Canning Perennials and a WEDGIE® in the Mail

We made a trip to Canning Perennials this weekend. They had a buy-two-get-one-free sale. It sort of made up for the fact that so many of the best plants in their catalog were just not available anymore. (Normally we go to Canning's earlier in May when the pickings are good.)

I'll tell you all the plants I bought -- as I've been happy to do before -- but I'm just not inclined to go and take photos of them all, though I do have one I took of this echinacea:

Echinacea 'Big Sky Sunset'



I also got an 'Orange Meadowbrite', and a compact variety, 'Raspberry Tart'. It's about time I jumped on the bandwagon with all the new echinaceas coming out.

Along with the echinacea I picked up some beautiful sedums ('Linda Windsor', 'Pink Chablis', and 'October Daphne'), and several sempervivum which I bought by appearance and not by name. I'll have to do a post soon on my sempervivum planters this year. It's not been a great year for them, with all this rain. They are used to drier weather.

I've never grown this plant before, but two monarda caught my eye: 'Grand Parade' and 'Marshall's Delight'. I bought them specifically because they are compact varieties, resistant to powdery mildew, and bred in Canada.

And of course, what would a plant shopping trip be without new daylilies? I bought two of them, 'Africa', a deep purple that didn't have any scapes so I'm hoping it will bloom, and 'Justin Miller', which is deep red in the center with lighter edges.

Speaking of daylilies, I've actually had some blooms in my garden this year. The first (which I missed taking a photo of) was 'Siloam Plum Tree'. The second was an unknown purple one that came with the half-price perennial planter I bought a week or two ago from the Canadian Tire garden centre. I think it might be 'Purple d'Oro'. It's not likely to be anything exotic coming from a generic planter.

New Daylily (Possibly 'Purple d'Oro')



Oh, and of course I can't forget that 'Moonglow' also had its first bloom. It also looks like 'Barbara Mitchell' is about to bloom, tomorrow or the day after at the latest.

'Moonglow' Daylily First Bloom



As well as the daylilies, the Asiatic lilies have been blooming. I got a pretty good picture a couple of days ago:

Asiatic Lilies



That's 'Sugar Baby' honeysuckle in the background, along with some poppy foliage dying back. The beautiful vermilion lily was actually supposed to be crimson. At least, that was the colour in the photo on the label. Ah well, I am very good at misjudging flower colours and making "interesting" combinations.

On the same day I took that photo, the blanket flower was in full bloom, and I managed to get this photo of it:

'Burgundy' Blanket Flower



At the same time, both hardy geraniums 'Rozanne' and 'Splish Splash' got blooms. Here is 'Rozanne':

'Rozanne' Hardy Geranium (Cranesbill)



Oh, and I don't have a photo (mostly because I had to crawl through hip-high thistles to get to it), but my Lewisia plant that I bought at Wal-Mart earlier this year is blooming. It has flowers similar in colour to 'Regenbogen', only with more yellow. (I have since removed all the thistles and other weeds from that neglected corner of the garden. It was a big job.)

On the way to Canning Perennials, we stopped at a new garden store that opened in a location that used to be a wonderful bakery. Sadly, the bakery that we loved is no more, but the new garden store wasn't bad. With all the rain we've been having, I decided that a new umbrella was just the thing.

New Umbrella from the Garden Store


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

There's something else I hope to blog about soon, and that is the new WEDGIE® garden tool that Cookie Wherry sent me from Chicago. Wedgie promises to make my container gardening so much easier. I can hardly wait to try it out.

Oh, and for those of you with a sense of humour, I don't need to tell you about the look on my husband's face as he gleefully informed me that I got a "wedgie" in the mail. (If you not familiar with vernacular English, "wedgie" is a schoolyard word for what happens when you pull upwards really hard on someone else's underpants so that the fabric becomes wedged between the buttocks.) My husband is just a big schoolboy at heart.