Gardening, anyone?
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still recovering from last chemo so haven't been out much in the garden. Finally managed a short period with a thorough watering. Couldn't resist this reward for myself:
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Jackie- I am sorry to hear you are still coming through chemo recovery. I only had surgery and rads, but have a good friend who just finished chemo and she is much the same as you. Just taking time to recover and she is anemic from the whole thing, but getting better. Chemo is so hard on the body (well, any of the treatments are really). I hope you continue to feel better each and every day.
We broke a rainfall record in the last 24 hours. We have not had a full day of rain, but I guess the monsoonal storms between last night through this afternoon are real soakers! We got 2.24 inches, with the average rainfall at 8 inches annually. It is going to rain off and on all week so we may get our annual rainfall this week from the sounds of it.
Good for the trees, shrubs and flowers......
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Flavia - can i move in too
Hope you are feeling better jackbirdie!!
hugs to all, love the flower show.
Delphinium - love the fake bees in delphs !
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Daylily-wow, that is lovely. Love the fake bee too! Nature is so clever!
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To all the avid gardeners: holds hands out to heart-warming flowers and gardens! Stlll trying to figure out to upload some of my own! A bit overgrown, because of the surgeries (not all cancer) in the past year, but a place of calm for me as I'm sure yours are for you.
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Hello ladies, does anyone have ponds in there yards? I love watching my goldfish and enjoy the plants in the ponds.
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No pond here but I love going to the garden center that has a koi pond in the gift shop and snack bar area. One day they kept following me as I walked the length of their area. My friend pointed out that I had on a red shirt which is what the employees who feed them wear. Poor disappointed koi.
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Garden is growing well in all this hot weather we've been having!
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We have a small pond that we dug in a field that has a spring in it. No liner. In late summer with dry weather it can dry up, so no fish. I do have some water lilies and a wonderful population of frogs and tadpoles. I've also planted around the perimeter: daylillies, comfrey, mint, lupines, helianthus, black raspberries, iris, and some wildflowers.
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looking tasty Monis!!
great pond flaviarose, i like your choice of plants to surround it.
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OOhh love all the photos. Thanks for sharing. Delphinium and hostas.. oohh so lovely. Our garden isn't anywhere near as lush as yours Monis.. too hot and dry here. I have been too tired to weed. I will yank the heck out of the forgetmeknots neck year because they suffocated some of my favorite perienniels. Bummer.
Jazzy I am amazed at the amount of water you folks are getting. Is it breaking records? It must be.
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Rose- yes we broke a record Monday night here in ABQ for the most rain in 24 hours since they began recording it back in the late 1800s! We had a big huge soaking rain storm here this afternoon. The past few summers, our moisture switch flipped and this will be the third in a row of good summer rains. It is good for the plants, the water supply, and has had the fire problems way down. In 2011, we had one of the worst fire seasons every with fires everywhere and some very beautiful places damaged or destroyed. Too much rain brings it's problems too, flash floods and mud slides in the old burn scar areas. But so far, nothing really terrible yet with damage. Just very full arroyos!
I stopped at the local nursery I love today on my way back from an apt and found these incredible flowering artichoke plants. I did not buy one, but had never seen the artichoke flower. Aren't they amazing? I bet Flaviarose would have a great spot for this in her gardens.
Flavia- love the dog in the pond. I bet he loves that spot!
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I've never see that flower either--perfectly amazing. Is that the choke we usually find all nicely tucked inside the artichoke?
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That is it. Another similar flower is cardoon. They're related and look similar. My cardoon is blue. I've read you eat the stalks of cardoons, after peeling. I've never tried it, but if it tastes like artichoke I'll kick myself for waiting.
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I don't think I can grow artichoke it in my climate. Last year I got some seeds, planted them in the garden and they were growing nicely. I knew that frost would come before they would have a chance to flower, so I put a couple of them in pots and brought them in the house. They died :-(
The ones that I wintered over in the garden died too :-(
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I plant a lot of bee balm for the hummingbirds0 -
Scarlet runner beans for the hummingbirds0 -
Flaviarose- do you get lots of hummers in Western Mass? We have tons of them here in the summer. They stay until around October then head south to Costa Rica.
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rudebeckia0 -
OMG, I want to lay down in that field of posies.
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Flavia, How much land do you have? I would love to be able to plant big chunks of things. We have a normal city lot and it's just crammed. Room in front for 2 chairs and a little more in the back. Our deck is so full of flowers we never use it for sitting. We've had bee balm before but I think ours was blue.
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Flavia- I love that big party for the flutterbyes!
You are a true friend to the universe
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We do get hummers in western mass. Just the ruby throated kind. They come when the daffodils are almost done blooming, and leave in september.
we have about 100 acres of land. A gardener's paradise :-)
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100 acres, wow! We have 10 acres - 7 of them are a forested hillside. The remaining 3 acres are a lot of grass fields, our vegetable garden and some flower beds out front. We get hummers too - They do love the bee balm and also the foxglove and red hot pokers.
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FlaviaRose, you can't be far from me, so when I saw your glorious bee balms (one of my favorites), I ran to the window, hoping to see the same. Nope. Just a little red beginning to show on the buds. Rats.
My early hummingbirds love the flowering quince. My early blossoms are pretty much gone, summer beauties just getting ready. My hybrid purple loosestrife (not invasive like the wild kind) is just beginning to show gorgeous purple spikes. I have banks of orange daylilies in full glory. I also have fancy daylilies, but, truth to tell, while their blossoms are more beautiful, I prefer the everyday orange guys with their tall, slender stalks--far more graceful.
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Good morning ladies, well do I ever have a hummingbird story for you this morning! I was out doing some work early in the back yard and gardens as the sun was coming up and got near my desert willow tree that is blooming. I noticed there was a little broad bill hummingbird there grazing off the pink blossoms. I was very close to the tree and bird when I saw this, and just stopped and stood like a statue watching the little bird having it's breakfast. This little fellow circled his way up from the lower part of the tree, and at one point was within less than a foot from my face enjoying the nectar from one of the blossoms. I could see every detail of it's tiny body, and then, my little friend came closer to circle my head, head so close I could hear it's hum loudly and feel the breeze from it's wings on my face. Talk about a gift from nature on this saturday morning.
Here is a photo of the desert willow. I did not have anything to take a photo of that little bird, but think the memory of this will remain etched in my mind forever.
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Beautiful photos ladies. i walked a different route this morning to see what is blooming in the neighborhood. I have a bit of a lull in my perennials so I wanted to see what else is blooming. I do have yellow day lilies in bloom on the side of my house but the ones in front are more shaded and just budding. I saw a bee balmin full beautiful bloom just like the picture here
We have hummingbirds and so I feed them. They like red but once they come to your neighborhood they will come back and enjoy many kinds of flowers and Jazzy, as you saw they are not very shy. I have a fuscia colored camera and had one starring at me in a similar manner a few inches from my face. It was attracted to the color of the camera. However the click sound of the camera did scare it off so I didn't capture that picture.
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Jazzy- wonderful story! I think of these things as little (sometimes not so little, such as this one) gifts from nature. I just love hummingbirds, they were special friends to me during my surgery recovery. I still stop what I'm doing when I see them come to the feeder outside my big window. I've missed I don't know how many important points during Wimbledon during the last week!
This sounds like a magical moment, and I'm sure you won't need any photographic record to remind you. But thank you for sharing. Made my morning
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Brookside, I too love the wild daylily more than the cultivated ones. I'm about 10 minutes from Pownal Vt, a half hour from Bennington. Where are you?
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Jazzy, great hummingbird story. I love when I visit the West, so that I can see the different varieties of hummers.
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