1-2-3 Go Garden!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

First Blooms and First Shows

Based on the (non) appearance of spent blooms, I can tell whether a daylily had its first bloom while I was away or whether today's flower is the first bloom of the year for that plant. With that knowledge, I can get back to my usual practice of cataloguing the date of first bloom for certain daylilies.

Here are today's actual first blooms, of which there are five:

'Sabine Baur'

'Siloam Doodlebug'

'Kwanso'

'Country Melody'

'Justin Miller'

In addition to first blooms for the year, there are some daylilies that bloomed today that were not blooming yesterday, so as far as the blog is concerned, their flowers are "new" here.

'Cimarron Knight'

'Lady Fingers'

'Russian Rhapsody'

Also worth mentioning is the fact that some of my daylilies (even ones that have been completely reliable up to this year) are starting to get sickly and produce inferior flowers. This makes me sad, especially Lavender Rainbow, which is hands-down my favourite daylily.

'Druid's Chant'

'Lavender Rainbow'

This next couple of daylilies are not sickly (although 'Mini Might' has seen better days), but are miniatures. A miniature daylily must produce flowers that are less than 3 inches across. Some of my miniatures are registered as such, but some, like Naomi Ruth are just sports, for whatever reason producing miniature versions of the regular flower.

'Mini Might'

'Naomi Ruth'

Chicago Atlas is, sadly, suffering the same fate as some of my irises. It has grown through the chain link fence (again, I must say, chain link was not my choice) and blooms on the neighbour's side.

'Chicago Atlas'

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Copyright © all rights reserved. All text and images in this post belong to 1-2-3 Go Garden! at kbgardenblog.blogspot.com.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Evening

Edit: Sorry I keep changing my posts, but I have this tendency to misidentify my daylilies, especially in the large bed. This time around I realized that the ruffled red I was calling 'Justin Miller' is actually 'Lucky Catch'. 'Justin Miller' has now bloomed and is more of an orangey-red and less ruffled.

I went out again this evening with the camera. Normally in July I would be posting once a day, with a few flowers each day to show as they put out their first blooms. With the timing of our vacation this year, the "usual practice" has not been possible. So here are some of the daylilies that weren't shown this morning, or that weren't open to their best advantage.

One noticeable thing about my flower choices is that I love dark daylilies. I seem to be on a quest for a reliably dark flower without too much red in it. My collection contains many daylilies that I have bought in an attempt to meet my requirement, with varying levels of success.

'American Revolution'

'Siloam Plum Tree'

'Wayside King Royale'

'Darkside'

'Bela Lugosi'

'Strutters Ball'

Cricket Dance is normally a very dark daylily. It's great for a flower garden, with plenty of scapes and a high bud count. It has one drawback, however, and that is its tendency to lose colour easily. Here is a photo from the end of the day. The petals look almost bleached.

'Cricket Dance'

But not all my daylilies are dark purple. There are many, many of them in my garden, and they come in almost all the colours that daylilies are available in. For example, the reds seem to be well represented at this time of year.

'Lucky Catch'

Ed Murray

'Persian Ruby'

'Executive Decision'

'Highland Lord'

Highland Lord is a double daylily that hasn't been giving me reliable doubles for the past couple of years. Today the plant had two flowers, both doubles, but neither of them fully open even as late as 7PM.

The remaining daylilies for which I have photos this evening are apricot and pink.

'Green Eyes Wink'

'David Kirchoff'

'Strawberry Candy'

'Spiritual Corridor'

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Copyright © all rights reserved. All text and images in this post belong to 1-2-3 Go Garden! at kbgardenblog.blogspot.com.

Early Morning

So, we were away on vacation all week, during prime daylily season. I have come back to a profusion of blooms. Not all daylilies look their best first thing in the morning, but I took a few photos with my new camera anyway. (I'll have to go out this afternoon and take some more shots when all the flowers are fully opened.)

'Darkside'

'Bela Lugosi'

'Luxury Lace'

'Cassadiana'

'Destined to See'

'Moonlit Masquerade'

'Nile Crane'

'Moristar Mix'

'Pandora's Box'

'Green Eyes Wink'

'Bama Bound'

'Tuesday'

Friday, July 08, 2011

Snaps

A couple of cell phone snaps of daylilies that bloomed the day we left on vacation, July 8. I have backdated this post to keep things accurate.

'Always Afternoon'

'Ice Carnival'

Thursday, July 07, 2011

The Season Has Begun

Although I love the tulips and daffodils of spring, and I have been slowly adding to my collection of irises, when it comes to my garden there is really only one flower for me: the daylily.

I have quite a large and varied selection, though the urge to add more has been fading lately. Not so the urge to see the ones that I have start blooming.

Today as the first week of July draws to a close, two daylilies in my garden had their first blooms, Barbara Mitchell and Grecian Gown.

Poor old 'Barbara Mitchell'. The flowers are wonderfully fragrant still, but this plant has seen better days. It did not even bloom at all last year, so I am glad to see the one scape this year, as that represents an improvement -- even though that scape is not self-supporting (not a good sign).

'Barbara Mitchell'

H. 'Barbara Mitchell' First Bloom, 11/07/05

This is slightly early for 'Grecian Gown', as it usually has its first bloom sometime during the second week of July. (Except for last year, of course, when everything in the garden was two weeks early across the board.)

'Grecian Gown'

I am really loving the performance of this new camera. It takes way better pictures, far faster, than with any previous camera I've had access to. I'm not even tempted to tweak the photos in post-processing, as I am with most other cameras I have used on this blog (with the possible exception of the Sony point and shoot I had way back when -- but that was also before I had photo editing software to work with, so it's kind of a chicken-and-egg thing).
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Copyright © all rights reserved. All text and images in this post belong to 1-2-3 Go Garden! at kbgardenblog.blogspot.com.

Sunday, July 03, 2011

New Camera!

A new camera has joined the others in our household: the Pentax K-r. (Non-camera buffs can skip the next paragraph in favour of looking at actual photos taken by the new camera.)

The K-r is a mid-level Pentax, a step above entry-level, but not quite as fancy as a semi-pro model. We currently have a Pentax *ist DL (mid-level) and a Pentax K10d (semi-pro) in our collection. What's great about the new K-r (though not for garden photos) is that it has wonderful low-light performance, with access to very high ISO settings. The K10d is a great camera, but at ISO settings higher than 800 the image quality deteriorates rapidly. The K-r will take photos up to ISO 12800, extendable to 25600. And on top of that it has a very fast auto-focus, noticeably quicker and more accurate than our older cameras (though that's with the brand-new lens that came with the camera -- still haven't tested with our older lenses).

Anyway, back to the reason for this blog's existence: garden photos.

Daylily season has begun with 'Moonglow'. That is, the first blooms appeared on June 30, but I was going away for the long weekend and didn't get a chance to take my usual "first bloom" photos. My husband has taken the following photos as he tested the new camera for us.

'Moonglow'

Penstemon 'Husker Red' is now past its prime, but still looks elegant as it starts to die off.

Penstemon Past Its Prime

The big hostas under the elm, meanwhile, are just starting to bloom.

Hosta

The sempervivum I planted last year survived the winter (they usually do) and is blooming its little heart out. I am not a fan of sempervivum blooms; not that they aren't pretty -- I don't mind them to look at -- it's just that the blooms destroy the plants and I lose my investment, as I end up having to replace them with more the next year.

Sempervivum Blooms

And it's not just blooms that catch my husband's attention when he is out with a camera. He managed to capture a couple of critters (of the miniature variety) at the same time.

Spider on Poppy Leaf

Sweat Bee on Hardy Geranium 'Hokus Pokus'