a bit of this, a bit of that

Last week I was out taking photos of things blooming in the gardens. This little vignette caught my eye. Do you think the squirrels are trying to bribe the fairy? Is it an offering for a mild winter and plenty of food? There were acorns, bits of a walnut, a birch leaf, and a small peach from our neighbor's tree.

Look at the brilliant color on this balloon flower - I love it! There are still a few blooms and little balloon buds - but we are definitely nearing the end.

I had seen a cool rusted sunflower that I thought would be neat in the gardens, but then my neighbor bought one for her garden. So I kept looking and found this fun star.

The bees have been happily buzzing on the sedum. Both of these photos are of "Autumn Joy" but were taken a couple days apart and in different light. If I went out tomorrow, I would probably get another shade of pink. These add such great color to the autumn gardens.

This is a copper sprinkler that we bought on sale. The pattern for the sprinkler made it ornamental rather than useful for watering, but I thought it added a fun touch to the gardens.

My shed guy called about 8:30 tonight. They're coming at 6:30 tomorrow morning to install my new garden/storage shed. So there will hopefully be photos to share on tomorrow's post. I am so excited!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESS!!

hooray, there are still things blooming

Nearly Wild

Okay, I know this won't be popular with those of you who still need rain, but I've had enough for awhile! We haven't had the flooding amounts that they received south of us, but for the past week it has been grey, drizzly, and/or outright raining. I'm ready for sunshine. And bring back some of those 80's, too, please!

I was feeling like my gardens were done, and it's only August 23rd for heaven's sake. So this afternoon between rain showers and drizzles, I took the dogs out and we did a little garden recon. There is still color in the garden! Hooray! So over the next few days I'll show you some of the things blooming, a few of them reblooms - that's always fun!

Balloon flower

Mark has been out of town on business all week, which probably accounts for some of my blahs. I've been doing fun stuff like moving the compost pile to a new home, edging and weeding gardens (between showers - the weeds pull out really easily at least!), roasting tomatoes, etc.

Well, yes, I have had some real fun too. There has been very little wind and the grey skies have kept boaters off the lake, so I did get in a couple of wonderful kayak paddles. Tuesday I did 4.2 miles - on my own - and that felt great. Here's one of the things I love about kayaking: you go out and at some point you think, okay I have to turn around - I'm tired. And then you get back home and you realize that you have energy left! You could go out and do a couple more miles! It is just that much fun. I love it. Down side is I sit in water in mine (sit-on-top model), and very soon I am going to need some neoprene shorts. Once it starts dipping into the 50's at night, our lake starts cooling off quickly. Most of the summer the lake is like a tepid bath - not even refreshing on a hot day. But it is starting to cool down, so I'll be doing some on-line shopping very soon.

All Summer Beauty - starting to turn its fall colors

summer gardens

This is such a great time of year for Minnesota gardens! The roses are starting their second show. The asiatic lilies are pretty much done, but the orientals and daylilies are in full glory. All of the prairie-type blooms are jumping on the bandwagon. I just love it! Here are a few of the things in my garden right now.


Ligularia "Othello" - I just put in this plant this year. I have "The Rocket" which is starting to show some color too, but my first try with this one. I thought I was buying one "Othello" and one "Desdemona" - but when I got home, found I had two "Othello." Not a problem - they're looking good!

I love veronica - I have it in several gardens. The bees love it too - there's at least one in this photo. This is in the west porch garden - with pink roses - beautiful.

Not a great background - but the bloom is perfect! This is J.F. Quadra - a new climbing rose. I planted it last year - and this is the second show of blooms this year - lots of new growth. Meresy_g at Edge Effect commented that my red daylily would look nice planted in front of Russian sage. I agreed and started looking to see if I had any red and purple combos like that - I just happen to have a Russian sage planted beside this climber. In another year or two, I think it could be looking pretty good. (This is on the fence - wonder if I could talk my neighbor into planting something tall and purple and airy on his side??)

My wild brown-eyed susans have been blooming for awhile - but the hybrids are just starting. I love them with purple coneflower and phlox.

More balloon flowers - I love the color - and the bud is too cute.

This is snakeroot or bugbane. The latin name was cimcifuga but they have reclassified it, and I can never remember what it is now. I like snakeroot, and that's what I always call it. This is another one that the bees love. This is a plant that will grow in sun, but prefers partial shade. The plant is fairly large and then gets these wonderful tall blooms. It adds great height to the shade border.

Here's a photo of the snakeroot plant - the buds are all curly and maybe snakey?? and then as the flowers open the bloom stalk straightens. I think it's very fun. And it has a cool fragrance.

Last but not least, phlox. I have this purple, plus a darker pinkish purple, a dark pink, and white. They all smell just like phlox should.

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!!)