Only a weed

I always like the old saying "A weed is only a flower growing in the wrong place". Here's a great example. A sunflower of some sort found a spot to grow next to the arbor vitae in the backyard. I assume the seed was dropped there from the birds as we feed sunflower seeds in the winter.
I just don't have the heart to pull such a sunny and smiley flower from its "wrong" place. What a nice surprise to find.

French Marigolds - so pretty!

This little french marigold bloom is so lovely. It's the first marigold I've planted in my garden since I was 13. I've always kind of dissed them because when I was a kid, marigolds were planted in every yard, windowbox and planter in the neighborhood.

But I saw these at the nursery this spring and thought the single petals were more like a coreopsis than the big-headed stinky flowers of my youth. These are great bloomers as well. They've been blooming since May.

Ring around the rosies

After a couple of emergency water infusions for the new roots, the flowers are budding like crazy this weekend. Not wanting to inundate with too many photos, here's just a couple of the beauties. The colors are just so rich.
The native wildflower, Liatris, seen below (also known as purple gay flower) is blasting its flowered spikes in the garden as well. When I was taking the photo of the flowers this morning, I had two monarch butterflies land on my shoulder and then go straight to the flowers.Got to love flowers.

Blooming in the garden

July is a great month for the perennials in the backyard. Over the past couple of years, I just been dividing the flowers and spreading them across the yard. As you can see in the above photo, I have a lot more space to cover. Thanks to Todd's re-landscaping this past spring.
The red flowers above are a perennial favorite of mine called Bee's Balm, and you guessed it, the bees love and flock to this flower. The flowers are past their prime already, but I liked the contract they provide with the hostas, cone flowers and day lilies.
The Ellis Nelson sculpture above balanced the the height of the flowers in this garden bed. There are several sculptures throughout the yard and you can see several of them in the photos.

I really like to work with native flowers for a couple of reasons. One is cost, it's cheaper in the long run to buy the plant once, let it mature and then divide it to put in other spots in the garden. Two, they are tolerant of the summer conditions and can often go without additional watering. While I have my rain barrels now, I don't have enough to water everything.

Well, I'm headed back to the garden to pull weeds, fight the mosquitoes and enjoy the flowers.

Winter Orchids

I've been collecting and growing orchids for years now. The orchids I have the most luck with (re-blooming and thriving) are with phalaenopsis orchids. These are the most common type of orchids with thousands of different varieties. Fortunately I only have about 15 of them.

One of my favorite things is to have an orchid re-bloom. a few of our orchids are now five or more years old. About once a year, the orchids will re-flower if their roots are healthy, the plant is happy and there is a certain amount of daylight vs. darkness. It's like having a visit from an old friend.

The orchids pictured above I received for my birthday this year except for the last two pictures. The half open flower with the yellow and red lines is a re-bloomer from last year. It just opened this morning. There are six other orchids from last year that are in various stages of re flowering. I can't wait!!!!


As you can probably tell - it doesn't take much more than a flower to make me happy (well, at least briefly...)

I need a little more color...

It is really a gray and glooming kind of day. I need more flowers to cheer me up!

November blooming Delphiniums

Imagine my surprise to find late blooming Delphiniums in the backyard today. They bloomed in June of this year as well. This is the second year this plant has given us two blooms within one season. Cool.

The colors of summer

I picked up a beautiful bouquet of summer flowers at the Northside Farmers Market on Sunday morning. The large bouquet was $5. The best deal around, if you ask me! The colors are absolutely mesmerizing. I took these photos outside last night at 6:00 pm. The natural lighting was phenomenal!
All right, one more photo, I just can't stop, the colors are too much!