Very nice dal
I only have a few stems of pussywillow in a vase this time of year
Yard to vase - Winter 2009-2010 series
I love the vase and those roses are wonderful.
I really like them with the hydrangea's. Is the rose a good bloomer all summer?
I have started a rose garden but I am going to have to restart it because I made some mistakes...surprise surprise....LOL. Great thing about gardening you can always start over.
Yours Always is a good rose, blooms repeatedly all season, even after the first frosts!
It doesnt seem to get too much in the way of pests & diseases...
the scent comes out on warm days, not strong but pleasant.
When cut or on cold days I don't smell any scent at all.
The colour is just lovely, especially on over cast days or at dusk, it just glows.
That rose is certainly a keeper. I only have 4 roses, and don't have much room for more, but I love the color and the fact that it is a repeat bloomer even after the first frosts.
That's a perfect arrangement for our 4th of July.
I didn't even notice the colors for the 4th. I may have to see if I can find that rose. When I retire....we have a public garden with a gazebo and I have already approached the city council to see if I can start planting flowers (roses) around it. Down in the big city there is a garden called Loose Park. It has a beautiful rose garden and every year the brides line up around 3am to get registered to have their weddings in the park. I don't see any reason we can't do that here and we have a beautiful gazebo to go with it.
I love really deep red almost black roses but they do not photograph well.
I wasn't too sure about Yours Always at first but have come to appreciate what a great colour it is in the garden & in the vase.
I have been given Fond Memories a few weeks ago & it is still in the pot but has new buds coming out will take some photos & see if I can use it in an arrangement.
It had one bloom when my boss gave it to me and it was a pretty pale pink.
I really need to get it planted soon but have not had decent weather or sufficient good health to get digging.
When my boss lost her sister-in-law to cancer a couple of months ago I gave her a white clematis, she returned the favour with the Fond Memories rose after my father died.
Teresa - giving or receiving a remembrance gift of a plant is a wonderful idea.
Week 5 in California brings about a second flush of blooms for the jonquils. Here is a patch of the yellow ones. The paperwhites are almost done blooming.
I am not too crazy about the smells of the jonquils, so this arrangement will not stay in the house for long. The Christmas cheer is still going strong, so I added one to fill the arrangement out.
soils,
Oo! I love the scent of jounqils! I can't wait for Erlicheer to bloom so I can bring some in. To me this one has the best scent but then may just be because it's the first to bloom and by then I am so ready for spring.....Oo...and hyacinths...love the smell.
Paper whites bloomed very early this year and right in the middle of their bloom cycle,we got low temps in the teens...bub-bye blooms.
new arrangement, penstemon, sweet pea, golden marjorum.
Bigred - jonquils are funny. Some people love it like you, and others don't like them at all. I know of few plants that generate this wide range of reactions.
Theresa - love the colors in your arrangement. I am afraid I am stuck with green for this week.
Week 6 - the rain has wreaked havoc on a lot of the camellias in this area and causing the petals to turn brown. One plant that doesn't seem to be fazed by all this rain is the Helleborus foetidus. It started blooming I think in November, and the blooms will last for another month or two.
The stalks are thick with lots of side branches so you don't need very many for an arrangement. My other hellebore - lenten rose - is starting to bloom now too. But they won't reach their prime for a couple of weeks.
I have hellebores - one flowered last season but I don't know what colours the others are - no blooms last year when I planted them.
Hope they flower this time around
Good luck with your hellebores in the coming year, Teresa. My two lenten rose hellebore patches have shrunken considerably in the past two years. I have a bunch of seedlings growing all around, but they are really tiny still.
Happy Chinese New Year, everyone. I didn't realize how late it was - I have less than 15 minutes left.
And just in time for Chinese new year, my flowering quince is in full bloom. Chinese New year last year was at the end of January, and there was only a few blooms opened. But what a difference two weeks makes - here is the flowering quince in it's full glory. I must have trimmed about 20% of the branches off to keep the plant in check. I love the old-fashioned tall ones.
Since this is too early for peach blossoms, the flowering quince has become the traditional flowers for Chinese New Year here in California- bringing luck and prosperity.
And since we can never have too much luck, I made another arrangement. May this year of the tiger bring you all peace and happiness.
Oh Dianne, soon here please. My helleborus are buried under 60" of snow plus all that has been shoveled on top of that 60" My quince bush does have tiny buds on it, but will be quite a while yet. So lovely to see yours, I just love quince!
Very pretty. Nothing here blooming, bitter bitter cold. I did go to the lawn and garden show.....only thing I purchased were 3 used vases....LOL You all have had quite an effect on me.... :D
I LOVE used vases - I always make a beeline for that area of the thrift stores. Some of my favorite vases are thrift store finds for about $3-5.
Week 8 - I am lucky enough to live in what is sometimes known as the "Camellia" capitol of the world. The early C. japonicas have been in bloom since January. The sansaquas have finished blooming for awhile now. We have had a wet winter, and that has wrecked havoc on a lot of the blooms. Here is a not very good photo of a white one that I have.
It was hard to get a bunch of blooms that did not have brown splotches on them - the result of all this wet weather that we have been having. Considering all the snow that has hit a large part of the country, I have no reason to complain. We had really good springlike weather for the last 10 days or so and I finally got enough good ones to cut for an arrangement.
Happgarden - that vase (I think it is a wine decanter) was one of my thrift store buys!
LOL love the vase it is beautiful. I am cleaning cabinets today (since we had snow drifts so big I can't get work.....darn...LOL) so I can put all my vases together.
Beautiful blooms. No ground here to be seen, everything is still fast asleep.
Compassion, cutting from my Mum's garden
Compassion is the largest, Fond Memories is the next one in size & Patricia the bud.
Compassion is a beatiful rose....another for my list......love it!
I love those shades of peach/pink/salmon. I just wish I had a bigger yard.
Week 9 in California - daffodils are dependable harbingers of spring. I dug up my patch of Dolly Mollingers last year and they are recovering. I am hoping that this patch will increase in size next year.
And here they are in a vase, mixed with some thalias and a couple of other colors of daffodils. I was experimenting with a couple of vases. Here is the first one.
And the second one. I couldn't decide which one I liked better, so I posted the two of them. I thought about adding some greens, but decided against it.
They are both lovely, I can see why you couldn't decide.
The first pics of spring.
I have a huge yard, acres, the problem, you can't afford to fill it and you can't physically afford to take care of it, but you keep adding to it all the time...LOL Biggest problem is removing the grass...ughhhhh! Rented one of those sod strippers one time, and went all around my house.....look so easy on tv and it was, but what I didn't think about was having to lift that sod and put it somewhere to compost! LOL That was the hard part and thank goodness for a bucket on a tractor, but still back breaking when you do so much, but you have to get your monies worth from renting....LOL
Happgarden - did you do anything special after stripping the sod and before you started to plant other things? I am thinking about getting rid of some of my grass area too, but it is small potatoes compared to what you did. I will probably hand dig a bit at a time.
Flower of the week for week 10 is another camellia, in honor of camellia week here in Sacramento. The yearly camellia show was this past weekend, but I did not go so no photos to post. I am amazed at the variety and sizes of camellias there are.
And here it is in a vase - actually a large erlenmeyer flask.
camellia, are beautiful! Do they smell? I have seen pics before but I don't think I have ever seen one live.......such a sheltered life...LOL
I was a new gardner when I was watching too many gardening shows on TV and stripped the grass...LOL I dug the soil loose but now that I have gotten a little wiser on some things, I would of amended the soil alot more at the time I stripped the grass before planting. But it turned out ok in the end. Now the big problem is it started out sun and the little trees have grown into big shade trees with lots of roots.....gardening is ever changing......
Lovely Diann!
Joyce - camellias typically do not smell. There are a few that is slightly fragrant, but they are rare. You are right - gardening is an ever changing art. My yard is so different than what it was 10 years ago.
Thanks, Candee. Are you thawed out yet???
This is supposed to be my entry for week 11, but I got sidetracked. I took the photo of the plant a few days ago. This is a Chasmanthe. I got a few small corms with small stalks attached a couple of years ago. I was visiting a friend in the bay area in February, and this blooming plant caught my eye. It grew into a nice-sized patch in 2 years - I have heard that they can get invasive so I will be deadheading religiously.
By the time I got to picking the flowers today, they were way past their prime. So I added some freesia to the mix. I actually have a yellow chasmanthe that I planted years ago, and it is definitely not invasive. It always gives me 2 stalks of flowers per year (which you see in the vase too). I need to move it somewhere else to see if it will do better.
And lastly, happy first day of spring everyone!!!! and on that note, this series will end. I started it two years ago, and it has been a lot of fun. It has made me focus on meeting my goal of getting something from my garden every week to bring indoors. I have limited myself to buying plants that will fill in the late summer and winter months, and noticed greens that I can use from my garden in weeks where there were no blooms. And I have enjoyed seeing flowers from your gardens and how you make use of them in your homes. Nothing shouts out "Spring!" like a bed of freesias.
Soilandsand, I will miss seeing your postings. You have given me more than you would realize. I am planting a cutting garden just because of your series. Thank you so much, and so sorry to see it end.
Joyce (I hope I have your name right) - you have made my day. What a nice comment! You will have many happy years of gardening in your huge yard. Please keep us posted once spring comes your way.