, at least not with his current set up.

Back at home, here are things in the garden.  Okay, these aren’t from my garden, but were in the city park downtown:

They look really good considering the nights have been pretty cold.

The cold nights turned my hydrangeas all pink:

Even though the nights have been colder, it hasn’t frozen and so new growth is still happening on some plants. I saw a bloom on my 100-pound rose!

The Enchanted Evening will also be blooming again if we don’t get frost before that happens – see all the new growth?

Fully colored up sedum:

The bugbane plant from last week totally changed into a bottle brush flower! Last week:

This week:

I was not expecting to see that. There are two blooms on this plant.

That’s a fun one!

John is kind of demanding that I take a couple of days off this week for a staycation, so maybe I will get some work done in the garden if I actually listen to him 😀

 

What’s Blooming!

Fall has arrived – and it finally feels more like fall, too. Glad we went to see some balloons last night because the launch didn’t happen today with gray and windy conditions.  Hopefully they will be able to take flight tomorrow.

Lots of mums a poppin’ now.

I’m not sure why, but I have had great luck with taking those cheap $2 mums from the big box stores and putting them in the ground. They survive the winter and thrive. Maybe they have a different kind now because they never survived for me before.

I gave my petunias a massive haircut – pretty much to a stub – and stuck a mum in the pot as well.  I didn’t realize how well they would match in bloom 😀

That was a fun surprise!

This year I did another really hard prune on my rhododendron. A lot of the growth was still at the tips, so I took more branches way down to hopefully force new growth at the bottom and it is working!

I’m not giving up on this plant.

Zinnias still going pretty strong.

The butterflies appear to have moved on, but the bees are still around. Speaking of bees, I moved some of my bee balm up here where the zinnias are. Hopefully those transplants take. They should since bee balm is a real spreader and divides well. Even my parents got bee balm for their garden from the same plant 😀   Gardening, the gift that keeps giving.

Potted hibiscus and a tiny marigold. And some weeds…

The balloon flowers keep going.

Appropriate for balloon festival weekend 😀  I’m so happy at how these are reblooming.  I don’t know if the pink ones will, but who knows?

Finally the moonflower.  I wait and wait for this one hoping that frost doesn’t come early and kill it before it flowers:

The blooms only last a day and sometimes I miss them.  The ones out back have buds, so hopefully those will get a chance to open as well.

I planted a couple of Cimicifuga – or bugbane – a few years ago. I actually forgot that they bloomed!  This is the back corner of the shade bed. I was surprised to see a flower spike:

Mixed in there is also some Virginia creeper, which is all over the place. I try to keep it off other plants, but it spreads so fast. It turns such a lovely fall color, which is why it gets to stay.

Now the sedum are in full color mode:

True sign of fall right there.

Hopefully we will get some decent riding in this weekend. Both John and I are swamped with work, so that has limited ride time a bit, but we will sneak in some.

Happy fall!

What’s Blooming!

I keep meaning to write more posts, but then the week gets away from me and here we are again at Friday.  At least there is that!

I’ve continued with some renovating of the garden bed, moving things around, planning for next year, etc.  I *finally* ordered some bulbs to plant. Normally I get that done in spring, but this year has been really weird and I never got around to it until this week. Some alliums, hyacinth and tulips are coming.

Still flowers happening. Lots and lots of snapdragons:

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The hibiscus:

I’m kind of surprised the hibiscus are still here because we had temps in the 40s for a couple of nights.

The moonflowers are just now getting buds. I missed a couple of blooms, but I won’t miss this one right by our front door:

The brass thing behind the plant is a brick clip. It’s what we use to attach Christmas lights or other decorations to the house since there really is no other way to do that without drilling holes in the brick. They are also quite handy for plant vines!

Mums:

Some random blooms on the balloon flower:

That surprised me. I think this happened because I cut them back earlier than usual after they stopped blooming. Must remember to do that next year.

The new rose of Sharon bush:

It seems happy in the new spot. Hopefully it will get a good root system going this fall.

Autumn Joy sedum are getting their color now:

The bees love these, but it was really cool when I took these pictures and not a single bee was on them.

There is a random catnip plant that showed up in the back garden bed and sometimes when I go out there, I will bring some leaves in for Pixie.  Some cats aren’t affected by catnip, but Pixie goes absolutely bananas. This is after she ate the catnip and was just rolling around the floor:

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I can’t keep a potted plant of it in the house or she destroys it. So, fresh catnip only in the warm months. She is pretty spoiled in general, so it’s not a hardship 😀

Have a great weekend!

Welcome September! While it seems like there wouldn’t be much in the gardening world in September, it’s actually a great time of year. Zinnias are really going now and mums are appearing everywhere. It’s a good time for renovations as well. Plants don’t worry about new growth like they do in spring and can concentrate on establishing a good root system before winter.

My zinnias:

Butterflies go crazy for zinnias. This year’s crop just wasn’t all that good. That’s what happens when you buy bargain seed at a big box store.  Last year I had great zinnias from the seeds I bought at Select Seeds.  I already have the seeds bookmarked that I will be buying for next year.

Callibrocha from my tippy pots:

I think next year I will try the tippy pots in the shade. It’s hard to keep them moist enough, even in partial sun.

Butterfly bush:

One of those little mum pots I bought – already blooming in its tiny way.

Self-seeded agastache.

These don’t get very big and I’m not sure why. I think they just get too late of a start in our climate.

Potted plants on the back patio. This is salvia:

All those little brown leaves are from the honey locust tree, which you can just see at the top of the picture. We don’t really like this tree very much. It’s 3 seasons of mess. It’s also quite large, but we don’t dislike it enough to remove it. At least for now.

Heliotrope:

I will get more of this next year. I love the smell.

Last weekend I bought myself a rose of sharon to go in where I dug up that large stump:

This was a 3-gallon size pot, which I never buy because they are expensive, but a lot of nurseries have clearance sales in the fall and that brought this plant to a price I would pay 😀  .It pays to wait sometimes!

My moon flowers are still pretty small and not ready to bloom yet. I tried something different this year and put them in the back yard.

I think there is still time for these if we don’t get a hard frost before October.

My caged iris rhizomes are doing great! I planted them like this for protection:

They have been undisturbed with my covering and are showing growth:

Yippee! Hopefully they will bloom next year, but sometimes it takes 2 years.

The hydrangea still looks beautiful and lush:

These have to be 10 inch flowers.

Now that cooler weather has finally moved in, I will be doing more transplanting and moving plants this weekend. Plus working on the garden at my parents’ house. They get the benefit of me dividing plants 😀

What’s Blooming!

Another week has gone by. So much for my goal this year to post more LOL.  And this summer has been like the summer that wasn’t. It went so fast and we didn’t do anything really for vacation or long hikes with how busy we have been.

A second flush of flowering on the rose plants is happening now. Fair Bianca:

I love this plant.

Othello has put out a few blooms. It doesn’t really bloom that much and the blooms last only a day once they are open. It’s definitely a strange rose bush.

This is that planter that I did back in early spring. Still looking pretty good!

It’s in the dry partially shady bed as that needed some filler while the bushes get bigger.

Flowering tobacco:

These are very low to the ground, unlike the one I have out back.

Mullein:

These are charming. I obviously have a cottage garden style and these fit right in.

I have started renovating the back sunny flower bed. After the fence came down 2 years ago, the design I was going with now doesn’t work very well. I need to move the taller plants into the back.

So, last weekend I got a bee in my bonnet and started moving stuff.  Irises have been moved up to the front.

I moved the really tall globe thistle to behind the bird bath. I think I got a bit over zealous with moving since we had super hot and muggy temps this week and it really stressed out the globe thistles:

Not sure all of them will survive, but they have left a lot of little babies that I can move easier as the tap root isn’t as deep on those.

Another big project was digging up this mess of whatever.  It was a mix of bittersweet vine, some sort of viburnum and another tree – which I imagine wasn’t supposed to be there, but grew in it from neglect.  I had chopped it all way down in the spring and decided the stump needed to come out.

That stump has to weigh 40 pounds at least. It is soooo heavy. It left quite the crater behind – and bonus that I did not re-injure my bad shoulder digging this up 🙂

Thinking about a rose of Sharon bush there or maybe some small tree. It’s a partial sun spot, so there are quite a few options.

I guess I could do another hydrangea, but something different would be nice.

Speaking of hydrangea, more rain and the branches drooped more:

I have to say that I really like the way it looks. Almost a weeping willow appearance.

Labor Day is coming up and that means getting ready for fall! I couldn’t resist the baby mum pots:

Now to pot those up.

Have a great weekend!

What’s Blooming!

This is going to be the close-up edition of What’s Blooming this week. I had my good camera out for shots today.

Black-eyed Susan:

These look really good still in the front and the back. I’m hoping for some babies from this plant. It looks like some seedlings started this year.

Butterfly bush:

Smells like honey. This is a miniature version, so if you have a smaller garden, it will fit in perfectly rather than the really tall ones.

Million Bells, aka Calibrachoa

Zinnias:

Isn’t this one fun? The quills haven’t opened all the way, but I thought it looked cool.

Marigolds:

The last gasp of the lily:

This one  blooms for a long time from the bottom up.

Calycanthus bush:

Blooms all summer long. It doesn’t have a very neat habit, but the blooms are nice.

Snapdragons:

I still have a critter problem out in the back yard. The woodchuck was back. He left me with this nice bare spot:

Grrrr…  We’ve got some Repels-All and Molemax to apply this weekend.

I think a squirrel did this:

Remains of a heuchera. Wahhhhh!!! It might live, but I’m not holding my breath.

I divided up some of my irises and planted those new rhizomes I got last week. Here is my solution to keep the critters away from them:

The rock on top is insurance that the bigger guys won’t just flip it over. I’m leaving this on through the winter and into spring.

My beeooteeful hydrangea. Flopped over from the rain, but so pretty:

Sedum just starting to get a bit of color. A sure sign the season is nearing the end.

Potted begonia:

It’s really a pleasure in the garden right now. Always something new to see when I go out there.

Have a great weekend!

What’s Blooming!

Hey everyone. John and I have been battling the crud. John started getting sick last week and was feeling terrible. I thought i was in the clear, but Sunday I started with the sore throat. I did not end up getting it as bad as John – in fact, he is still coughing from it – and now I’m feeling mostly better and back on the bike again.

The garden is still enjoying the rain that has been coming regularly.

The coneflowers are getting a bit tired, but still look pretty good.

Hibiscus:

This orange one is my favorite. I’m going to try bringing this one inside for the winter.

The zinnias up front are all happy and blooming. This is what the ones in the back look like:

Leaves and buds all nibbled off.  Sigh.  I started spraying with neem and some leaves are starting to sprout again. I don’t know if the neem helps keep the critters away, but it can’t hurt.

Our dead magnolia tree was removed last weekend.

I was hoping they would grind the stump down, but John didn’t ask them about that. It’s pretty low and I couldn’t put anything there anyway even if it was ground down. So, I planted a couple of peonies around it that i got in a clearance sale. (Yay!!)

Superman is guarding the new peonies. This was something we found attached to our fence when we moved in and i kept it for whatever reason.

I think I just find him funny. 🙂

The tree hydrangea:

Once the flowers start to bloom, the branches droop down when it rains.

My giant hosta:

I actually have some baby hostas that I’m going to put around our water feature. It’s hard to get things to grow there, but hostas are like tanks. Maybe they will work.

Like my “baby” Joe Pye Weed?

I like the plant, but if I had known it was going to get this tall, I would have it about 6 feet further back. I need to read and see if these tolerate being moved. It obscures the path through here, too. I don’t want to walk through it because it gets a lot of attention from the bees:

Flowering tobacco:

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Cardinal flower:

We have 2 hummingbirds that come by and they like this flower a lot.

This weekend is iris planting time!

I bought some chicken wire to cover these with so they won’t get eaten like last year. I’m also making plans of where to move plants and what new ones to put on my wish list 😀

What’s Blooming!

Welcome to the weekend!  We have still been having rain off and on, which has been nice for not watering the garden. Just some hand watering of some plants under the tree canopy, but that takes 5 minutes, so it’s like not having to water at all.  I’m kind of over the humidity, though. Yuck.

I have some self-seeders coming up.  This is the Agastache, which I dearly love, but it doesn’t live over the winter. These are from the seeds that drop.

There are a couple of other ones as well. I guess I will just let them reseed as long as they want to come up.

This one is a suprise – Cleome:

I had Cleome two years ago. This must have been seed that overwintered for two years!  It’s also very short. These normally are tall – or the parents were. That was fun to find. There is one other one as well.

Zinnias are blooming. One seed packet had different color flowers in it for some reason. There are several different colors:

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And this one:

It’s almost like the plant couldn’t decide between red and yellow and said, “Let’s do both!” 😀

I have a dwarf butterfly bush in the front and I must say, it is nice and bushy with lots of blooms coming on it.

It is doing much better than my really tall one out back.

Out back is the Joe Pye Weed:

Picture taken at eye level. The pollinators love this one.

Last year I planted some flowering tobacco – an old-fashioned kind. It didn’t bloom and I decided to dig up one of the plants and bring it inside for the winter. I replanted it in the spring and now, finally, it has bloomed:

This smells wonderful, but it was such a pain in the butt that I won’t be trying it anymore.  I might just pile a bunch of mulch on it in the fall and see what happens, although I don’t hold out much hope as they are hardy in zone 10 (I’m 5). Wishful thinking.

Cardinal flower:

I had some of these in the front, but they didn’t survive the winter. The ones in the back did. Who knows why that is. The vagaries of gardening.

It’s a very striking color. In this picture also is the Enchanted Evening rose and my Autumn Joy sedum – aka broccoli at this stage 😀

Weather will be a bit iffy this weekend, plus John got a summer cold and hasn’t been up to any biking. I’m going to try to fit in a solo ride at some point.  Have a great one!

What’s Blooming! 8-3

Happy Friday and happy weekend everyone! With all the rain we have been having, the garden is enjoying being fully hydrated – and I don’t have to water it!  Our lawn still doesn’t look great. It’s green again, but mostly crab grass that flourished in the wet weather. Sigh…

On to the blooms. Flowering tobacco:

I know hummers are supposed to like these, but I never see one at these flowers.

One of my favorite color of snapdragon:

I’m making a mental note to scatter the seed pods from this one around the garden. Or maybe I should really write that down if I want to remember LOL.

I was a little surprised to see the mullein sending up more flowers. I really was not expecting these to bloom this year, so bonus!

There is something like 200 species in the mullein family. It’s actually historically a medicinal plant, although I think most of that is folklore. You do find it in some herbal teas in stores.

Black-eyed Susan and hydrangea.

This hydrangea is now 3 years old. It’s called Strawberry Sundae and it is supposed to have pink-tinged flowers. This is the first year that I have seen the pink and only on the largest blooms. Maybe it just needed to be more mature.

It’s very pretty.

Tons of flowers on the globe thistles now.

It’s bee-palooza back here. 🙂

Second flush of blooms from Enchanted Evening:

This one smells so good! And I need to do some weeding 🙂

We had a nice visitor to the feeder this week. A juvenile downy woodpecker:

One thing about the baby birds – they are not afraid of people. The chickadees sit very close to us and I was maybe 6 feet from this guy. He just kept munching away. In fact, he ate seed the whole time we were eating our lunch outside!

There was a mixture of thistle and safflower seeds in that feeder. I’m pretty sure he was just picking out the safflower.

I’m happy to provide him all the food he wants.

John’s birthday is tomorrow, so whatever he wants to do for the day is on the agenda! Have a great weekend!