Lily Garden Annuals

Autumn is upon us, and it feels that way today. We had gray, overcast skies this morning with a cool breeze, and rain is falling now. Thunderstorms are predicted for this afternoon. No gardening will be done today, sad to say.

My dear husband finished the trellis for "Social Climber" Rose and we set it up to see how it looks. We like it very much (click for a closer look). I'll show you closer photos of it next time. That late sunflower is still blooming brightly, and the New Rock Garden still looks beautiful, but today I'm concentrating on the annuals in the Lily Garden, seen on the left down by the road.

Last Friday I caught the late afternoon sun shining on the red vines winding up the big old Elm and dead tree stumps in the hedgerow across the road. The leaves of the big Sugar Maple, seen in the foreground, are changing color and falling at an alarming rate, creating the look of autumn in the front yard.

Here's the Lily Garden in the morning sunshine. The Daylilies finished blooming in August, so it was up to the annuals to take over the job of providing color.
Hannah, always curious, was tagging along to see what I was up to.
Those snapdragons to the left of her are self-sown volunteers, moved down from the Pink Garden.

The original deep pinks and purples, planted last year as seedlings, became a nice mixture of shades this summer. I especially love this white with pale lilac tips and yellow centers.

Cleome was planted for the first time and I've loved every moment of its spidery purple blooms. If you look closely you'll see the long, thin seed pods it makes, which I'll save for next year's plants.
Nicotiana is about the same height and looks good with the Cleome.

I started the seeds inside in mid-March,

...but it was July before I got them planted. Much weeding needed to be done first! With so many garden beds it takes me quite some time to get all the plants in the ground. Having lots of space has its disadvantages. One tends to bite off more than one can chew, thinking there'll be ample time to get everything done. The term overzealous comes to mind. (I try to avoid the word "obsessive") :)

It's a pretty mix of colors called "Sensation Daylite", bought for less than a dollar at a big box store.

Pretty, aren't they?

Speaking of pretty, Jasmine was my "helper" on this day.
The Morning Glories planted on either side of the center posts have grown well, but have hardly bloomed.

This gorgeous magenta bloom appeared last Friday and the vines have produced a few more lovely blooms since then. It's called "Crimson Rambler".

Clematis "Sprinkles" climbs up the center posts and is backlit by the morning sunshine.
I thought it had winter killed and was very disappointed, but much later than expected, tiny shoots appeared and hope was revived.

It wasn't until late August that buds were noticed, and the first bloom opened on the 30th of the month (click to enlarge and see the small bloom).

It has opened several lovely blooms since then.

Tucked in between the daylilies more annuals are providing late season color, and there's a nice clump of bright yellow self-sown Gloriosas (Black-eyed Susans).

I love the pastel colors of these annual Asters, called "Powderpuff ".

Helichrysum (Strawflower) buds are almost prettier than......

......the open flower.
I'll cut these to dry and use in an arrangement during the winter.

Here's a long shot from another angle. There's a little clump of Marigolds beside the Nicotiana, and around the Gloriosas more snapdragons are being crowded by the taller plants, but some of them are blooming.

Brightly colored Zinnias are always delightful.

The hot pink looks gorgeous next to this dark leaved Basil, called "Dark Opal".
I had an opportunity to try Basil lemonade the other day and it was delicious! I must make some.

Calendulars are a bright spot of sunshine colors.

Salvia Farinacea "Blue Bedder" is another plant that I'm enjoying immensely. Those violet blue spires add wonderful color to the late summer/fall garden.

As the cooler weather sets in and I reluctantly ease my mind into thoughts of the coming winter, these still blooming annuals give me a great deal of pleasure.

Jasmine and the other cats are making the most of these last warm days.

Here she found a stick to chew on.........

....and then gave herself a good wash.

Somewhere around 5PM the crew shows up to tell me it's dinner time :)

During the month of August Carol of May Dreams Gardens had a Cobrahead weeder giveaway, and much to everyones' surprise, the wonderfully generous folks at Cobrahead decided to give one of their handy dandy tools to each entrant (If I remember correctly there were over 60)! A few were even shipped overseas. Now that's great public relations! I hope their generous gesture will bring lots of sales to the good folks at Cobrahead, which is a small family business.

My hubby is using this one and loving it.
Thanks to the friendly folks at Garden Shoes Online, I already had one, and knew DH would like one of his own, since he was borrowing mine all the time ;)

This truly is an amazingly handy tool which makes weeding...well....a pleasure, and I highly recommend it.

We've just had a wild and wooly thunderstorm, and now the late afternoon sun is making a breakthrough to give us a last flash of glorious, golden light at the end of this drab, rainy day.
And thanks to the wonder of digital photography I can share it with you! I made it a little bigger than usual, so that you can see more detail if you click to enarge.

Happy autumn/fall everyone!

And happy spring gardening to our friends below the Equator.

Summer Work and Play

Blogging has taken a backseat to summer activities during these past several weeks. The days fly by and are filled to overflowering with things to be done, but happily, also with some recreational activities in between. There are never enough hours for me in these treasured summer days.

I'm sad to be missing all the gardens and activities of my blog friends, and apologize for not visiting you all much lately, but I do hope to catch up with your posts sooner or later. I appreciate each and every one of you who stops by and leaves a comment (and also those who don't leave a comment ;) ). They are all such a pleasure to read.

Gladioli are blooming in Hubby's vegetable garden. I had just 3 beautiful spikes last Sunday for the church bouquet, so I filled in with a few other things that are still blooming in the garden: Phlox, white Feverfew and yellow Golden Glow.

I wanted a photo using natural light instead of the flash, so I took the bouquet outside.

This peach Glad is "Early Bird" (Netherland Bulb Co.). I noticed that it's a perfect match for the "Seapearl" rose, and enlisted my patient Hubby's aid to snap a photo.

He planted this patch of beautiful "Strawberry Blonde" Sunflowers (Burpee) on the edge of the veggie garden.

The blooms are not all the same, with a few yellows in the mix, but most are a combination of this gorgeous rose-pink shade and cream. The above flower is my favorite....almost solid rose-pink.

The front porch garden is chock-a-block full of volunteer Sunflowers that grew from fallen bird seed. My intention was to weed them out, but it was one of the many chores that I didn't get around to. When I finally did have time the flowerheads were blooming and I didn't have the heart to pull the plants out. Besides, why waste all that free bird food?

Now the Goldfinches and other birds are having a feast. I love to hear them chatter as they feed.

The Nuthatch has been a regular visitor lately too.

We were richly blessed with a houseful of family this past week. Our oldest daughter came up from NY City, and our niece and her family were here for the week as well. The last time we saw that little family was 5 years ago, and the two children have grown so much!

One of the highlights of the visit was a cookout up behind the barn. Hotdogs, sweet corn on the cob and s'mores never tasted so good!

We ate sweet corn for lunch and dinner almost every day. It's one of the only veggies that has done well in the garden this cool, damp summer. Our tomatoes have late blight, like everyone elses' in the northeast it seems. We have one cherry tomato plant which must be more resistant, because, although it's affected to some degree, has kept producing some good fruit. Also a few bigger unmarked fruits that I picked green have ripened, and mmmm, are they delicious!

During the week, our daughter and niece's husband (NH) painted the barn and outbuildings. They worked very hard and did a fantastic job, which included cutting away a jungle of brush, and braving a hive of honeybees that have taken up residence in the back wall of the barn. After NH was stung on the hand 3 times they sensibly decided to give the bees a wide girth, and left that section unpainted. We'll have to have a beekeeper in to remove the hive. In the meantime though, I'm sure the bees are doing a great job pollinating my garden, and that explains why I see so many of them.

What a joy it was for Hubby and I to have two dear little children around for 8 days! You can guess what the little boy liked the most :) He got to ride on all the tractors....red, green and blue. The cats were a close second, and they received lots of attention from both children, which was greatly appreciated, for the most part.

The little girl is a bookworm. She was overjoyed to find bookshelves filled with plenty of reading material. Here she's reading a book of stories about fairies, filled with beautiful black and white illustrations (plus a few wonderful color plate pages), many of which were colored by me as a little girl. It was my favorite book as a child. What fun it was to see it enjoyed again.

Little girls can look at the slender stalks of Gaura and see a cloud of upside-down pink butterflies, dancing like ballerinas above a clump of pink Snapdragons and white Alyssum.

Do you see them?

We also enjoyed a family picnic, spending a glorious day with siblings, their children and grandchildren who we don't get to see nearly often enough.
The weather was perfect...plenty of sunshine, and no rain for a change, so the kids had a lot of fun in and on the wonderful pond which is on the property belonging to one of my husband's sisters and her husband. It's the perfect spot for a picnic.

The highlight of the day for the boys was this huge frog, which they found when upending one of those blue boats, getting ready to put the boat in the water.

You've never seen such excitement and scrambling as the frog tried desperately to escape before finally being nabbed by little hands. They kindly let it go after they had examined it thoroughly.

On the way home we saw this beautiful rainbow, which seemed to me a symbol of the joyful day we'd just spent.

On the Sunday after, our niece's parents (Hubby's oldest sister and her husband) came for the afternoon, and our son, DIL and our grandsons stopped in for a brief visit on their way home from a weekend up north. So the little second cousins got to play together, and we had the pleasure of seeing our little boys for a short while.
The only sad note was that our youngest daughter and her boyfriend couldn't be here for the festivities.

Now the house is quiet again, and our days are slowly getting back into a routine. We miss having the company around, and were very sad to see them all leave, but there's plenty of work to be done. The chilly nights and mornings hint of fall, which is just around the corner, and time is running out for the many chores still on our lists.
The garden still has quite a bit of color....

Although this photo was taken on August 20th, this clump of Gloriosa Daisies (Rudbeckia hirta) are still going strong. I love the coloring of this one!

The past several days have warmed up to be perfect for gardening, and the cats have enjoyed them as well....sunbaking as only cats can :)

On August 17th, when this photo was taken, the Golden Glow was standing tall and beautiful, with Gloriosas at their feet, but then we had a day of heavy rain, and they were beaten up and knocked down. There's still a little color in the clumps, but they're looking pretty straggly and in need of tidying. If you click to enlarge you'll be able to see the cows grazing on the hill in the background.

That's Murphy in front of the Top Driveway Garden, where Rubeckia triloba is blooming, among other things, and the field corn is looking good in the background.

For the past several days I've been working in the Rock Garden, down by the road, and in the Lily Garden. Jasmine was there, keeping me company, along with several other cats, as usual. I'm never lonely!
Notice that the rust colored Gloriosa is still blooming, though fading now.

Barbara, I was excited to discover that I have your Verbena bonariensis blooming in the Rock Garden :) It's difficult to distinguish, but if you enlarge the first photo (above this one) you may be able to see the stalks to the left of center, above the white Feverfew. I'll try to take a better photo when the stems have more blooms.

Notice in the background of this photo (click to enlarge) that the Driveway Garden is still showing quite a bit of color, due mostly to the Phlox and Gloriosas, but there's also a Butterfly Bush blooming beautifully, and the climbing rose is producing its second burst of blooms. The two white Daylilies, White Temptation and Joan Senior are still offering a few blooms each day. I'm amazed at how long their bloom time has lasted.

Reuben is there on the fence, in his alloted spot of the Lily Garden, and Murphy is trying to bully Phoebe into giving up her perch.

In my opinion she gave up much too easily :)

Here's Jasmine in one of her favorite spots. The containers are doing well, still showing lots of color.

Hannah has an itchy ear. I must remember to put some earmite drops in it...

The time is fast approaching when the hummingbirds will begin their fall migration southward. We're always so sad to see them go.

If you see these two little wiseguys, will you please tell them we miss them?

I hope you've all enjoyed summer as much as we have.

Happy Spring to all our antipodean (an-tip-o-dee-an) blog friends on the other side of the equator!