More great shots from Mike in Oly:
My garden has been in transition the past two years and likely won’t start coming together enough for good garden shots for another year or two, but I have been taking what I refer to as ‘flower portraits’ in the meantime.
Some are from my garden, some from friends.
Bidens (aster)
Cosmos
Lobelia
Lily
Coneflower
Lily
Dahlia
Lily (& visitor)
Zinnia
Amaryllis
Zinnia
Cleome
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What’s going on in your garden (wrap-up / notes / planning), this week?
sab
WOW! Your plants of the same variety look so much better than mine.
eclare
So so pretty! I especially love the lilies, I wish my kitty didn’t like to snack on them.
sab
Deer was in the yard again. I am thrilled she is eating the brambles, but next time dear deer please take your ticks with you when you jump back over the fence into the world.
satby
Those are great pictures Mike! Beautiful!
I’ve noticed that my pictures lately have a less than perfect focus due to my own less than perfect eyes, so I really appreciate the sharp clear focus here. Thanks.
Pete Mack
Cleome is a scary plant. If you fail to deadhead just one flower they end up all over the garden.
Those seedpods have crazy long range.
satby
Lots of us up early 😆
My canna lilies all produced a ton of new tubers and it took me a few days to finally dig them all up and out of pots. I went from 15 last spring to well over 60 rhizomes to plant next year. Which is nuts.
satby
@Pete Mack: kinda jealous, I tried growing them and they didn’t take.
sab
@satby: My husband has glaucoma, treated well so only lost periferal vision. Out front is okay. His cataract surgery was so successful that his opthamologist warns him that he is a fluke and results are hardly ever that good, so stop advertising her as a miracle worker.
So now he is pressuring me about cataract surgery. I know my eyes haved dimmed a lot. Night driving is out of the question but I never do it anyway.
Opthamologists keep telling me you’ll know when you need it. I am not so sure. I lived most of my life with 20/20 vision. Now I need 450+ correction even to read. But still hesitant. Cataract surgery you lose flexible focus? But at 450 who cares about flexible. I need focus.
WereBear
@sab: How can anyone live in the modern world without being able to read all the avalanche of STUFF we are bombarded with. I can see fine… to where the tips of my fingers end.
Without my glasses, I’d carry a magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes. If delay won’t make any difference to the final product, don’t worry about taking the time to make up your mind.
sab
@Pete Mack: Roughly, where are you geographically? Scary stuff in some areas is just healthy in others. Fierce winters, hot summers make a difference.
WereBear
I love flower portraits so much I got one of those cheap macro lenses for my phone.
sab
@WereBear: I used to be able to read the condensed Oxford English Dictionary (gazillion volumes condensed to two, tiny with four pages per page) without even the magnifying glass. Now I can’t read the newspaper without major magnification.
Husband before cataract surgery was scary blind. Now he is pretty much okay ( still needs reading glasses but only for reading.)
His lack of peripheral vision is still an issue. Macho man: at this point in your life you really do need to start using turn signals in time for other drivers to notice. Grrr. Nitwit.
satby
@sab: well, I only worked for an eye doctor (optometrist) who partnered with opthalmologists for her patients who needed surgery, but my understanding is that cataract surgery is usually pretty successful and people are thrilled with how well they see after. A lot depends on the lens implant you get, the skill of the surgeon, and how you heal too. When I still worked there, it wasn’t uncommon for me to pretest 80 and 90+ y/o aged people with better vision than younger folks because their surgery was so successful even years later. Most of them happened to get single vision lens implants for distance and used reading glasses as needed because that was what was available, but they had great outcomes. The less great outcomes often had complicating conditions, like poorly controlled diabetes. So I would feel confident in getting the surgery.
I need a cornea transplant, but since I have beginning cataracts they need to do both at once. But I have to be approved by Medicare for the surgery and the cataracts aren’t quite that bad yet. 😟 Soon though.
WereBear
@sab: Yes, and all I’m dealing with on the vision front is readers, essentially.
But if we want to live long enough to have such problems… that’s still a win in my book. :) And if we don’t have to rush into a decision, we probably shouldn’t.
WereBear
@satby: My grandmother had one eye done 20 years earlier than the other. She said it was like night and day.
This procedure really has dramatically improved. Unlike menopause. I thought they would have figured it out by now! That I had to figure out myself.
satby
@WereBear: There’s actually levels of vision acuity they use to determine when the surgery is recommended for best outcomes. They won’t do it too early, and insurance won’t cover it before it’s a better outcome than not doing it.
sab
I used to buy flowers at my grocery until about fifteen years ago they stopped giving/selling plant food. Why pay for flowers that will wilt in a week when with plant food they would last six weeks?
Finally somebody did their homework and noticed that this current buyer has stopped using that department.
So seven weeks ago a dozen roses were delivered for free to my doorstep from the grocery. Gorgeous.
They had their plantfood packet attached, and the roses lasted six weeks.
I might be on board again as a customer.
Houseplants might kill the cats. Vased roses won’t.
satby
@sab: nice!
I always heard a bit of sugar in the water, changed regularly, is the same as the cut flower food. That’s what my grandmother did.
sab
@satby: Thanks. My dad is 99 with dementia so surgery is out of the question with him because post op. So he is essentially blind. I don’t want to stubbornly resist treatment until it is too late as he did.
WereBear
@satby: Yup. And a penny in the water.
sab
@sab: Dad can see with 600+ reading glasses. Good luck finding those anywhere.
sab
@satby: I heard it needed a touch of bleach too, but in my experience that fried the plants.
sab
@sab: His nurse’s aide actually found such readers on line. Whose nurse’s aide even bothers with such research? She is a miracle.
sab
Still very impressed with Mike in Oly. Amazing plants. I know Washington is very plant friendly, but these are still lovely plants well beyond just living in a plant friendly environment. Those plants have some one competent who csres about them.
sab
@sab: Same story hearing aid. He is sitting in a nursing home deaf and blind by choice. Luddite. And other people have to pick up his slack. I am seriously angry.
I am a Boomer, and I have had my life significantly fucked up by the Greatest Generation thinking we owe them the world and our retirements.
They had parents and they had money and they chose to pretend they weren’t aging when their own parents did.
Just dump it on the kids.
I am a kid of that generation and I am furious. Dumping it on your kids I can understand. We were stupid and gullible.
Dumping it on our kids is unforegiveable.
kalakal
Very nice. I particularly like the Cleomes
Just been announced we are getting water rationing for gardens starting December 1st, very early for the Dry Season. Can’t say I’m surprised, the Wet Season wasn’t this year
Gvg
@Pete Mack: I prefer the sterile cultivar senorita rosalita. Flowers spring through fall, no thorns. If you cut it back periodically and protect from frost it can be perennial but mine usually wear out and I buy a new one each year. For the flowers, it’s worth it.
My mother on the other hand actually likes the reseeding. That doesn’t have to be so bad, but she can’t keep up with the other weeding. It complicates things when she doesn’t have some serious weeds under control but wants multiple wild types to be allowed to reseed. And I have to help…I recommend getting weeds under control first, and then doing a wild meadow look.
After a few decades,I turn to heavy mulch. And plant more flowering shrubs and perennials not so many annuals.
Jackie
Pertinent for the Garden Chat: The USDA has finally updated the growing zone due to climate change!
SiubhanDuinne
Lovely flowers, lovely photos.
How did I never know there’s a pretty flower named “Bidens”?
kalakal
@Pete Mack: A friend of Mrs kalakal’s got raided by the police after a neighbour reported that he was growing pot in his garden. They took at least 4 lbs of Cleomes off the mean streets of Cincinnati
kalakal
@Jackie: Thanks for that, appears we are now 10a
eclare
@Jackie:
Thanks! Yep, zone switch to 8a in Memphis.
satby
Took an allergy pill and fell back asleep for two hours. Woke up right at dawn in time to bring the latest porch kitty refugee his breakfast of kibble, warmed can food, and water. This one started coming around a bit more than two months ago and was living under bushes at my neighbor’s, but he’s moved fully on to my porch in the last few weeks. I made him a shelter with a kitty bed and a microfleece blanket under my covered for winter bench. I can’t bring him in because my isolation room has 3 cats with a respiratory bug. But Tuesday I can nab him and he’ll go on the neuter trip the next day, get his shots, and be on the way to adoption shortly after because he’s a sweetie who was apparently dumped. He never leaves my yard.
OzarkHillbilly
Thanx for the beautiful bouquet of flowers, Mike. A great way to start a Sunday.
I’m working in the green house now.
Then I’ll be corralling leaves and then mulching what I want for the gardens and burning the rest (after the Gdaughters get done rolling around in them today and tomorrow)
Then I have to plant all the bulbs I bought (after mowing the wildflowers). We are supposed to get rain tonight and tomorrow. Hopefully enough to soften the clay/chert matrix I have for topsoil.
Elma
@sab: The doc kept telling me my cataracts weren’t “ripe”, as things like night vision and even reading signs on the highway became more and more difficult. That just meant the insurance wouldn’t pay. Finally got both eyes done within a month last fall. Procedure was easy and a great success. I do need readers for extended close work, but otherwise, I see as well as I did when I was a kid.
satby
@Jackie: Huh, a lot of the bigger online plant stores already had me in the same zone for the last few years, 5b-6a. Lately they’ve just shown it as 6a, wonder how they knew.
satby
@Elma: Assuming the transplant portion is also a success, I’ll probably see the best I ever have in my life, because I’ve always been very nearsighted. So I’m anxious to get it.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone😊😊😊
Beautiful flowers 🌸
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Greenhouse! Want some cannas?
OzarkHillbilly
I am sure Texas will ban the new growing zone map as being mean to the oil and gas industry.
@satby: Sure, I think I could find room. Thanx.
scribbler
@satby: Your tending to the needy kitties (and pups) you find always inspires me, and makes me feel a little better about the world.
eclare
@satby:
Same here! I got glasses in fifth grade, and I still remember putting them on and clearly seeing stripes on the assistant’s shirt, with clear edges!
And on the way home, trees with leaves! Not just pudgy tall green things.
kalakal
@satby: I had it done about 6 years ago. Can’t praise it highly enough. I was very near sighted and haven’t worn glasses since
@Elma:
me too
@sab: It worked very well for me, I was
really near sighted, everything beyond about 3 ft was a blur ( legally blind for work purposes), now I see like when I was 10
Scout211
@Jackie: I was just about to post that. You beat me!
Here is the direct link to the new hardiness map from the USDA, searchable by zip code.
O. Felix Culpa
Good morning from Albuquerque! We had atypical cool and rainy weather yesterday, and all the leaves on the tree in our side yard fell down in a single whoosh. Ms. O was kind enough to rake (we don’t have a lawn, mostly flagstone and gravel in that part of the yard), and save to feed to our little electric composter. Thanks to TaMara for featuring those nifty devices for us urban dwellers.
The flower photos are beautiful. Thank you, Mike in Oly for sharing, and AL for providing this Sunday morning garden delight so faithfully.
Big Mango
Olympia is beautiful year round but I love the fall.
Eunicecycle
@satby: my ophthalmologist says my cataracts should be bad enough next year for Medicare to approve my surgery and I can’t wait! I have always had very bad vision corrected by contacts but as I got older they became uncomfortable. I would love to wake up in the morning and see what time it is without needing glasses! I ask for so little.
JAM
@satby: They didn’t take off for me, either. I think the summers here are too hot and dry for them.
StringOnAStick
@sab: I saw that dissolving a baby aspirin in the water is an effective flower preservative.
Jeffg166
@satby: When they are happy they are happy. This year mine didn’t flower well at all.
Mike in Oly
@satby: I have to rely on the auto-focus built into the camera. My eyesight has become too poor to see on my own if the focus is right.
Mike in Oly
@Pete Mack: Thanks for the warning on them. Mine did not make it to seed this year as they bloomed very late and frost took them down before seeds ripened. But I did let Cerinthe major go to seed and deeply regret it. Thousands of seedlings have come up and I pull more every day.