Daylilies!

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

Claire - what gorgeous lillies!

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!

Thanks, pixie_lou, lilies are such a joy now, as you also show.

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

Every day the daylilies are different (which is why they're called daylilies) and this combination showed up today. Autumn Minaret on the top, an inherited daylily on the bottom left, and double ditch lily on the bottom right.

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

Hello, NE forum.

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:

Here's a longer shot:

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.

This is my favorite driveway hellstrip spot:

That's it for me!

A few of the daylilies are finished but there's still a lot of color. Most of these were grown from seed via winter sowing:

WS Belamcanda chinensis/blackberry lily
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WS pink evening primrose & Early Sunrise coreopsis
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WS Echinacea 'Harvest Moon'
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Phlox p. 'Blue Paradise'
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NOID hydrangea
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WS Lobelia siphilitica/great blue lobelia
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Platycodon/double white balloon flower
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NOID hydrangea
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Lobelia cardinalis/cardinal flower 'Fan Scarlet'
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Echinaceas

Casa Blanca lilies

Gardenweed, your blue phlox is very striking! Also I like your blackberry 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.

Blooming 8/1- 8/8 in my garden beds.

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 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

Claire - what a sad screen story. The arabesque is such a pretty lilly. Also - I love your terminology of Ditch Lilly.

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

Pixie Lou -- I love your terra cotta family. I may have to mooch that idea. With the red daylilies at the back end of the hellstrip are a russian sage, gaillardia 'fanfare', achillea 'paprika', and 'stella d'oro' -- the only place I have ever liked her! She compliments the throat and outside of the red daylily and goes sweetly with the gaillardia too....

I mistook the sunflower I posted above as a "red sun" variety. It is actually a "tangerine" sunflower. The first "red sun" bloom appeared today.

Phlox (below)

spedigrees -- gorgeous phlox...and what a sunflower! Beautiful!

pixie_lou - love your whimsical terra cotta woman! The blackberry lilies are super easy to grow from seed and will bloom the second year. I'm about to have a ton of seed if you'd like to winter sow them.

spedigrees- gorgeous sunflower. I think I'm going to cage my sunflowers next year - do battle with that woodchuck! And - all the bottles - bottle art? To designate where not to mow? They are volunteers from the bottle tree?

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.

Thank you Mayalena and Pixielou. :-)

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.

littleonefb, I meant to comment how much I like your broken-colored 4 o'clocks and morning glories, and also your pot with the miniature alyssum and statue with gazing ball, very pretty arrangement!

The hostas, probably Royal Standard, that surround my porch are blooming.

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

"yellow centers turn pink after pollination", well, I'll be..wondered why NE Asters(of which I have plenty)had two different colored centers! You are a treasure of information, Claire, thank you! And, gorgeous colors on your phlox. I just have 'pink', no idea which variety.

Jane

That pink and yellow differentiation bothered me too for a long time, until I read somewhere that the color changes after pollination. I just tried to find the reference but it's not within a quick search. I did find one reference (CT Wildflowers) that said the yellow centers age to pink. Maybe I read it in a real book somewhere (or maybe I remembered it wrong).

Claire

You remembered correctly. A quick Google search - "The yellow centers attract bees and beetles that pollinate the flower. After pollination, the flower quickly turns to a fluffy, white seed-head that is easily carried away through the air." Written By: S. Williams Edited By: Kathryn Hulick
Not a botany dept., but it's a ref.

Here is a link that might be useful: What Is Senecio?

OK, found a reference in The American Midland Naturalist:

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

You posted while I was searching and writing a response.

Thanks,
Claire

Found one more reference (if anyone besides me still cares):

Aster Sizes

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

Claire

You're not alone - that picture is an excellent illustration - good find. By George, interesting.

This whole aster pollination discussion is fascinating to me, so thanks to all of you for the research.

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.

Buddleia 'Butterfly Heaven' with a visitor

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

The ornamental grasses are beginning to send up their plumes. Panicums are among the earliest here. Panicum Rotstrahlbusch has the nice pink seedheads, but the blades are just beginning to turn red.

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

This is my first year with Canterbury Bells - not sure if they are supposed to bloom a second time?

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