Nature Friday in the Garden

Hi everyone! It’s Walter here. We’ve had a roller coaster of weather here this spring. One day it’s nice and cool and the next it’s like a blast furnace.

It’s a lovely day to be outside today.

We’ve been helping our parents with the garden this spring. There is always something in the perennial garden that doesn’t make it through the winter, so dad has been planting a few more shrubs in there.

Mixed garden – View from the house

Mixed garden – View from the yard

There are lots of flowers blooming right now with more still to come.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the flowers.

Ceasar’s Brother Siberian Iris

Geum – Totally Tangerine

Therese Bugnet Rose

Those roses sure do smell sweet! We hope you enjoyed seeing how our garden is shaping up this season and we will try to keep you posted about all the other things going on here.

Join the Nature Friday Blog Hop

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

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Nature Friday – Bugs and Blooms

Hi everyone! It’s Cindy here. Summer is near the end and so is the growing season for the flowers in our yard. We still have a few daylilies blooming.

Rose colored daylily

Yellow daylily

Some of the hosta still have flowers too.

Hosta flowers

Another late bloomer in our yard is our non-vining clematis.

Clematis “Mrs. Robert Brydon”

The various bees around our yard seem to be working overtime collecting pollen.

Bumble bee on Joe Pye Weed

Bumble Bee on Blue Fortune Agastache

This little guy was so loaded down with pollen he could barely take off.

Now those are full saddle bags

Next I want to show you some dragonflies.

Orange Meadowhawk dragonfly

Orange Meadowhawk dragonfly on hypericum berry

Lastly I want to show you one of the many leopard frogs we have in our yard.

Leopard frog

There are so many of these frogs in the lawn that when I mow the lawn I have to go very slow around the edge of the grass (where they seem to be the most plentiful) to try not to squash or mow over them. We seem to be having a banner year for leopard frogs in our yard this year. It usually takes me about 2 hours to mow our lawn but since the frogs have appeared it’s taken me about 1/2 hour longer because I’ve had to go much slower. I want to get a bumper sticker for my tractor that says, “I Brake for Frogs”!

I hope you enjoyed this stroll around the garden today.

Join the Nature Friday Blog Hop

We are joining our Sorrell the Feline Boss of the Texas Branch of the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

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Daylily Delights

Hi everyone! It’s Cindy here. We’re entering into daylily season in our yard so that is what I’m going to show you today. There isn’t much to say about them so enjoy the show.

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This next daylily is a hybrid that sprouted from the one above.

Hybrid from the previous daylily.

This is the largest daylily flower in our yard.

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This is my favorite of all our daylilies. I just love the burgundy ruffles on it.

I hope you enjoyed this stroll around the garden today.

Join the Nature Friday Blog Hop

We are joining our friends Arty, Jakey and Rosy (a day late, but better than never) for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

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Flower Friday – Yellow Daylilies & More

Hi everyone! Today we are joining Dory for her Flower Friday Blog Hop. We are playing catch up this week as we took the past couple of weeks off to be in the Pawlympics.

We showed you many of our daylilies already so here are the rest of them.

It seems that many of the flowers in bloom are yellow. Maybe it is just the color of the hot time of year.

Black-eyed Susan

Yellow Crocosmia

We do have some flowers of other colors in bloom now too.

Red Crocosmia

The final flower in the perennial garden in bloom now is the Joe Pye weed. It is so tall that it almost falls over from the weight of the flowers.

The rugosa rose is on its second bloom and the bumble bees and other bugs are enjoying the pollen.

The last flowers are on another hydrangea.

We hope you enjoyed this trip around our yard.

Be sure to pop over to Dory’s Blog to see who else is participating.

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Flower Friday – Daylilies & Other Flowers

Hi everyone! It’s Millie here. Today we are joining Dory for her Flower Friday Blog Hop. The other day I was out in the yard while mom took pictures of our flowers.

Is that the chipmunk I see?

I was keeping my eye on all the rodents in the yard in case my mom needing protecting from those pesky chipmunks. Let’s take a look at what is blooming in our yard right now.

Veronica

Yet another variety of Campanula

Coreopsis

Monarda aka Bee Balm

A yellow Red Hot Poker

Our hummingbirds are happy to have those last two around. They are favorites of the bees too.

Hey mom are you done yet?

We still have a few more flowers to show you. Our daylilies are in bloom now so here are a few of them. Not all had started blooming when we took these pictures so we will show you more at a later date.

This is our mom’s favorite.

These are actually a very small flower compared to most daylilies

We hope you enjoyed this trip around our yard. Check back next week for more flowers.

Be sure to pop over to Dory’s Blog to see who else is participating.

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Flower Friday – Hazy, Hot, Hostas & Hydrangeas

Hi everyone! Today we are joining Dory for her Flower Friday Blog Hop. As our title indicates we have been having a heat wave this summer. The weather peeps tell us that we have had more 90+ degree (32 C) days than the past 3 years combined! In addition to that we are experiencing a drought. Our daddy has been working hard to keep all our plants happily hydrated. We haven’t been spending much time in the yard because of the heat but lets take a look and see what is blooming.

First up are our hosta. You can’t see much blooming in this picture but we also like our hosta just for its colorful foliage.

When they do bloom they have these nice bell shaped flowers that the hummingbirds just love.

Next up we will show you some of our hydrangea. We have this great climbing hydrangea and smooth hydrangea on the side of our garage.

The climbing hydrangea flowers aren’t much to look at but the plant itself is a great place to raise a family. We have had robins nesting in it almost every year. Here is a closer look at the smooth hydrangea and its big white mophead flowers

Also next to the garage is one of our oak leaf hydrangea.

Many of our hydrangea have only white flowers but a few also bring a bit of color to the yard. Here are some pictures of another type of mophead hydrangea.

They start out a pale greenish white color and change color over the course of the summer. You can just see a hint of pinkish purple in them now.

Last but not least is our mom’s favorite hydrangea the lacecap variety.

These are a beautiful pink color. Let’s take a closer look so you can see how they get their name.

They sure are a beautifully delicate flower.

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Flower Friday. Be sure to pop over to Dory’s Blog to see who else is participating.

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Flower Friday – Perennials

Hi everyone! Today we are joining Dory for her Flower Friday Blog Hop. The last time we did a flower Friday we showed you mostly trees and shrubs so this week we are showing (mostly) perennials. Since we said “mostly” perennials we will show you the one shrub in our post today first.

Deciduous Swamp Azalea

Now on to all our perennials. Let’s start with some of the campanula or bellflowers we have. These are all blue or purple and bloom at about the same time.

Willow Bell Campanula

Serbian Bellflower – Blue Waterfall

Purple Clustered Bellflower

Now sticking with purple we want to show you how spectacular our clematis is doing this year. We can’t remember when it has been so full of blooms in recent years.

Clematis

Clematis bloom

We have a couple more blue flowers in the garden too.

Agastache – the hummingbirds love these

Amsonia – Blue Star

Let’s move on to some white flowers.

Rodgersia

Goats Beard

Astilbe – This one actually has a peachy tint to it.

Husker Red Penstemon – another hummingbird favorite

Heuchera – two varieties shown here

It’s difficult to see the heuchera flowers but there are many tiny white bell shaped flowers along each stalk. Now let’s move along to a little more color.

Ladies Mantle

The ladies mantle almost form a hedge along one edge of the perennial garden. Among all the blue and purple flowers the yellow sunflowers and pink cone flowers really stand out in our garden right now.

Yellow Sunflowers

Pink Coneflowers

Last but not least our Stella D’oro daylilies have been blooming like crazy and are a hint of the many daylilies we have in our garden that are just about to start blooming.

Stella D’Oro daylilies

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Flower Friday. Be sure to pop over to Dory’s Blog to see who else is participating.

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Flower Friday – Trees & Shrubs

Hi everyone! Today we are joining Dory for her Flower Friday Blog Hop. We have so much in bloom this time of year that we are just going to show you the trees and shrubs that are flowering this week.

It’s really looking rosy around here this time of year.

Old Fashioned Rugosa Rose with bee

Yellow Knock Out Rose Bush

Yellow Knock Out Rose – closeup

Therese Bugnet rose

‘Purple Pavement’ rugosa rose

Last week we showed you one of our deutsia and this week we are showing a different form of that same shrub.

Deutsia shrub covered in flowers

Deutsia Flowers

The next picture has a tree, shrub and a perennial. We love the color contrasts of all three next to each other.

Catmint, Japanese Maple, & Yellow Barberry

Potentilla in bloom

Kousa Dogwood Tree

Kousa Dogwood Blossoms

Last but not least…

Spirea flowers

We have a lot of spirea around the yard and all of them are covered in these lovely pink flowers.

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Flower Friday. Be sure to pop over to Dory’s Blog to see who else is participating.

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