Long Absence

Blue calabash and orange gazanias

After a 4 week absence from my garden it was wonderful to see it again!  August is not the best time to leave your garden behind, but it's not often that we get the opportunity to visit Europe. Luckily we found someone to water my deck pots and house plants (our pet sitters) and Mother nature took care of watering the flower beds and the vegetable garden. Normally we get very little rain here at Buffalo Lake in July and August so the weather cooperated beautifully this summer, I am pleased to report. I wasn't sure what state my garden would be in when we returned. Many things have actually grown quite lushly in our absence! (So much for plants needing human TLC!)

Star gazer lilies

In the time we have been away, so much has changed!  I regret that I missed the blooming of many of my oriental lilies, but the star gazer lilies are still going strong and smelling spectacularly! And amazingly enough, several other lilies are still in the bud stage, getting ready to open, so I will be able to enjoy them soon.  (Surprisingly, the deer have not found those tasty morsels, but the secret there is to keep the deer from establishing your garden as an eating location right at the beginning of the growing season. Then they don't come on a regular basis to browse. The deer deterrent spray 'Plant Skydd' has done wonders in that respect.)

Cactus dahlias started from tubers in the house in spring

My red cactus dahlias are even more spectacular than before! It is the first thing you notice when you look out at my 'stack stone bed'. I have had these particular dahlia tubers for over 6 years now and they continue to be dazzling every year. Of course it is a certain amount of work to dig the tubers up every fall and over-winter them in the laundry room till spring, since they are soft bulbs, but the small amount of work is rewarded in a big way!  I really have no idea what the average life of a dahlia tuber is. Because the plant keeps making new tubers each summer alongside the old, I'm not sure from year to year the ages of the ones I keep. (I usually just keep the biggest tubers each year.)

Then there's my late blooming fireglow dahlia which just began to open yesterday! It's a beautiful firey yellow/ orange color... very autumnlike. This is one year that I'm not complaining about how slow it is!  But since dahlias are very susceptible to frost, I will have to start watching the nighttime weather forecasts for frost warnings and cover them as needed.


My Morden rose bushes continue to amaze me! The new little 'Morden Ruby' that I had planted this June is covered in small but spectacular deep red blossoms and my 'Blush' is blooming beautifully for the second time this summer with an abundance of baby pink flowers.

Helianthus needs more staking...

Many of the sunflowers that my marmot garden helpers had planted in my flower beds are blooming now was well. I love the sunny little heads of the sunflowers as they gaze adoringly at the sun, basking in its warm rays!  My helianthus growing in the middle of my 'Angel bed' is  about 7 feet tall now and needs to be staked up better. It's drastically leaning at one side!  I had put 4 long stakes in the ground and wrapped string around it when it was shorter, but now it has outgrown it and needs more string closer to the top. (Will get my favorite garden helper (my husband) to help me do that today.)

Purple echinacea flowers, purple liatris spike, remains of blue sage flowers, 1 small yellow sunflower

My echinacea (cone flowers) are looking so fabulous! I love their huge purple blossoms on top of the tall stately stems. It took 3 years to get this plant to this stage, and many of the other cone flowers I tried to grow kept dying. But I persisted and I have 2 others as well, each in other beds, but they are not looking as gorgeous as this one which is located at the top of my rock garden next to the deck.

My gayfeather (mauve colored) liatris has pretty long spikes of flowers now, but is crowded out by the huge blue sage and the cone flower. My white liatris in the same bed is only looking mediocre. Again, probably not enough sun due to the aggressive growth of the other perennials around it.
I like this plant and would love to get a few more, but I would need to find a better location, I think.
The interesting thing about the liatris is that the blossoms open the opposite order of most other plants which start blooming at the bottom of the spike and work upwards. The liatris opens the tiny blossoms at the top of the flower spike first and then works downwards.

My favorite gazania's "tiger eyes"

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours in my flower beds clipping the spent maltese cross which have all gone to seed now. Normally I clip the tops of the maltese cross in mid August as they finish blooming(to prevent the massive spread of the tiny poppy seed-like seeds), keeping some of the greenery. Then in late September I cut them down to about 6 inches in time for winter. This year, though, I decided to skip step 1 and proceed right to step 2 and I have cut them right down. I also started trimming my many delphiniums which have also gone to seed.  I still have my long bed down the middle of the yard to tackle where most of the delphiniums reside and the other 50 % of my maltese cross.

Today the weather promises to be sunny and warm, +23C according to the forecast so I plan on spending part of the afternoon in my flower beds. But my kayak is calling me, too, so I think I will listen to that call as well. I look forward to floating on the still waters of Buffalo lake again, enjoying the birds and the sunshine, at least until the boaters and sea-doers all descend for the Labor day weekend.

Found the catnip!