Belated Bloom Day July '13

Left my camera home when I was at the Cottage yesterday, so I'm catching up today.  I have not yet visited Carol's May Dreams Gardens to connect with many other Garden Blogger Bloom Day posts.  Check it out on the 15th of each month.

  The hot, muggy weather here is fine with most plants... roses and day lilies are thriving.  Lot's of things putting on a show.

 I'm so glad last year's seedlings of cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) are doing so well.  The plants are certainly robust, and just starting to bloom this past weeekend.  I will need to move them before next year.

The blooms of agave-leaved sea holly (Eryngium agavifolium) are subtle, but the structure of the whole plant is spectacular.  Growing perennials from seed is encouraging when a neat-o plant like this arises!

     A weed I collected this spring that is not too common in the province is viper's bugloss (Echium vulgare); it's great to get another true blue flower.  No offence intended toward good ole Clematis 'Jackmanii'.

 

I will say the day lily season is starting with a bang.

 

The bleeding heart, below, should bloom for quite a while.  Collected from my parent's home, it likely was planted years before by my paternal grandmother.  I like to think so, anyway.

I love the late-blooming azaleas, so I bought this reddish one just the other day.  Has a nice fragrance too.  I think it is named "Millennium."

     And the roses keep blooming... This is a moss rose I collected in a nearby ditch a decade ago.

 These final shots - for those who are curious - are of dyer's greenwood (Genista tinctoria).  A couple seedlings were kindly given to me by some friends here in Hants County.  First saw this plant blooming in Cape Breton, where it is wildly prolific in one North Sydney neighbourhood.

Good luck gardening AND blogging.  I can't seem to catch up with either... but am having fun trying!

June in Bloom

Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius)

So little time for blogging, it seems, not be mention weeding, planting, trimming, and simple enjoying!  But life at the Cottage goes on with the usual splendour, not matter what I do.

Lilac (Syringa vulgaris)

The peonies are very promising this year, and amid them a few other plants compete, and bloom first.

Allium

Hyacinthoides hispanica?

Also competing is a trillium and an iris, both doing fine growing in the same spot!  I will separate these two, later.

Trillium grandiflorum, Iris pseudacorus

As we view the shadier side of the cottage, a couple azaleas are becoming spectacular.

A view of the beds shows the new and weeded on the left, the older and overgrown on the right.  

Make the most of your opportunities to tend your gardens, and also to enjoy them, whatever state they are in.

Plant With Nine Lives

Perhaps the only way I have continued growing plants for 35 years, indoors and out, is thanks to the hardiness, toughness, and "will to live" that so many plants exhibit.  I'm a gardener who is very good at neglect and destruction.  This week's example: Crape Myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica. To me this is a very desirable plant: I've never seen it growing in Canada.  I got this little slip of a thing in 2011 from the Honey Tree Nursery in PEI - an amazing resource for unusual trees and shrubs here in the Maritimes.

One of my first blog posts, last spring, was about this little twig coming out of dormancy.  Who knows how hardy it might be in our Nova Scotian winters?  I keep it indoors in a cool place.  Last summer it leafed and branched out nicely.  It had managed to survive the winter in a closed-up bedroom.  As the azalea with it indicates, it dried out too much.  The Azalea died, the Crape Myrtle survived.  I'm a chronic under-waterer of plants.

This winter I housed it in a cold front porch.  I was hoping for a cooler and longer dormancy, and it fared very well.  I found it all leafed out a week ago, and decided to take it out the the unheated greenhouse.  

  Well, it's mid-April in Nova Scotia, and we had a night of -5 degrees Celsius.   Yeah, naturally, the fresh little leaves froze quite solidly.

Here it is.  But notice that one single branch did not freeze like the rest.  And that one stem has kept its leaves, while all the others rolled up and got crispy.  Funny phenomenon.  I've seen this before, with a tray of tender plants that I've left in the greenhouse in the fall.  One night, ninety percent of the succulent leaves froze to death, but the occasional rosette did not, and lived to die another day, with the onset of icy temperatures.  I must investigate this scientific curiosity.

With hopes that the budding twigs of my Crape Myrtle will come back from the grave, I rubbed off all the dead, dried leaves.  Here's hoping this little fellow will flourish again.  Perhaps, one year soon, there will actually be blossoms in the late summer.  And maybe, just maybe, I will venture to plant it out in the ground in a protected spot, and discover if it will live through our winters.  It has only used up about three of its nine lives so far, I'm guessing.

NSAC Gardens

On the grounds of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, in Bible Hill, one can enjoy plenty of interesting horticulture.

And a few sculptural elements.  But to me, the natural sculpture of the plants themselves is the most enjoyable.  Such as this Allium... nectaroscordum siculum?  Or did this get renamed and is no longer an Allium?  Well, doesn't matter to me.  It was nice to see it.

Can't resist Irises.  And then, at an entrance to the Alumni Gardens, this planting looks like it came right out of a hot, sunny landscape.  These are all plants that will not be spending the winter there, that's for certain!

Love that Kangaroo Paw!  

But other, more usual plants caught my eye too.  Like this Mahonia which is surviving here, year by year, fairly well.  My attempt at one of these a few years ago failed.   

I love that Euphorbia griffithii 'fireglow'.  And the last of the Azaleas and Rhododendrons were still blooming.  This season, as many across Eastern North America can attest, has been an early one this spring.  So many of the Rhodos are over and done already.  Nice to enjoy the finale.  

Though... just last year I learned that there are some later-blooming Rhodos available.  Must get one... once a bed is ready for it at the Cottage.  

Nepenthes Bloom

Well, I know it is wonderfully spring, here in Nova Scotia, but my work and other hobbies have gotten in the way of my gardening and blogging.  And, I know it is time to blog on the great outdoors, but one of the rickety houseplants is blooming.  It's an unnamed tropical pitcher plant, Nepenthes.  

This dear ole thing is a bit neglected.  It's had a dry winter, and all the pitchers that hang off the leaves are dried up.  I guess, like various other houseplants, it blooms when it is threatened.  This one is a male, producing these pollen flowers.  As I took these shots I noticed another blossom arising from another meristem.

 

OK, next post, I promise, will celebrate the plants outdoors.  Happy Earth Day, one and all.

Rhododendron hybird