Six on Saturday – 09JUL2022 -Hot, Dry and Colourful!

It’s been a perfect summer so far, if you happen to like hot, dry, sunny days! The garden would certainly appreciate a few nights of rain – our water butts are quickly being depleted and there’s not much moisture in the long range forecast. Typical summer, in other words! It’s time for Six on Saturday – six things in the garden, hosted by Jon the Propagator. A bit of a mish mash today, with so many things in bloom or ready to harvest. I’m going to start with seed heads – from this annual poppy called Lauren’s Dark Grape. If you’d like to see it in bloom here’s an earlier post, but I really like the seed heads as well:

Coreopsis is in full bloom, of course – it’s so easy to spread about the garden: I let seed heads ripen, snip them off, then just scatter them here or there. If there’s a bit of clear space the seeds will readily take hold.

It’s been an interesting year for sunflowers. I have two currently blooming – volunteers from seeds left to drop from a five foot tall ‘Ruby Eclipse’ last year. The seeds I planted this year; however, either did not come up or had their tops snipped off by insects before they became big and strong enough to withstand attack. I started a new batch in pots and will be planting them out tomorrow, hoping to produce a late summer feast for the birds. I may have to provide a bit of water…

Daylilies (Hemerocallis sp.)are in full swing, including this one I started from seed several years ago:

Lilies (Lilium sp) have also started to bloom, including this Asiatic variety – ‘Tinlico.’ I have orientals and trumpets still to bloom, and they see to be doing fine, but these first few, OMG I’m not sure what’s been going on but the flower buds have kept disappearing, a few buds each day – just snipped off. I’m speculating it’s either an insect or self preservation – with it being so dry (and only veggie beds getting any supplemental water) perhaps the lily just doesn’t have the ability to put out all the flowers it should. I took this photo on Thursday – on Friday morning two of the buds, including the one just about to open bottom right, had disappeared…

Finally, I’m so happy to report that Verbena bonariensis – a name I can now spell without looking it up – managed to send seeds throughout the kitchen garden last fall – one of the side-effects of not dead-heading. (All those hyphens!) I’m quite liking having them pop up here and there, mainly in gravelly crevices. Have a great weekend everyone!

morning dew, fuzzy focus…