pinks and blues

I finally know the name of this rose - for sure - no more questioning the tag!
My mom and dad and I went out to the Arboretum one day and had a wonderful time walking through their extensive rose gardens and perennial gardens. No one thought to take a camera with, so I will have to go out again soon - their daylilies and dahlias are particularly stunning right now. As we were leaving the rose garden, I happened to notice one that looked very familiar. It was exactly like the one I have pictured above - and it was labeled Hawkeye Belle. So I'm thinking the description I read (pure white, 2 ft tall, etc) was incorrect - my tag is right - and from now on I will be referring to this as Hawkeye Belle. And what a lovely lady she is!


Here's another sweet little rose that I've shown before - Frau Dagmar Hartopp. I have 2 roses in the lakeshore garden behind the boat - this one and Country Dancer. Last year Country Dancer was fabulous - this year something is chewing on the leaves and evidently stunting the blooms. But FDH is hanging in there - so she gets to be the star this year.

This is a balloon flower that started up as a volunteer. I usually deadhead the balloon flower and drop the spent blooms on the ground. Last year a couple new plants popped up - nice! However, it is way lighter than my original - probably because the original is a hybrid???

Here's the original plant - definitely a darker more vivid color. Kind of liking the two colors together.

This is All Summer Beauty hydrangea - I showed it before when the blooms were just starting to turn pink. It really is a pretty color - who needs blue when you can get a fabulous pink like this - lol!

Remember my cabbage rose - Fantin Latour? It's a rose that only blooms once, but I wanted to show you how much it's grown since it finished blooming this year. All of the brighter green leaves are new growth. I think it has nearly doubled in size in the last month! Very cool.

I have a bunch of daylilies blooming so more photos to come. It's so fun right now with a ton of color everywhere you look. A couple of my hibiscus are loaded with buds - that will be fun. The Minneapolis paper does a Home/Garden section every Wednesday, and today they talked about getting great photos of the gardens. I will be experimenting, for sure. I feel like my photos of individual blooms are usually passable - but photos of the overall garden don't turn out like I want them to. We'll see - maybe the tips from the paper will help. (Lucky you - getting to be my guinea pigs!!)