The Ceanothus and the hedges have bloomed and settled by now, and a lot of the mid summer flowers have already arrived. Unfortunately I was on holiday to France and fell behind on my garden duties! A cold night followed by extreme heat took the blush off JJ’s roses, but there’s so many more buds on that bush that we’ll be seeing and smelling roses for the whole summer.
The pernicious snake vine also grew and you can see it sneaking in flowers here and there. It actually outcompeted the honeysuckle vine I had in a shady corner so I’ve had to cut and snip a lot of both just to give the honeysuckle a chance to recover.
I resisted photographing a lot of the plants I saw in France because it was hard to resist wanting to bring some of them back and I wanted our channel crossing to be as stress free as possible. It was a short visit but the warmth and sun, (and judicious watering by family!) meant that a lot of things put on a growth spurt. I will have to split this between several posts to get everything in!
This is JJ’s tiny Silver Inch plant and has bloomed at least 4 times this summer. Almost every time I’ve watered it!
I did some research on what was discolouring our Buddleia leaves and it’s apparently an aphid that was also inspired by the dry hot weather.I will be keeping an eye on how they do. It hasn’t stopped our Dark Knight buddleia from blooming, and as the second wave of flowers come to our garden you can see how striking the colouration is!
Houdini, our neighbours other cat, helped me solve the mystery of why I keep finding JJ’s fountain tipped over. Can’t blame him for drinking from it in this heat!
Our Begonia bloomed earlier but kept trooping on going thru the heat. I expected it to grow bigger in this pot but since it died back completely during the winter I’m grateful for the tiny flowers we do have.
The Zizi plant continues to amaze me, as its sprouted a third stalk after rapidly growing one last month that topped the original stem. This north facing window must agree with it. I swapped out a lemon tree that lived here during the winter. It’s now out in the garden enjoying the direct sun and showing a bit of new leaves itself.
I repotted one of our aloes that had grown like mad over the winter. It looks very dramatic in its new pot and location.
The three Cosmos on our fence line peaked a bit while we were gone but there are still enough flowers to enjoy. I am curious to see if the plant itself will grow to fill the pot after the blooms have dropped.
JJ’s fairy circle is growing lots of wild flowers, and deep inside some bell flowers in blue. I took some of the seeds from the Columbine that bloomed next to the greenhouse and sprinkled them liberally into the circle. Hopefully next year we’ll have several out in the open where they can be better enjoyed.
I was very surprised to find that while I was in France our alpines decided to bloom. We’ve had them for several years and they’ve never produced a single flower. I guess they like the new location and the fence pots we chose for them. More photos to come!
Time to split this entry into the ‘outside the garden’ section but first honourable mention goes to our Hydrangea. I’m really looking forward to seeing it in bloom in the next week or so.
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