Mother Nature does her own decorating for the season

This is what I woke up to today (and, yes, the sun was fully up before I even opened my eyes this morning!). Seriously, Mother Nature is the Queen of Outdoor Decorating!

hydrangea

It was a very rainy day here in the Twin Cities. But I hardly noticed - well, except that my hair was BIG and bordering on frizzy from all the moisture in the air - lol.

Nadine, Susan and I have French lessons on Tuesday morning, but Nadine is leaving next week to visit her family in France for 6 weeks. So we went out to lunch. We went to a very nice little French cafe - good food - beautiful decor - very fun to have social time with my instructor and classmate. It was noisy and difficult to hear each other, so we conversed in English for the most part. (Susan and I breathed a huge sigh of relief on that one!!) (I must start remembering to take my camera with me!)

This past weekend I took photos of everything blooming in the gardens, and today I thought I would show you how the hydrangea are doing.

"All Summer Beauty" - I adore this hydrangea when it starts turning this dark rose color in the fall.

"Annabelle" is mostly lime green right now. I used to hate this color change, but I guess I'm mellowing in my old age, because now I'm quite enjoying it.

"Annabelle" again. It was simply loaded with big blooms this year.

There are a couple newer, still white blooms on Annabelle too.

And some turning brown already.

A bigger view with "Autumn Joy" sedum next to it. And look at that brunnera - it has simply gone crazy this year. This photo is a little weird - our yard was very shady - our neighbor's was very sunny - plus they had their sprinklers turned on - so lots of stuff happening to affect the lighting.

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

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!!)

June gardens

This is one of my favorite garden spots - daisies, mallow, purple coneflower and Raspberry Wine monarda all bloom together. Later purple phlox will join in too. It's a riot of wild bloomers. The monarda is just starting to open - this lakeshore garden used to be full of monarda and looked totally cool when it bloomed. But monarda has a way of taking over a garden, so last fall I took out most of it and, for the time being at least, I'm planning to contain it in a couple spots. We'll see how well that works!

This mallow plant is in one of the porch gardens, and is poking through the railings by the steps. Later a fall blooming anemone will do the same thing on the other side. I love these blooms - and how happily this plant sprawls.

The daisies are opening. I have several groups of daisies spread around various gardens.

All Summer Beauty hydrangea. It needs a little winter protection in Minnesota, and every fall I feel like yanking it out because who needs all this winter protecting work anyway... but then I relent and when it starts blooming, I'm always happy I helped it out. This is one that will bloom either blue or pink - mine is pink, and I'm okay with that.

The hollyhocks are so happy this year! I love this old-fashioned plant. On the right is one of my heirloom tomatoes - the plants are getting very big and new tomatoes are setting every day. I CANNOT wait to have tomatoes from the garden!!

Mark made me a special holder/sling for my kayak. Seems to be working pretty well. Look how clear and calm the water was this morning: you can see footprints in the sand bottom. (The black thing is not a snake - it's the hose for the lake pump. Just in case you were wondering.)

I am loving the kayak - feel pretty comfortable with it, but I'm still avoiding super windy conditions and haven't been out when there's a lot of boat traffic yet. I'll get there though!

(Some of these photos will click big)

in the gloaming

Isn't this a fun photo? I was sitting on the porch steps watching Mark work and the dogs play, and decided I should probably get some photos while the wind was calm and I still had some light. The landscape lights by the porch came on while I was shooting, and I thought the way the lights lit the Jackmani clematis on the lattice under the porch was very cool.This is one of the yellow lilies by the porch that just opened. I love when the lilies start - I have a good collection of colors, and they are all big clumps, so lots of color around the gardens right now.

This is Madison - a short but sprawly rosebush. (Is "sprawly" a word?) It will bloom pretty heavily from now until it freezes. The blooms are quite small, but the color and number of blooms really make this a standout. A neighbor has Madison right next to the road, and it survives winter salt and sanding - a great city rose!

A repeat blooming daylily - it opens a light lemon color and ages to a light gold. I'm interested to see how long it actually will keep blooming. I like the bloom time of Stella de Oro - but I don't like the gold color as much as I like yellow in my gardens - so I'm hoping this will be good.

Old fashioned single hollyhocks. I love these flowers.

A very pale pink lily.

Alexander MacKenzie. I bought this rose 3 years ago and planted it in a bad spot - not enough sun. So last fall, I cut it way back and moved it. The blooms are pretty small this year, but it looks healthy, so I think it will make it. Maybe by next year it will be ready to really take off.

This is my Annabelle hydrangea. I've had it for at least 10 years. The first 2 or 3 years I moved it many, many times. Once I finally left it alone, it just took off. The plant is huge and blooms like crazy. Every spring I think I'll cut off a chunk or two and start a new one in another garden, but that has yet to actually happen. I cut the dried blooms in the fall and decorate outdoor containers, wreaths, the Christmas tree, etc - and I leave some blooms on the plant for winter interest. In the spring, I cut it back to the ground, and it just shoots right back up - taller each year.

I think this is some kind of coneflower or rudbeckia. It's a volunteer in the lakeshore garden. I have 2 lakeshore gardens - one has the potential to be wet all the time in high-water years. That one has siberian iris, monarda (bee balm), turtlehead, etc. The other side is usually very dry - who knows why! Anyway, this is on the dry side. The leaves are skinny and hairy or fuzzy. If anyone knows what its proper name is, let me know!

The purple coneflower are starting to bloom. I used to have 2 gardens that were full of this great plant - but I've taken out a lot of it now. It self-seeds like crazy, so when I decide it's time to fill the gardens again, it will be an easy task!

I just did some whiskey barrel plantings for the driveway - more on that project later! For one of them I bought a Knock-out rose for under 10 bucks at Home Depot. When I bury Gertrude Jekyll next fall, I'll stick this guy in the same hole, and then find a permanent spot for it in one of the gardens next spring. I am very impressed - in only a week, it's growing and blooming like crazy. Could be a keeper.

This is an annual I picked up to use in another barrel - with some purple fountain grass and double red petunias. In a few weeks, this could be a cool group, I think. Anyway, I threw the label without really looking at it - but totally cool leaves - green with purple - and it's kind of irridescent. I like it.

Happy Summer to everyone - hope you totally enjoyed this longest day of the year!