Commentor / photographer Mike in Oly took these photos in early May:
These are just random flowers I have seen lately in my garden or in friend’s gardens. The irises are getting started here, and they are my favorites… Happy spring!
(Part I appeared last week at our temporary Jackal-Action site.)
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I need more photos, people!
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Saturday / Sunday, June 4-5
JPL
The pictures are beautiful!
debbie
All beautiful, but there’s just something about peach-toned azaleas and rhododendrons…
Chat Noir
Herbs and cherry tomatoes. Herbs consist of basil (homemade pesto!), dill, oregano, rosemary, and thyme. We also have a lavender plant because I’m curious about its culinary uses.
satby
Far away from Olympia, but I have lots of the same flowers
Special excitement this year because two of my baby azaleas finally got mature enough to bloom. And master gardener Dan B helped me identify my mystery plant that grows and grows but doesn’t bloom as an azalea too, a Mountain one. I was beginning to doubt it was an azalea at all!
Today will be transplanting two hardy hibiscus that I ordered last fall and heeled into a temp bed.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I love irises
OzarkHillbilly
Beautiful pics, Mike.
jeffreyw
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Good morning!
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: That may just be the cutest little birdhouse that I have ever seen.
@Mike in Oly: Gorgeous, as always! Love the white / yellow iris! What is the white flowering plant? That’s spectacular, too.
jnfr
I got my first strawberries this week. Always a happy moment.
Betty Cracker
@jeffreyw: We have Carolina Wrens that nest in our downstairs porch every year. The mister calls their arrival “Wren Fest.” Maybe a lovely birdhouse like yours would be safer for them. (I worry that critters like raccoons, snakes, etc., can reach their porch nest.)
Immanentize
@Chat Noir: home made lavender chocolate chip ice cream is divine. Also, lavender in soups, especially ones with red wine base that take a bouquet garni!
Betty Cracker
Last night we had the last of the larger red tomatoes (Jersey Boys) on sandwiches for supper. Early crop, early harvest! I’ll miss them, but we’ve still got cherry tomatoes, and the peppers (hot and sweet) are coming along nicely.
Immanentize
Mike, thanks for the pictures! I love iris also, but I have neglected to dig mine out and replant (African and a beauty yellow/brown heirloom). But their stalks are up, so I have another chance this fall. Please let it be a trauma-less autumn!
satby
@Immanentize: I hope everyone has /is recovering from your harrowing last year. Glad to see you.
Kristine Pennington
Here in Lakewood Colorado peonies are popping- honestly my favorite flowers; the scent is just divine
satby
@Immanentize: iris are pretty hardy, you should be fine. I was transplanting mine last year to their new bed and gave my neighbor some “extras” that turned out to be all my yellow ones
So now she’s going to give me a couple back this fall
WaterGirl
@jnfr: Me, too! it’s so shocking to be reminded of what strawberries used to taste like! (shocking in a good way)
Immanentize
Garden is in. Yellow pear, sweet 100s, celebrity, Italian Plum, and Rutgers tomatoes. Tomatillos (fall harvest). Anaheim, jalapeno and some mystery pepper I picked up by accident. Mexican Red Silver, Siberian, German, and Korean Mountain garlics which I planted for the first time just to see what works best (looser so far is MRS). Peruvian blue and regular red potatoes, leeks and lemon grass. Herbs. Really a kitchen garden for me, but I ought to make it bigger.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Jealous!
Here in Illinois, tomatoes are still just a gleam in the eye.
Immanentize
@satby: i love the neighbor method of increasing (and restoring) beauty!
PS thanks for the good thoughts. Things right now are very mellow. Immp starts his summer job (remote) tomorrow. And he is getting real paid!
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: Well, there are tomato plants at least. Two months ago, not even that.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: So happy to see that you were able to put in your garden! Not just for all the yummy stuff you mentioned – but because it’s such a great sign that things are settling down. Such wonderful news!
satby
@Immanentize: Her display of them is fantastic, early bloomers and very lush. Mine are mostly mid-late bloomers, so only two of my 20 or so are blooming right now. A bright orange and a bronze like the top right in Mike’s 6th picture. Really looking forward to the rest of them blooming!
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: It’s true, and my tomato plants are growing by leaps and bounds. I do have one tiny little pepper, and I do mean tiny!
it’s one of my Hungarian hot wax peppers. Maybe double the length of the nail on my pinky, and maybe just barely as wide as my nail, too.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: i did jack up my elbow a bit tilling. But it is actually, for the reasons you mentioned, a happy hurt.
Immanentize
@satby: the top upper right? The darker one? That’s a beaut!
jeffreyw
@Betty Cracker: Mrs J has concerns due to its location in the Kitty Garden:
prostratedragon
Such blooms!
“Ennanga,” William Grant Still; Patricia Terry-Ross, harp; Leah Claiborne, piano; Ivlas string quartet.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: Isn’t everything the kitty garden? :-)
Love love love your curvy sidewalk!!!
Immanentize
Oh, and for the South and Central American cooking folks — against all odds and reason, one of the smaller nurseries here had beautiful, well grown Epazote herb plants. I got two. I am very excited about this. I want to try to keep them alive over the winter in doors. We shall see.
Big Mango
We have a huge amount of spectacular blossums on our rhoadies… I chalk it up to the Mrs feeding them last fall, a very wet April, and 3 inches of bark mulch laid down last summer…..
May/June are spectacular here….
@mike in oly we should have a meet up at Big Toms…
JAM
I have green tomatoes on all the plants, but only one is turning ripe on the Sungold cherry. Old fashioned petunias are blooming, and salvia farinacea ‘blue bedder’ and salvia greggii, daylilies are just starting,and liatris is about to bloom. Hibiscus are getting big but no blooms yet. And I keep seeing a squash vine borer menacing my plants every day while I wave my arms and curse at it –the stems are coated in bt that’s getting washed away by a thunderstorm as I type this.
satby
@Immanentize: Yes, THAT’s the one. I gravitate to the orange, bronze side of the spectrum when I have the option. Though I enjoy all colors of the rainbow
oldgold
As a rule, I do not brag about my horticultural skills; however, I have developed, over time, an unique area of expertise.
As a consequence of East of Eden being located in the Twilight Hardy Zone,every winter my lawn suffers 4th degree winter burns. So, every Spring, otherwise called the Fourth of July, I over-seed, fertilize and water my thin and balding patch of brave green spears.
Unfortunately, these annual epic and expensive efforts to keep the County Weed Commissioner at bay fail spectacularly. But, in so doing, I have developed an otherworldly skill for raising the most beautiful bluegrass, this side of Bill Monroe and/ or the most fertile valley in Kentucky, in the cracks of my driveway.
This remarkable skill is akin to my ability, developed in my advanced dotage, of growing hair on the gnarly knob of my aged nose.
Steeplejack
@jeffreyw:
I was wondering about that. The birdhouse looks a little close to the ground.
Steeplejack
@oldgold:
Just wanted to say that I enjoy your posts.
satby
@Steeplejack: @oldgold: Ditto
p.a.
Really nice.
I just spent the morning shoveling up the straw mulch that Tractor Supply assured me- multiple times- was sterile, clean, perfect-for-mulch, no seeds, no hay, no sir-ee straw. I was well on my way to being an alfalfa farmer
Jeffery
Philly is having a run of great gardening days. I am getting out around 5:30 or 6 in the morning to work on things for a few hour and not breaking a sweat. Could live with this picture perfect weather all summer. Know the god awful will arrive soon.
RaflW
Relative garden neophyte here. Our family bought a cabin in early ’21. Last year we sort of let the yard run wild (lots of other things to tend to in a new setting!) but this year I’m working to have a bit of order and care.
Last summer roared in hot, so the irises barely bloomed before fading. It seemed touch n go again as we had three very windy days of 90 just as the flower stalks were surging (I think the wind, which was particularly focused, whipping around the garage corner may have rather injured a new hydrangea I planted about 3 weeks earlier – it’s sad now, even as I kept it well watered – the fairly newly emerged leaves just got battered for 72 straight hours – 25-35 mph wind gusts! what a spring).
Aaaanyway, about the irises. They look spectacular now! We shifted to 70 and gentle for four or five days now. But they also look like they need to be divided? Eep! I watched a video, and the guy confidently just split em and arranged em.
Is this a fall task? Are the root thingys delicate, or tolerant of oafish hands? Am I gonna ruin my lovely clump if I don’t divide them — or if I do but do it badly? My sad hydrangea seems to have sapped my limited garden confidence. (It also cost $45 so I’m a bit glum about that, too!)
StringOnAStick
@RaflW: Iris are tough, and you want to wait until after they bloom to divide them. The mistake most make us fully burying the tuber; it must be half exposed as they will rot otherwise. Most cut the leaves back when dividing and transplanting, otherwise being rocked in the wind won’t let the roots on the bottom of the tubers get established. Try some YouTube videos to help guide you.
StringOnAStick
We’re having a long, cold spring, and that helps my 120+ new plants with getting established. A landscaper I worked for years ago said up to 10% attrition is normal, and so far only one didn’t make it.
Thursday we had a screaming intense storm, heavy rain like a monsoon downpour then 10 minutes of small pea sized hail. we live in a place that gets an average of 12-14″ of rain a year, and at least 1 .5″ fell in less than an hour. It is relatively flat in front of the house and I put in a very large dry well to get water away from the house but this storm filled it. I put on full rain gear top and bottom then used a push broom to get the water along the walk to the door pushed away from the house; it worked fairly well. The standing water in the backyard post deluge soaked in by two hours. Then it rained moderately all last night; crazy wet for the high desert of central Oregon, and that means an excellent wildflower season is coming!
Dan B
@WaterGirl: In case no one has gotten back to you the white plant is Iberis sempervirens (spacing common name, apologies). It’s very white which can be trouble since most other whites are greenish, cream, yellows, or pinkish white. They can look dirty by comparison. Iberis makes Trilliums look dingy! Bright whites make colorful flowers nearby look brighter, sometimes harshly bright. Adding grey or silver foliage can mitigate this as can chartreuse or yellow foliage.
Mike in Oly
@WaterGirl: That white flower is, I believe, called ‘snow in summer’. Not sure of the latin for it.
Mike in Oly
@Big Mango: I would love that!
Mike in Oly
@RaflW: Dividing the irises is super easy, and they are very forgiving. It is usually done 6-8 weeks after bloom season ends., altho if you are in a hot climate fall may be better for you. Replant shallow with the rhizomes just under the surface. They will grow into the level they prefer for your climate.
We are having such a late bloom season on them this year. It has been so cold and wet in the PNW. And last nights heavy rain just plastered the blooms and bent the stems over. Broke my heart to see them all this morning. But some stakes and some sunshine and maybe we can salvage the rest of the season.
RaflW
Thanks for the confidence builders. They’re looking great now, emailed a photo to our thread host this afternoon, maybe they’ll appear in a future garden chat. :)