Garden Update: What's Flowering?

I had a bit of a lull on flowers recently.  Some of the spring flowers died back and now we're in a sort of "in-between" period when flowers are not as plentiful as they were, but some are still going, and fall flowers haven't yet started.

One current standout in the flower department are my various squash, zucchini, and pumpkin plants.  They are putting out a daily show of gorgeous yellow blossoms that are enormous.  Most of them are male flowers, unfortunately, but I'm hoping for some females soon so that fruits will start to develop.

Daylilies are in their glory right now.  Here are some of the blooms today:

I love this cheerful lemon yellow one - not as golden as Stella d'Oro day lily, but just as lovely.

This one is a kind of peachy yellow with a red throat.

A pale yellow with lovely ruffled edges.

This is more of a coral or salmon colour than it appears in the photo.

All the day lilies were here when we moved here, so I didn't plant any and don't know their names.  I think this one is my favourite.  I love the deep burgundy colour and the ruffled petals are stunning.

This is a monkshood, also known as wolf's bane, or Aconitum.  I was surprised to see it this year because it didn't appear last year or the year before, and I didn't plant it!  It's extremely poisonous, but also very beautiful.

 The containers have been suffering a bit in the heat, even though I water them all regularly.  The petunias have been having particular trouble despite being watered.  These calibrachoa have been doing well though.

I found this evening primrose flowering in the garden this year - another surprise that didn't flower last year.

I bought a delphinium earlier this year and it's over now, but the blossoms were glorious while they lasted.  I might get another one next year.

The astilbe are finally flowering as well, and as you can see, there's a rudbeckia (far right) coming along that isn't quite ready to flower yet.  The hostas are all flowering as well.

It's great to be able to take a little wander outside and enjoy the colour in the garden.  I'm trying to do it more often these days, because I didn't do it often enough last year.  If you have a garden, I hope you're enjoying it!

Garden Visit

On the weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting with my parents and enjoying some time chatting and knitting in their backyard.  They have an absolutely lovely yard, both back and front (and a side path of lavender plants!) with carefully considered landscaping and plant placement.  I really take inspiration from their garden, but also find it to be a lovely place to just sit and enjoy the colours of the flowers and leaves, the feel of the breezes that are nearly always present, and the chatter of the ever-present birds.

Here's a little tour of some of the beauty of their garden.  There are a number of gorgeous roses, all of which are tremendously fragrant.  I know they have Brother Cadfael, Hermione, Campfire (which is 2-coloured) and several others.  I'm not sure which pink bloom is which, but they will know!

The bees are always busy in my parents' garden!

Here is one of the pollinator bee nests that my parents have installed in their garden.  The bees lay eggs in the tubes and the nest keeps them insulated and safe until spring's warmth triggers the hatching process.  I have one of these bee nests for my own garden but haven't installed it yet.  If I was a bee, I would certainly like to make my home near this delightful garden!


This rose is definitely Campfire.  The honey bees like it a lot!

I think this one is Hermione.

My mom grows some poppies that her family grew in England.  I just love the shaggy blossoms and the distinctive seedpods.  I have some seed for this one to put into my own garden next year.

This is "Swiss Mint" daylily, which is a beautiful custard yellow colour with a touch of peach.  I am particularly fond of this daylily because it is very fragrant - most daylilies are not.

The flower beds are always well planned and the colours are designed to work well together.  My mother has a very green thumb and an excellent sense of garden design.

This beautiful Japanese maple is a show-stopper.  I hope to have one in my garden someday.

This clematis has lovely blooms, but as the blooms fade, the centre portion remains on the stem, giving a kind of second bloom without petals that extends the flowering time.

Here is an unusual fruiting structure on the Kousa dogwood tree - apparently it's edible!

There is also a lovely bed of Scotch heather - species carefully selected for their diversity in foliage and floral colours.  I'm hoping to try some slips of these heather plants in my own garden in future. They make a lovely "cushion" style of ground cover.

Finally, here is a beautiful Calibrachoa blossom that I couldn't resist photographing.

I'll show some of the birds from the garden in a future post!

Sharing this post with Today's Flowers #420:

Friday's Hunt v 2.9

It's Friday, so that means it's time for Friday's Hunt, hosted by Eden Hills.  As usual, there are 3 topics for today:  Starts with I, Week's favourite, and Pink.

Starts with I
I have a few different things for the letter I this week, and I couldn't decide on just one, so I'm sharing all of them!

First, this week we were quite industrious.  Our new home is heated by a wood stove in the winter, which is located in the basement.  The previous owner advised us that he used about 7 cords of wood to heat the house per year, so we have recently had 4 cords delivered, with another 4 coming in late October.  Here is the wood as it was delivered outside the house.

We needed to be industrious to get the wood from the driveway into the house.  Each evening, Marc works on transporting the wood with the wheelbarrow into the garage, where he sends it down a chute into the basement wood storage room, where I, in turn, have been stacking it.  We have made good progress and are now on the 5th row of stacked wood in the basement (this picture was from a couple of days ago when there were only two rows in progress.  The rows go up to the ceiling, except for the back one because of the pipe being in the way.

Here's how much wood is left - we still have some industriousness left to go, but I am pleased with how well we have done so far!

Second, I'm sharing a photograph I took this summer of Idia americalis, a moth whose larvae feed on lichen and dead leaves. Its common name is the American Idia. The trees in my yard have a lot of lichen on them, and I'm surrounded by woods with decaying debris on the ground as is normally seen in woods, so it's not surprising that I see quite a few of these moths.

There are 18 different Idia moth species in North America that you might see if you look for them!  
An interesting Idia fact I found is that one species, Idia gopheri, lives in abandoned burrows of the gopher tortoise and feeds on its droppings. We don't have that species here because the gopher tortoise only lives in the southeastern US.

Third, I'm sharing a picture of our cat, Izzy, sitting on a hay bale.  I think she is glad that I have the sheep back and therefore have hay bales again, because she always loved sleeping on hay in my Iowa barn, and as soon as I put the bales in the garage here, she was on them!

(Hmmm.... letter J for next week.  That one might be tricky!)

Week's Favourite
This week's favourite is a photograph I took on Tuesday at the Sackville Waterfowl Park.  This young bird was scurrying about the reeds and grasses when I was there, and I was captivated by it, although it proved very difficult to photograph because it was always behind something!  When I finally downloaded my pictures that day, I sent this picture, which was the best one of the bunch, to the park staff to see if they could help me identify it.

I was quite excited when they responded quite quickly that I had managed to photograph a baby sora. This was exciting for several reasons.  Firstly, it's very late in the year for sora chicks, so seeing this one is surprising.  Secondly, sora chicks are not often seen - although the sora is a common marsh bird, it is also a secretive bird and is hard to spot, so seeing a chick is really quite rare, at least in this area! Thirdly, it's a bird I had never seen before! I'm hoping I might see it again as it grows. The sora chick starts out solid black and downy-fluffy all over.  This one is just losing its down and developing its adult feathers, which helped to identify it.

Pink
I know it's probably going to be a common choice, but I just couldn't help choosing to showcase pink blossoms for this prompt.  There were so many to choose from that I decided to put them into a couple of mosaics.  These are a variety of pink flowers from my garden this summer, as well as some pink flowers I photographed at the waterfowl park.  Pink is a bit subjective - when exactly does pink become mauve, or purple?  Opinions will vary on this matter, but hopefully we can all agree that at least some of these are pink flowers.

Clockwise from top left:  Spiraea tomentosa, unknown Geranium species, second unknown Geranium species, pink clover (Trifolium species), pink phlox (Phlox paniculata).

Clockwise from top left: Paeonia lactiflora cultivar (bi-coloured peony), Lythrum salicaria (purple loosestrife, bad invasive weed, but pretty), Malva moschata, daylily (with friend!), and rose (again, unknown species, although there was a tag for a John Cabot rose in the outbuilding, so I think it might be that one).