Garden Bloggers Bloom Day May 2011

For those of us who have posted for GBBD from its beginnings in February 2007, this is the fifth time that we're showing our May blooms. Participation in this ritual may now require alcohol ... one drink to celebrate those parts of the garden that are better after 5 seasons... and a second glass raised as consolation after viewing GBBD photos of dead-and-gone lovelies.Woe for the Passionvine, the 'Happy Returns' daylily, the Sweet Peas, the Malva zebrina AKA French hollyhocks, the gardenia, the single mockorange, the aloe in flower!

Most of my flowers are the same plants that have appeared here every May - their return is comforting and rhythmic, giving the illusion of stability in the garden, even in the erratic climate of Austin,Texas.

'Best of Friends' daylily from Pam seems happy and established: The small rebloomer known as 'Vi's Apricot' has been divided into several plants, adding repetition to the borders. A GBBD photo reminds me to appreciate the individual flowers:Hemerocallis 'Devonshire' has been here a couple of years and so has the orange Ditch Lily kindly passed along by Lori the Gardener of Good and Evil. The larkspur is an annual - first added in 2005. Last year there were just a few reseeded plants but this year it appeared everywhere!
After 5 years the 'Little Gem' magnolia has filled out. It was not quite in bloom for April GBBD but there have been dozens of fragrant flowers in the past four weeks. Today's bloom now fades as new buds swell: Four weeks ago the reddish purple Clematis by the back door was in full bloom. The very last flower opened today. On the other side of the back door there are Tropical Milkweed plants in bloom and the first flowers of the blue plumbago. The plumbago dies to the ground each winter. The milkweed can survive a mild winter but last February was not mild. I bought a couple of new plants in early spring and since then seedlings have appeared from last summer's plants - they'll catch up soon.

Salvia guaranitica grew near the back fence when we bought this house - we brought Salvia 'Black and Blue' with us in a deck pot and introduced them to each other in 2005:
With those two blues as background, a patriotic May border just sort of happened. The Shasta daisies came from the previous house, a pure red Salvia greggii was a passalong from my Divas of the Dirt friend Mindy. Salvia elegans/Pineapple sage seemed to fit in easily. A visit to the garden of Jill Nokes made me seek out Salvia 'Hot Lips'. Seeing 'Diamond Frost' Euphorbia in the garden of Pam/Digging made me want it- growing the Euphorbia last year turned me into a fan.

'Blue River II' Hibiscus grew in our Illinois garden, survived 5 years in the previous deck garden, and is now established here. It isn't in bloom yet but the buds promise many large white flowers.
The Bluebonnets & Texas Paintbrush that looked good for April GBBD are still flowering in the mini-meadow, joined now by the reseeding orange cosmos.
Last year I let too many self-seeded sunflowers grow wherever they sprouted. One of them shaded two small orchid-purple Salvia greggii plants at the end of the meadow bed, stunting their growth. This year the sunflowers are confined to another spot. The salvias are already responding to the space & light.
Another plant also appreciates the new Sunflower rules. Last year this Perovskia/Russian sage grew sideways in the shade - this year it stands upright, making a see-through mist of tiny blue-purple flowers. The magenta and white flowers of Rose of Sharon are barely visible at back-top of the fence. Between the Rose of Sharon and the lavender-blue Perovskia is another small-flowered plant tending more to pinky-lilac in color - Poliomintha bustamanta/Mexican Oregano
Up front in the Pink Entrance Garden the pink skullcaps/Scutellaria suffrutescens have rebounded after winter's deadwood was snipped off:

A native skullcap blooms in the parkway strip, Purple skullcap/Scutellaria wrightii. It's done so well that I bought a few starter plants to try in other places.


Last winter the 'Patrick' abutilon froze in its pot in the Secret Garden so this replacement 'Patrick' will come inside when it gets cold. The 2010 Patrick grew as one single stalk but this year's plant has been cut back to see if it will make multiple stems. I gave Patrick a Torenia for company.
Two plants surprised me this month - both native plants. For the April GBBD I photographed a newly planted Salvia regla/Mountain sage in bloom - but it had buds when I bought it so that wasn't the surprise. Now the established older plant has bloomed- it's never made flowers in spring before - only in autumn. Is this a result of our odd weather or did something about the new one having flowers trigger the bloom?Fragrant mistflower/Ageratina havanensis has always been an autumn bloomer, too - but this May I'm seeing Mistflower with Larkspur.
A recent surprise wasn't a flower - it was another bird sighting to add to those in the last few posts. Local bird expert Mikael Behrens identified this green visitor to the birdbath fountain for me... it's a female Painted Bunting. Seeing a colorful male would also be fun.

I'll bet you'll find many more surprises in the posts linked at Carol/May Dreams Gardens Garden Bloggers Bloom Day Roundup.

(added abt 3 PM on May 16th - complete bloom day LIST with botanical names and more photos has been posted at Annie's Addendum Broke 100 this month!)

Daylilies of June

Would you be excited to know that two of my Irish great-grandparents were married in Worcester, Massachusetts in August of 1873? Not even if I used a photo of Rudbeckia 'Irish Eyes' as a come-on? That's what I thought.
Would you be eager to read about a great-grandmother from the other side of my family whose previously unknown sister Verona suddenly appeared in a record? Could comparing the endurance of immigrant farmers' wives in Michigan to the endurance of violas blooming in Austin heat turn genealogy into gardening?
I'll bet such tidbits of family history could interest other gardeners at some times of the year...

but not when it's June in Austin and the first tomatoes have turned red-orange! With threatened highs of 100°F this weekend, tomato season may end before it ever gets going...

Attention must be paid when 'Royal Wedding' sweet peas refuse to stop opening fragrant flowers in spite of weeks of heat, climbing high on the obelisk

I love how they've artistically twined and arranged themselves against a background of 'Little Gem' magnolias
The travails of the ancestors must wait while I bemoan the way insect-chomped leaves on 'Belinda's Dream' make the rose look more like 'Belinda's Nightmare'
And even though the leaves on 'Julia Child' have been julienned, this shrub rose keeps blooming
How can anyone resist the flower-laden, bustling growth of Mexican oregano/Poliomintha bustamanta - its lavender-tinted blooms positively glowing in sunOr resist the way heat can put the lips on 'Hot Lips' Salvia?
I can't keep from smiling at the sight of coneflower gentlemen on parade with zaftig daylily-ladies on their spindly arms
When it's daylily time in Austin the experienced gardener knows that Hemerocallis means beautiful for a day, and taking photos cannot be postponed. This week Lori's old-fashioned ditch lily/Hemerocallis fulva and the small yellow 'Happy Returns' were out of bloom. The ditch lily blooms just once a year, but the 'Happy Returns' should have another flush of flower scapes this summer, depending on the weather.

Some people (like onetime Austinite Jean) have moved into a house where daylilies already grew in the garden but mine got here because I brought them, bought them or a division was bestowed upon me by a friend.

Pam/Digging gave me a start of 'Best of Friends' a few years ago. I divided it last year and was surprised to see how different the petal color looks in each bed. I'm not sure if it's sun, soil, fertilizer or a combination of factors that is responsible, but the plant that blooms in afternoon sun looks like this:

while the plant that blooms in afternoon shade looks like this:

This small rebloomer was bought in Wisconsin long ago - I couldn't leave 'Pinocchio' behind in Illinois:

A hybrid bought last year called 'Devonshire' made it through last year's drought and has three bloom stalks this June Its large flowers have great substance but you'll have to ask someone like Rock Rose or MSS of Zanthan whether they really look like England's famous Devonshire Cream!
An old, old passalong daylily with scented flowers that open in late afternoon is Hemerocallis citrina - looking especially dramatic this year with sufficient moisture to pump up the burgundy-leaved cannas in the background. We had 1.1 inches of rain on Wednesday evening - very welcome!

'Prairie Blue Eyes' traveled with us from Illinois, too - the more fashionable daylilies seem to be the fancier cultivars but my heart belongs to the plainer, green-eyed flowers like this one.

And here is the the little rebloomer from Illinois that I cherish most - a descendant of 'Stella d'Oro' going by the name of Hemerocallis 'Vi's Apricot' - a memory of a wonderful friend.
Last year there were still daylily flowers for Garden Blogger Bloom Day on June 15th but this year? Maybe it's a good thing they had their photos taken today.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, May 2009

It's already May 16th here, long past midnight after a long hot day. I went out to take photos for GBBD early in the morning under an overcast sky, hoping the flowers would be fresh. The back lawn looked pretty raggedy so I mowed it, then took more photos in the late afternoon. Many of the photos of individual flowers are pretty good. But you won't see them! I've spent hours formatting the pictures and trying to write this post but Blogger is being a pig as usual, uploading most of the closeups sideways. They look like crap that way so I deleted most of them. I might try to put the apricot daylily on my Twit-pic page instead. This little harvest of a 'Spanish Spice' pepper, 3 'Juliet' tomatoes and 8 peapods appeared there a couple of days ago. What you get is the garden in long shots - perhaps it's just as well. It's hot, we need rain, and insects and crustaceans have been chomping everything. Poor Rosa 'Julia Child' has been devoured. Pillbugs got the marigold seedlings. The front garden - 'The Bride' white gaura, Salvia guaranitica, Texas paintbrush, Yellow Bulbine, lavender blue Creeping Phlox, Salvia 'Nuevo Leon', Verbena bonariensis, the dependable Mutabilis rose The Pink Entrance Garden - a dwarf burgundy daylily, Mexican oregano, Rose-pink gaura, verbena bonariensis, rose Ice Plant, Deep pink 'Telstar' dianthus, white trailing lantana, pink skullcap, 'Belinda's Dream' Rose, deep magenta Calibrachoa. Just inside the gate, flowers in purples and oranges, blues and apricots. Mexican honeysuckle, Orange cuphea, , 'Vi's Apricot' dwarf daylilies, Verbena bonariensis, Setcreasea(Purple Heart tradescantia), Bicolor iris and Butterfly Blue scabiosa. In the middle and at the far end of the fence bed two shrubs of Mexican oregano are in full bloom And in the far corner the Rose of Sharon has a dozen flowers and the top of this shrub has finally reached the level of the fence, a small step toward the dream of a green screen.In the triangles and the center back bed are more 'Vi's Apricot' Daylilies, white salvia greggii, one lonely larkspur, tropical Asclepias/Butterfly weed, snapdragons, cilantro gone to seed, lavenders, Zinnia linearis,
the tiny flowers of Myrtus communis nana, Dwarf Greek Myrtle

The large fragrant flowers of Little Gem magnolia A white delphinium Budded daylilies, Batfaced cuphea, Black & Blue salvia, Salvia coccinea, Salvia greggii, Salvia guaranitica, Shasta daisies and Perovskia Head back to the patio and the color comes from geraniums and petunias (and more calibrachoa offscreen)Abelias dangle from the tall shrubs at the entrance to the secret garden. Inside are geraniums, impatiens, passionflowers, Mexican lime flowers, 'Coral Nymph' salvia and two pomegranates with a few flowers, one regular variety and one dwarf kind. In a few hours I'll be digging with the Divas of the Dirt so goodnight! Wonderful flowers with much less cranky gardeners can be found at May Dreams Garden, where Carol keeps track of more than 130 Garden Blogger Bloom Day posts from around the world.