The Daylilies are Here!

July 14 - I am in my glory at this time of the year. Each morning (and let's be honest, every noon and night), I walk around my garden, deadheading, seeing what needs staking, but  most importantly looking for what has come out in bloom since the last time I checked. Everything seems to be all coming out at once. The last few days have seen the appearance of seven different daylilies.

All except the two orange ones were gifts from Rita's garden. 

These are my 'Catherine Woodbury' daylilies.   I'm not really sure what to call this colour.   I've seen it described as 'salmon' but it's almost a mauvey-pink, with lovely yellow in the centre.  The flowers are quite large at 5 1/2 inches across.

 

'Missouri Beauty' daylilies.  These are also really large flowers and a lemon yellow colour.  I love the way the flowers only live a day, but there are always new ones to take their place.   The lovely flowers are also about 5 1/2 inches across. 

These are my two orange daylilies.  They are slightly different.  Some people call these 'ditch lilies', I guess because you see them everywhere - including seemingly growing wild.

I once read that they fell off the wagons of pioneers and grew where they fell.   The bottom one, which I call my 'Cottage Lily' because it came from my family cottage, I'm growing in a pot on our deck.  It looks great there and I will bury it, pot and all, in the compost pile for the winter. 

This is the other large-flowered daylily I have in bloom right now.  The name is unknown to me.  I'm not sure the photo does the colour of it justice - but it's very much a golden yellow, with a burgandy throat.  They are quite striking en masse!

These two are my little daylilies, about 2 1/2 inches across.  Again, I don't know the name of the red one, but the cream one with burgandy centre is the darling 'Pandora's Box'.  It is just the sweetest little thing.  I adore it. 

Rita's Garden

I've mentioned my dear friend Rita on the blog before.  She is the dearest lady, whose garden I stopped to admire one June day in 2007.    After we spoke for just a few minutes, Rita invited me to come over again to give me some of her plants.   We have become good friends and she has given me many delightful perennials over the last couple of years.  But even more wonderfully she shares her knowledge and love of perennial flower gardening with me. 

The picture above is the garden in Rita's front yard and this one is her side garden.   Rita has a different kind of garden than I do....she has her perennials placed in long rows, with straw in between, to mulch and walk on.   Because she mixes up the perennials, her garden doesn't give the impression of being all straight lines.  Quite the contrary, her garden is a place of beauty, where one can walk through and admire everything close-up. 

A closer look at some of Rita's beautiful delphiniums. In front of the delphiniums are her 'Missouri Beauty' daylilies.




And a sample of the beautiful beebalm that is at it's peak.

And last, but not least, Rita's beautiful poppies. 

I hope you've enjoyed the tour of this lovely woman's garden. 

Hosta Delight

July 8 - I love hostas!

Since I have a lot of shade in my front yard and part of my backyard I have room for a lot of them. I have about twenty different types so far. I tend to like the ones that have white or cream edges (margins), but I am trying to mix some plain or two-toned green ones in for contrast.

These are some of my favourites:

Hosta 'June' - Gold coloured leaves with blue-green margins.  It seems to be quite resistant to slugs.  It was one of 'Mark's Choices' at the Home Hardware store last year and I've been quite pleased with it. 

Hosta 'Lancifolia' - this was a gift from friends and it has lovely shiny leaves that are fairly slender.  It has a medium-green coloured leaves.

Hosta 'Queen Josephine' has medium green leaves with a lovely ivory coloured margins. 

Hosta 'Blue Mouse Ears' - this is a really tiny one, plain green roundish leaves.  It's kind of adorable mixed in with the larger ones.

Hosta 'Gold Standard' - this is the only hosta that was on our property when we bought it.  It's also the only hosta I'd had before (at our old house).  Since I couldn't bring my hosta with me I was very happy to have this one.  You can see a little damage to a couple of the leaves.  I'm wondering if a little rabbit had a bite or two.

Hosta 'Longissima' is the name of this one.  I looked it up on the hosta libray website and the ones there are solid green.  I got this one from a member of my horticulural society, so this must be a different variety of "Longissima'.  So far it is small so I'm not sure how big it will get.  It's a lovely contrast to the others, because the leaves are so narrow.

Hosta 'Krossa Regal' - mine is quite small still, but these ones have an interesting feature that they grow up in an upright position.   On the side you can see one of my little gophers that our niece bought us years ago. 

Garden Happenings in Early July

The shasta daisies are starting to bloom now. This is my favourite because it's a double-flowered one. It's called 'Snowdrift'.

These 'Snow Lady' shastas are my dwarf ones.  I had two of them, but somehow there is only one this year.  Everything else is the garden came through the winter intact, so it's a mystery. 

Blue Monkshood behind the Lychnis.  Blue and pink is my favourite garden colour combination.  

   

This little Crane's Bill geranium is blooming in my front shade garden.  It was a gift from a friend's garden. 

My Blue Peachleaf Bellflower is also blooming in the shade garden.  It was also a gift, planted last spring, but blooming for the first time now.  It's quite a delicate blue shade and quite lovely. 

Varmits!

July 2 - Something has been digging and chewing in my garden! 

I'm not really sure what it is, but we have squirrels and rabbits around our place.  Something dug up crocus bulbs (and left a few of the outer bits, so I know they ate them) in several places.  They also chewed the green pepper plants, leaving only about an inch of the stem to remind me they were there. 

I filled in the holes and sprinkled some blood meal around the areas of concern.  So far the varmits have not returned!

PS - I said 'varmint' and my husband said it's 'varmits'.  I looked it up on google and both are correct - it's a matter of where you are from.  (English lesson for today.)  ;)

What's left of two of the green pepper plants.  (No worries, we have four more!)

Backyard Border

June 30 - This is my backyard border taken from our deck.  This is the same border shown in my blog's header.   It's difficult to photograph from the front with my camera.  The border backs onto the creekbank so you are looking at lots of trees behind in.  Sometimes I entertain the idea that it would look really nice if the border had a bit of a decorative fence behind it (white picket or split rail cedar). 

There are buds on almost all the daylilies now and they will be the next thing to pop.  Right now, some of what's blooming:

From front to back:  Dwarf Shasta Daisies, Evening Primrose, Lynchnis, Perennial Sage and Monkshood.

And what I call 'Dad's Sweet Williams'.  These are from seeds my Dad collected for me from his garden, before he and my Mom moved into a condominium apartment.  They smell wonderful and are very special to me.   I think next year I will let them to a bit more wild in the empty spaces between the perennials.  They seed themselves quite profusely, but are very easy to transplant from one place to the next in the garden or into a friend's garden.  And easy to just pull out and put into the composter if you have more than your garden can hold.