After breakfast this morning, I had fun taking photos in the garden and on our porch for this week’s Weekly Photo Challenge. Since I take so many photographs of my flowers, I decided not to include any blooms in the challenge; but I still think that these are interesting garden shots. I hope that you do too. Have a great day!
Rarely does the Daily Prompt fit my day quite so well as today. With gentle rain showers on and off this afternoon – the kind that sinks into the soil without beating up the plants – I felt like singin’ in the rain with joy for my plants and with relief that I didn’t have to drag hoses around today. Instead, I walked around in the rain and photographed my garden. I hope that you enjoy the images!
Asiatic Lily “Kiss Me Kate” – named, I assume after the Cole Porter musical – is the standout in my garden this week. I planted the “Kate” bulbs in 2000 and they are still producing beautifully every year. This year, however, we had unusually cool weather for early June – that is, until yesterday afternoon when our official temperature was 99 degrees F. As a result, I had the opportunity to observe that the blooms that opened during the cooler temperatures had much darker coloration than those that opened on warmer days. Kiss Me Kate is a bicolor lily often described as being magenta and creamy yellow. Mine are usually a mauvish-pink turning to salmon-pink at the border of the yellow centers; and just this year did I see a few that were close to red on the outer edges. I have 5 groupings of the Kates, standing at about 3 feet tall. In early morning and early evening light, the colors look like those of the sunset.
We used to have a beautiful American Linden Tree in front of our house. That is, it was in front of our house until this morning and it was beautiful until last summer. Even though we watered it regularly last year, it suffered from drought and heat stress as was evident by the fact that it dropped its leaves late in the summer rather than after they had turned golden in the autumn as it had in previous years. That worried me. Then, to my relief, this spring it set leaf buds. Unfortunately, it set them just in time for the buds to get frozen when we had snow in early May. That was it for our Linden tree. Though it tried to come back, it was mostly dead. The city came and cut it down this morning, since it was on the city’s easement. Now part of the front yard will receive much more summer sun than it has in years. I shall have to observe this area in the coming weeks to determine whether any of the perennials need to be moved to a cooler location. I was sad to see the tree go. I had been pruning it for the past 13 years and really liked its shape.
The Linden tree last summer, lush with leaves …
Its leaf buds, killed off by cold temperatures in May …
The tree did manage to produce a few little shoots on the trunk after May’s freeze, but they were not going to be enough to allow it to thrive.
And so it went …
I’m not used to seeing our house without the tree in front. This will take a little getting used to. Luckily, there are still a lot of tall trees around.
Have a great day!
The other morning, I noticed some beautiful early light starting to peek through the plants, so I captured this shot of it illuminating the autumn ferns in my shade garden. It was a very quiet time of day and, I think, produced a rather peaceful image which is why I decided to share it for the Weekly Travel Theme by Where’s My Backpack?
Livin’ Easy is a floribunda rose that I planted last year; so this is its second season in my garden. Even though it has only a light fragrance, I am fond of this rose because it is vibrant and cheerful – and, of course, a pleasure to photograph. Its small, bright coral buds brushed with gold at the base, open to fluffy many-petaled roses which soften in color to a soft apricot as the 4-inch blooms fade.
Wishing you an easy and pleasant day …
We have a wedding in the garden this afternoon and our irises are at their peak. It should be a beautiful a day!
For a while, I have been wanting a beautiful urn for the back garden. Even mature gardens are still always a work in progress. I am delighted to have found this lions’ heads piece which coordinates with our fountain in the front yard. I chose to plant it with bright coral pelargoniums to add cheerful color contrast to the oregano around its base.
Since not much will be blooming in the garden for the next day or two, after breakfast I decided to play around with getting a few photos of our fountain. The sun was quite bright -so nice after the long winter we had.
Even by Kansas standards, our recent weather has been unusually variable. It has been gorgeous and sunny the past few days with high temperatures in the mid-80′s. (In case you don’t remember, we had snow last week.) The warm weather has stimulated plants to put on a lot of growth and it is really starting to look like Spring; and yet cold weather is supposed to roll back in tomorrow with the chance of snow Thursday and Friday. That would be snow in May – not very good for the garden, even if it doesn’t stick around. So, I decided that I’d better enjoy the flowers while they last and get some photos of them today. I’m so glad that I did. Photographing flowers makes one stop and really look at them. What a nice thing!
