A blast of colour for a December Day

 Suddenly, we're well into December and Christmas/Yule/Solstice and winter are rapidly approaching. There are deluges of posts and articles all about Christmas plants and winter interest and other seasonally appropriate topics. However, I'm not that keen on talking only about winter topics right now,   so instead, I thought I'd offer up some observations of favourite plants past and present. Starting with this 'Forest Pansy' redbud (Cercis canadensis), which will be one of the first purchases I make to plant in my new garden. I've already told Jill at Bunchberry Nurseries to put a good one aside for me next spring! This is its fall colour--in spring, its foliage is a rich wine-purple colour, and it doesn't even have to flower with foliage like this.

 Anyone who reads my sites and articles knows that I am besotted by blue flowers, be they annual, perennial, biennial--so long as they're really blue and not dyed or painted. Not a fan of those hideous dyed blue phalaenopsis, but I love this annual, Anagallis, also known by the common names blue pimpernel and poor-man's weatherglass, because it closes up in cloudy or wet weather.

Catching up with some great catches

Well, I'm baaaccckkk! Vast improvements in the weather coupled with a need for a bit of a break have kept me in the gardens and away from the blog, but today is cool and showery, a great day to do a little catching up. I've been roaming around the province, doing book events plus of course checking out nurseries; I haven't been to all my favourites yet this year, but have certainly visited those in the Valley and part of the south shore. With the book-travel winding up soon, there will be more time for just relaxing travel to gardens and nurseries.

Before I go on about some of the great plants blooming here, a couple of interesting housekeeping tidbits for those who visit Facebook and nursery websites:

Baldwin's Nurseries now has a Facebook page, and I hope people will visit and 'Like' it.
Glad Gardens has a new website as well as a Facebook page. I think these pages on Facebook are extremely useful for keeping people current quickly.
The Friends of the Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens are holding their Native Plant sale tomorrow from 9 am til noon at the gardens. The gardens are at Acadia University in Wolfville. Baldwin's Nurseries, Bunchberry Nurseries and I will all be there, and the Friends are selling a host of native species great for home gardening.

Containing our Gardening Enthusiasms

A few days of warm weather has made many things leap ahead in our gardens, and in my greenhouse. I spent part of Friday up my containers, most of which are filled with a variety of annual flowering and foliage plants. I use containers as portable gardens once the risk of frost is past, moving them around the yard to where I want a burst of colour. My Halifax Herald column today is about container plantings, and I didn't have a lot of room to provide a lot of plant examples, so I've added some here for people to try.

One of my most beloved annuals for containers is the African daisies, of which there are a number of different genera. The Osteospermums or osteos are among the most common, and are vigourous, longflowering container stars. The top photo includes a white variety, while this one is called 'Summertime Blueberry.'

Skywatch Friday on Saturday: Mighty Cape Split

Photo courtesy of NS Tourism

The countdown is on for Manuscript Filing Day, and I'm happy to report that things are well in hand. Except for other parts of life unrelated to book, such as blogging/blog reading, garden upkeep, making meals, etc. But just to let you know that all is well here, to participate in Skywatch Friday (even on Saturday) and to give you something to think about, this is an aerial shot I found in some old backup discs when I was looking for something else. This and several other photos were provided to me for use in a story I wrote years ago, and they are the best possible way to explain the mighty tide that races up through our neck of the woods. I know I wrote about this a while back, but beg your forbearance as I do so again.

That long promontory of land you see snaking away into the distance and curving off to the right of the photo is the end of the North Mountain, most specifically the Cape Split/Blomidon peninsula; the community of Scotts Bay is in the bowl of land surrounded by water in the upper righthand corner of the picture. In the foreground are the sea stacks of Cape Split, a very famous and welltravelled hiking trail. The trail terminus, I hasten to add, is on the grassy green field on the main part of the peninsula, NOT on those outer stacks where the tide is racing.

Because yes, that is the tidal pull of the upper Bay of Fundy, screaming around the end of Cape Split in a rip tide that is astonishing, humbling, beautiful and dangerous. This happens several times daily, as the tide rises and falls, creating that 'Voice of the Moon' I described for you before.

Before I leave you to return to editing, we go from the sublime to the ridiculous. I have written in the past of my dislike of petunias, although I acknowledged that Proven Winners 'Pretty Much Picasso' is very cool. It didn't do well for me last year, and I put that down to it not being a fan of the wind, fog, and other meteorological marvels we get up here on this hill overlooking the Bay and the Split. Well, didn't Proven Winners send me another bunch of 'Pretty Much Picasso' with the trial plants this spring! I had a thought, and put several of them in a planter on the greenhouse door, along with another green wonder, 'Avalon Lime' nicotiana. In really rude weather, I just shut the door, protecting the plants, but otherwise, the door is hooked open and they can bask in the sun when we have some. They're doing very well. AnnaFlowerGirl is laughing in "I told you so" glee. I can hear her from here. I'm not a petunia fan, though. Just like this one. Really.

A little midweek miscellany...

Actually, these photos were taken on Monday, rather than midweek--but you get the point. I like to wander around the garden, camera in hand, and see what's new and exciting each day. The fun part about the garden at this point in spring is that there are still new things emerging while others are half-grown and flowering, and still others are beginning to wind down.

It's no secret that I love poppies of all kinds. The first to bloom in my garden are the Icelandic poppies, which come in a nice array of fresh, warm colours. This photo doesn't do justice to the colour of this particular poppy, which is vibrant deep salmon as opposed to 'just' hot orange. It's new to the garden because most of my Icelandics are yellow and it was time to introduce some other colours.
A lot of the veronicas are known for having spikes of tiny flowers, but this one is a little different and quite wonderful. It's Veronica gentianoides, and it is the first to bloom in my garden. Its pale blue flowers are accented with deeper blue and pruple lines, plus it has that wonderful chartreuse throat and blue stamens. It's been a faithful bloomer in my garden for about a decade: I divide and move it around occasionally and it always settles in nicely.
Sometimes, a plant simply doesn't need to flower, because its foliage is so glorious. This is Filipendula ulmaria 'Aurea', with vibrant gold foliage. It should be in a little more shade than it is because the foliage does burn in too much hot sunlight (see the browning in a few leaves on the left hand side of the plant). Behind it is Actaea 'Pink Spike', which I think is tied with Actaea 'Black Negligee' for having the deepest black foliage. They make a good foil off each other.
Fragrance is extremely important in my garden, and I was very glad to locate some wallflowers (Erysimum) on the weekend. While the fancy coloured ones don't seem to be quite as fragrant as the old fashioned yellow and orange varieties, I can't resist them. This is 'Apricot Twist'.
And this is the well-named 'Pastel Patchwork', easily my favourite wallflower ever. The flowers remind me of a lantana or a pulmonaria, in the way they change colour as they mature.
This basket of three different colours of annual alyssum (and some spiral rush in the centre for accent) was totally irresistable to me--had to have it for the bees and hummingbirds. And for me--I love the fragrance of alyssum and put this on the stem where I can enjoy it as much as the pollinators do.
Still waiting for me to find the right place to plant it is 'Gro Lo' fragrant sumac. The flowers are tiny and not fragrant--the foliage and twigs give off a scent when they are bruised or broken. It's supposed to have tremendous fall colour and will grow only 1-2 feet tall although it does naturalize like its common sumac sibling. That's okay with me. What's cool about this plant is that it can be monoecious OR dioecious. I'm not sure which mine is yet.

Several years ago, I saw the royal azalea (Rhododendron schlippenbachii) displaying incredible fall colour at The Willow Garden in Antigonish. I had to have one, and came home with one tucked in the car a couple of weeks ago. It's now blooming, but I don't so much care about the flowers as I do the foliage. However, I'm in no hurray to see the fall colour display--we're just nicely into high spring here, with things bursting out all over.

Funnily enough, the weekend was blisteringly hot in the Valley, but we had fog Sunday and most of Monday, which also brought a little moisture to the soil. It's astonishingly dry in the parts of our garden that have good drainage, which makes me worry about those who live in the Valley where they don't get the fog we do. It could be a tough summer for farmers.

When the weather gets tough, the tough go plant hunting!

It started out innocently enough, as these things often do. I blame it totally on the weather.

After a highly productive early morning writing plant profiles and finishing up a presentation I'll be doing soon, I thought I might go outside and work. Well. I knew it was windy, but when I went outside and got blown halfway across the yard, I got enormously peeved at the universe. I knew there'd be no working outside, so I got thinking about a wonderful plant I spied a couple of weeks ago at Briar Patch Farm and Nursery in Berwick. It's a new annual euphorbia along the lines of the awesome 'Diamond Frost'; this one has more of a pink tinge and larger flowers, and is called 'Breathless Blush'. I figure the weather has moderated enough that I should go pick it up, along with a few other things, and then I can work in the greenhouse, planting my containers. So I headed off down the highway...


...but I didn't go to ONLY Briar Patch. I managed to hit four nurseries, two of which have websites: Briar Patch, and denHaan's, down in Middleton. Because you see, I thought I'd go visit denHaan's, see what they have for annuals, then go have tea with my friend Terri at her Telegraph Tea Room in neighbouring Nictaux.


At den Hann's, I managed to have 4 small fall asters, a burgundy flowered sanguisorba, a huge, purple-belled gloxinia for my office, and several annuals follow me out to the car. One of the annuals is this pink Pentas, a great butterfly magnet.


In Centreville, I had to go in to Gerry Frail's nursery (no website) and collect a few other container plants, including the white osteo in the second photo, 'Osteo Soprano Vanilla'. Though I love some of the newer colours of osteos, I always need a white one or two, and I haven't had one of the spoon-petalled types for a while.


I had this cuphea, called 'Totally Tempted' a couple of years ago. Although it's kind of messy when its flowers finish, I found it a huge hummingbird magnet, so I decided to get another one this year to put in one of the hanging baskets. I picked this up at a small family greenhouse in Aylesford called Marlene's. A miniature astilbe called 'Sprite', which I can't wait to plant, pleaded with me to give it a good home. Well, you know when plants plead with you, you have to comply.

Oh, let's see, what else did I collect? At Briar Patch, a really fine specimen of Amsonia 'Blue Ice'; I have the regular A. tabernaemontana, which has been a tried and true performer for nearly a decade. I did have a 'Blue Ice' a couple of years ago, but...ahem...I forgot where I planted it and I don't know if it went to sleep or if I weeded it thinking it was something else or what happened to it. Have I mentioned that we have a lot of garden beds, and that sometimes things do go astray?


So then I went to Terri's place, the perfect way to wrap up a highly satisfactory break from working. Terri and her husband James moved here from England several years ago, and opened this tea room as part of their new life here. At one time, Terri worked at Heligan and the Eden Project back in the UK, so she's a real plantswoman and a pleasure to talk with. And I'm now hopelessly hooked on what she calls a Ploughman's lunch. I'd read about this for many years, but never had it before. Maybe it was the homemade wholegrain rolls. Or the white Stilton with pears blended into it. Or the delectable chocolate mint herbal tea that I had with it. Or just all of the above, plus good conversation. It was altogether dandy, and much better than sitting home cussing at the wind. I did enough of that when I got back and had to unload everything into the greenhouse!

By the time you read this, I'll be on my way to Bible Hill to give a talk, but first I'll be flying to Antigonish to pick up some plants from Bill and Sharon at The Willow Garden. And then detouring to Lloyd Mapplebeck's Hillendale Perennials to drop off some plants I promised him. Am leaving Longsuffering Spouse at home because...he takes up too much room in the car, and there has to be room for plants.

Eating my Words

I love learning something new, especially when it comes to plants. There's always, always something new to learn, too. Including about myself.

So I'm at Glad Gardens out in Waterville, which is a very cool family owned operation that I discovered a few years ago. Daina and her mother Laura and their team of employees strive to have great plants, including a lot of unusual annuals, many of which Daina grows from seed. She creates astonishingly beautiful container plantings too, but more about those another day.

One of the reasons I enjoy going to Glad Gardens so much is that, like the other nurseries I frequent, the owners LOVE plants, and love to talk about them. We exchange information, puzzle over things together sometimes. Like when Laura told me about the Filipendula purpurea 'Elegans that she'd had growing in front of the nursery, and then moved it, and the flower colour changed. She'd grown it on in several spots and it still didn't resort to the rich pink flowers they had been--more of a pale peach. Did I know why? No, I didn't, although I'd read something about this in Allan Armitage's Native Plants for North America Gardens just recently and so when I got home I'd go find out what ever else I could and let her know.

Daina and I are walking through the nursery looking for plants for me to take with me to Saltscapes Expo this Friday, and she points out the tuberous begonias she grew. "I'm not a fan of begonias," I tell her, even though my father grew them splendidly when I was a kid back in St. John's. Somehow, they're just too...I don't know what, but I've only ever had the occasional Rex begonia around for years.

The words are hardly out of my mouth--I MEAN that--when I glance up and come to a halt. "Which one is THAT?" I demand, pointing at a glowing, perfect flower, gold edged in pink-scarlet. It looked a little bit like a tree peony, so stuffed with gorgeous petals.

"Non Stop Fire, "Daina says, grinning at me. She knows me well, and when plants stop me in my tracks, there's usually something about to happen.

Yes, she added one to the box of treasures she was carrying for me. Surprised? Didn't think so.

So that was one thing I learned--I can be seduced into liking at least ONE species or cultivar in a genus if the right colour combination catches my eye. But the thing about this little interlude that cracked me up is that I was looking at another flower on the plant, with single petals and a cluster of stigma in its centre. "Why is this different?" I ask.

"That's the female flower," she says. "The male is the bigger, showier one. Some people cut the female flowers off so more energy can go into the fancy double ones."

D-uh to me. All these years and I didn't know that? Okay, granted, I've said I don't LIKE them and consequently don't grow them or read about them or...but still. Wow. But I've never pretended to be a know-it-all, just a curious person. And like I said, I love learning something new.

Oh, so what else got into the car today besides the begonia that felled me in a single swoop? I'm not telling, not today. Just a tempting little hint; rich dark foliage, blue flowers, orange flowers, rosy pink flowers, vine, annuals, perennials, succulents. Hmmmm. What has she gone and done NOW?

You'll have to wait a day or two to find out, friends. With the Saltscapes Expo only 5 sleeps away, I have much to do before I head to Halifax for the weekend.

Urgent Plant-Seeking Madness: Do you have this Condition?

In my previous post I mentioned how the initial signs of Urgent Plant Seeking Madness (UPSM) were upon me, as witnessed by my foray out on Saturday "just for a look" and my return home with the car packed with plants. Ooops.

Others of you have commented that you've also been stricken--or smitten--with this condition. You may have it and not even be aware of it, or you may already be in the full-blown condition. In the interest of public (garden bloggers) health, I thought I'd offer a reprise of a post I did several years ago, with some additions and of course shiny new photos. Gotta have more pretty pictures, don't we?

UPSM affects a broad spectrum of individuals. It’s closely related to Urgent Plant HUNTING Madness, which is a less-known form that causes botanists, nursery operators, garden writers, and other plant enthusiasts to go off on forays to exotic locales such as the Himalayas, outer Mongolia, central Africa, and Newfoundland and Labrador. UPHM sufferers should have bumperstickers on the backs of their vehicles that say, “I brake for interesting plants”.

There is no known cure for either affliction, other than a change of seasons, or an exhausted bank account. Even an overflowing garden doesn't cure the situation. You'll figure out ways to make more beds. Who needs boring ol' lawn, anyway?




Here are the warning signs of UPSM:

1. All winter you’ve been salivating over blog posts, catalogues, websites and magazines, learning about new plants.

2. You’ve got a list longer than your regular grocery list of ‘Must Have’ plants.

3. You can’t pass by a nursery, garden centre, or even a bigbox asphalt ‘garden centre’ without going in. Just. For. A. Look.

4. You come out of said business with at least one garden-related item. Probably more like six or seventeen. Or two dozen. Or so.

5. You carry a tote box, plastic trunk liner, spade and bucket with you wherever you go.

6. You find the need to have to go run errands far more often. No matter that the price of gas is approaching that of a dentist appointment. There are plants to be checked out!


7. Your grocery budget takes a dip towards hamburger helper, peanut butter, and canned soup.

8. You start parking your vehicle around the back of the house, so as to unload your ‘groceries for the garden’ (as my friend Flora and HER long-suffering spouse call these outings) more conveniently (and out of view of your long-suffering spouse, who’s getting tired of peanut butter sandwiches and hamburger helper).

9. An enormous queue of new acquisitions lines itself up along your walkway in your dooryard (That’s Maritimer-speak for driveway/walkway/front yard), or your holding bed, or your greenhouse. Or your kitchen. We do what we gotta do to protect those new little darlings.

10. Despite that enormous queue, you continue to suffer from UPSM and to seek out nurseries, plant sales, yardsales with plants, garden centres, plant giveaways…

11. The first thing your longsuffering spouse says to you when you come home from an expedition is “Where are you going to plant THAT?” The second thing, of course, is “what are we having for supper? Not MORE hamburger helper!”

12. You blithely say, "Oh, that's been here for years!" when confronted about the new magnolia or Japanese maple or plot of hellebores or three dozen Osteospermums that have suddenly appeared in your yard. You change the subject to, "When are you going fishing, dear?" or some such diversionary tactic.

13. You plan Sunday drives/family outings so that they'll accidentally go past nurseries. And then, well, since you're in the area, you need to stop in. Just. for. a. minute.

14. While longsuffering spouse drives, you scan roadsides for houses with tables of plants for sale, even though you KNOW they'll mostly be stuff you already have. And damned ol' goutweed.

15. You make up excuses to go off by yourself for drives. Just to do some thinking, you know. (and because you don't want to waste valuable vehicle space with other family members.)

You can’t wait for the next trip so you can do it all again!

Everything's poppin' up poppies!

Yesterday dawned a little foggy but also sunny, and since I was feeling pretty good, we decided to go to Liverpool, collect the rest of my stuff, and put that chapter of my life (happily) far, far behind me. As we got ready, I looked outside, told longsuffering spouse I'd be a few minutes, and took off outside with my camera.


Some mornings we have what I call 'breathing fog.' It's very odd, and seems to come in and go back out again like inhalations and exhalations of breath. One moment the sun is obscured, the next it's breaking through the mist, and the next everything is bathed in sunlight. It makes for a lot of moisture, but also some interesting light and great photography moments.

Those who are regular readers of bloomingwriter know that I adore poppies of all kinds, be they annual, perennial, biennial, or blue. Right now, right on schedule, the big annual breadseed poppies have begun blooming in earnest.

I collect seed every year from the ones I like the best and then cast it around the garden here and there, and let the poppies do their thing. They also selfseed, of course, and they seem to cross pollinate, coming up with some extraordinary shades.

Our absolute favourites in the annual poppies are these deep wine double beauties. Aren't they great? Maybe not to everyone's tastes, but I love dark-wine flowers, and have a number of different plants with rich dark flowers or foliage.

Poppies catch the light as beautifully as do tulips, as they have equally transluscent, silken petals. They don't last as long as individual flowers, but they're profuse and for a few weeks we get to enjoy quite a happy show of colours.

As one poppy finishes and drops its blooms, others are opening up to show off their beauty, while still others are preparing to open or getting in the queue for a performance in a few days time.

One particular bed is host to mostly bright pink, single poppies. I love their foliage too, until the flowers are spent. Then I only leave in the ones that we'll use to collect seed; the rest get hauled out because their foliage gets quite ratty looking.

I spend a good deal of time looking into the centre of our poppies, with or without my camera. Everything about their flowers pleases me, from their showy petals to their complex hearts with the many stamens clustered around the central carpal.

In case you're feeling a bit bludgeoned by all those deep, rich colours, here's a little contribution from the Icelandic poppies, which are never shy about showing off THEIR beauty. These biennial or perennial poppies will bloom themselves almost to death, especially if you're faithful about deadheading. I've had them flower until hard frost before. And they pop up in odd places, so I never know where we'll see them, but we welcome them always.

Bright Colours to Chase the Fog

While a significant number of garden bloggers are enjoying themselves in Chicago at the Garden Bloggers Spring Fling, some of us had to stay behind and tend to real life. Like finishing assignments and trying to make head and tail of our gardens. Nature has a sense of humour, however, so she decided to roll the fog in, and it's just too wet for my temperamental bones to be out scrubbing around in the yard. I did, however, take my camera for a little walk and catch some bright colours to cheer myself with.
While I like pastels in other people's gardens, there aren't a whole lot here for a very good reason. The fog washes out such colours and makes them look drab. I like real jewel tones for the most part, and also like to punch things up with colourful foliage. These two cranesbills are Espresso and Springtime; I have to move Espresso because it has a much lower and less-exuberant growth habit than Springtime, which is a Geranium phaeum cultivar.

I'm always gushing about lantanas, and this one is no exception: Landmark Citrus. It's still in my greenhouse because it's planted with some new cultivars that came to me from Proven Winners, and I want them to get well established before I introduce them to Scotts Bay fog. 

Last year, I got my greedy little hands on several new Geum cultivars. I know that often geums are short-lived perennials, at least in my garden, but I had to have these two. This beauty is called 'Mango Lassy', and it's unfortunate that I finished my bottle of mango nectar last night because I have a sudden craving, you know? 

Longsuffering spouse thought it looked a bit like a poppy, but agreed with me that it's a beautiful thing. I just wished they flowered a lot longer than they do. 

The geums and cranesbills are near my fabulous copper beech, still a modest sized sapling but growing well and with gorgeous, gorgeous foliage. 

Snerk. I should have 'David' phlox (one of my favourite plants, even though it's pastel) planted beside this geum and call it my rockstar planting. Because this geum is called 'Cooky'. Heh. 

The double-flowered grape hyacinths are coming out and they look especially striking against the brilliant foliage of 'Aztec Gold' veronica. 

The front garden is forging ahead quite happily, although there's not a huge amount in bloom right now other than the containers I've put outside already. in the right-centre foreground is a new tansy I got last week, 'Isla Gold'. I've bought it just for the foliage, which I think is lovely, and will go well near something with purple foliage like Sambucus 'Black Lace'. 

Many of the containers are still in the greenhouse, but I put these outside last week just to see how they'll do. We're going to track them every week or ten days or so and see how they're growing. 

And I haven't decided where to plant this glorious 'Autumn Brilliance' dryopteris fern yet, but I got very excited when I found it last week at Briar Patch in Berwick. Probably it'll go out in the shade garden, and I'm optimistic that it will do well here. The literature says it keeps changing its colours throughout the season. We'll keep an eye on it and see how it does, but it's definitely a thing of beauty. 

Aliens in the gardens

No, this isn't a diatribe against non-native plants. I was just out prowling around the garden last night and was struck by the marvels of plants in our gardens, especially when they're waking up, but also just...because they do what they do. Take the forget-me-nots above. They're mostly all blue...except when they're pink. Or white. 

A year or so back a friend gave me an Ohio Buckeye sapling, and it's leafing out, a few days behind its relatives the horse chestnut and red buckeye. I am totally enamoured with its new leaves which are as pretty as a Japanese maple. 

This is one of the stranger denizens of my garden, and I may need my LongSuffering Spouse's Stihl chainsaw to divide it up. This is Darmera, sometimes called umbrella plant; it flowers first with these stalks of tiny flowers, and then the huge leaves arrive later. The rhizomes are huge, fleshy and would probably NEED the chainsaw. I've never tried to divide it, but instead let it grow where it grows, and it handles the wet there nicely and just behaves itself. 

All ferns (as far as I know) start out life with a fiddlehead, but these are the Ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris) which produce the delectable, delicious and divine edible fiddleheads. I grow them just because I love the plants, and buy my fiddleheads from a farm market in town. And eat them with lemon and butter and great joy. 

This mottle beauty is my yellow trillium, Trillium luteum, not yet flowering but with such handsome foliage. 

Okay, this little charmer seduced me last year and I had to buy it. This is the delightfully named Birdseye primula, P. frondosa. You can see how big the plant is; that's the lens off my digital SLR main lens. 

And here's the plant a few day s later, with its tiny flowers. I'm lucky that A. This plant survived and B. that it survived in a place where I noticed it. Because I had totally forgotten that I bought and planted it. Oooops. Its label was still there, happily, so it must have gone dormant last year or been caught up in the wave of wild wood anemones, which I'm beating back this year. Sort of. 

I'm liking this corydalis more and more, and yes, it IS fragrant, so we're pretty sure it's Blackberry Wine. With a little turtlehead sprouting in front of it, which I'll move tomorrow, weather permitting. The flowers of all the corydalis are charmers, but this one especially amuses me. 

Sylvia likes that we go trillium counting, which we haven't done yet. Maybe this weekend, though the main accomplishment so far has been getting two more beds cleaned out AND going to see the new Star Trek movie. (which was totally made of win and you should go see it too!) I have the hosta Captain Kirk in this bed, but it's not up much yet. Meanwhile, these trilliums are in the same bed, along with a dozen or so of their siblings. They're native here, and we're glad we rescued them from the clearcut everytime we see them multiply a bit more. Just ignore the burdock growing beside them. He's leaving tomorrow. 

While I love the wine-coloured checkered fritillaries, I find these white ones wonderfully soothing even though their checks are very hard to see. 

Moving into my first love song to annuals now, aliens all; I was delighted to find a variety of Lantanas already this year, and of course I had to get all of them. This is Landmark Citrus, and I can see it's going to be a favourite. Bright coloured flowers are my usual passion...

Although occasionally I kick over the traces and opt for something a little more pastel, like these Opal Innocence Nemesia. This particular form is also fragrant, and is just a lovely plant. 

A lot less pastel, but equally charming, this is a fancy geranium called Graffiti Violet. The digital camera doesn't do it justice, because it doesn't show just HOW hot pink and HOW red-tipped the flowers really all. They're exotic like a bird of paradise, and I may have to go get some more. 

While I love the brilliant flowers of annuals, I also like to include foliage in my container plantings. This is a new to me plant this year, called Sky Flower or Tala Blanco 'Gold Edge'. I know nothing more about it than it's an awesome colour. We'll see how it performs in my containers soon. 

It's well known that I'm not a particular fan of impatiens. Except this one I love though I probably won't let it flower. The leaves are simply glorious sort of like a leucathoe, which I don't grow because they hate the wind. 

It's a well known fact that I'm also not a fan of petunias, though I love them in other people's gardens. But I think that may be about to change. The plant gods are not without a sense of humour. You'll have to wait til next post, but suffice it to say...Picasso would be pleased. And so will Anna Flowergardengirl.