Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

It appears that I took the previous month off - it wasn't intentional, but it happened.  I will remedy that right now.  Welcome to another edition of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, where garden bloggers post photos of what's blooming in their yard.

With so many plants growing close to the ground, one doesn't always look up.  It pays to do so when your tallest yucca decides to bloom.  It's tall enough that it makes it hard to get a decent picture.

When we think of American beautyberry, we don't usually think of flowers, but that's what you need if you want berries.  Here they are.















I'm not exactly sure how this is a flower, but this is what the root beer plant does during the summer.  I've never seen any seeds - it actually spreads fairly easily by way of underground stolons, or horizontal roots.

I can always count on my American Bog Lilies to put on a show.  They're in a sometimes shady, overgrown bog area, and when these white flowers appear, they really pop.

The last couple of years I've enjoyed seeing my night-blooming cactus do its thing.  It's in a little less than ideal spot - a little too much sun, but it puts on a show a few times a year now.




I'm not really sure how many different types of day lilies I have, but here's another one.

I thought I had posted a photo of my backyard sunflowers, but it doesn't look like it.  Here's a shot of it, almost fully open, with bees pollinating it.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

I started doing a "Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day" post every month last spring, but after the summer and fall, I ran out of blooms to post photos of.  This may happen again this year, but, even if it is only vegetables, I hope to be able to post pics for the whole year - actually I just thought about this, and a lot of winter

vegetables are leafy greens, so maybe I won't be able to.  I'll cross that bridge when I come to it - here are the past months blooms.

I've had trouble with this lantana for the last few years.  It might need more water or more shade.  It's in what I used to refer to as the "desert garden", which gets full sun and drains pretty quickly.  It's doing better this spring, probably due to the fact that we have had so much rain.

You don't always think about certain plants blooming, especially when there are more interesting aspects.  Some carnivorous plant enthusiasts recommend cutting off the stem before it flowers, so it doesn't take energy away from producing more and larger traps, but I don't agree.  These are beautiful, right?

Every year these old garden roses bloom very close
to Mother's Day, early May.  We had a cold spring that just would not warm up.  It finally did and everything started blooming - late - including these roses.

I think I like the blooms of plants that you don't expect to bloom.  Some are just unusual, like these elephant ears.  They got huge last year, and they have recovered well after a mild winter.  I would like to transplant them to a more visible area - right now they are behind the chicken coop - but they are growing through some giant roots, and any attempt to  dig them up would mean their destruction.

This is one of my least favorite plants.  There are probably better varieties of Nandina that have a nicer form, or are sterile, but this one is a pain.  Amongst the switch cane that I was trying to kill by smothering it, was a number of these volunteer plants.  Birds eat the seeds and then sit in a tree and drop them, from one end or the other, and they sprout.  With the help of carpet and chickens I was able to eradicate the bamboo/switch cane, but the nandina would not die, and the chickens won't eat it.

First daylily of the year.  I got this at a plant swap last year, so I didn't know what it would look like until it bloomed.  Apparently its name is "Grape Magic".  I had all my daylilies labeled until recently when I transplanted them to another bed.  So I'm excited to see which is which when they bloom this year.

I love it when I catch a pollen-covered bee in one of my flowers.  They always look like they're in heaven.  In this case, it's one of my many squash flowers.  They're blooming like crazy right now.

This is some Rudbeckia, I think, that I grew from seed last year.  I had a number of these plants, as well as Echinacea, and I didn't know which was which until they all started blooming this year.  I also kept getting bees in the pictures of a lot of the flowers, as you can see.  No problem with pollinators in my yard!

The irises around the pond bloomed a couple of months ago, but this pickerel weed is just starting to bloom.  It has multiple tiny flowers on this plant, and it will bloom continuously for the whole summer.  I want to make a few changes to the back yard, which would mean this pond would go, but I would still have room for marginals, like this plant.

This is one that I used to see on occasion, but now I have one in my yard - Stokes' Aster.  It's beautiful and it's native to the southeastern United States, which even better!

First cactus bloom of the year.  After they are pollinated, prickly pear cactuses will produce fruit that turns a deep red in the winter.  It actually tastes pretty good, if there weren't so many seeds in it.

There are recipes for making jams and sauces and even daiquiri mix with it.  There are to many seeds in these fruit and it can be a little hard to handle because the juice stains very badly.

About the only thing I know about this plant is that it's called hidden ginger.  It produces these blooms on a short stem near the ground, while other leafy stems grow taller.  The main flower is pink, and there are smaller yellow blooms below it.

I've been trying for weeks to get a good picture of my hydrangea - thi is probably the best that it will get for now.  This is in the shade garden, and it didn't do well last year.  A few years ago, I moved it from the back yard (where it was blue) to the front yard (where it is pink).  Very interesting.

I just saw something growing out of the top of this Golden Barrel cactus the other day.  I assumed that it might bloom eventually, but not so soon!  Everything was status quo this morning, but when I left home in the evening it was blooming, and I had no idea it would happen so fast.

Speaking of the pond, this loom popped up recently.  It's a water hyacinth and it's an invasive species, if it ever escaped to another body of water.  But here in my pond it is contained.  There are too many in here right now that you can't even see the water.  They need to be thinned.

Friends dropped off a butterfly bush at my house recently.  I wasn't sure where to plant it, so it's been sitting in the driveway.  In the meantime, it put out its first bloom.  Thanks, guys!

Every day something else blooms, but this is going to have to do it for this month.  I'll get to work on next month's post as soon as this posts.  Enjoy!

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

Welcome to another edition of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.  The 15th of each month, garden bloggers post photos of what's blooming in their yard at the time.  Without further talk, here you go:

It has sort of finished blooming, but that it the ajuga I got off of craigslist for free.  It has survived neglect from me, and too much attention from the chickens and is still chugging along...and spreading.  It's planted in a narrow area between the driveway and a concrete divider so it won't spread past there.  I found one growing in the grass on the other side of the driveway, one growing out of a crack in the driveway, and one growing 100 feet away, around a corner and at the front of the house!

What can I say about knockout roses?  They are a showstopper.  I got these for free off of craigslist too.  I had them for a few years before I could decide what to do with them.  I finally made a flower bed on one side of the house and they look wonderful right now.  They happy to be in the ground, I suppose.

Every year someone throws out a hibiscus that just needs a little TLC.  I pick them up and give it to them, providing me with flowers the rest of the year.  I found the tag for this the other day and it is called "President Red".  Very appropriate.

I don't know when I got this Setcreasea, also known as wandering Jew. I just know I planted it somewhere so it wouldn't die, until I decided where I really wanted to plant it.  I haven't moved it since.  It comes back every year, and I think, "oh yeah, I said I would plant that somewhere", and I never do.  Maybe one year I'll figure out where I want it.  Maybe one year...

These daisies came from one of the plant swaps last year - I think it was the fall one, but I can't remember.  We expected it to be perennial, but sometimes you don't always know.  It has come back this year and is in a constant state of flower.  I've been meaning to find a nice pot for it and take it to Robin's house, but I just haven't done it yet.

Robin is a big fan of Gerber daisies.  I would see them at Lowe's, but the tag always read that they were annuals.  I don't usually do annuals, so I never bought them.  Now, to the best of my knowledge, even though the tag reads "annual", they are most likely perennials around here.  I have seen some around that come back every year.

Last, but not least are these daisies that I grew from seed almost two years ago.  They are just everywhere around the yard now, and blooming like crazy.  I plan to divide them later this summer and give some away.

I know I did a little of this last year and then it petered out.  I'd like to do this every month, but it all depends on what is blooming.  I have a better chance of doing this more now, since I have more plants...and more blooms.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

I'm not sure how other people do it, but I won't be photographing every bloom I have.  My two goals for these posts are to share some photos of our flowers, and as a record of our yard.  Right now, these posts are a little long - imagine if I photographed every flower?  I have been taking pictures of the first time a plant blooms for the year - that way I have a photo and know when it first bloomed.  There is an over abundance right now, but I suspect that in the future, I will be hard pressed to find flowers to take pictures of.  Or maybe not - we'll have to see.

 Let's start with the flashiest one - and also the one I previewed last month.  Finally, here is the flower from out night-blooming cactus.  It bloomed after I went to bed one night and Robin took pictures of it.  It was good she did, because we got an inch of rain that night and it was a dripping, sad, little flower then next morning.

This is a spider lily, possibly Hymenocallis caroliniana, but I'm not positive.  There are a lot of similar flowers and I got this from someone off of craigslist.  It blooms every spring with a succession of about four flowers on a single stem.

These are our American bog lilies - Crinum americanum - they like wet areas and bloom in the spring, but they have bloomed later in the year, maybe in the fall.  It could depend upon how wet they get or their stress level.  We started out with two bulbs, but they have multiplied many times.

We got our Root Beer plant several years ago.  Supposedly when you crush the leaves they smell like root beer, but I'm not so sure.  This thing spreads fairly easily.  I usually pull some up twice a year and take them to the plant swap.

I can't forget the vegetable flowers.  These are from our pepper plants.  They were really hard to get a photo of.

And here is a tomato blossom.  These have been blooming for a while now, but it was the first chance I had to take a photo of them.  No tomatoes without these flowers!

While not exactly food, I thought I would continue with this bloom from an apple gourd vine.  It has been hard getting a photo of these.  It didn't seem like they were blooming very much.  As it turns out, they are probably nocturnal, blooming at night.  No wonder I had trouble getting a picture!

These little black-eyed Susans are starting to bloom.  I didn't remember them being this small, but as the summer continues, maybe they'll get bigger.  I've got some others that are about to bloom as well.  Stay tuned.

I planted society garlic in the yard a couple of months ago and it's taken this long for them to bloom.  These, along with tomato blossoms and other small flowers, can be hard to photograph at times.

Our garden phlox started blooming.  We got these at a plant swap years ago, and they just keep multiplying.  Now we take some every year to the plant swaps.

 I got these from the plant swap last fall, I think.  I thought they were going to be black-eyed Susans, but it looks like they are purple coneflowers.  This photo doesn't do them justice - they weren't very purple when I took the photo, but they are now.

Earlier this year, someone was throwing out last year's asparagus fern.  After I got it home, I repotted and fertilized it.  It started flowering the other day and I knew something was wrong - fern don't flower.  They produce spores.  This is not a true fern.  Learn something new every day.

And now, more daylilies.  There may be a duplicate bloom from last month.  I can't always keep track.  I could just look at last month.  Anyway, enjoy!

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Welcome to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.  On the fifteenth of every month, garden bloggers post photos of  what's blooming in their garden.  Let's start with potatoes.  I planted these potatoes almost a month late, and in bags as an experiment.  They were blooming the same time I was harvesting the ones in the ground.  Some of them look like they're doing really well.  We'll see in a few weeks.

As you can see, the sunflowers are starting to bloom the same time as our Echinacea.  This a smaller variation called something like "Bee's Knees".

Our Rose of Sharon, or Hybiscus syriacus, puts out a few blooms every spring, but it's never covered with them.  It's not my favorite, and I consider moving it every year - this time, back to where it was originally...

Just a smaller sunflower we have growing near the back yard.  It's only about waist-high, where the others are head-high.

I like this Canna.  I like the colors a lot.  And I hope to have more of it some day.  It's been invading our
yard from our neighbor's for the past couple of years.  It's in a shady spot, so it doesn't grow out of control, but we still get some blooms every year.

The Hostas under our oak tree are starting to bloom.  These are the first few flowers that have opened.  Ever since I started doing Bloom Day, I've been paying close attention to every possible flower bud in the yard, so I don''t miss it.  I'm talking to you, day lilies!

A few years ago, someone had dug these from their yard and put them in the trash.  I brought them home and eventually planted them.  It took them time to recover and I have about thirty of them now.  The spot I picked is less than ideal, so I've potted them and plant to transplant them somewhere that gets more sun.  Ironically, the edge of the shade is not very shady at all, and needs something there.  So, that's where they're going eventually.

Another bloom that I can't remember the plant name.  These were growing in our yard when we moved in six years ago.  They come back every year.  I like them.

We have some cucumber flowers - which means we'll be getting cucumbers soon.  I picked a trellising
variety and they're working out well.

I had some old zucchini seeds that I thought I would try - I got a few plants and this is one of the blooms.  You may be able to see some fruit at the bottom.

Some of our other Echinacea started blooming the other day.  It's a lot taller than the first one - a little paler too, I think.  You can see there's going to be a lot more blooms where that one came from.

I know it's not quite a bloom, but I noticed that our night-blooming cactus was trying to make a flower.  Maybe next month it will be ready for some good pictures to post here.

And, finally, some daylilies...