Summer 2011 - What's blooming in your garden? Part 1

i love those passi's .. so exotic looking/

Becky, lol yes I know you do. I favor the dark pink/red too, striking blooms

This message was edited Jul 19, 2011 11:59 PM

Debra & Jackie - Thanks! :-) :-) :-)

I have alot of daylilies blooming and some are polying.(extra set of petals) One of my favorites did it this morning and it looked so funky!
'Kalahari Jewel'

This is 'Pandora's Box' a lovely reblooming DL that is fragrant.

Another of my favs....this is 'Storm Prince'.

'Wild Horse's'

'Bela Lugosi'

'Mary Ethel Anderson'

'Antique Rose'

Last one....'Dream Legacy' sitting in a bed of baby's breath.

pixie - Beautiful daylilies! WOW!!!

Thanks Becky :)

beautiful , pixie.. especially pandoras box..

Pixie, I couldn't pick a favorite, I love all of them.

Really beautiful blooms on this thread!!! Wow!!!

Thanks All!!

My first ever bush morning glory bloom. The first I ever.saw.

WildcatThicket - Welcome! Pretty pink I. carnea bloom! They become nice sized bushes or even small trees from what I've heard! :-) http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/52996/

Oh my lord, you guys have got me beat by a long shot...

pixie, I love those daylillies guys, good thing I have always had bad luck with those or I'd get started again. This heat here is a bear!!

Very lovely flowers everyone....

love your platensis flowers joeswife!

It's hot here too, Antoinette. The only thing keeping my plants alive is the partial shade during the day from my Oak tree. And the occasional rain storm. But the temps with the humidity index is over 100 degrees F! Whew! I'm sweating just thinking about that! LOL!

Thought I would add some more plant photos to this thread. Always fun to see what else is blooming ...

I thought I had lost the sweet potato vine to the freezing winter I had, but it is coming back and making quite the statement in my front garden bed. :-)

Silver Moon clematis is blooming again for the 2nd time so far this year.

Pompom bloom.

Scarlet Hibiscus bloom. Hummers love these blooms!

Jatropha red blooms.

Venosa Violacea clematis.

Crocosmia. This is supposed to be Emberglow, but the blooms are too light colored, so no clue what the real name is. Another hummer favorite! The foliage surrounding it on the ground are watermelon vines! :-)

Queen Crape Myrtle blooms. These are large blooms that bloom in clusters. People always ask me what this plant is when it blooms! It is a traffic stopper ... literally!

Water lilies growing in a bowl and 2 cups. I haven't been able to get the cup lilies to bloom yet! I am determined to get mini blooms on those! :-)

This is th corner of the Butterfly and Hummingbird Zen garden. The bench is one I made. Love those concrete bench molds I bought over a year ago! I plan to make several more benches. I want to decorate the seat with tile or something on at least one of the benches. Maybe a butterfly mosaic? :-)

Lemon bacopa. This plant is a host plant for the Peacock butterfly. Can you see the tiny blue blooms? This is a water marginal plant that grows in a pot in one of my pre-formed ponds.

One of the ponds for the fish and tadpoles displaying the new water lilies I got from a great sale! Waiting to see what they look like when they bloom. :-) This pond is loaded with Southern Leopard Frog tadpoles and lots of minnow type fish. Both ponds are stocked with lots of babies of both. :-) I want to put a bench under the shade of the Cassia trees facing these ponds. A tranquil place to sit and enjoy! I may eventually add large pavers/rocks around both the ponds. I will keep them as raised ponds.

And the following next photos are of my harvested edible plants. I am so surprised I had such success this year. It was all trial and error this year to see what would grow here. My cucumbers got infested with some kind of worm. Maybe beetle larvae or moth larvae? I don't know for sure. Looks like green worms burrowing around inside the cukes. :-(

These are some of the eggplants I collected yesterday.

These are green and red peppers. The front red pepper looks pretty ugly. LOL!

I love these sweet yellow onions! These are the easiest thing to grow from seed. I originally thought they were chives. All of these onions in this picture were grown bunched together in a one gallon nursery pot! They probably would have gotten bigger if I had separated them out when I first potted them up from the 8 oz. styrofoam cups! See what a small root system they have. Most all of it grows above ground. Amazing! Never knew how onions actually grew till I grew them for the first time this year! I will be growing them again. :-)

I finally think I figured out the problem I was having with my watermelon fruit. I think they were getting dried out too much, so I am watering the roots every day, and using the leaves to shade the actual fruit as it is developing and ripening. I also read you have to keep the fruit from sitting directly on the ground because the bugs will get them. So I am using the concrete sprinkler guards to sit the fruit on. I have about 5 watermelons developing currently and the vines show no signs yet of slowing down! LOL! I hope I get at least one ripe watermelon out of all those vines. :-) These have gotten the biggest I've ever grown yet. Usually they start wilting and rotting before they hardly get bigger than a baseball. These are bigger than that, so I am encouraged that I might actually get some edible watermelon this year!

I have been finding baby Monarch caterpillars on my Milkweed, so I have bringing them inside to raise in a cage. I think I have almost 30 that I am raising. Most have gone into their chrysalis and will emerge as beautiful Monarch butterflies soon. I hope I get lots of both genders so they will come back and lay eggs on my plants again.

These are the cats that haven't changed gone into the chrysalis stage just yet. Soon ...

And these are all the pretty chrysalis. I think I counted 22 of them so far. It will be a grand day when I release the last one out into the world when they emerge as butterflies! :-) It doesn't get any better than this! :-) Especially coming from someone who has adored butterflies all her life and has raised and released close to 1000 of them over the past 7 years. :-)

Usually they get eaten by the wasps, but lately I've noted quite a decline in the wasps population. I think a new sheriff has moved into town and the bug is attacking and killing the wasps. I think the new predator bugs are the Robber Flies. My Monarchs thank them ... and me, too! :-)

This message was edited Jul 29, 2011 10:13 PM

Truely beautiful and up lifting pix and commentary. Now you need to find out what kind of Artemesia the Swallowtails will lay on. On my side of the Rockies the Swallowtails species all lay their eggs on some kind of Artemesia or another. They must lay their eggs on some other species too, because we always have beautiful swallotails in late May here , and we don't have any wild artemesia species. Frank