Spring Finery

I haven't been able to garden properly for about a year and a half now. It's very frustrating.

Ubiquitous Weeds


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I realized as I did my grocery shopping yesterday that at this time of year I would normally go to the garden centre in the parking lot before even thinking about milk and eggs and breakfast cereal and all that other stuff. But this year I have other things on my mind.

Backyard: "Good Bones"


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Luckily, the garden has "good bones", and -- except for the ubiquitous weeds and last fall's detritus still waiting to be cleared -- it still manages to put on a decent show. Daffodils, tulips, and iris are the main players, although a lot of what was blooming was already past its prime when I took the photos. Like these magnolia blossoms.

Magnolia Blossoms (Past Their Prime)


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Or some of these daffodils.

Hybrid Daffodils


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Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

These are some early tulips, which were at their peak about a week and a half ago.

Early Tulips, First Year Showing


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Now we have the later tulips putting on a show. Many of these bulbs are a couple of years old now. The flowers are smaller, slightly frail-looking, compared to the first year of planting. I'm grateful, though, that they continue to bloom.

Late Tulips, from Older Bulbs


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Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

The irises are also putting on a good show, including my favourite dwarf iris, 'Grape Orbit'.

Dwarf Iris 'Grape Orbit'


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Some other blooms that I like at this time of year are Pasque Flower, which can be quite photogenic, though they are hard to photograph being so close to the ground. I usually just hold the camera down in front of the flower, snap a few photos, and hope for the best. Sometimes I get one or two good photos in the bunch.

Pasque Flowers


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Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

And finally, a promise of what comes next in the garden. Here is a poppy bud that should be ready to bloom at the end of May or early June.

Poppy Bud


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Rainy Day Garden

"April showers bring May flowers." What a cliché!

Besides, I've got flowers in April. Even in the rain, a garden in bloom can be a nice welcome home.

Front Garden in the Rain


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Magnolia


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Daffodils and Early Tulips


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Pink Tulips Ready to Bloom


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I took these photos with my iPhone camera when I got out of the car, just because it made me feel so good to arrive in my driveway with a view of flowers.

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Spring in the Garden

I've left it rather late to take this blog off its winter hiatus, but then spring seems a little bit late in coming to the garden this year.

But now it's here, in both the front and the back yard. It started with crocuses, as it always does, but this year they looked just the same as last year. (Except for the additional mix I got at the grocery store last autumn. I have to say that was a waste of money. A poor showing of tiny, mostly pale yellow crocuses. I now understand why my "Ruby Giant" are called "Giant", even if I'm still not sure why purple crocuses are called "Ruby".)

We did also add plenty of early tulips to the garden last autumn, though, and that seems to have paid off well.

Early Tulips


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The purple hyacinths are ancient (by the standards of this garden) and strong, and return year after year. The white ones return, but they are sparse and sickly looking. There are the light purple hyacinths under the gingko tree, which are the same colour as the periwinkle that is also blooming right now.

Hyacinth and Periwinkle


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We also have dark purple hyacinths under the Camperdown elm. These ones are really striking in contrast with the hybrid daffodils that bloom at the same time.

Dark Purple Hyacinth


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Garden Under the Elm


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Hybrid Daffodils


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Over in another corner of the back yard we have other things going on. This time of year, with the snow cover gone and the hostas not yet grown, we get an interesting view of the base of the willow tree. This tree has character. And we love it (as do some of our neighbours) for the privacy it gives us.

Base of Willow Tree


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Under the willow, some flowers that will also eventually compete with the hostas that grow there: fritillaria.

Fritillary


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Now, I'm assuming, probably wrongly, that "fritillary" is the singular of "fritillaria", and that "fritillaria" is a real word. If you are a person well-versed in flower lore who knows otherwise, please educate me. If I am wrong, I'd rather not have it go on for too long.

Another flower that blooms at this time of year that's located nearby is the pasque flower. Here is one that is almost open.

Pasque Flower


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It is Pulsatilla vulgaris 'Rode Klokke' (Red Bells). I did have some nice purple pasque flower, but these are newer, planted in 2006. I think the purple ones died off (it grew to be quite a large plant, as seen halfway down this post) and only the red ones remain.

Moving back to the front of the house, the magnolia is once again starting its glorious bloom time. I'm afraid the Nootka is starting to invade the magnolia's space though. I don't like to prune evergreens, but removing the entire Nootka is not really an option, since it is part of a group of three, so I might have to remove some length from a couple of branches in order to give the magnolia some more room to grow.

Magnolia and Nootka: Close Enough to Kiss


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In this final photo, however, you would never know there's a problem.

Glorious Magnolia Blossoms


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Winter in the Garden

On hiatus.

Winter in the Garden



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Autumn in the Garden

Here is my garden in autumn.

Moonglow Rebloom


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Not much good having a yellow flower surrounded by so many yellow leaves fallen from the Honey Locust tree above. It gets kind of lost.

Red October


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True to its name, my hosta 'Red October' is blooming quite happily.

Autumn Entrance


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The Buddha head surrounded by ivy is now surrounded by a carpet of tiny yellow leaves.

Dandelion


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This is another yellow flower taking the opportunity to rebloom in my garden. This one is not quite as welcome.

Rozanne Hardy Geranium


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The bees are still out, but they are slow and even more bumbling in the cooler weather.

Japanese Anemone


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These late bloomers are beautiful in the autumn garden.

Autumn Vine


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Well, my neighbours didn't kill it all in July. A couple of tendrils survived to grow up the wall of the shed. The colour is just starting. In a couple of days the red will really pop.
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New Daylily Bed

Well, with all the new (and a few existing) daylilies I have bought this year, I came up with a great idea to deal with the Eco-Lawn disappointment. We've made over the area where the grass was into a new daylily bed.

New Daylily Bed


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Mr. Wonderful removed all the dead Eco-Lawn grass (that's right, it ALL died) and amended the area by double-digging in some nutrient-rich triple-mix. Then he planted the daylilies where I arranged them. (I'd have helped with the planting, but I'm still recovering from surgery, so I can't overdo it.) At the moment, everything is covered in plain cedar mulch, but in the spring I'd like to set off the daylily bed with black mulch. Also, as soon as it's time for planting bulbs, I will put down lots of tulips and daffodils among the daylilies so I have both a spring garden and a daylily garden to look forward to.

I haven't quite decided what to do with the empty area in front of the elm tree yet. I don't know whether to make it a focal point with a bird bath, statue, stone bench, or fountain (although the electrical cord to run a pump would be distracting, I think). Another possibility is creating a seedling bed there; however, I'm reluctant to use prime visible space for something where the results would be a complete unknown. It might be next spring before we truly figure out what to do there.

Anyway, one daylily I couldn't show you earlier because it didn't have blooms at that time is Coal Miner. Here it is now.

Coal Miner


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This is one my husband picked out. He likes how the bright yellow jumps out of the dark purple. I must admit it's quite striking. Of course, I've yet to see any dark purple daylily that I didn't like.

Here is another striking pair. You've seen Green Eyes Wink in a previous post, but the white one is Tuesday. Tuesday was only registered in 2003, and there are not many photos of it out there. (Of course, try doing a search on the name "Tuesday" and getting a photo of a daylily. It's a difficult thing to do with such a common word.)

Green Eyes Wink (left) and Tuesday (right)


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The thing about Tuesday is that it's a small-sized, ruffled and recurved beige-white self with what looks to be prolific blooms. It's registered as mid-season, but the fact that it's still blooming indicates that it must be mid-to-late, at least in this climate.

Oh, and in planting the daylily bed I had a bit of a disappointment. When I looked closely at Tang Dynasty it turned out to have two plant tags in the pot. The plant we picked up is not a dark purple daylily (as Tang Dynasty is supposed to be) so we have come home with the wrong one. I need to get in touch with Betty so I can fix this. Tang Dynasty is one of the daylilies I really, REALLY wanted.

But I'm not complaining.

Anything for another chance to visit the daylily farm, right?!
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Catching Up with Garden Stuff

Well, the other day I realized that I had one more daylily to show you that hadn't yet bloomed in my garden, Royal Palace Prince, whose first bloom was on August 14, very much later than usual for this daylily.

Royal Palace Prince


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Yesterday we visited my favourite daylily farm, Floral and Hardy Gardens, to see what late-blooming daylilies they had available to add to my collection. Here is my favourite shot of the AHS Display Garden on site (although I took many photos of this beautiful garden).

Daylily Display Garden


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And when I went shopping for my garden, there were so many daylilies to choose from! I was sad when it came time to pay for my choices that I had to give up some of them which the farm needed to keep for restocking. A beautiful healthy purple spiderform that would have looked lovely in my garden had to be abandoned at the till. But I still came home with plenty. Here are some of my purchases, waiting to be planted.

Some of My Daylily Purchases


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Here are a couple of blooms shown in a bit closer view.

Green Eyes Wink (New Purchase)


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Stoplight (New Purchase)


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I have what may seem like a long list of new daylily purchases from this trip, but this year I have made fewer trips, so over the length of the summer this is no different than in previous years. (Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

• Bama Bound
  
• Coal Miner
  
• Green Eyes Wink (see above)
  
• Ivory Edges
  
• Little Red Spring Song (blooms early June)
  
• Lucky Catch
  
• Spiritual Corridor
  
• Stoplight (see above)
  
• Strutters Ball
  
• Sunday Gloves
  
• Tang Dynasty
  
• Thomas Lee
  
• Tuesday (Klehm, 2003 -- no image currently available)

Other stories I'm sticking to: my husband and son helped me shop. They are the biggest enablers on the planet.

You might recognize some of those daylilies from a list I made last January. There would be more from the January list, but some I was unable to get on this trip because we couldn't find them, or they were sold out.

I also took the opportunity to pick up some more Postman's Pride sedum, and a new sedum called 'Xenox' which is a most intriguing pinkish-purple colour. It was a MUST HAVE for my garden.

Xenox Sedum


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We have already started on the big rearrangement in the garden. Since the Eco-Lawn grass was such a nightmare we are tearing it all out and I am making a daylily bed instead. We have also torn out the overcrowded evergreens and overgrown shrubs (well, I say "we" but Mr. Wonderful did all the heavy digging -- I just chopped branches). A westward view of the maple garden now looks like this.

Garden Looking West


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I don't know if you can see in the above photo the toll that the rainstorms have taken on the slope this year. There is almost no mulch left, and the water is starting to erode little channels through the dirt. Whereas normally in August we would say the dryness is killing the garden (unless it is planted with drought-tolerance in mind) this year it seems the water falling from the sky is damaging roots and leaves and killing off certain plants, while causing others to flourish beyond the means to control them. (Periwinkle is a case in point.)

Anyway, to get a better idea of the "cleared" look of the maple garden above, here is the same view at the end of July, 2006. You can see how the evergreens were already overcrowded at that time. Now that they have been removed, the garden has more room to breathe.

Maple Garden 2006


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Oh, and just as a follow-up to something I said in a post about how the goldfinches like the sunflowers that have grown up around the feeder. I thought I would fill people in on what the goldfinches do. You see, to get to the seeds, they perch on top the sunflower and pluck the top petals off. This allows them to get a better foothold and bend down from the top and peck out the seeds. It results in a messy-looking collection of droopy, dismembered flowers. (It's totally worth it though.)

Food For Goldfinches and Squirrels


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At this point, some of the flowers have now drooped so low they are lying on the ground. Along come the squirrels to solve this problem. They chew through the stem to remove the flower and then carry the entire flower off to hide it somewhere.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if it ended up somewhere in my backyard neighbour's flowerbed. Only because of what they did to my vine. (I'm just sayin'...)
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We've Got Stinkhorns!

Enough. Said.


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EDIT: Hmm, maybe I didn't say enough after all. These things are weird fungi that grow without prompting from out of the mulch. They have a strange odour, an even stranger appearance (those orange stalks poke out of puffball-like "eggs" that emerge out of the ground), and they are really good at attracting flies. Just one big "Ewwww" if you ask me.
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My Hope

I can't believe I said that My Hope wouldn't bloom. Well, I can believe I said it, but I can't believe it bloomed anyway. Its first -- and possibly only -- bloom this year was on August 10.

My Hope


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It's almost mystical, in a way. There were no scapes coming from this plant at all, but sometime around the beginning of August I rearranged the garden a bit and returned the Grey Buddha to its accustomed place under the elm (right next to the 'My Hope' plant). As soon as I did that, a scape appeared -- seemingly overnight.

However, this smallish yellow flower with barely a hint of pink is a far cry from the plant's heyday in 2006.

My Hope, August 7, 2006


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One notable thing about the daylily My Hope is that it has a lovely fragrance. This is definitely a plant worth saving and I am planning on dividing and moving it to a more favourable location this fall.
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