Format, Font and Flora!

June 30, 2011

First of all, about the new colours: I've been playing around with some new designs for my blog. I realize that the writing is more difficult to read on the black background and I've made the font a little bigger to see if that helps.

I'm still not happy with the ease of reading, but I don't have a lot of time to work on this today....PLEASE HAVE PATIENCE WITH ME, I'll try to get this rectified before my next post.

Now, to today's photos: I wanted to take some overall shots of the garden. I know I'm always intereted to see what other gardens look like as a 'big picture'. Hope you enjoy these.

Happy Gardening, everybody!

Back Border

Side Border

Front Shrub Bed

splash of color in the back border

Peony Love - "Pretty in Pink"

June 27, 2011


For my money (at least in my zone) peonies are the Number One perennial for showiness. I love the way they look as a plant, the way they look as individual flowers, the way look as cut flowers, and the way they smell.

Below is my very favourite of all the peonies, the 'Bowl of Beauty'.

I bought a lovely new perennial book on the weekend, Lois Hole's 'Perennial Favourites'. In the book, she tells at what stage to cut the flowers and also how to dry them. She has a lovely photo in the book of dried peonies. I had no idea you could dry them. I'm experimenting with that now. I'll post photos later, if I'm able to accomplish it!

Happy Gardening, everyone.

Paeonia 'Bowl of Beauty' Peony

Paeonia 'Sarah Bernhardt' Peony

Cottage Garden Blooms on Fertilizer Friday

June 24, 2011

Here we are on the last Friday of June.   We've had a pretty much a good solid week of wet here, but one of my peonies has started to bloom and the other ones are close!   I think I look forward to the peonies opening more than anything else. 

I love to cut them, soak them in soapy water to get rid of the ants and put them in my best crystal vase!

Here is a little mosaic of the one that's blooming now.  It's the only one I don't know the name of.  It was mislabelled as a 'Bowl of Beauty' when I purchased it at a garden centre a few years ago.  There are two tones of pink, and the difference in the two shades is ever-so-subtle. 

Another of my favourites, that is in full bloom right now, is Salvia nemorosa Sage 'Caradonna'.  It's dark purple flower stalks fade to an almost black seed head, which I leave on right until frost.  The seed head looks almost as lovely as the flowers. 

The hostas and ferns are really starting to fill in, beside the limestone walkway.

Ditto for my little hosta shade bed in the backyard.  (I think I will ask my long-suffereing husband to trim some of the lower branches of the pine tree behind it.  That way when the tree is bigger, the hostas will look wonderful under it.) 

Happy Weekend and Happy Gardening to everyone!     And please check out all the Fertilizer Friday happenings at Tootsie's Blog 

Wordless Wednesday

June 22, 2011

Fertilizer Friday for June 17!

June 17, 2011

I'm joining up with Tootsie and friends over at Fertilizer Friday.  It's another nice way to meet garden bloggers from all over the world. 

This is the time of year that the perennial borders seem to have a lot of lovely green foliage, and a lot of buds waiting to come out. 

For colour in my borders right now, I have all my irises in bloom.  In addition to the ones I have shown in recent posts, I have my Really Giant white one in bloom, as well as a purple one with white, a very dark one (almost a blackish-purple) and my favourite - a lavendar coloured one.

All these irises were gifts from my wonderful friend, Rita. 

And I really cannot resist posting this photo of our little friend, who seems to live under our deck:

Happy Fertilizer Friday!

Have a great Weekend!