Happy weekend everyone!  We have had much needed rain this week. Maybe a bit too much, but it certainly was a good thing to have.  I didn’t have to water all week.

On to flowers.  More Black-eyed Susan:

These are so prolific and stay in a nice shape. Not spreading, either.

Hydrangea:

This is supposed to be Strawberry Sundae, but it pretty much stays white. I don’t know if it is just a weird plant or maybe the pH of the soil. Still pretty.

Zinnia:

I’m so irritated with the critters in the back garden. Somebody (somebunny) went through and nibbled the buds from every single zinnia in the back. Argh! Time to get the repellent.

Anyway, this is from the front:

I planted some mullein this year. I couldn’t resist the $2.99 pots. Who can say “sucker”?  They were small and I wasn’t expecting blooms. I was really surprised to see this:

This should get much taller and will fill in the back where I was trying to grow foxgloves, which don’t seem to like me very much.

Balloon flowers:

I love these because they bloom for a good month.

Another hibiscus.

It’s a little more orange than this shot shows. This one I will bring in over the winter.

I tried some passion flower from seed and they actually are growing!

The front plant is a sweet annie. I had tried these from seed a couple of years ago and for some reason this one popped up in the walkway to the back this year. So I moved it into this pot. I looooove the scent of the leaves.  Gardening is always a surprise.

I have started composting. We collect in a bucket compostable stuff like coffee grounds, banana peels, fruit cores and the like, which I take outside and put in a pile along with dried leaves and plant material. I made a pile last year and this spring I got some nice compost. All of the things composted over the winter were in one pile to “marinate” and I made a new pile for this season:

Small piles, I know LOL. The one on the left can be spread in the fall. It has broken down nicely already.  I think I did a good job considering I don’t know what I’m doing 🙂

Reblooming lilac that was gifted to me last year for my birthday. It’s reblooming!

It’s amazing to smell lilac in late July.

Last night I was in the back garden and a hummingbird came right up to the beebalm I was standing by. I wish I had a zoom lens on the camera, but you can still see it:

Usually this guy comes around lunch time like clockwork. He loves the beebalm.

And speaking of bees, sort of, the globe thistle has opened and all the bees are flocking to it.

Look at these two:

I was about 3 inches from this flower and the bees didn’t care at all. Too busy gathering. Have at it bees – it’s all for you!

Hopefully there will be biking this weekend as the rain is supposed to clear some. See you on the flip side!

Vroooom and another Friday has rolled around. Things are popping along in the garden. Our season is short so plants explode in summer.

Snapdragon volunteers:

This year only white and yellow are showing up so far. And they have gone to many different places in the garden bed – a bit wayward as well LOL.

Candy stripe zinnia:

These are some zinnias I picked up at a big box store instead of ordering them online from Select Seeds like normal. Lesson learned.  Only about half germinated. These are short and not very full. Select Seeds from now on for the best zinnias. Future Lori reread this post to remind yourself.

I picked up some clearance plants for $1 and two of them happened to be hibiscus. I repotted them, fertilized and watered. Now I’m getting lots of blooms:

I’ve never grown hibiscus before. I didn’t know the flowers only last one day. Or at least mine are only lasting one day.

Same hibiscus by the balloon flowers:

Liatris complete with pollinator:

We are in a drought situation here. Any rain that has been in the area keeps missing us. Here is our lovely lawn:

Just in case you think my gardens look perfect 🙂 . We don’t do anything for the lawn. No water. It just goes dormant when it’s dry.  This is why I want to make more garden beds and get rid of more lawn.

Lots o’ coneflowers:

This one is a baby from the Cheyenne Spirit and it turned out a really cool color:

I’m calling it hot papaya.

Hydrangea and black-eyed Susan:

My other hydrangea, Annabelle:

The flowers on this are just perfect.

In the back, more razzmatazz:

The milkshake coneflowers just opened. I swear, nothing blooming and then boom – all of them:

These will get all white on top.  I’m having better luck this year with fewer bugs eating all the petals. Maybe the neem helps with that after all.

Drumstick allium:

Those were flopped over on the ground, so we caged them up. It looks like some of them have bed head LOL.

Bee balm:

It has spread so much! The hummingbirds have been visiting it this week.

Gooseneck loosestrife:

The globe thistles are really close to opening up now. Hopefully these coneflower blooms will last:

For some perspective on where these plants are, here is a pulled back shot:

We get a for real and true cupcake ride on Saturday – I’m so excited! Schedules and weather finally cross beams. Yippee!  Have a great weekend!

The garden is busy, busy, busy right now. Making up for lost time, I guess 🙂

Lots of balloon flowers:

The pink ones open a little later for some reason. They are right next to each other, too.

Liatris, aka gayfeather:

Now is the time for coneflowers:

Those are Cheyenne Spirit. If I were to recommend a coneflower that you should get, it would be that one. You never know which of the colors it will be and sometimes more than one color per plant. I have lots of babies from the original three that I bought. I gifted some and let others just grow where they sprouted.

Loved by bees:

Supreme cantaloupe, which is kind of small this year:

Campanula rebloom:

My Annabelle hydrangea is doing nicely:

This should double in size for next year if all goes according to plan (haha – do gardens ever do that??). These big blooms don’t droop over since the stems are nice and thick.

Black-eyed Susan:

That’s one plant! In its third year. Another hydrangea behind that, which is just starting to bud out.

It’s baby bird time right now. With having feeders and a relatively safe place for birds, we often see lots of babies. Right now there are goldfinch and chickadee babies. Here is one of the chickadee babies looking to take a dip in our water feature.

Baby chickadees are adorable. They look just like the adult only tiny. They don’t fly very well and kind of bump into things. Plus they aren’t really afraid and will often come pretty close to us when we sit on the patio.

The gooseneck loosestrife that I moved when we put in the water feature has really taken hold. I started with something like 6 of these?

Yikes! They can be invasive, so I’m not really planning on putting them anywhere else. The blooms line up and point to the sun like little soldiers:

Bee Balm:

Another one that went crazy. I started with a one gallon pot and now I’m going to have to thin this patch.  I think of Raggedy Ann when I see the blooms:

Not to mention the bees go crazy for this plant. There were quite a few bumblebees on it this evening when I took these pictures.

Another bee favorite is the drumstick allium:

These had actually flopped way over and were almost touching the ground, so John and I wrestled to put a hoop around them – all while the bees were trying to eat lunch. Eeek! Making a mental note to put a cage around these early.

White swan and magnus coneflowers next to my globe thistle:

At our old house, I had a perfect placement of the globe thistle and coneflowers. They bloomed at the same time and looked so cool together. They aren’t timing right at this house. Not sure I will ever get that combo duplicated again.

My old friend the Razzmatazz coneflower:

Weather should be decent this weekend. However, my bike is in the shop. I don’t know what happened, but after I cleaned my bike, the rear wheel started making a grinding noise. I don’t know how I could have done something to the inside ball bearings by cleaning it since I didn’t have the wheel even off the bike, but there you go. Could just be coincidence.  Flat tires I can fix, but wheel problems I cannot. Anyway, I dropped the wheel off at the bike shop on Tuesday and they aren’t even going to get to look at it until Saturday. Boo!!  So, the plan will be for a hike instead.

Have a great weekend!

Happy Friday and FINALLY cooler weather!  It was so icky and sticky this morning and it rained. Then the sun came out and as the day went on it got windier and the humidity dropped. In fact, we are going out tonight and I’m going to need to change into pants and wear a jacket!  Lori is much happier now 🙂

 

The garden fared pretty well during the heat. I was watering it every other day, but some plants still got really wilty looking. They seem to have recovered today.

I had a new allium open up. I have to say that I cannot remember which one this is. I got so many different allium bulbs last fall and I seem to be suffering from CRS disease any more.

The stem is very thin and wispy. With the wind today, these have nodded over quite a bit. I need to search the catalog and see what one this is.

Flowering tobacco:

Clearance annuals for $1 and how could I refuse?

The balloon flowers are all popping open (hahahaha!).

There are even more flowers today, but it is hard to get pictures when it’s so windy.

The tippy pots:

My $2 chair is just about ready to bite the dust. It fell apart and I glued it back together, but this may be the last year for it. I don’t dare place anything on the seat or the whole thing will come tumbling down.

More shasta daisies:

They are so cheery!

I still struggle with the shade garden. It is getting better, but slow going. The heuchera in the front got chewed by either the rabbit or bugs and they are still small. At least they are regrowing and not dead!

Closeup of the astilbes with the solomon seal:

There is a pink one next to it:

John got me this cute bike planter for my birthday.  All I did was add the pot. It sits by our water feature.

So cute!

The main bed in the back is cooking along.  The butterfly weed:

No aphids so far, but I do spray these with neem oil about once a week, which is supposed to keep them away. Might actually be working!

My baby Joe pye weed is tall again this year.

It obviously loves the spot I put it in as it continues to grow gangbusters.  Buds are forming on it now.

Old-fashioned daylilies:

I just stuck a few in this back corner after the fence came down and they really took to this spot. The ferns and other greenery to the left is my neighbor’s stuff.

I have some shasta daisies out back as well. These have a specific name, which I can’t remember either LOL. They are a quilled type:

Complete with little buggies! They don’t seem to be eating the plants, so I let them be.

There will be more new stuff next week. July seems to be when most of my things bloom:

With this gloriously much drier weather, I’m hoping for a nice long ride this weekend.  Have a good one!

June is almost gone already!  I’m going back to my garden today as I still haven’t finished editing Longwood Gardens photos.

We finally got some much needed rain. Our lawn was pretty crispy and I was watering the gardens a lot. After a couple good days of soaking rain, everything feels lush and green.  Now, of course, it’s going to get boiling hot, but you can’t have it all.

My Calycanthus bush is doing so well. Even though it got hit with a snow/ice slide off of our roof this winter, which broke some of it off, it recovered great.

I planted this is 2015 this size:

The garden sure has changed in 3 years!  Patience for this is so, so hard.

Here is a closeup of the blooms:

June is rose season. All of mine have been sending out flowers. This is Othello, a David Austin rose:

I have to say that I’m not terribly impressed with this rose. It only puts out a couple flowers and they last 1 day or two at most. It’s a beautiful flower, though.  I may move this to the back garden this fall.

Fair Bianca, on the other hand, is my fabulous rose bush:

This has probably 20 open flowers on it now – and the plant is not that big. They are in clumps like this all over the plant. It smells amazing, too.

My astilbes are fully open now. Or at least the white ones are.

I have a few different kinds of astilbes. My shade bed really has a mole problem, which is pissing me off. I’ve gone to mixing up a castor oil solution with dish soap and cayenne pepper  and pouring it over their tunnels to try to chase them out. Results uncertain as of yet.

Shasta daisies:

I got a lot of these last year from my BIL as leftovers from the tree nursery and they all came back.

Pretty petunias:

And the mini petunias – calibrachoa :

The yellow ones are a lot of fun!

We were hoping for a cupcake ride this weekend, but it’s just going to be too hot for that kind of riding in the afternoon. Mid 90s and humid – ick. That means morning rides only. Can you believe we have not had a cupcake ride this summer yet? Our schedules have not meshed with the weather to make that happen.

Stay cool everyone!

I’m going to do a couple of Longwood Gardens posts as it really is too much to squish into one post.

Longwood is really huge – over 1000 acres. We were there for 6 hours and didn’t see the whole thing.  It was founded by Pierre Dupont and was designed as sort of a horticultural and cultural experience. Not only are there the gardens and learning centers, but there is a stage for performances.

Upon entry:

It was quite sunny that day. Not the greatest for taking pictures as the colors get washed out. Cloudy days are best for photography, but at least it wasn’t raining!  Early morning sun as I was pretty much banging on the gate when they opened 🙂

The gardens are divided into sections or groupings and there is always something in bloom. Clematis was all over the place:

This was along the Flower Walk:

I really got some great ideas for plantings and new things to try.  This is datura.

It’s actually a poisonous plant, so you pretty much have to grow it from seed. There are a lot of colors available, too.

.Right now is the Festival of Fountains. There are a lot of water features around the gardens.

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I wish I noted the tag on that flower. It looks like kind of like celosia or maybe amaranth, but I’m not sure.

Topiary garden:

They didn’t come to life a la The Shining, thank goodness.

Italian water garden:

This was lovely. You weren’t allowed out there in the fountain area, which is probably a good thing. People tend to ruin stuff, you know?

Then there is the main fountain area:

The Conservatory (my favorite thing) is that big building in the back. We are standing on a walkway between these fountains and the larger ones:

The fountains put on periodic shows that are set to music throughout the day. It was fun to be this close to them.

The rose garden:

I love pretty much any flower, but I have a special fondness for roses.

I wish I had the patience for tea roses, but they are so fussy and need too many chemicals for me to bother with. I’ll just enjoy the work other people put in and stick to my floribundas.

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Last rose shot:

That’s enough for today. If you ever are going near Philadelphia, you need to check this place out. Doesn’t matter if it is in the winter as they have the whole conservatory blooming then.

I finally have my pictures downloaded from Longwood Gardens, but I have to edit them and organize. I took over 200 pictures, so I have some work to do LOL.  I’ll do a couple of posts because it was just such an amazing place. Absolutely well worth the admission cost and the drive to get there. I wish we could have spent two days there.

Back home to my little garden patch, which seems piddly in comparison.

My favorite Allium – the Star of Persia (Allium cristophii)

They are light and airy, not to mention huge!

My inlaws gave me a gift certificate to John Scheepers for my birthday and I am getting more of these! 😀

My “climbing” rose.

Need to mix up some more neem oil to keep the buggies from chewing on it. It smells great by the front door, but not really what I’m going for. I think I will move this one and the matching one on the other side of the door to the back and put clematis here.

Campanula alba:

It almost looks like it is floating. Just one flower stalk so far, but this will bloom a couple of times during the season.

My container plant is looking great now!

I have it in partial sun and it seems to like that a lot. That also helps keep it from drying out too much since it is a container and they need more frequent waterings than the rest of the garden.

The back corner garden:

Again, I wish this was closer to the house. It’s a nice full sun area for my roses, though.  Speaking of – here is Enchanted Evening:

I know you are singing right now…

I spied a toad friend in this garden bed:

I kind of freaked him out when I leaned in to take a picture, but living is good for him in this garden, so he won’t be leaving any time soon.

Shade garden with spiderwort:

I didn’t plant that. It just came by on its own.

Astilbe that is not quite ready for prime time, but close:

Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium):

I had planted one plant, which died, but it gave me 3 offspring.  You can see one of my heuchera behind that, which I think is called Spellbound.

Long time readers know that I’m not a big fan of hostas and there were some here when we moved in. I gave away some and just pulled others out, but left this one:

It’s quite large and my shade bed was so empty that I left it. It’s future in this spot is uncertain, but moving it won’t happen this year if I decide it needs to be somewhere else.

Flanking the hosta on each side are the Ladies Mantles:

The are just putting up flower stalks. The flowers are kind of a yellow foamy-looking flower. It’s mostly for foliage, though.

And lastly is the final iris. This was a very late bloomer – yes, I went there.

Night ruler. This looks almost black in person, especially in the sun.  I have 3 more iris rhizomes on order and one is supposed to be even blacker than this one. I will do my darndest to keep the bunnies away from those!

Have a great weekend!

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes! Just a quick blooming post today. As a gift for myself for turning 50, we are taking a weekend trip to Longwood Gardens so that I can soak up all things flowers 😀  I’m so excited and the weather is supposed to be nice!  Yippeee! First vacation is many, many months.

Anyway, on the home front there are some new things:

Calycanthus bush

It has lots of buds on it.

We need to make/buy a snow protector for this bush as it is in the drop line for snow slides off our roof, which broke a chunk off it over the winter.

This is the Purple Sensation allium after it goes to seed.

I love how these look and leave them up until they dry up and fall apart. I haven’t gotten any baby allium that I know of from the seeds.

Here is my very favorite allium – Star of Persia:

I have them all over.

They are still filling out and will be even bigger once they are done.

Last of the Boysenberry Buttercup iris:

One more iris to open up out back still. Late bloomer 😀

On a side note, Woodrow is still coming around a lot:

His leg seems better, although I suppose it could be a different woodpecker.

Potted heliotrope:

One of my new favorite annuals. It smells divine!

My peonies are still going strong:

One of the bushes only has one bloom on the whole plant, which is weird. It could be from road salt as it does get some from the plows in the winter. Who knows?

My Zepherine Drouhin rose:

It is a climbing rose, but a lot of the canes die back in the winter here, so it is pretty short. I have two and one is much bigger than the other, likely due to the sun. I may move these this fall, but I’ll wait and see how much they grow this season.

Looking good for June!

Still have that blue/purple theme going right now.

Have a great weekend!

Okay, last time I posted was last Friday. Oopsie! Time just gets away from me. Welcome to my garden blog 😀

I’ll start in the back today.

Heuchera. This is getting a bloom spike on it. I actually forgot they bloom since I planted them all as baby plants a couple of years ago.

Pretty foliage colors:

The wind and/or critters removed a lot of my plant markers so I don’t remember the name of this one. It’s either Marmalade or Southern Comfort.

This is a lilac bush that I got for my birthday last year.

It suffered a little in the harsh cold, I think, as the leaves are a little sparse. It’s supposed to rebloom, so we shall see.

And, our magnolia tree is officially dead. Nothing green on it at all and the end branches are dry and breaking off. I’m sad about that and we really don’t need the expense of a tree removal right now. It’s not really too big. I almost have half a mind to remove the branches and leave the trunk to decorate somehow.

The back garden still is somewhat sparse. This is taking me a long time to get it where I want it and filled in.  I have moonflower seeds planted where that black metal stand is. The plan is for them to twine up that.

Alliums in this bed along with the Boysenberry Buttercup iris like I have out front. It bloomed about a week after the one in the front bed.

When we moved into this house in 2015, the back garden was atrocious. I didn’t keep anything really, except for some iris rhizomes. I have been nurturing them without any blooms since then. I told myself if they didn’t bloom this year – out they go. Well, they must have listened because they bloomed!

I didn’t even know what color they were going to be! I wonder if the fact that they were in the shade for probably years is why it took them a while to get going again once I got them in the full sun that they need.  Patience is good for a gardener, but hard LOL.

Speaking of irises, the Brindled Beauty has opened up:

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Out in front, I had another surprise. I planted a Tour de France (yay cycling!!) iris rhizome, which is supposed to yellow and white. It didn’t bloom last year as it was establishing and I was sooooo excited to see buds on it this year. Then it opened.

That doesn’t look yellow to me. I obviously was sent the wrong plant. I am going to contact the company. I don’t really expect them to do much since I got it 2 years ago, but what a disappointment. Not that it isn’t pretty, but it wasn’t what I ordered.

Star of Persia allium just starting to open.

I’ll get a better picture once they are full. This is my favorite allium.

And the rhododendron that I “rejuvenated”. It’s flowering now.

You can see all that nice new growth at the bottom. I will be taking off most of the top of this. You can’t see from this angle, but those flowers kind of stick out from thin bare branches.

Love the flowers:

It’s weeding time in the garden this weekend. Have a great one!

I love my garden so much! It makes me so happy to putter around out there and see all the changes day to day – and even from morning to evening!

Allium are still blooming. They last a long time, which is always a plus for a flower.

I also planted some small alliums, but now I can’t remember the name of them LOL.

My big bearded irises are showing off right now.  Boysenberry Buttercup:

 

This is a nice mature iris. I have had it for at least 6 years? I had it at our old house and I cut a chunk off for Radiance Manor 3 years ago.  There is one in the back garden as well, but that one hasn’t opened yet.

There is a blue/purple theme going on right now.

The front part of this bed has some ranunculus bulbs planted. I have no idea if they will come up or not, so it’s going to look bare until I decide I can’t stand the emptiness anymore LOL.

Batik is also about 3 years old. Nice size and lots of blooms this year:

This is one of my favorites.

Remember a couple of months ago when I did that container workshop?

It’s home with me and looking good!

I love it and am still trying to figure out where I’m going to put it.

Again, this is the calibrachoa annual. I have these in my tippy pots, too, but they haven’t bloomed.

My holiday weekend plans? Getting our back patio in order. It’s quite the mess:

I finally got all the solar light strings untangled, so hopefully those will get strung up as well.

 

Have a great weekend!