Category: Biennials

Biennial plants I grow.

July bloom day scans

I’m actually early to the party this time. With rain headed our way, I thought it good to go ahead and do this month’s scans. Click images for larger view. Apologies for lazy nomenclature and mis-IDs.

Update [7/15/2007]: As Layanee and Carol both pointed out, there’s a big article on scanning in the latest Horticulture (which has been sitting in my huge stack of unread gardening magazines). It’s by Ken Druse, so you know it’s gotta be good. (Print’s not dead. Sign up for a free issue of Horticulture.)

Monarda, Asian lily, sedum, spiraea, lychnis, Rosa ‘Cuisse de Nymphe’, allium, daucus, stachys (the other one), Scotch thistle.

july bloom day scan 1

Astrantia, viola, sorbaria (about to pop), verbascum, sedum, that weed that looks like fried eggs, digitalis, Verbena bonariensis, Verbena hastata, coneflower, teasel, rock garden campanula?, wild composite (aster?).

july bloom day scan 1

Digitalis, Asian lily, allium, astilbe, monarda, sorbaria (popped), astrantia.

july bloom day scan 1

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Honeybees on Verbascum

bee and verbascumWith Elly out of town this weekend, I thought I’d send the hookers home early, clean up the liquor bottles, turn on LiveEarth (Bravo or Sundance networks) and post some of my picture backlog.

I actually took these this morning. It takes a close-up image for me to actually focus on flower parts. Check out the orange ‘pollen baskets on the hind legs of the honeybees. I’m guessing it’s because they are packed full of orange pollen from the verbascums.

bee and verbascumbee and verbascum

Click on images for larger view. It’s opportunities like this that make me wish I have more techinical skills when it comes to making images.

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June bloom day scans

I’m late to the party again. Sorry. Seems like it wasn’t long ago that I had to scour the garden to come up with a single scan. Now I just pick a couple themes and fill three scans without covering half of what’s flowering.

Mostly pinks and purples: Peonies, bearded iris, bearberry, violas, dame’s rocket, pinks, willow.

peony scan
Larger image | Original scan

Mostly whites: goatsbeard, nectoscordum, persicaria, daisies, violas, bishops weed, arrowwood, anemone, columbine.

peony scan
Larger image | Original scan

Mostly grays: artemisia, Scotch thistle, verbascum, plume poppy, hosta, lambs ears, begonia.

peony scan
Larger image | Original scan

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As the snow retreats (lotsa pix)

I love the frenzy of flowers in late spring/early summer.  And the garden here peaks in September when the shear mass of plant  material is nearly overwhelming.  But nothing beats seeing what pops up as the snow retreats.

We hit 63 yesterday and today, and had a little rain today.  The snow has retreated quickly, and we had a nice blanket of ‘melting snow fog’ this afternoon.  (Click on images for larger view.)

snow fog

The rain and melting snow has our little creek up over it’s banks.

over the banks

The snow pealed back to reveil Eranthis (winter aconite) in full flower.

Eranthis

The hard cyclamens are also looking good and flowering within a day of seeing the sun.

cyclamens

cyclamens

And the Hellebores are getting off to a good start …

Hellebores

I’m just as excited to see vegetation that amazingly survives (if not actually grows) under the snow, like these Digitalis ferruginea …

Digitalis ferruginea

… Verbascum …

Verbascum

… Lamium …

Lamium

… and this viny groundcover that’s taking over the patio.

groundcover

Best picture of the batch: This Verbascum has been nibbled on a bit. I wonder by what?

verbascum and bunny turds

Snowdrops, iris and other goodies are coming on, too. More pix from the compressed spring coming soon.

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