Here’s a little montage of some of the wildflowers beginning to emerge in the garden this season. Some months ago I sprinkled the seeds in a fee patches, raked the beds and remembered to keep things moist over the days and weeks that followed. These are some of the results… (Click for a larger view.)
The wildflower patch continues to produce surprises. You never know exactly what’s going to come up, and in what quantities. I’ve been fascinated by this particular flower, for example, which seems to be constructed out of several smaller flowers! What a wonder, and of course, there’s just one example of its parent plant in the entire patch, so once it is gone, it’s gone.
I got a lot of plants and seeds into the ground early this year, so they got the benefits of some of the rain we had, and got in a good amount of growing before the relentless heat begins. Here is part of a patch of wildflowers that have been putting on a generous display these last several weeks. It has been great to enjoy them with the whole family too – the young gentleman is a big fan of flowers of all kinds.
I’ve been looking for a good way to photograph these. Most angles have distracting background elements. Decided that the sky was best. (Click for larger view.)
I remembered that this all started as a tiny plant (the name of which I’ve forgotten) that I bought in a Huntingdon Gardens sale probably more than a decade ago.
-cvj (And by coincidence, after taking this picture for this post, I noticed that this time last year I posted this.)
So far, the Summer has not been as brutal in the garden as it was last year. Let’s hope that continues. I think that late rain we had last month (or earlier this month?) helped my later planting get a good start too.
This snap of a sunflower was taken on a lovely warm evening in the garden the other day, after a (only slightly too) hot day…
The title of the post sounds like I’m about to talk about a new film by Zhang Yimou, or by Wisit Sasanatieng, but I’m not. Just wanted to share […] Click to continue reading this post
Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers in my life, to all others, and especially to the wonderful mother who recently made me a father! Thanks for all that you do every day.
After a recent bit of rain this single spectacular bloom was poking out from the undergrowth, in a seldom-tended part of the garden. So vivid! It almost looks like I’ve done some sort of enhancement to the colours and contrast post-photo. But I have not.
An update on one of the wild flower patches I spoke about earlier. Quite a pleasing variety is now showing:
And to think that there is a much larger patch nearby that has yet to begin in earnest. Exciting!
Been a bit tough to find time for any serious gardening effort recently, due to… you know. I anticipated this, however, and one of the things I did back in December was prep some open spaces and liberally sow a bunch of wildflower […] Click to continue reading this post
One of my favourite Mark Twain sayings: “cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education”. Spotted these in the Hollywood farmer’s market on Sunday:
One of the many plants* that look a lot happier after the much-needed rain…
I promised two things in a previous post. One was the incomplete sketch I did of Crater lake and West Maroon Valley (not far from Aspen) that I started before the downpour began, last weekend. It is on the left (click to enlarge.) The other is a collection of the wild flowers and other pretty things that I picked for you (non-destructively) from my little hike in the West Maroon valley. There’s Columbine, Indian Paintbrush, and so forth, along with […] Click to continue reading this post
Yep. This is an exciting new discovery for me. No, it is not what you think! I’m talking about gardening matters. It seems that a lot of my cucumber and squash plants are not producing a great deal this year, (with several small squashes not developing much before falling off) and I could not figure out why. On the other hand, I’ve done a better job of building sun shields for them, to stop them being fried by the intense heat over the course of a hot day. I now think that maybe these things are connected. First of all, I’m not seeing a lot of bees of any sort in the garden, and so I wonder if it is simply that there’s not a lot of pollination going on. Couple this with the fact that the sunscreens (some quite low) are probably hiding them from some bees that might be passing by, I’ve begun to wonder if it is time to help things along a bit. […] Click to continue reading this post
