A much-needed respite, thank you commentor Delphinium:
As we head into summer, wanted to share some last spring flowers from my gardens and around the neighborhood. The mild winter here in Central NY combined with the warmer than normal May (and usual rains) led to an explosion of blooms a week or two early.
The first set of photos are from my front and back gardens.
Allium, Gaura, and Columbine
Cosmos
Lamium
Solomon’s Seal
Ninebark
This last set is from various areas in my neighborhood.
Dogwood
Pink Petals
Irises
Rhododendron
My planting is done for the season so the summer will be spent cleaning up some of the beds and other routine maintenance.
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What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?Reader Interactions
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Jeffg166
Lovely photos. Spring is the best time in my garden.
Between the heat and lack of rain everything is toasting. The guy who cut the grass called to say he was coming. I told him the lawn had gone dormant. The way things are going it may not need cutting until autumn some time.
I have watered the basil to keep it alive. It is big enough now to cut and grind up with olive oil. It gets frozen in cubes to use through the winter.
p.a.
Lovely.
Garden-adjacent: I’ve had a nesting pair of catbirds use my yard- nesting when I had my big rose of sharon- feeding/watering at my feeders & birdbath for 30 years, living in the woodlot behind my property. Not saying the same bloodline, but always catbirds. Haven’t seen this year’s bird(s) for two weeks. Just a real cap to how this year is going.
Gloria DryGarden
I want to smell that daffodil. It’s one of the fragrant ones, I’m sure..
Why can’t I get a fragrance app on my tablet?
in hot very dry Denver, my toughest plants look very pissed off; I’ll have to give in and drag the hose out. I have allium sphaeralcea blooming, reddish purple tops, it’s a July thing, and peaches developing. Even the hollyhocks are short and not blooming. A dry few months. 102 degrees for a few days. Not conducive to getting outdoor things done.
a friend in nw Georgia has a plant that smells like licorice. He says the root smells like licorice too. Herbaceous, 4’ high. Any ideas what it might be? I’m hoping it’s not hemlock, and I can’t seem to describe the strong smell of osha to him, but to me it smells like medicinal licorice on steroids. Anyone know a lot about the plant growing in Georgia?
Barbara
@Gloria DryGarden: Wild fennel or agastache?
delphinium
@Jeffg166: Thanks! It has been a hot, dry summer here too (although we did get some rain a few days ago) so have only been mowing the lawn every 2-3 weeks. Typically have to do it at least once a week.
kalakal
lovely photos, here in Florida spring bulbs etc just can’t survive, I miss them, so it’s a vicarious pleasure for me. Our rainy season has really gotten underway in the last few weeks and everything is going boing! Lots of hazy skies due to Saharan sand* so very humid and all the orchids and bromeliads are having a blast.
* not very pleasant but an excellent hurricane suppressant which gets my vote
Princess
Beautiful respite.
Dorothy A. Winsor
It’s good to remember that there are also flowers
eversor
I’m still sitting around here with a kitchen knife that wasn’t taken from me peering out the windows. Fuck me. Fuck this. And I know once I tell the woman we are moving out farther out into the burbs or to a place with higher rents.
satby
Lovely, lovely, lovely!
We keep getting waves of rainstorms (big one last night woke me up) followed by intense heat and humidity. Which is why I plant mostly perennials, because they’re on their own come July and August during heat waves. 91° with freshly restocked humidity today. Cooler later this week, so I hope to take a few tall weeds down.
OzarkHillbilly
Wonderful pics, thanx Delphinium.
Our weather has been wet, wetter, and wettest. Beryl gifted us with 4 1/2″, maybe more. I say maybe more because I suddenly realized that an oak has grown over my rain gauge. So observant, am I. Oh well.
Still fighting rabbits in the veggie garden, safe to say I shan’t be canning any beans this year. Quite a few green maters on the vine, some eggplants and sweet peppers too. My flower beds are in full bloom and the pollinators are loving it. They should be happy thru autumn. Except the hummingbirds who never hesitate to complain when the feeders are empty, This year, a couple have taken to complaining face to face.
delphinium
@OzarkHillbilly: Got super excited the other day when I saw 4 butterflies hanging out in my gardens-usually only see bees/wasps.
JMG
We had a mild winter, a cool, wet spring and now a hot humid summer. The former two have resulted in the best crop of hydrangeas on Cape Cod in years. Ours are wonderful, not that I had anything to do with it, they came with the house. We just water them when it’s dry.
OzarkHillbilly
@delphinium: Hey now, bees and wasps need love too.
We always have flutterbys here. Usually Great Spangled Fritillarys, Blue Pipestems, and the smaller Skippers and Pearl Crescents. Every now and again we get a visiting Swallowtail as well. I’ve planted some milkweed for the Monarchs but they rarely deign to give me an audience.
Ken
Thanks for the names — I’m terrible at flower identification. I’ve sometimes thought of snapping photos on my walks and submitting a “what is this?” garden chat.
Argiope
@JMG: The hydrangeas in OH have also been off the chain stunning this year—thanks for explaining why! My garden was so overrun with oregano and mint that my chard wasn’t getting enough sun. Yesterday went and weeded out a big wheelbarrow full of herbs plus weeds. Hopefully the rest will do better with less competition. The wee baby dinos on my screened in porch seem well—Carolina wren nest on the top shelves in there.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: Please do.
Rachel Bakes
@Gloria DryGarden: hyssop perhaps? It’s native to New England. Purple flowers I think? GA might be too hot but it has an anise scent and flavor. Planted one a few years ago and it did not thrive in my garden, sadly.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone😊😊😊
Rachel Bakes
Glad for the good hydrangea year. Spent 2 days ripping all the barberry, wineberry, bittersweet and violets out of a garden I wanted to turn into a wildflower area. Planted lots of seeds. Nothing took, or nothing survived the 5 days we were away with high temperatures and pounding rain. Now the violet leaves have come back up.
Argiope
@Rachel Bakes: Gardeners are accustomed to heartbreak, but that sounds especially disappointing. Deer have eaten all my asiatic lily buds this year. Need moar wolves.
delphinium
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Barbara
@Rachel Bakes: Hyssop is another name for agastache, which is what I guessed. They naturalize and can grow to 4 feet.
Barbara
@Rachel Bakes: We’ve had a similar experience. Once non-native plants take hold they can be hard to eliminate, but especially rhizomes.
narya
I’ve been slowly reining in my ambitions for my north-facing porch. In the two boxes that hang off the railing, I only planted nasturtia and flax, and both are blooming like crazy right now; I got some more nasturtium seeds and I’ll plant them soon so that I have blooms into the fall (and will maybe get some more seeds from the plants themselves). I’ve continued my tradition of planting a bean from every pot I cook, and I scored some tomato cages on which the climbers can grow, so they’re growing, and I think a few of the other planters’ plants are about to bloom, too. I don’t remember what I planted where, so it’ll be a fun surprise. If they all bloom at once, I’ll submit a picture!
Gvg
I googled licorice scent in south east us and got some suggestions. Carolina all spice, deciduous bush, anise hyssop, agastash, fennel, anise scented sage.
No rain this week and brutally hot again so not a lot of blooms. Collected a bunch of seed and sowed some in trays for next year. Most spring bulbs don’t like Florida, but there are Summer bulbs that love it. I especially love rain lilies. The past 5 years I have been saving their seeds and sowing them right away in trays. It takes about 2 or 3 years to flower from seed. They have a cycle of flowering about 3 days after the first hard rain of summer in May (our summer starts then) and setting about 50 seeds ripe maybe 10 days later. Then they are ready to repeat several more times through the summer, especially if you help with some fertilizer. Around October I have seed trays of potting soil that have thick grass like coverings. It looks like rye grass. I scoop out handfuls and plant in the garden, and water in. The first spring I water the seedlings in spring by hand, because our springs are dry and I want them to get going. By the next year I don’t need to. For several years I have been collecting seeds from earlier seedlings. I have a large and growing patch in my front yard. Last year I got 16 trays of seedlings from them. This year I am past 20 already. I am running short of trays and the earliest could be planted out if the rain would just get a little more reliable.
Now if only all my garden obsessions were as cheap.
Supposed to rain all next week. Which means in about a week I will be back to picking seed twice a day. I really could stop, but now it’s a habit and I can’t seem to. I enjoy it so much and it is a garden task that is always successful so it feels good.
Geminid
I’ve been a real garden slug but at least my fried Debbie’s bees have been hard at work. She came out 10 days ago and pulled the top two “supers” on the beehive she maintains here. She took them home and spun out the frames in her honey extracter. That’s a stainless steel barrel on legs with a spout at the base and a crank on top. Yield: 50 pounds.
JAM
I saw a female Diana butterfly in my garden for the first time in my new natives bed, that was exciting. Something ate all the bean flowers, probably grasshoppers, but I’m still picking tomatoes, peppers and watermelons.
Weekend Editor
Hydrangeas have been going nuts here in New England, mostly due to the mild winter. (The set buds in the fall, and next year’s flowers are the survivors.)
Here’s an example from my back yard, up against the neighbor’s garage:
Gloria DryGarden
@Rachel Bakes: my anise hyssop never made it, either. I think I’ve tried 3 times. I’m just not going to water it enough. They sell it to us, good for pollinators. Oh well.
Debbie
@Geminid: 🐝