During the heavily blooming summer months, I will post multiple threads each month. When we hit too many posts, I will try to start a new thread. The number of threads per month will depend on how many people post photos.

July 2011

June 2011Part 2

June 2011 Part I

May 2011

April 2011

March 2011

H. Autumn Minaret

H. Pardon Me, still blooming away

Lily lilies!
L. Speciosum rubrum with H. Pardon Me

L. Speciosum rubrum

L. Arabesque

Rose Carefree Beauty sneaking into a white pine.

Claire

My day lillies are still putting on quite a show.

Tiger Lilly is also showing nicely!

My Echinacea in the front white garden has been blooming for a while.

The Hydrangea is finally opening

I'm getting my first Morning Glories

And file this under odd - a Columbine in bloom. I have 3 different varieties of Columbine, and half a dozen plants of each variety. I did not get any Columbine blooms this spring. Zilch. Zero. Nil. Nada. But one opened this week!

I was so involved with getting the photos posted that I forgot to add some commentary I had intended.

Re Autumn Minaret daylily: This daylily is my tallest and is about five feet tall.

Re Arabesque lily: I have three of them and all three were prepared to bloom this year. Unfortunately, after my rejoicing that they had avoided the red lily leaf beetle, one of them succumbed to a screen door. I was putting screens on and I'd leaned the screen door against the side of the house while I did something else. A gust of wind blew the screen door over on top of a hosta and one of the lilies. Chopped the bud cleanly off the lily. I'm still kicking myself after the other two lilies have bloomed so beautifully. At least most of the foliage on the choppee is OK so the bulb should be replenished for next year.

Claire

Phlox blue paradise near rose Carefree Beauty and of course some meadow phlox:

A hint of fall, meadow phlox on its second flush and sedum at its broccoli stage:

I noticed the ubiquitous virginia creeper had snuck into another rose, Blushing Knockout, but it did look pretty with the rose and the berberis. I'll pull out the vine before it smothers the rose.

Claire

I've been meaning to post photos forever, but am just getting them off my camera....

This is one of my favorite combos in the backyard:

From August 2011 Garden

Here's a longer shot:

From August 2011 Garden

This one is in response to a thread on "perennials" in which people complained about their baptisia and amsonia -- both of which I like so much in the backyard.

From August 2011 Garden

This is my favorite driveway hellstrip spot:

From August 2011 Garden

That's it for me!

WS Belamcanda chinensis/blackberry lily

WS pink evening primrose & Early Sunrise coreopsis

WS Echinacea 'Harvest Moon'

Phlox p. 'Blue Paradise'

NOID hydrangea

WS Lobelia siphilitica/great blue lobelia

Platycodon/double white balloon flower

NOID hydrangea

Lobelia cardinalis/cardinal flower 'Fan Scarlet'

Casa Blanca lilies

It certainly is a spectacular year for daylilies. Everyone's photos look gorgeous, and my own daylilies are flourishing.

Here's my first "red sun" sunflower.

From Wintersown seeds sown winter 2011. just some of the blooms of these

zinnia zowie yellow flame

chinese forget me nots

4 o'clock broken colors yellow/pink

4 0'clock broken colors white/yellow/pink

regrowth of lupin after hard prune and bloom. new bloom stems are just starting to come up again.

california poppy

alyssum tiny time, only grows about 3 inches tall

torenia purple/white

Torenia blue/white

zinnia zahara starlight rose

morning glory flying saucer all blooms on same vine

marigold disco flame

balsam impatiens dark pink

cosmos diablo

purchased from local market 29 years ago and lucky it was hardy for the area. surprised that it grew as well this year as both of them have and even bloomed. There was massive snow damage to both bushes. I had to prune them really hard to get off all the dead and damaged stems.
this does bloom on both new and old stems though

true nikko blue hydrangea

Fran

mayalena - what is that plant growing in front of your day lillies in your hell strip?

Gardenweed - those blackberry lillies are gorgeous! I saw a nice plant at Russells, but it wasn't for sale, and they had no others in stock.

Spedigrees - love your sun flower. Unfortuneately the wood chuck loved my sunflowers.

My day lillies are coming near an end.

As are my tiger lillies

This is just my 2nd year with Hydrangea Paniculata Tardiva. So far I'm happy with the purchase.

I have some great weeds growing out behind the pond. This thistle recently bloomed

And some goldenrod.

And who was asking about my Terra Cotta woman? She is finished. Here she is with her watering can. I'm awaiting a big load of wood chips to mulch this area. And then I'll let my daughter figure out the plants next year. This is the whimsy garden.

Her husband and child are still works in progress

Phlox (below)

gardenweed - I'd love some of your blackberry lily seeds. You can just e-mail me when you have some seeds ready and we can make arrangements.

Yes, Pixie, the bottles on spikes are to keep hubby from getting too enthusiastic with the lawn tractor. He claimed he couldn't see the rock borders around the beds and asked for something more visible. lol!

Good luck with caging the sunflowers. I hope that works for you. I guess woodchucks are too big to be deterred by pinwheels.

Some phlox paniculatas that were overlooked by the woodchuck are still blooming. I don't know if it means anything but the phlox that are behind sedums or embedded in meadow phlox patches are relatively untouched. Also the phlox down by the parking area are untouched. The poor phlox that are close to a path and exposed have been chomped on.

Phlox Grenadine Dream

Phlox Watermelon Punch

Sedums are beginning to show a little pink:

and the White Wood Asters are beginning to bloom. The pollinators have found them (yellow centers turn pink after pollination).

Claire

Jane

Claire

Does Flower Color Change in Aster vimineus Cue Pollinators?

"Abstract
Flower color change, floral rewards, and the size of a floral display in relation to pollinator attraction were studied in Aster vimineus. The center disk florets of A. vimineus are either all yellow or all red in a given flower. We determined that this variation in disk color was due to localized color change from yellow to red. Yellow florets contained more pollen and a greater percentage of viable pollen than red florets. All pollinator types consistently preferred flowers with yellow disks over those with red disks. The addition of nectar did not influence pollinator visitation rates, unless the pollinators were choosing only among flowers with red disks. Retention of the flowers with red disks allowed for greater floral display which increased pollinator visitation rates."

Apparently the pollen is yellow which hides the red color. When the pollen is removed, presumably by an insect, the red becomes visible. So it's not really an issue of the flower being pollinated (although it may be, this study doesn't address that), but that the pollen is gone.

It could be that the removal of the pollen coincides with pollination of those florets.

Claire

Thanks,
Claire

Aster Sizes

"Disc florets and ray florets also usually change color after anthesis (the flowering period, when pollination is occurring)."

Claire

Thanks also to everyone who posted this summer for all the photos! My internet connection is so slow that uploading photos is difficult, even when I remember to take photos.

What is blooming now:
-Hydrangeas: Annabelle, Pinky Winky (which is just starting to turn pink), pink diamond, Endless Summer, Penny Mac
-The tale end of a pink flowering spirea
-Several western Agastaches which have been blooming since near the end of July: A. rupestris, A. 'Acapulco orange' and I think one other. They are planted on a sunny, steep, sandy end of a flower bed along with some western penstemons, so I am hoping that they will survive the winter. They are first year plants, but I have had A. rupestris survive for several years in the past, so there is the possibility of survival for all of them, and I will probably find some gravel to mulch around the crowns just to add some even better drainage. It's the first place I've managed to overwinter lavender, so I am hopeful.
-Many of my clematis are still throwing out some flowers, though not as many as earlier in the summer.
-Phlox in white and screaming magenta
-meadow rue (lavender colored and about 7 feet tall)
-In my pots I have Salvia 'Black and Blue' and 'Hot lips' along with portulaca, Euphorbia 'Breathless Blush', petunias, dahlias, a red-flowered mandevilla vine, and begonias
-Annual Nicotiana in white, red, purple and all shades in between that reseed themselves every year. Lovely scent that wafts through the house in the evenings from July through frost
-Lilies. I've learned that the red lily beetles don't seem to bother the Oriental/trumpet crosses and so have started growing them to replace the Asiatic and Oriental varieties that the RLBs seemed to love.
-Single and double balloon flowers
-Astilbe chinensis 'Pumila, a great groundcover for shade, totally trouble-free and slow spreading for me.
-Ravens! They have discovered that the berry crop in the pagoda dogwoods is ripe, so every time I look out there are three huge ravens perched precariously in one of the pagodas gobbling berries.

I'll have to check down by the shop a bit more carefully to see what else is blooming down there - long work hours have kept me from spending much time in those gardens.

Hosta 'Fried Bananas' with Petunia 'Purple Wave'

Hemerocallis 'Sandra Elizabeth' very late bloomer

Hemerocallis 'Stella Supreme' reblooming

Hosta 'Guacamole' very fragrant

Hydrangea (Noid)

Hosta 'Lakeside Dragonfly' sending up a scape

Steve

It's next to a chrysanthemum (Mary Stoker) and I'm hoping for a good combination when the mum buds open to a yellow daisy.

Panicum Cloud Nine is much more upright with a frothier look.

Claire

Morning Glory Clarkes Heavenly Blue

Some wild mushrooms in the lawn

And not a flower, but adding wonderful color to my patio planters - Thai Chile Pepper Matchbox