Gold Finch and Bell

This little gold finch is not too sure he wants to ring the bell, but it is a little hard to fly away

Day Lilies

My gardener friend on the other end of our street was commenting today about her regrets about crowding her garden.

The main culprit is over-zealous, overtall, spreading day lilies.

We arrived at the same conclusion: Smaller, interesting, long-blooming lilies are best.

My favorite is this double, ruffled apricot day lily.

Smoke Tree

This smoke tree "Young Lady" is one of the prettiest bushes I have.

It is labeled a tree "cotinus coggryia," but it is 7 years old and still modest in size.

The leaves are shiny green, but the pretty part is called the inflorescences, the smoke.


Here it is next to Harry Lauterer's walking stick.

My smoke bush can be seen in an earlier post.  Some also label it a smoke tree, but they are very different.

Chocolate Vine

I forgive this pretty chocolate vine "Akebia quinata"  for not blooming in its second year in my yard.

Its beautiful delicate leaves and its delicate twining nature are pretty enough.

It is supposed to have purple-mauve drooping flowers in late spring and sausage-shaped edible fruits in the fall.

To produce fruit it must have another vine nearby.  But no blooms yet.  Maybe next year.

Meanwhile it will cover both sides of my trellis and overpower the jasmine on the other side.

Oak-Leaf Hydrangea

The name of the oak-leaf hydrangea is easy to understand.  The huge leaves look like super-size oak leaves.


 This is a large shrub, overpowering the flower bed.  My daughter-in-law planted a smaller version she bought at the garden store, probably a wise choice considering how big mine is.


Margie, a friend of my mother, gave it to me some years ago.

Sun Drops

One thing a little chilly spell in early May can do is make the sun drops bloom much later.

They are among my favorite blossoms.  Their name is very appropriate--just little yellow drops of sunshine.

Actually this year they are a bit larger than usual.  Also they seem to have sent out more runners and multiplied a lot.

This is another plant that came from my mother's house.

Foxglove

This has been a great year for foxglove, or digitalis.  Sometimes a relatively small number (perhaps twenty) appear.  Not only are there more this year, the ones that showed up are tall and healthy.

 Each year's crop comes from the seeds of previous years. Sometimes they don't bloom until the second year.  The foxglove is not a true perennial, more a biennial. It relies on seeds for permanence.

Sometimes people say their foxgloves didn't return.  When I ask if they use much mulch, they say, of course.  Generally thick mulch keeps the seeds from reaching the soil.

What color are my foxgloves?  Whatever color they want to be, mostly white, lavender, or pink.  I bought a dark red one last year.  It died, and I had no red blooms this year.  But when I looked where the red foxglove had died, I found a couple of dozen little plants.  They should bloom next year.

Perhaps everyone has heard of the traditional use of digitalis as a heart medication.  My passalong foxglove may have seen that use through the years.

Violas

Most people would choose pansies over violas. They are in the garden center in the fall about the same time.

 I bought these last fall for 25 cents per six-pack.  They bloomed all winter and are still going strong in June.  They probably will last until August.

 They are more compact and graceful than pansies.

Deutzia

The deutzia appears in gardens that have been around for a hundred years or longer.

Old houses, some no longer occupied, have these beautiful flowering shrubs.


Many are twenty feet tall or more.  Mostly they were passed along from generation to generation or from neighbor to neighbor.



The white one, deutzia scabra, is more likely to be a passalong plant.

I found the pink one, deutzia gracilis, in a nursery. Last year we cut the pink one back drastically, but it is a very fast grower and is as tall as ever.

Dwarf Irises

I have previously shown a blue dwarf crested iris that grows as an edge-of-the-woods plant.

 I knew I had a white one, and I  finally located it. It spreads but not as much as the blue one.

 It also likes a somewhat shady corner of the flower beds.