Summer is gone in Wisconsin

When I left for Mexico 11 days ago, the temperatures were near 70 degrees. The rose bushes were in their final burst of flowers. I didn't want to cut them back because they were so beautiful.

The sudden cold snap that hit last week, froze the roses in their bloom. I took this picture this morning. There were about 50 blooms on the bushes and all were frozen and frost covered.

I'll be putting the rose bushes to bed this weekend. That will be fun as the temp is expected to hover around freezing with sleet and snow expected.

Late summer flowers are still blooming

The warm days of mid September and the cool nights have caused one last hurrah of the blooming season in the backyard. The roses are offering up a third round of blooms this summer. The photo above shows the early morning sun casting shadows across the bloom while the morning due glimmers.

In the photo above I used the macro setting on my camera to get a real close up on the flower heads of the sedum. Holding the camera about two inches away from the flower head, the above photo shows the whole picture, but I miss out on all the beautiful dew drops that are there.

So if I zoom into the photo closer, the clarity and pixel strength is still there and now I can see all the dew. Kind of cool.

Well it's friday, and Todd and I are off to see Neko Case, headlining the Forward Music Festival taking place across Madison this weekend. Yay!

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.

Roses in the garden

Spent a good portion of Saturday and Sunday out in the gardens weeding and fighting off the hordes of mosquitos while I worked. I also put in several new perenials and 10 new rose bushes to the side garden. My favorite greenhouse, Jung's had a great sale on roses at 50% off. So I figured if I lost half of them to winter kill, there'll still be some flowers next summer. Right now the new flower bed is starting to look filled in - yay!

While I was working, sweating and basically being eaten alive by the 'squeeters, I had several humming birds come to the new flowers I had just planted. And right after that, butterflies arrived. And that made it all worth while in my book.

Below is a shot of the same flower bed, right after Todd built it in May and after we put in four new Arbor Vitae. Since then I've slowly been added other flowers as you can see in the photo above.