April Bloom Day

Life's been more than a little hectic in recent months, and I've been taking a break from blogging.  All's well here though.  Life has been going on as usual, and spring is upon us once again in the Chicago area.  Snowdrops are fading,

Hellebores are blooming,

scillas too.

 

This hellebore may be reverting to single blooms.  There are more singles than doubles. These blooms are on the same plant as the doubles up above.  Last year this plant didn't bloom at all.  Maybe it didn't like the early-spring heat.

This hellebore is still doing what it's always done.

Warmer weekend weather coaxed a few daffodil buds open.

I love these split-cup daffodils. 

We're way behind in blooms compared to last year when March brought temperatures in the 70's and even 80's.  This has been a more normal spring, actually a bit cooler than usual, and a lot rainier than last year.  I'm grateful.  Last spring's hot, dry weather continued through summer.  A cooler, rainier summer would be nice this year.  Can we order that?  Trees and shrubs, everything flora and fauna could use a break. 

Hope you all here in the northern hemisphere are enjoying normal spring weather, and enough rain. To see more April blooms, please visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

January Bloom Day

It's another relatively mild winter so far in Chicagoland.  The snow thrower hasn't moved from its storage spot yet this winter.  We've had a few snow flurries, and a little rain.  Drought in our area continues.

Again this month we have no outdoor blooms. A single Helleborus niger (Christmas rose) bud continues growing in the garden, showing no sign of opening anytime soon.  Maybe next month.

We do have this kalachoe blooming in our dining room.   Kalanchoes kept indoors here tend to get somewhat leggy,  and not so pretty when left to their own devices.  So after they bloom I'll cut them back, strip the bottom three or four sets of leaves from the cuttings, and let the cut end dry out for a day, maybe two.  Next the cuttings go in a pot filled with moist soil, deep enough to cover the stripped leaf nodes. The pot will be watered sparingly, but enough to prevent the soil from drying out until the cuttings have rooted.  Then  we'll have more of these sweet, colorful blooms next winter on new plants. The old plants don't seem to recover very well from being hacked, so they'll probably be composted.

Cactus potting soil works well for kalanchoes.  I don't bother with special soil for them though.  All-purpose potting soil works fine here as long as the pots have drain holes.  These get watered once every week or two at most.

Kalanchoes thrive on neglect. They like this sunny south window, and they like to dry out between watering once they're well-rooted.  In December they get a little fertilizer, and by sometime in January they bloom.

The African violet has been blooming for over a month - cheap thrills and winter color. 

The Thanksgiving cactus bloomed on time, and again at Christmas. This month it has a few fat buds and one about to open, with many more small buds still growing. This plant will often rebloom through spring if I remember to fertilize it now and then.

I hope you're enjoying a few blooms this month, either in your garden or indoors.   To see more Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day posts, please visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

December Bloom Day

It's that time of year again, when we turn to indoor blooms for entertainment.  The African violet gets little attention during the gardening season, but now that the outdoor blooms are gone for awhile,  she gets some love, and a little fertilizer, and she'll bloom off and on all winter.  African violets are cheap thrills - this one came from the grocery store for under $5.00.  She's perfectly happy with a little water, good drainage, and some fertilizer now and then.

African violets can get leggy, floppy, unstable, and start looking unattractive as older, lower leaves wilt and fall off.   The solution I've found for that is every year, maybe two,  I re-pot.  All I do is carefully remove the pot, slice off an inch or two of roots at the bottom, and add a little fresh soil to the bottom of the pot - just a little.  I leave enough room in the pot to sink the plant down enough to cover the leggy stem and stabilize the plant so it's not floppy anymore.  Then I add more soil to the top of the pot, water, and fertilize.  It renews the plant beautifully, and it looks brand-new again.  I've done it twice with this one, and I'll do it again whenever it needs a fresh start. 

A few things are blooming in the basement greenhouse, including this little fuchsia.  If she makes it through winter, she'll be visited by hummingbirds in the garden again next year, spring through fall.

I hope you're enjoying a few indoor blooms this month too, or you're somewhere warm and still enjoying blooms in your garden.

Happy Bloom Day all!  To see more Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day posts, please visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

October Bloom Day

Blooms around here in October are getting fewer, and further between.   We haven't had frost yet, and there's still some color in our garden.  

These mums were planted in spring three years ago, and they've returned each year.  Planting them in spring helps with hardiness.  Their roots get established and they're less likely to heave in winter.  We think it helps not cutting them back in the fall too.  Stems cut back in fall tend to hollow out and soak in moisture that can rot the roots.  In our garden most things don't get cut back until spring.  Fallen leaves tend to collect around the stems this way too, and that helps insulate and protect them until spring.  That's calamint blooming behind the mums.

Our mini-rose has been blooming continuously all summer.  It's never done that before.  A couple of years ago it even bloomed through an early-December snow.

'Rozanne' has slowed down some, but she keeps blooming until frost gets her.

Gomphrena 'Fireworks' is still going.

Next year the lowly wax begonia will likely replace impatiens here.  I'm tired of watering impatiens, and most of them succumbed to downy mildew this year  - not only in our yard, but all around the area - both the singles and the doubles.

They're not flowers anymore, but the brown balls Previously Known as Coneflowers will make good food for the critters around here well into late fall.  It's not unusual for squirrels to bite them off and carry them away.

You may be able to see the work of critters here  on these mums.  Most years rabbits eventually eat all the mum blooms.

This group of sedums gets just a little afternoon sun.  If I didn't pinch them early in they season they'd be flopping all over, but don't let anyone tell you sedums are just for full sun.  They're great in dry shade,  and pollinators love them in our garden.  This is a spot where many other plants, both natives and cultivars, have been tried and failed.  Here, the roots of silver maples, a serviceberry, and a hedge of mature arborvitaes all come together, and this spot is dry, dry, dry.  But the sedums don't mind at all.

More wax begonias still going strong long after the impatiens bit the dust.

I'm not sure which asters these are.  I do know pinching them a couple of times in late spring and early summer helps keep them from getting leggy and floppy.

This bunch of  'Autumn Joy' sedums got pinched too, even though they get a little more sun than the others. Pinching back tall sedums once or twice early in the season really does help with floppiness.   Another NOID aster mingling with the sedums is just about to bloom.  This one has teeny white blooms too, but it's got a slightly different form from the one pictured earlier, and it blooms later.

The last hardy cyclamen left is blooming, but not as prolifically as in previous years.  The other two seem to have dissapeared.  

Every two or three days since late spring, I've been enjoying a little handful of these heirloom French strawberries.  I started them from seeds from Renee's Garden two springs ago.  The flowers are cute, the berries are delicious, and the plants form pretty mounds.  They can be divided, but there are no runners on these strawberries.  They produce a nice little crop all season long, even in just part sun.

Heuchera villosa 'Mocha' blooms all season.

This is the latest I can remember still seeing phlox blooms around here.  This one's a NOID from a fellow Master Gardener.  Chocolate Joe Pye weed was also blooming in our garden, until something stepped on it last week and broke the stems.

After a very hot, very dry summer, October's been chilly.  It feels more like November than early October.  While we haven't had a frost or freeze yet, all the tender plants came in last weekend just to be safe.  I'm always glad when that task is done!

In spite of the drought, fall colors have beautiful.  And this weekend we had the first substantial rain here    since early August.

Happy Bloom Day all, and to see more October blooms, please visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

September Bloom Day

Our long, hot, dry summer has given way to September's milder temperatures.  We're still short on rain, but the  cool nights and mild days, especially this week, have been welcome relief.

This overwintered canna has been blooming for a few weeks, making this one of my favorite spots in the garden lately.

Double impatiens and 'Diamond Frost' euphorbia are among my favorite hanging baskets this month.

'Rozanne' is my favorite geranium.  Here, she's seen with my favorite oxalis.

'David's Lavender' is one of my favorite phlox varieties.  Even during this very hot dry summer, this tall phlox kept all its foliage, and suffered no powdery mildew.  It was one of the earliest phlox to start blooming, and one of the last still going.

Seen with Agastache 'Blue Fortune,' this was one of my favorite coneflowers this year.  It had the most blooms of a single coneflower plant, and the goldfinches left its petals alone.

Sky blue aster, new last year, has upstaged the smooth blue as my favorite this month.

'Autumn Bride' is my favorite heuchera this time of year.  Amazingly, the bunnies haven't eaten any of the flower scapes (yet.)  Behind 'Autumn Bride,' 'Autumn Joy' sedum is just starting to color up.  They're my favorite sedums this year, since I remembered to pinch them in June, and they didn't flop,

(unlike the un-pinched 'Matrona' flopping into 'Autumn Bride' on the bottom right.)

Hanging basket fuchsias are the hummingbirds' favorites, now that the cardinal flowers are finished for the season (and maybe finished for good after the swale went completely dry for the first time since I've here.)

Gomphrena 'Fireworks' is my favorite new annual in the garden this year.

The last black-eyed susan still blooming, just behind Japanese anemones, and next to an upright 'Matrona'  I remembered to pinch.

Of all my favorite blooms in the garden this month, this is my very favorite-ist of all, shown at night when it's not only gorgeous, but amazingly fragrant too.  'Sunset' variegated angel's trumpet is in the midst of it's best show all summer, with two dozen blooms and as many buds yet to open.

There are a lot of favorites here during one of my very favorite months of the year.  I can't remember a time when the mild days of September were more welcome.

For everyone who survived one of, if not the hottest summers on record in the Chicago area, the United States, and around the globe, I hope you're enjoying a mild September so far, with plenty of rain, and cool, refreshing evenings.  Happy Bloom Day to all, and Happy Fall  (almost!)

For more Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day posts, please visit our host, Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

August Bloom Day

It's high summer here, and in the Chicago area we've been getting some welcome, and much needed relief from this year's record heat and drought.  The garden is grateful, and so am I.  

Salvia x sylvestris 'Blue Hill' has been oblivious to the weather, maintained its clean foliage as usual, and as long as it's deadheaded regularly, it keeps blooming all season.

Here in a small corner in front where lava rock has been pushed away and the ongoing battle with a neighbor's ivy is waged, an unnamed phlox, Sedum 'Matrona' , a seedling baptisia, and young native grasses grown with seeds from Monica this spring have done well with little rain.  

These are the delicate seedheads of petite purple love grass.

 Here's the whole little plant, along with a couple of flopping phlox stems. This, along with four other kinds of grasses, are my first forays into native grasses.  They were  all easy to start from seeds, and didn't need much coddling in spite of the hot, dry weather.  I kept them in gallon pots until mid-July.  Now in the garden, they're all growing and thriving.  I'm loving this little native grass and hoping the other larger grasses will bloom this year too.

Thank you for the seeds, Monica!

'Happy Returns' daylilies were sheared to the ground about a month ago to clean up the yellow and brown foliage.  Within a week they were back up, and blooming again a few days later.  Still blooming now, they're looking a lot better with clean foliage.

 I wait for angel's trumpet blooms all summer.  They're exquisitely fragrant,

 and beautiful too, don't you think?

Combined with the fragrance from Hosta plantaginea, 

Hosta plantaginea 'Aphrodite' (fully-open bloom further down, below,) and Sambac jasmine (not pictured,) the evening through early morning scents on our patio and floating on light breezes through open windows are simply divine.

Double impatiens are staples in a couple of hanging baskets almost every year here.  I like them with the airy blooms of Diamond Frost euphorbia.  Is there anything Diamond Frost doesn't go well with?

 We like impatiens in multiple colors.

Purple coneflowers are still looking fresh.  So far this season, the goldfinches haven't pulled off all the petals.

Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm' is about a foot shorter, with fewer blooms than usual.  Pollinators ignore these cultivars.  I'm thinking we need the natives.  Starting native plants from seed takes patience, but it's rewarding, cheap thrills. 

Here's Hosta plantaginea 'Aphrodite,' the morning after the first-ever bloom opened.  They open at night.  They're notoriously slow to bloom after planting.  It took seven years for this one. Unlike most other hostas, The scapes barely rise above the foliage. The foliage is solid, deep green. I love the texture, elegance, substance, shade, and shape of it.  The flowers make lovely icing.

Hibiscus 'Midnight Marvel' is a new introduction this year.  All of us who attended Walters Gardens' Media Day last week got to bring one home.  How thoughtful it was to obligingly open its first bloom just in time for Bloom Day.  

I've made peace with Agastache 'Blue Fortune's' grey-blue foliage.  It performs well in our garden, returns faithfully each year, and while it's not as full as usual, it's tolerated the heat and drought here well.  Although they're cultivars, pollinators are all over them.

Rudbeckia 'Herbstsonne' is a cross between two native rudbeckias.  Pollinators love them in our garden, but they haven't performed nearly as well as they usually do in more normal summer weather.  The plants are severely stunted and not blooming as much as usual.  The two smallest plants have powdery mildew.

Hummingbirds visit this fuchsia multiple times every day.

Cardinal flowers are another hummingbird favorite here.  They look better most years.  I'm glad they survived the hottest summer here on record.

Here's 'Midnight Marvel' fully open a few hours later.

Late summer is one of my favorite times in our garden.  This month, with it's milder temperatures and good rains so far, has been beautiful here.  I hope you're enjoying beautiful weather, enough rain, and lots of blooms in your garden this month.

Happy Bloom Day, and to see what's blooming in gardens everywhere today, please visit our host, Carol at May Dreams Gardens.