September 1st, 2011 - Winding Down

Have been without internet service for over 10 days so this post is late in coming:

It’s September already! Where did the summer go?  Judging by the weather, which is fabulous, there’s still lots of summer left to experience. We are having hot sunny days with very little rain. That used to be the ‘normal’ summer weather here for the first number of summers, but in the last two summers we have had a LOT of rain, particularly this summer where we rarely went even 3 days without some kind of precipitation. 

We have however, been lucky out here at the south side of Buffalo Lake in that we have missed out on most of the hail! We did get a small amount twice, but my friend B in Red Deer had hail  8 or 10 times this summer alone!

Red Durango Marigolds

Some of my flower beds are no longer looking great, like my long bed where I clipped down all the maltese cross plants and the delphiniums to try and keep the reseeding to a minimum.  One lone little blanket flower at the far end of that bed is just starting to bloom. It doesn't get as much sun as the one in my round 'Angel bed'.  The sea lavender in my long bed still has a faint blur of tiny flowers on its tall stems to add a bit of color.  The lysemackia ‘creeping jenny’ has creeped its lime green tentacles  along the edges of that flower bed providing some great ground cover.

The tall false sunflower helianthus (or is it heliopsis, I’m never sure which to call it) in the middle of my round ‘Angel bed’ is still displaying a profusion of yellow multi-petaled blossoms.  

Arizona Sun Guillardia (blanket flower)

I cut back the monkshood and maltese crosses in that bed and the lilies are almost finished now. The Star gazer lilies are still looking fabulous!

Star Gazer lilies

The Arizona Sun guillardia (blanket flower) is full of beautiful sunny blooms and the annuals are looking great: gazanias, and lavataras especially. 

Gazanias

My cactus dahlias are impressively beautiful! There are 2 red ones, one in the angel bed, one in a pot on the deck. The most stunning one one though, is the orange/ yellow Firebird Dahlia in my old stack stone bed. 

Firebird Dahlias

In that stack stone bed the lavatara are looking great and the snapdragons started blooming again which adds a nice splash of color. The golden yellow Morden Sunrise rose is blooming in that bed for the third time this summer!  :)  

Speaking of rose bushes, on Aug. 31 we dug 2 small Manitoba Maple saplings out of my stack stone bed and I planted my “Love” hybrid tearose bush there. I hope that it likes its new home. It grew so fabulously well in the tiny pot which it was in all summer, providing me with 4 beautiful red and white roses. It is only a zone 4 rose bush, though, (and we are only Zone 3 here), so I will have to do an especially good job of providing winterizing protection to help it survive the cold winter weather we always get.

cactus dahlias

We planted the maple saplings in the wild brushy part of our acreage, behind the swing set.  (Many of the poplars there are dead or dying and we want to try and encourage more trees to grow to replace them. They provide privacy screening from the road, as well as dust collection from the dry gravel.)

Tall golden colored sunflowers have sprouted up in various beds, and some are gigantic! The biggest ones are in my new stack stone bed. I always try and imagine how those seeds came to be where they are, (since I didn’t plant them myself); It’s always a bit of a mystery. Most of the potted tomato plants on the deck also had sunflowers sprout in them so I know that those seeds must have originated in the Triple Mix soil bag. But who put them there??? I think it was one of the little rodents that live here in the environmental reserve around our yard...   

The rudbeckia are still fabulously gorgeous. The 'Autumn Colors' annuals are huge and the perennial Black eyed Susans are full of flowers this year. 

Rudbeckia "Autumn Colors"

 The echinacea coneflower that I planted 3 years ago are also finally blooming well. It takes about 3 years for them to really establish themselves, I understand. I had a few tries that didn’t make it, notably the ‘white swan’ variety of echinacea, but I have so many white shasta daisies that I don’t know why I tried to plant white coneflowers anyway... 

‘Nuff said!