It's Blooming Tuesday and I Have Very Little to Show You

When this white phlox blooms, it means the end is near.

I do have one bloom on the Endless Summer oops! Forever and Ever hydrangea. I have three Endless Summers and so far (3 yrs) they  have all been duds.

I got two magazines yesterday. The covers of both scream of fall decorating and baking.

Wouldn't you love to welcome guests with this entrance?

Here is something more manageable -- replant a container with mums.  I never do that. I wonder why...a nice planting of mums would last until early November.  I really should replant the big garage urns with mums.....hmmmmmmmmmmmm....I will have to give that some serious thought.

I love this--simply gorgeous!

Don't forget to visit Jean, our Bloooming Tuesday hostess, to see what everyone else has today.

Hair Allium puts out its Alien Flower

I showed you the hair allium bud a few weeks ago. Here is the allium 'Hair' flower: 

Isn't it wild?  I love it!
The yellow callas in a container that I hid among the flowers are beginning to bloom in the Manhattan lily garden.

These callas are a very bold yellow and I find that they don't play well with other flowers...at least with most other flowers. I have since removed them from this garden. In fact I cut them and brought them inside for a dining room table centerpiece.

The majority of my garden blooms the first two weeks of July. After this flush, it fades fast. So I take a lot of pictures in early July.
I was playing with the two containers of Ninebark that I bought this past weekend, to see if I wanted to buy a couple for the gardens. I liked it in almost every place I tried it, like behind this old milk can full of Guara.

and in back of this area:

I noticed that the astilbe blooming here is different from that in the first picture. It taller and more feathery.  I have no idea what it's called.

That Ninebark is a great backdrop for so many of my flowers.

The Lamb's Ear is blooming:

Lots of daylilies burst open this past weekend.

None of the arbor planters have really taken off yet.  So I guess I will have a few things to look forward to later in the season.

I will also have my hidden containers of canna lilies and dahlias.

  I removed this lychnis coronaria (magenta flower on the right side)

 and replaced it with a container of dark-leafed cannas.  I am a pretty big fan of dark foliage interspersed among all the green.

If you want to see more gardens, you can continue your garden walk over at Jean's Blooming Tuesday. and Garden Floral Thursday.

Who Knew that Kale Bloomed?

Our rainstorms knocked down my peonies just as they started to bloom, so I cut the fallen branches off and used them as a centerpiece on the deck.

I was able to appreciate them all weekend on the deck.

I have a lot of the yellow-flowering allium 'Molly' in bloom.

 I have them in a few different areas.

My orange impatiens have finally begun to fill out around this hosta.

They are still a tad sparse on the opposite side.
I was totally surprised to see these buds on my purple kale. Who knew that kale bloomed--not me!

We have thunderstorms predicted for tonight. I am happy because it did not rain yesterday and all the containers need watering.   I would be totally ecstatic if it would rain every other day for at least an hour.

Go visit Jean's Blooming Tuesday if you get thyme time. There are lots of interesting flowers this week.

Let the Blooming Begin!

Finally, I have lots of new bloomers!  I don't even know where to begin. I will just pick a few to showcase for Blooming Tuesday as I know most of you don't want to see a dozen or more pictures today!

First I will show the lupine that I featured awhile back.  It turned out to be pink and quite lovely.

I have to say that this is one of my biggest and best lupine blooms.  I am doing the happy dance over this one!

I also had one white poppy bloom. I LOVE this poppy called 'Royal Wedding', BUT....

I am very disappointed as I expected many white poppy blooms as this is the third year for these Breck's poppies.  Most of you know I order from Breck's and I have not been happy the past few years.  You all know the saying..........the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they LEAP!  Hmmmmmmmmmm, one bloom is no leap in my book.  I planted six poppies  (2 of 3 varieties) and this year I  have a total of 4 buds..........4 buds total for six plants--not good!

I have long forgotten where I planted which color, so I am pretty excited to see what these two luscious buds will morph in to--I am hoping they will be the gorgeous salmon-colored 'Queen Alexander'.

Update 5:00 pm:  I got home from work and the two buds opened.  I was a little let down to see they were white.

I still have two buds to open on another plant. I think that one has to be either purple or salmon.

I also have two different colored spiderworts blooming--the typical blue and the less seen magenta:

I seem to have alot of magenta this year. I probably dug up a lot of blue and threw it out last year.  It tends to take over and sometimes my patience wears thin and I just toss it out in the wooded area where it usually continues to bloom even though there is very little sun back there.  You really can't kill this plant.

Right next to the magenta spiderwort, I have an allium 'Christopherii' blooming. 

This guy started out HUGE - like 12 inches across - now I can fit it in in my palm.  I really hate how my allium get smaller and smaller each year - that is those that return - most them just die out. I love allium, but I have to treat it like an annual to get the best blooms.  That can be pretty expensive, so I don't do it.  Do any of you have this problem with allium?

My MIL gave me this white-flowering plant. She called it Sweet Annie..........it has the most wonderful sweet smell..........do any of you grow this herb? 

I have a few clumps of Dutch Iris blooming. I like them next to these chives:

Last, but not least, I show you the promise of  flowers to come:

I think I enjoy the peony buds almost as much as the flowers.

Be sure to go and visit the other participants at Jean's Blooming Tuesday.

Blooming Tuesday

It has been raining quite a bit for the past two days, so I have not been able to show you my blue paint project.  We stained the deck flooring two days ago, but with all the rain, we have not been able to get my project back where it  belongs.  For those of you dying to know ( :) ) , at the end of my Blooming Tuesday post, you will get a clue as to what I painted.  I will show you more later.

I am having ambivalent feeling about these linky parties.  I really don't understand how they work. I have been to a lot of  blogs where the authors have a separate page for the dozens of linky parties they participate in.  There was no link to the current party as there should be; just a link to the main blog of the host.    Is this acceptable?  I can  sure see that it would be a lot of time to link to 12 different parties in one post -- so much easier if you just make one page  to list the linkies, but that is not the way I understood it should be. I thought each post had to link to the current week's party so if I wander on to the post three months from now I can just click and find the whole list of participants.  However, I have not seen any linky author delete anybody who uses a separate page.  With multiple parties, it would  be quite a pain to wait for all the hosts to post their linky so you can link up.   Jean, please let me know how this works! You are about the only linky party I do here right now. 
I have some creeping phlox that just began to bloom.  I removed most of it from the Arbor Gardens last year, but I did leave a couple of small areas, like this one:

I also bought a flat of orange impatiens and planted it along the walkway.  I wonder how it is going to look when the short pink lilies begin to bloom!  I was planning to buy white impatiens, but decided that was way too boring.

Back in the rockwall garden I have some tulips blooming. I have decided to use this area as a cutting garden for flower bouquets.  I have not even started to clean up this garden. It is full of fallen branches, etc.

I noticed a nice group of purple peony tulips and some very small Princess Irene orange tulips in bloom. I cut them all down and decided to make a centerpiece bouquet from them.

I added a few other bloomers, like this ajuga...

I ended up with this purple/orange bouquet:

I just love it!

You can see what I used that bouquet for if you click here.

Happy Blooming Tuesday! Click here to visit the other participants.