15 November 2007

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day...NOvember


Well, after a few false starts, we proudly present the November issue of Garden Blogger's Bloom Day, Scotts Bay style. It's been a curious weather-week here, having gone from the snow of the weekend to various windy and rainy events to milder weather to downright spring-or summerlike weather today--temperature around 60 degrees F. (The snow, curiously, has melted...) The garden is, not surprisingly, a mess--and far, far too wet to try to clean up or get those bulbs planted--but there are still flowery surprises among the mud.
Out in the greenhouse, among a cluster of portulaca (that I forgot somehow to get a decent photo of), I found this fading but still fascinating specimen of an annual Ice Plant flower.


This photo was taken on Sunday, after the snowfall--but the honeysuckle flowers have shaken of the snow and are doing just fine.


Foxgloves are a beloved plant here. We let them selfseed, which they do without trying to take over the entire yard, and they do surprisingly wonderful things like keep flowering right into mid-November.


Although the Hansa rugosa continues to throw a few flowers, that's not really surprising; but THIS is a nice, delightful jolt of pleasure. It's a bud of Golden Wings, which has produced late flowers before, and it will open up in the next couple of days.


Has anyone else grown this and enjoyed it as much as I have? It's Lysimachia 'Walkabout Sunset', a creeping, annual variety of lysimachia that sports not only the familiar loosestrife flowers, but really attractive rose-green-bronze foliage. I'm tempted to bring this in for the winter, because of course I don't remember where I got it this spring.


Surely the most floriferous, longest blooming perennial in my garden, this dainty little beauty is yellow corydalis. It starts blooming in mid-late May, and as you can see, it's still doing so. I wish some of its relatives flowered like this, but others tend to bloom for a few weeks then just go dormant. Wouldn't it be great if the beautiful blue species, C. elata and C. flexuosa, bloomed for six months?


This has been a surprise, too--the African daisy, Osteospermum are STILL green and flowering! I took cuttings of both this one, "Astra Pink Yellow" and of a bronzy one and the lovely white cultivar, a couple of weeks ago, and while they're not rooted yet, their parent plants haven't turned to mush at all!


Meet another African star of our garden--Venidium/venidio. One nursery gives the name as Arctotis venidium and two cultivars as 'flame' and 'wine'. Whatever you call it, I love it; we have had orange, pink and brick-red coloured varieties, with beautiful grey-green foliage. The more you deadhead, the more it flowers, and oh yes, it will have to get much colder than we've had yet before it's done for the year.


Remember the other day we had snow on this bacopa, and I thought it was done? Nope. It's still forming buds and it looks just fine now that the snow has melted. This is definitely a plant that I am going to take cuttings from--tomorrow! I suppose we could take the whole plant in, but things are getting crowded in here!


Oh, isn't this a lovely, unique, graceful flower? Yeah, I know, it's common as dandelions--because it IS dandelion. I confess to being an unrepentant fan of dandelions, especially in the spring when bees are desperate for nourishment and get plenty of food from these sunny yellow blossoms. I don't mind them in the lawn, I like the way they break up the clay in the garden...and oh yes, I'm very partial to photographing their seven gazillion seeds, too!


Other flowers still in the garden include both of those dandy penstemons, (Sour Grapes and the unnamed one);
Johnny jump ups;
Centaurea montana (just the regular one, not Amythests in Snow);
Wallflowers (yellow, orange and variegated orange-pink)
Dianthus, unnamed variety
Campanula persicifolia (a repeat bloomer but this is very late for it)
Fleeceflower

Stay tuned next post (or maybe the one after) for the indoor bloom report.

17 comments:

  1. Oooh... great list, Jodi! It's surprising to see how well some of these flowers have rebounded from the snow you showed a few posts ago. :)

    I missed that lovely little lysimachia at the garden center where I worked this spring. We only got in a couple of trays' worth of 4in pots and they were snapped up in no time. I ended up with plectranthus 'Troy's Gold' instead, but really really really want some of that lysimachia next year, too.

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  2. After all the snow you had, isn't it great there are still a few blooms? I think snow acts as an insulator sometimes, and plants do survive under it, if it warms up afterward. Whereas I know from my own garden, frost kills!

    Thanks for sharing your blooms with us for bloom day again.

    Carol at May Dreams Gardens
    (I, too, had a few minutes with Blogger uploading the pictures, it has had some problems with that lately).

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  3. Hey Jodi, you have lots of lovely blooms. A nice surpise to me after all your snow and cold.

    I just love osteospermums. I think they like the cooler weather you have. Here they look good until we get into our hot humid summers then if they live through summer they perk up in fall. I get discouraged with them becasue they just seem to fry in our heat.

    I love the yellow codyalis. I had some that self seeded all over the garden. Now they don't bloom. They look healthy but not a blossom. Hmmmmm Maybe too much shade even for them.

    I am a dandelion fan too. I do however limit their occurance in my flower beds. They are relagated to the side lot or an occasional pop up in the lawn.

    During the garden party a friend and I have every other year or so a guest just raved about a blooming dandelion in the lawn. ha of all things. She just went on about how bright and cheerful they were and praised me for "letting" them grow. I thought that funny.

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  4. What a nice blog, very informative, would you consider introducing it to Fuelmyblog? I am sure our users would be interested in your blog. We are also working on a book project with Blurb where all our bloggers will get a chance to advertise their blog and get some extra coverage.
    Nice work ;-)

    sylvie
    www.fuelmyblog.com

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  5. awesome blooms for this late! My garden is SO jealous! I think my hibiscus and elephant ears are lonely for some color...I feel a trip to home depot coming on!

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  6. It amazes me how a Canadian garden can still have so much life and vibrance at this time. I'm obviously much too far north -- day before yesterday in my blog I had to slip in photos of my daylilies I took during the summer :)

    Even my Johnny jump ups are long since finished ... and buried under snow.

    What I was most thrilled to read about is your positive attitude towards dandelions. I thought I was a lone wolf that way. I love watching the pine siskins sit on the stem, just below the globe of seeds as they feed and the stem, in slow motion, bends toward the ground. Those gazillion fluffy, parachute-like seeds always fascinate me.

    Diane at Sand to Glass
    ... see you after the weekend

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  7. Hi Jodi,

    This is my third attempt to make a comment- and not sure what is going wrong.

    I like that corydalis and what fun to see your tough African flowers make it through the snow ... maybe that's what insulated them from the cold?

    In Illinois we hated to see temperatures dip into the minus ten degree range with no snow cover [guess that's about minus 23 C]. The snow let some marginal plants make it through and my bet is that you count on it, too.

    We'll all be doing houseplants next month!

    Annie at the Transplantable Rose

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  8. Those are very tenacious Canadian flowers you got there. Love the foxgloves but don't have luck with them in my garden.

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  9. Add me to the list of dandelion lovers. I can't get enough of it and I'll actually weed out the ones with the small flowers to try to cultivate the larger flowering ones. One of my my favorite pics I've taken is of two dandelions that fused together to make one large dandelion.

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  10. So many blooms even after snow! I learned a new one, Venidium/venidio so thanks for that although you may have to remind me what it is in the future! Glad to hear the snow has receded!

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  11. Wow! What an impressive array for late November! I had hoped to make this month my entry into the Gardening Round-ups on the 15th, but just too much else to do this week. I have six or seven plants throwing up a bloom or two (or many in the case of the Viburnum Bodnatense, Erisymum 'Bowles Mauve,' and the hardy fuschia). Now I want to go look more closely at my Golden Wings to see if it might have a bloom to match yours. Isn't it just a perfect rose? And I think corydalis is pretty perfect as well -- I truly loved the c. flexuosa (Blue Panda? Pere David?), but only had them for a year or two, and they've gone into permanent dormancy, while c. lutea seems unstoppable!
    btw, I have my 8 random things post written, except for adding the rules and a bit of preamble, and I should be able to get the tagging done and the post posted tomorrow. It's been fun -- thanks for thinking of me.

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  12. I love your blog. Most enjoyable to read. Shall be back for more delights. Thank you for sharing your artistry.

    Paterika
    http://poetrynest.blogspot.com

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  13. Hi all, and welcome to bloomingwriter;

    Kim, I don't think I've seen 'Troy's Gold' yet; I had a marvelous plectranthus last year with startlingly blue flowers, but no one knew what it was because it came mislabeled from the grower.

    Carol, you're right about snow insulating sometimes; i love these found treasures that come about as a result.

    Lisa, That's interesting about your corydalis; maybe next spring you could move some out into a sunnier spot; ours are in sun during the morning although I've moved several clumps to shadier locales. We'll see what happens.

    I'm glad to see other closet dandelion fans--even though that shade of yellow isn't my favourite, it's like a smile and an entire field or lawn of dandelions will make me extremely happy. (not the lawn care people, though.)

    Sylvie, thanks for the invite to Fuelmyblog. My only suggestion is that you need a category where gardening fits better than just in Personal.

    Queen Annie, elephant ears sound great to me...I have no luck with them indoors here and have never tried them outdoors.

    Diane, the past several years we've had unseasonably long autumns without a serious frost. I blame it on hot air coming from politicians of all stripes....;-)

    Annie, Blogger seems to have been having some issues the past several weeks, either with comments or photos (I don't bother with things like videos for the most part.) Maybe just more growing pains. I LOVE my African daisies--would love to visit Africa one day when the wildflowers are in bloom in Namaqaland.

    Carolyn Gail, yup, our flowers gotta be tough, same as the rest of us. Funny about the foxgloves, but we all have plants that just don't like to grow for us.

    Yea, Mr. Brown Thumb! Another dandelion lover! Another plant I love, and wish would get as excited about spreading as dandelions, is its relative, blue chicory. It's just glorious too.

    Layanee, tonight (Saturday), it's snowing again, weird little 'snowballs' in squalls that come and go. I'm sure there's a more meteorologically correct word for it, but you probably know what I mean.

    Materfamilias, glad you got your 8 random things post done. Try Corydalis elata, which is much hardier than C. flexuosa, and still gives that electric blue colour.

    Nancy, you and I have a few things we need to chat about via email--I'm sure we have friends in common via the Coast Guard (as per your other post--I'm behind, as usual!). I need to get some catgrass going here, I have two packets of seeds somewhere in my office...where is that....?

    Paterika, welcome! We could use some of your Barbados warmth up here--not to mention the plants that grow there, I'm sure.

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  14. Wow, that's quite a list, Jodi! Your impressive number of flowers would have stopped me in my tracks when I opted to do November bloom day because "there isn't much in bloom." Foxgloves are a real favorite of mine too, and I wish they did as well here as they do in your garden.

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  15. Thank you all for the warm welcome and surely that request is not hard to give both in the virtual and real world. Time will tell, won't it?

    Hugs everyone

    Paterika

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  16. So many lovely blooms in NOvember. I just have a lonely rudbekia plant outside. But inside my Christmas Cactus is really giving some lovely blooms.

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  17. More Blogger Behaving Badly - I left a comment, but it's not here now! I recall saying something about how I am glad for you that you were able to have flowers for this Bloom Day after the snow you had. Or something like that.

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