Lilies in the (Annapolis) Valley

I mentioned a couple of lilies in my last post, but since then, they've all started popping open in earnest, and the yard is awash with fragrance and colour. Mind you, with the Oriental lilies I have, the colours are mostly variations on a shade of pink, but that works fine for me. Let's have a walk around the yard and smell them all, shall we? We'll begin with Orienpet 'Purple Prince', which is still looking mighty fine.


How I figured out which were which: I went back and looked through a list of bulbs I got from one small company, looked at their photos versus my photos, and have made a note yet again of where the heck they all are. This one is named after a Dutch opera singer (which wouldn't be my choice of musician genre to name a plant after, but anyway): 'Willeki Alberti' is very vigourous and is just beginning to open up her huge blooms.

Actually, 'Willeki Alberti' ties with 'Stargazer' as being the last Orientals to open this year. 'Stargazer' isn't as tall as it normally is, but has plenty of flowers. I'm thinking seriously about ordering 'Yellow Stargazer' this year, but I refuse to deal with one particular mailorder company here in Canada, so hope I can find it elsewhere.

'Acapulco' is out in the back garden making a colourful contribution along with some very (powdery mildewed) monarda, and hot pink coneflowers and phlox. But 'Acapulco' is definitely the strongest colour in the group. And the most sweetly scented.

It took me a long time to figure out that this is actually 'Tom Pouce', but its not as vigourous as some of its kin and is in a little less sun, so the colours aren't as strong as some have. It's actually been rather daunted by the enormous Clematis recta 'Purpurea' beside it, which has to be divided and moved next spring.

Having no such qualms about being overwhelmed is 'Cobra' oriental lily, growing enthusiastically alongside one clump of 'Raspberry Wine' monarda. This monarda is very very vigourous but I have it planted in half a dozen sites and am encouraging its vigour. You'll see why in a bit.

We had a look at 'Zagora' orienpet the other day, when the flowers were first opening. It's definitely a favourite.

You can see why; along with very striking flowers, it's prolific, and tall; the shorter stems are newer growth. I think more orienpets need to come live here.

Making nice with Sidalcea (prairie mallow, checkerflower) is the stunningly awesome 'Dordogne' oriental lily. Behind it is also my 'Black Lace' sambucus, which has gotten inspired this year and shot skyward. This is a nice grouping of plants but I can't claim design talent. I just planted the lilies where there was a gap in things growing.

Okay, I mentioned the bee balm earlier, and that we have a LOT of it around the yard. We also have a LOT of globethistles, which can be seedy and vigourous but smell great, have neat architectural appeal, and also are a great magnet for butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds.

And the hummingbirds are extremely active and voracious right now, and are drawn to all the different monardas we have (which aren't that many: we have 'Jacob Kline', 'Raspberry Wine', 'Bluestocking', and one other that looks sort of like 'Bluestocking'. The white one went among the missing, and I don't have the pretty candy floss pink one that many people have. But the hummingbirds are happy with what we give them. And I'm happy with what they--and the rest of the garden--give us.

Sheer exuberance: The garden in high summer

In my last post I remarked about the crankiness of the weather this summer, and how it sort of compensated by creating humungous and gorgeous hydrangeas. There have been other plants that have reacted rather marvelously too.

For one reason or another, getting good photos has been a challenge some days. It's either been grey/foggy/dreary, or else I've been busy and haven't been able to get outside until the light is all wrong--too high in the sky, too low in the sky, or some other problem. I'm not a good enough photographer to compensate for those things, but tonight, the weather, the light and my macro lens and tripod united to help me get some pretty cool photos.

Large flowered clematis grow really well for us here, probably because the damp keeps their roots cool. But I happen to love this small-flowered tangutica clematis for its profusion of bloom and its fireworks as the flowers give way to seedheads.

Sunflowers are an instant smile to me, no matter what colour or size they are. I never get tired of them, although I neglected to plant any this year so we're reduced to a few freerange plants in the greenhouse. I was never good at math, but I love the geometric patterns of a sunflower's heart, and the subtle changes in colour as we head out to the rays.

I cut off all the spent flowerheads on my geums a week or two back, and 'Cooky' has rewarded me by putting up a few new flowers. The plant has gotten huge, too, so I'm hoping it plans to hang around for a few years.

Our coneflowers are coming on nicely now, but I'll have more to say about them when I get some more photos in just the right light. The sun was behind the house and was causing some neat effects just because of the way I had the camera positioned for this photo, but I want to get the subtle shadings of some of the coneflowers in just the right light. So expect yet another post on cones from me soon.

Talk about floral fireworks! The nice tidy geometry of the flowers and bracts of flat sea holly (E. planum)is especially cool when juxtaposed with the utter joyful lunacy of Allium 'Hair'. I planted half a dozen bulbs of 'Hair' six or seven years ago, and they continue to multiply nicely. They aren't huge or showy, but they're a lot of fun.

The Asiatic lilies are finished and the highlight of the Lilium season has begun: the Orientals and Orienpets are beginning to bloom. Their fragrance is intoxicatingly wonderful; I can be walking in some part of the garden and stopped in my tracks by the awesome fragrance.

My only problem is that I am not sure which are which. I bought quite a few bulbs a couple of years ago, but as so often happens, I've forgotten where I planted them. This could be 'Cobra'. Or 'Dorgogne'. Not everything is in bloom yet so I can't do a compare and contrast routine.

This is Orienpet 'Purple Prince', which was given to me by a grower from Truro/Bible Hill. I'm besotted. It opened up a few days ago and is just getting better and better. Only one problem; it's quite heavy, and one small stem with only one flower on it fell over before I could get it staked. The slugs devoured it right down to stamens and carpal. They haven't gone after the rest of the flowers yet, but i'm considering breaking out the diatomaceous earth tomorrow just to be safe.

And this is either 'Zagora' or 'Caravan'; I know I bought both and planted them somewhere...what I know for sure is this, coupled with the nearby bee balm, sea hollies and globe thistles, makes the bees and hummingbirds totally giddy. And makes me giddy too. And I'm all right with that.

Quite a year for Hydrangeas

One of my favourite novels is one that came out some years ago by writer Bailey White. Quite a Year For Plums is a delightful read, (and a novel I re-read regularly), but I especially love the title, and borrowed from it because it seemed apt for this post. Hydrangeas have the Greek for 'water' (hydra) in their name, and this year, all the water we're getting seems to be inspiring them more than usual.

I don't grow mopheads as a rule (the exception comes below) but I enjoy seeing them grown well, and this year they seem to be exceptionally well-grown down along the Acadian shore of the province from Yarmouth, through Clare and up to Annapolis Royal. Most are blue, but in looking through my photos of the past few days (during which I was on a roadtrip with my mother), I realize I LOOKED at dozens of blue mopheads but didn't photograph ANY. I did, however, photograph some of the striking purple hydrangeas that show up around Yarmouth.

I first saw these about three years ago, and nearly went off the road gawking at them. And I first saw them in late October that year, when frost had affected them somewhat. Here, however, is what they looked like on Tuesday, showing off their purple colours beautifully. Hydrangeas will turn purple when the soil is not too acid and not too alkaline (and depending on the cultivar; deep pink or deep blue varieties turn the richest shade of purple).

This is a flowerhead of the same hydrangea, taken three years ago in late October. They're astonishing, aren't they?

I sneaked a shot of this softly blue mophead hydrangea at the Queen Anne Inn in Annapolis Royal yesterday morning before breakfast. There weren't many buds on this one, suggesting that it's one that forms flower buds on old wood, and likely killed mostly to the ground during the winter-from-hell we had.


I highly, HIGHLY recommend the Queen Anne if you're staying in the Annapolis Royal area. It's one of my two favourite Inns in the province, the other being the Blomidon Inn here in Wolfville where they have a huge and wonderful display bed of hydrangeas, including this beautiful blue mophead.

Back in my own garden, there are mostly lacecaps and paniculata-types, along with two suckering, exuberant Annabelle-type white snowball type hydrageas. This is a blue lacecap in need of some acidifying help in the soil. I think it's 'Blue Bird' because its foliage turns handsomely red in autumn; Rob Baldwin of Baldwin Nurseries gave it to me a few years ago with orders to cold test it. It's doing just fine, Rob!


This is 'Blue Billows', another lacecap; it's in a different bed and is holding its blue petal colour just fine, thank you. The only problem with this shrub is that it hasn't grown as tall as some and is behind other, more exuberant plants. I haven't had the courage to move it.


Along with the lacecaps, I'm very fond of the paniculata type hydrangeas, including Limelight (with green flowers). This is 'Quickfire,' the earliest paniculata type to bloom. As its flowers age, they will turn rosy pink, and they speckle as they turn from white to pink. The florets are really, really large this year.

'Quickfire' is shooting up a lot of new growth and flowering at the same time. It'll flower until frost, or at least last year it put on a whole lot of new flowers in late summer/early autumn. I've been trialing this plant for several years and really like it.

This is an Annabelle/snowball type (H. arborescens). It suckers a lot, and blooms like a mad maniac. I have two of them, and this one I cut back hard last year. It had only a few blooms last year. This year, it has exploded in size and in bloom. The other one got its pruning this year so it's only putting on a small display this summer at the other end of the bed. The flower heads aren't as large as 'Annabelle' but they don't fall over too much, either.

Another view of my snowball hydrangea, along with some Jacob Kline bee balm and the slightly-overwhelmed Viburnum plicatum tomentosum 'Mariesii' (doublefile viburnum) off to the left. On the right are the huge leaves of a plant I've loved to hate for a couple of years, but which is redeeming itself this year.

That plant is the mophead hydrangea 'Endless Summer'. I've loved to hate it because it's been sullen for a couple of years. Last year, I took the shovel out and warned it that it had one. more. summer. in which to prove itself, or else it was moving to the compost heap.

Well. It's gone nuts. It's not flowering yet, but it's formed a lot of flowerheads and promises to put on a show. I think this is a definite case of being a hydrangea that needs a LOT Of water. Other summers, it's wilted some on days with hot sunlight. (Yes, we do get a few of those days. Today is one). This year, the ground has stayed wet, the plant hasn't wilted at all and it's growing like a triffid. It's perhaps being inspired by being between the snowball hydrangea and 'Limelight' paniculata hydrangea, which I pruned hard this spring and which also went completely nuts as a result. (We'll see photos of it soon. Right now it's just forming its flowerheads.) Anyway, 'Endless Summer' looks like it's finally going to live up to its promised hype of the past few years.

Quite a year for hydrangeas, indeed.

Blessed bee the pollinators...

I'm with Irish poet William Butler Yeats who extolled life in the 'Bee loud glade' in his poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.


Now, Yeats was talking about the simplicity of life and its pleasures, and while he wasn't fixing particularly on pollinators, they're one of my fixations. Be they bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, beetles or flies, I'm a fan, although of course it's the hummers, the bees and the butterflies that get most of the love in most of our gardens.


Ours is a pollinator friendly garden, and always has been even before the word hit in the media that many wild pollinators were in trouble. I long, long ago chose to be an organic gardener, although I've succumbed to chemical warfare on occasion (yeah, goutweed, I'm looking at YOU!). But we choose to grow the plants on our property without using pesticides or chemical fertilizers, and to create a haven that is pollinator friendly.


Because we have pastures and paddocks and adjoining woodlands on our property, there are lots of places where we simply let the wild plants grow; so you'll see thistles and nettles, goldenrods and asters, alders and mountain ashes and other plants that some might not adore.

There are also plenty of deliberately planted perennials, annuals, shrubs and trees to entice pollinating creatures. One of my favourite pollinator-magnets is flat sea holly, Eryngium planum.

This sea holly is a real bee-magnet. I can sit and listen to the various wild and honeybees as they go about their beeesnuis in the plant, and this seems to be one that especially attracts the yellow banded bee, Bombus terricola, a threatened species of wild bumblebee. I got very, very excited several years ago after experts with The Xerces Society identified that we had B. terricola hanging out in our garden.


We have several different climbing honeysuckles in our garden, all of which are much appreciated by the hummingbirds that hang out here all summer. We have no idea how many hummers are here, but I provide nectar in feeders for them each day along with myriad flowers.


Pollinators are especially attracted to purple, red and orange flowers, and we happen to have plenty of those growing around the gardens. One of my personal favourites is Monarda, or bee balm, and we have four or five different varieties. This is 'Jacob Kline', which is extremely red and doesn't show it nearly well enough in photos.


Astilbes attract many different bees and flies, and they began to attract me three or four years ago. My biggest problem is that I don't remember which astilbes I have...there's a white one, and a light pink one, and a deep magenta one, and a wine one, and and and...no matter. The garden is good to them because they'll take sun or shade as long as the soil is moist. Moist is something we have in great abundance this summer especially.


Although not as showy as astilbes, or echinaceas, or some of my other favourites, astrantia, or masterwort, is one of the most beautiful of perennials and one more people need to embrace. The flowers are so geometrically attractive, the colours wonderful, and the bloom profuse. I rarely get a picture of one of my astrantias without a fly or bee on the blossom.

As I said above, we have a lot of different kinds of plants, and mix many of them together in each bed around the place, so the whole property is a pollinator friendly garden. These knautia or pincushion flowers will bloom for a long time especially if I'm diligent about deadheading, which sometimes happens.

We all want to have a full season of colour in our gardens to please our own selves, but also to help support the pollinators. This 'Blaze' geum is in bloom now, nearly a month after some of its relatives finished up, and is a bee magnet. In the spring, I don't mow or kill the dandelions or coltsfoot, because these early blooming wild plants provide vital nutrition for those early awakening pollinators such as some of the bees.

I know that some are allergic to bees, wasps, etc, and for that very good reason aren't crazy about having them around. But in the more than a decade that I've been gardening here, I've been stung exactly once by a bumblebee, and that was because I stepped on her in my bare feet. I've had one wasp sting too, but far more encounters with the nettles, and the nettles bother me more than an insect sting. The hummingbirds greet me like part of the garden (and come to the window to complain if we're slow in filling their feeders), and the butterflies just do their thing. And I get to feel like I'm giving back something to nature by creating this bee/hummingbird/other pollinator-loud glade. And that's one of the reasons that I garden.

Blessings in many forms

Today felt like summer, in earnest; hot sunshine, little wind, and the garden smiled in relief, stretching towards the warmth. And the gardener smiled too. There's been a lot of wind and rain damage, and some plants are looking traumatized and threatening to rot because of all the wet. But others are doing just fine, thank you.

I roamed around the yard this morning for a little while and just looked around. Instead of fretting over the wet and the mildew and the slugs and weeds, I focused on the beauties we have. Like the delightful echinaceas that are beginning to get going, including 'Coconut Lime', which is pleasing in its vigour.


And 'Harvest Moon', which for some reason is one of the coneflowers that appeals to me the most in an architectural sense. Plus it's lovely, it smells nice, and it seems to do pretty well here.


Before we left this afternoon to attend our awesome Member of Parliament Scott Brison's annual Barbecue, I was out in the front porch and this coneflower caught my eye. Intense excitement! I hadn't noticed it this morning (in my defense, I hadn't had any coffee during that first morning walk), and I charged out to snap a hasty (and not colour-perfect) picture of 'Tomato Soup.' As Kylee noted in a post a couple of weeks ago, it really IS the colour of tomato soup.


To some people, this is a weed. To me, Queen Anne's Lace/Wild Carrot (Daucus carota) is one of the most beautiful wildflowers we have. I can (and do) spend a great deal of time delighting over the complexity of the flowers, the bees and butterflies and other pollinators that enjoy it, the sweetness of the fragrance, and later, the delightful seedheads. It's a pretty, pretty thing and it makes me happy to see; which is why I have a few of them scattered through the garden.


It's a good indication that I'm feeling much, much better that I actually want to go out and see people and do things. After puttering around here for part of the day, longsuffering spouse and I headed off to Cheverie, to go to the barbecue, and ended up seeing assorted friends, including the amiable Rob Baldwin of Baldwin's Nurseries (left, beside my LSS).

Our federal riding is called Kings Hants, and is a big, sprawling area comprised of the two counties of Kings (where we live) and Hants. Cheverie and other parts of Hants County are across the Minas Basin from us, which is part of the Upper Bay of Fundy, and as I've observed before is home of the World's Highest tides.

We are very blessed to live in this part of the world. Sometimes, I forget that when I get caught up in the morass of not feeling well or work challenges or other misadventures. But since I'm feeling much better with each passing day, I'm starting to remember just how blessed I am, and how wonderful it is to be able to live beside salt water. We get to harvest and enjoy treats like the dulse (yes, it's a seaweed) that my better half picked off the rocks by Cape Split (seen here drying in the sun outside our barn.)

After we left the barbecue, we went down the road a ways and visited the lighthouse in Walton. I know that Nancy of Soliloquy has written about this lighthouse and this part of the province before, and I'll just add that it's a lovely area and a wonderful place for a picnic, or just a stroll. The lighthouse and surrounding area is all maintained by volunteers, which just shows what a small community can do when inspired.

This beach is actually between Cheverie and Walton, and we happened on it because I said, "Let's go down this road and see where it leads." We knew it led to the water, but didn't know whether we'd have access or not. It was cool to find this shale-covered beach, though we didn't scramble down the rocks to the beach.We were a little too full of chicken, and pleasantly sun-weary.

All in all, it was about as perfect a summer day as we could have asked for. Suddenly all the unpleasantries and challenges of recent months seems to have cleared away like fog on a hot summer's day. Blessings take many forms, when we stop to consider and be grateful for them.