Feeling a little Sad

           pink lupines, white lilies, purple delphiniums, red maltese cross

           Sadly the last family of swallows left on Sunday. I checked the nest the next day and it was empty. I'm happy that they all managed to fledge successfully, though! This family of 5 tree swallow babies was quite late in comparison to all the others. It is a sad feeling when I go past the birdhouses outside and  they are all empty now.  The birds are still around here in this area some place and I do see and hear them occasionally, but I miss waking up to the trill of the house wren and the call of the gold finches and swallows as they greet the morning and they show off for potential mates.  I'm happy though that they have been successful in raising their families, but the 'bird raising season' seems to go by too quickly.

Garden:
The blue monkshood ( aconitum) have all started to blossom and my little pink monkshood looks like it won't be far behind. (photo soon!)

pink blossoms on Morden Centennial rose (left) and Lavatara (right)

The Lavatara have grown taller than last year and looking gorgeous with an abundance of flowers. As far as my roses go, the winner is..... Morden Centennial! It is full of numerous medium pink blossoms, quite similar in color to the lavatara blossoms and looking quite amazingly beautiful.

The winner of the gazanias (annual) is definitely the Tiger Eye! It blooms almost nonstop and I think I will try to get only Tiger Eyes next year.

My hollyhocks have started popping open their pink blooms now and they are superb, tall and stately as usual. The pretty pink blossoms are a nice contrast to the dark blue and purple of the clematis vines along the same wall of the house.

And my sweet peas are blooming now, too! Must have opened last weekend when we had some hot weather again (for a change). Guess I was too busy to notice! I tied some strings along the deck railing for them to grow on. Hmmm! I tied the strings horizontally along the spindles... I wonder if vertical strings would be better?

Another idea I read about is to take any branch cutting from shrubs, etc and put them upright in the ground for the sweet peas to cling to and climb up as they grow. Too bad I put them all in the compost already. Maybe next year I'll try that.

sempervivum (ruby Hen and Chicks)

My red 'Hen and Chicks, (sempervivum) is blooming and looking superb! I'm amazed by that because I dug it up from the wild flower bed out by the road where I had planted it 2 years ago.  It had grown quite large there, in a sunny but very dry location. I took one little 'rosette' from there a few weeks ago and planted it in my long perennial flower bed in the yard. It seems to love its new locations and started blooming in appreciation. This Hen and Chicks is amazingly beautiful!  My other regular green sempervivum  is growing so slowly, it almost seems to be standing still!

My white lilies have started blooming profusely and they are looking very lovely!  They remind me of Easter lilies. Speaking of which... I recently planted a healthy Easter lily bulb outside in my wild flower bed. It was a remnant of a lily I had bought at Easter. It stayed green for a long time in the house after the flowers were done and only just started dying back. I was going to put it in the compost, but decided to give it a chance to grow again, although I have not had much success with regrowing Easter lilies before this.  (I read some place that they are sprayed with something so they won't be able to grow a second time....)

white lilies pink lupines, red maltese cross


All in all, my garden is almost at its peak now! Some of the oriental lilies still have to open and then it will be at its utmost best!  Although vacations are great, I am so sad that I'm going on vacation next week and going to miss much of the spectacular show of my lilies. My flower beds will look so completely different in 3 weeks when I return!  I hope that Mother Nature won't be too hard on them in the meantime. :)

"Only Sunshine/ NO Rain"?

Well our predicted 7 day stretch of 'only sunshine/ no rain' didn't last long; 2 days was about all. We had a thunder storm and showers both Saturday night and Sunday night.

Yesterday we spent a hot and sunny +29C day in Calgary watching the finishing ceremonies of the 2010  60 km Walk for Women's Cancers at Currie Barracks.  We were very proud watching our daughter and son-in-law and their neighbor as they approached the end of their 60 km walk! We are so proud of them and all the other selfless participants and volunteers!  They spent countless hours raising funds and awareness of women's cancers in Alberta. Their team alone raised $8000 and the 1114 walkers there raised a total of 2.7 MILLION dollars for cancer research!

As we drove towards home last night we encountered quite a light show sponsored by Mother Nature! Some of the bolts of lightning were quite spectacular! Rain poured down, starting and stopping several times during the 250 km trip, but we discovered there had only been a small amount here at home. Later that night more rain arrived to soak everything even further.

My flower pots are down right soggy! Many of the plants that I put in over the last 3 years have been the drought tolerant type because our typical summer usually involves very little rain! Not this summer! the Farmers' Almanac was right in its predictions for the summer of 2010: Wetter than normal on the prairies and hotter than normal in the east. (The Farmers' Almanac have an 80% accuracy rate, according to them. I don't even want to THINK about what kind of winter they forecast for us!)

It cleared up around noon and continues to be sunny now with a temperature of about 19 C.
What's the forecast for this week? Well, that depends on which weather site you check. One says rain showers on Wed, Saturday and Sunday, but the other mentions only sun or partly cloudy, no showers, except next Monday.  Talk about contradictory! I'm just going to think positive and try to enjoy the sunny days when we get them!

I am so pleased with how my garden looks right now!
Vegetable garden:
The tomato plants have grown huge with all this rain! They have loads of blossoms on them, although they need more sun to help them bear fruit. The cherry tomatoes in the pot on the deck has lots of little tomatoes on it, albeit all still green. (Hmm! Fried green tomatoes!  :)

The Swiss chard is huge and lush. I cut some leaves off to have for supper tonight. Much of the spinach has gone to seed, but I harvested a bunch of leaves to feed to my tropical fish and to make into a salad for us. The bean plants are coming along okay but probably could do with a big blast of sunshine, too. No sign of any 'beanlets' yet!

The potatoes look great, and we're looking forward to trying them, baby potatoes with butter and dill! Yum! They are all red potatoes. We prefer them to white, which are more starchy.

There's still plenty of rhubarb on my 3 plants so I cut a dozen stems to chop up and freeze. It's nice to have the rhubarb in the winter for a pie  or some squares. ( Also I have a good rhubarb cake recipe!)

The dill is still very tiny. I think I should have put it in a sunnier spot. Maybe next year- put in in a pot on the deck!
The zucchini are growing, and have a few blossoms now,  but the plants are quite small compared with the usual for this time of year.

I transplanted the 2 small black Krim tomato plants (which I had started from seed) into bigger pots on the deck.  They used to be so tiny and have grown well, and they might not produce that much, depending on the sun we get in August.

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Beautiful Blossoms, Thunderstorm & Hail

Day lilies and maltese cross

Maltese Cross close up

Things are looking so fantastic out there! With all the rain , everything is nice and green, but now the last 2 days of sunshine has encouraged all the flowers to burst open and it's looking beautiful!!!
 The maltese cross is full of clusters of red flowers and the delphiniums are full of tall spires of purple and white blossoms.

The day lilies and oriental lilies are all starting to open now and I am eagerly waiting to see what the new bulbs that I bought at the Lily farm last fall will look like!

The deer have been munching on some of my delphiniums lately, which I must have missed spraying with Plantskydd.  Because so many of the plants in my beds have grown in leaps and bounds in recent weeks, I mixed up a new batch of Plantskydd today and sprayed everything that I thought might look attractive to my four-legged friends.

My Clematises are finally blooming and looking great! My new young Jackmanii is out performing my more established 2 year old Genaeral Sikorska. Jackmanii has lots of large deep purple blossoms on it although it is skimpy on stems being so new and young and all. The 'General' has lots of healthy stems and tons of buds, but has only just begun to bloom. In another week or so it will look spectacular!  My tiny white Alba Luxuriana is growing slowly but probably won't bloom for another year or too. Maybe some fertilizer wouldn't hurt either!


My hollyhocks are tall and stately looking, with an abundance of buds on all of them. They will probably start blooming in another week or two.

I wonder what I will have to stake up or cut down tomorrow? We had another wicked thunderstorm this past evening complete with a huge downpour of rain which went on for hours and even some hail for a while. There was a spectacular and noisy electrical display which knocked out our power 4 times, although only just long enough to make all the clocks on the electronic things in the house start flashing.
But the 7 day forecast shows that we should be getting 7 days in a row after this of sunny warm weather without a hint of showers or rain storms!

Gone, Birdy, Gone!

Tree Swallows

The busy birds are mostly gone from the birdhouses now, I'm sorry to say.  Most of the baby birds have fledged and left their nests. I really miss them! It is so quiet here now.  One birdhouse still has 4 baby tree swallows in it. The parents were late in building their nest and laying their clutch of eggs so these remaining babies are about 8 or 10 days behind the rest.

A few days ago we saw an interesting sight. One of our birdhouses had a small family of tree swallows in it, only two babies. One day we saw the tree swallow parents sitting on the dead tree snag near their birdhouse and one of their young had its head peeking out of the birdhouse hole. The parent swallows were calling to it and kept flying past the baby as if they were trying to encourage it to fly!
Then we noticed a smaller duller colored swallow sitting on the tree snag too and we believe that it was the sibling that had been in the same nest. We watched for a long while as the parents and then the sibling tried to encourage the other swallow to follow them as they swooped past the birdhouse, but it stubbornly stayed in the hole. We finally gave up watching and went on to other things, but I wish I would have been more patient in my watching because when I came back a while later, the little head was gone from the hole and the birdhouse was empty. It would have been wonderful to witness that first flight!

 tiny House Wren

Most of the wren babies have fledged and left their birdhouses empty, too. I think there is still at least one nest around here, though.  I heard one wren mother scolding loudly yesterday when one of our cats walked through the yard. They usually do that to warn each other of danger, especially if they have a family in a nest nearby. The wrens will often build a second nest and lay a second family of eggs if there is a plentiful food supply and the season is long enough.

I love the wren's call. It is a cheerful, happy sound and it is usually the first bird awake around here, starting its chirping just before the sky gets light, sometimes as early as 4 AM!

Gold finch pair, male on left, female on right

 The Gold Finches are still in the vicinity. I see them coming to the bird feeders in our yard for their favorite treat, the Nyger seeds.  Gold finches like to build their nests in trees, not in bird houses because they are not cavity nesters like the tree swallow, house wrens or sparrows. (Cavity nesting birds usually look for holes in tree trunks made by squirrels or other animals, but because there are not always very many available, they choose the 'cavity' of a birdhouse.) A forked branch is the ideal location for a Goldfinch nest. The nest is cup-shaped and made of plant material, but they like to line it with thistles or milkweed down. Their nests are very strong.

Another unusual thing about Goldfinches is that they molt all their feathers in the summer and the males turn from a bright yellow in the spring to a more subdued version, looking more like the duller colored female.

This is the first summer here that I have not seen the beautiful orange plumage of the Baltimore Oriole, although one of our neighbors said they had seen one. 

I really enjoy seeing the little upside down nuthatches at the feeder and my favourite little feathered friends, the Black capped chickadees.  Both of these birds stay around all winter and provide endless enjoyment watching the bird feeder even on the coldest winter day. The little Downey Woodpecker and his mate stay around all winter, too.

Downey Woodpecker male ( note the red on the back of his head)

The beautiful Cedar Waxwings

Storms and Clean up

Delphiniums and maltese cross are blooming profusely

We had a fierce rain storm a few days ago which left many of my perennials lying flat on the ground, the daisies especially. Two of my rose bushes were covered by fallen daisies as were many of my annuals.  The daisies are starting to go to seed now anyway, so I decided to cut most of them off. I had piles and piles of daisies and long grass (that still manages to grow in the middle of some of my larger perennials) to haul to the compost piles. I managed to clean up 2 of my big flower beds, but still have 3 big ones left to tackle.  At least I don't have to do any watering!

Many of my purple cluster flower campions are lying on the ground as well. I cut some of them off to add to a vase with some daisies, a few stems of purple delphiniums and a couple stems of perennial geraniums. They look quite beautiful on our table!

All of my Morden roses are blooming (the Morden Blush, the Centennial and the 2 Morden Ruby roses), but my little Winnipeg Parks rose doesn't even seem to have any buds. Maybe it's because the Baby's Breath has grown so big and is shading it too much.  (Lying on top of it, is more like it!)  Will have to go out and stake it up today. 

My huge helianthus, (perennial sunflower) which is growing abundantly tall in the centre of my round 'Angel bed', needs to be staked as well.  It usually doesn't bloom till August, but then it continues with a beautiful display of sunny yellow blossoms until the frost.

I had to spray Neem Oil on my current bushes on Wed. night after I arrived home. They were infested with aphids!  It is best to use the spray in the shade if possible and also needs to be reapplied after a heavy rain (which we got again last night!) We had 4 more inches of rain in the 7 days I was away! Haven't checked the rain gauge yet to see what last night's deluge brought.  It's sunny and relatively nice this morning, but more rain/ thunder storms are in the forecast for the next 8 days as well. 

Pink peony

My peonies started blooming a few days ago. This is really exciting because I don't have a good history with peonies. The rain has been really cruel to the beautiful blossoms, though.  I did cut one beauty off to bring in the house to enjoy!

I do have 4 other peony bushes besides this one, but I moved 3 smaller ones to sunnier locations (two last fall and one this spring,) so they most likely won't bloom for 2 or 3 years now. ( Like I have said before, gardening requires a great deal of patience!)  My other peony is big and growing well, but it only has one tiny little bud and I doubt it will even grow into a flower. Its location is now so shaded by trees it gets very little direct sunlight. Peonies need at least 6 hours of sunlight per day to bloom well.

red maltese cross, purple delphiniums and the endless shasta daisies

My delphiniums have all started to bloom this past week and the Maltese cross is looking fabulous! The little hummingbirds are enjoying them. We saw a tiny male ruby breasted hummingbird there yesterday. 

The gazanias and lavatara has grown quite a lot and are blooming well. Can thank all the rain Mother Nature has been providing for that!

Globe Flower blooming in my wild bed (along with the daisies of course!)

And the Winner is....! (Tomatoe Plants)

Although it is is one of the smaller plants, the Husky Red tomato plant was the first to produce fruit! We have eaten 3 ripened tomatoes off Husky Red already!

We bought this little plant at a small local greenhouse, while the others (Health Kick, Bush Champion, Super Fantastic, and Lemon Boy) were bought at a Home Depot back in late May. They were quite small then and I repotted them as soon as I got them home.

The Black Krim tomatoes were started from seeds which I had saved from last year's Black Krim tomatoes. They are rather ugly looking tomatoes (in my opinion), a blood red and black mix, but they are large and very sweet tasting! I should have started them much sooner than I did, though. The plants are still very small and still in pots on the deck.  We have been fertilizing them regularly and hope that will help them to grow and eventually we'll plant them out into the vegetable garden with the rest.

(photos to follow)

Maltese Cross

Shasta daisies and the first maltese cross blossoms

Hummingbird on top of the tree snag

The Maltese Cross are popping open more and more each day. Saw a little hummingbird visit one of them this morning. They are attracted to the red color of the blossoms and enjoy sipping the nectar. Hummingbirds also like the trumpet shaped flowers of fox glove (altho I didn't plant any Foxglove this year) and the delphiniums are another favorite. The delphiniums haven't opened yet. but it won't be long now. They have tall stems of flower buds just waiting to burst open on a sunny morning. 

Cup shaped flowers like lavatara are also popular.  The hummingbirds will still occasionally visit the feeder and partake of the sugar water, but they prefer flower nectar and also tree sap if they can get it.  

I have also seen hummingbirds at the columbine flowers as well. My columbines are at their best right now. They will continue to bloom till the end of July, but not much longer. The columbines in my wild bed will bloom later because they get less sun there and so develop slower.

More columbines, my particular favorites

My sedum is doing especially well this year. It has star shaped flowers in both pink and yellow and green and white variegated leaves. This plant is easy to grow, is not fussy about soil type or even how often you water it.  It stays relatively short about 12 inches in height at most. There are other types of sedum that grow a lot taller, but I don't have any of those. One of my Manitoba friends has them and they are one of her favorite perennials.

Scabiosa, another short perennial. 


This cute little plant with the weird name is in its second year in this flower bed and it doing well this year. It's supposed to be attractive to butterflies, although I haven't seen any there, and it is drought tolerant once established. Scabiosa is a type of Pincushion flower. It will bloom well into the fall with these pretty little lavendar/ blue flowers. 


Every day is a new discovery out in the garden. Remember the thrill of hunting for Easter eggs as a child? It's rather like that! 


On an edible note, we had a wonderful salad today made from swiss chard, spinach leaves, green onions and a tomato from our veggie garden!  I added some radishes that I had bought at the Farmer's market on Saturday to top it off. There's something very gratifying about going out in the garden to harvest your own vegetables that makes all the effort and hard work worth while.


I almost forgot to mention, I made 7 jars of rhubarb jam today from the plentiful rhubarb out in the garden. The 3 plants are huge this year.  We certainly appreciate their efforts! 

Red Red Rose

Today I planted another Morden rose bush, a second Morden Ruby. This one is in full bloom with numerous gorgeous red roses and has a lot of healthy leafy growth. I found it on sale last week and I couldn't resist it!  Even my husband thought it looked gorgeous!  The Morden roses are all hardy (zone 2 or 3) and were cultivated for our prairie climate. Most of them are disease resistant and they stay a relatively small size, ( about 3 feet wide and 3 feet tall.)

My Morden Blush rose bush, the first one that I planted in 2007, has flowers on it today! I find that so exciting to see the first roses pop open! They are a pale baby pink. My Morden Centennial rose has plenty of buds ready to open, too, which I'm looking forward to, but I'm disappointed in my Winnipeg Parks rose bush. Few buds so far!   I had to cut off a lot of the shasta daisies which were falling over and shading the rose bushes.  I think another shot of fertilizer might be helpful, too.

The Hansa rose bush that was already here next to the house when we moved in 4 years ago is doing tremendously well!

The columbines are doing so beautifully now, pink, yellow and white blossoms cover the plants. These plants will grow well in shady conditions. Columbines don't like to be moved once they are established, however. Columbines, like lupines, have a long tap root and they don't do well when they are dug up and moved.  The 'old' plant will look great for 3 or 4 years, but then they often die back so it is important to let some seeds reproduce new little columbine plants to replace the old ones that die back.

My 'Angel bed' is one of my favorite flower beds. The lupines are blooming excessively there this year and the monkshood (aconitum) and delphiniums have fat buds and are going to bloom soon, too. The pink Lavatara and the portulaca have both started to bloom now.  (Portulaca is like a tiny succulent cactus plant and I love the tiny double blossoms they get all summer long!)