Monday, May 16, 2011

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day for May

The daylilies are here!
It's that time again - Garden Bloggers Bloom Day hosted by Carol, and daylily season in my backyard! When I went out early in the morning to snap photos for this Bloom Day, I discovered the daylilies were a little shy about opening. Apparently the 46 F morning temperature was not to their liking (though it was to mine). So I had to wait a couple hours for the sun to warm them up, risking blowing out the photos because of the more intense light. No matter; it's nice to see the daylilies at all after this up and down weather!


Don't ask me the names of any of my daylilies. Some I inherited and some were passalongs. I've only got one with a "real" name.


You can tell that all of these blooms were not quite open.

I have a couple of favorites daylilies in my yard, and this is one of them. It's very floriferous and always the first to bloom.

Little Women rose in a pot
This Little Women rose is the one that bloomed for me indoors this winter. Not bad, eh?

Regal lily buds
Probably in a couple of weeks these lilies will be open. I'm really looking forward to the fragrance. At last year's garden bloggers fling in Buffalo, I got lily envy. In general, the ones they grow in Buffalo won't do well here. But the Regal lily is supposed to be a good Southern heirloom lily. I hope these guys stick around and are not just a one-year triumph for me.

Allium sphaerocephalum, drumstick allium
Speaking of envy, two years ago at the garden bloggers fling in Chicago I got a good case of allium envy. Growing those great, big-headed alliums down here is also supposed to be difficult. But I really wanted to try at least one, so I went for a much smaller allium, the drumstick allium (aka purple-headed garlic). Soon they'll all be blooming.

Camelot series foxglove
My foxglove are almost over for the spring season as you can tell by the last remaining blooms on this stalk. This is a Camelot foxglove, a Louisiana Super Plant. They did just OK in my garden but I'm not averse to trying them again in another location.


'Belinda's Dream' rose
The 'Belinda's Dream' rose continues to bloom away. It went through a rough patch from thrips, I think. You can still see some of the brown petals. In fact, I read that there has been a big outbreak of thrips in our state. Instead of spraying for it, I just waited it out. Sure enough, after having one bloom period of balling and brown petals, it seems to be over.

Verbena bonariensis
Now let's get to some of my blooming pollinator plants. The pollinators are getting active and so are their plants. Verbena bonariensis always starts the ball rolling. I'm sure next year I'll be regretting that I let this one get so big. They really seed out a lot!

Gaillardia x grandiflora ‘Goblin’
Notice the stippling on the leaves of this gaillardia? Lace bugs I think. They're becoming quite a nuisance in my garden.

'Zagreb' coreopsis
mystery poppy
I'm not sure if poppies do much in the way of helping pollinators but the biggest mystery to me is how this poppy got there. I scattered some passalong seed in my border bed, quite a ways from the raised bed where this is, but then I promptly dug up the border bed area for a tree. Somehow this one lone poppy ended up in my raised bed, along with three larkspur I also didn't plant there. Weird.

'Victoria Blue' salvia
'Blue Charm' veronica
This is my first year for veronica. It's very attractive to the bumble bees.

Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'
The 'Black and Blue' salvia has already got hummingbirds flocking. Love, love, love this plant.

I have many more plants blooming this GBBD - other roses, tomatoes, peppers, a few little straggler sweet peas, petunias, daisies, Stokes' asters, 'Caradonna' salvia, 'Goldsturm' rudbeckia (just starting and only a few) and still a few blooms on the blue-eyed grass. Hop on over to May Dreams Gardens and see what's blooming in the rest of the world. And if I get to it, I plan to post on more of the daylilies and maybe even show you the veggies while they're still looking good and not beat down by the summer!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2010. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

14 comments:

  1. it all looks beautiful. this is the best time of year...it is so rewarding.
    happy springtime.

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  2. Wow, you are ahead of me. My crocus are just finishing and my daffodils are starting. I love the photos. Funny about the poppy.

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  3. You were out early; the daylilies are not early risers.
    If you ever had corn poppies and larkspur anywhere, they can turn up anywhere. You could even have gotten seeds with a passalong plant. I was collecting larkspur seeds this morning and just decided to dump larkspur, corn poppies, a couple of tiny opium poppies' seeds and some California poppies in together. I had to fish out the Cali poppy pods so they can stay in a closed container until they 'pop' and then add them. I'll have a lovely meadow if I remember to scatter them.

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  4. Absolutely beautiful! I love 'Little Women', such a darling rose! I always let my Verbena bonariensis go to see, but get very little re-seeding...curious.

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  5. Jean, see if you can find Triumphator lilies for sale near you. They're a cross between Easter lilies and Oriental lilies and do well in our hot, humid climates. Mine are loaded with blooms right now!

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  6. We grow a lot of the same plants, Jean - but I haven't tried a regal lily. I'll psyche up to thinking of it as an annual ;-)

    The heat hit soon after the Belindas started opening - instead of a gradual show they opened in a rush and had to be deadheaded in a week. Your low night temperatures must be making the blooms last!

    Annie at the Transplantable Rose

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  7. It looks like summer in your garden, Jean! How lovely to see all the daylilies blooming already. I've had daylily envy since I first started blogging, which accounts for the increasing number in my garden:) I'm hoping my verbena bono. comes back as good as yours, since I forgot to plant some this year.

    Hoping you are safe and sound and far away from all the flooding!

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  8. You just remind me that I was given some verbena bonariensis seeds last year. I am going to look for them right now.

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  9. I so wish daylilies could take shade - yours are looking good. And I wish my Salvia guaranitica looked as good as yours. I get sporadic blooms - here's hoping they increase along with the heat!

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  10. Lovely Jean! I will get to see some of those beauties later in the season. Enjoy!

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  11. Cindy - I'll look for those lilies. I went with the regal lily because it's supposed to be very fragrant. I wanted that experience I had in that one garden we saw where the lilies stood head high and it was one big smell fest, LOL!

    Rose - thank you. We are far away from any flooding. The closest we are is a less than 2 hour drive to Vicksburg, MS.

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  12. I got allium envy last fall and put in a couple of different kinds. The buds are fat and should be open soon. I hope I can photo them - with IDs.

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  13. You've got a lovely knack for photography!

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  14. I am very late~but your blooms look splendid~I am liking your photos a lot. gail

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