A Three Sisters Bloom Day for May 2012

 This post was written by me, Annie in Austin, for my Transplantable Rose Blog.


Philo and I enjoyed the flowers that bloomed here on the 15th but May 15th was not my target date this month. The truly important date came a few days later when my sisters popped in from Illinois for a long weekend. They really came to visit our Austin family, not to see plants, but I still wanted the garden to shine.

Josie and Hannah have visited Austin before but only in fall. This time my gardening sisters and I would have our own special Garden Bloom Day for May. Some favorite plants didn't cooperate... 'Julia Child' rose had just finished a bloom cycle and it's too early for the 'Acoma' crepe myrtles

 

but a few Magnolia buds looked promising

 

We planned on meeting other family members at local restaurants for some meals but in a pre-houseguest tizzy I also cooked old favorites like Shredded Chicken with Peppers and baked a Cheesecake. Philo and I could hardly wait for our beloved guests to arrive! 

The front-garden greeting committee included the Mutabilis Rose. This enormous shrub rose used to be in shade by mid-May, but since the recent demise of Arizona Ash #2, it's still in sun and has continued to bloom.

Although Hesperaloe is called Red Yucca, it sure looks fluorescent pink to me. That's why this native relative of asparagus grows in the Pink Entrance Garden with Cherry Skullcap at its feet. Things would have been even more gaudy but the 'Belinda's Dream' rose behind the Hesperaloe was Resting Between Engagements.

The Vitex agnus-castus/Chaste tree caught Josie's eye as she went to the veranda steps. It had started to open over the weekend, the shrub resembling the unrelated Butterfly bushes while the color and shape of the blooms look a little like lilacs.
Like many plants here, the look of the flower draws you to smell it, but Vitex flower heads have only a vaguely herby-meadowy smell rather than a scent worth making into perfumes. 

In a similar way you can be drawn to the beauty of many Salvias while being repelled by the funky smell. Mexican Mint marigold flowers are not as beautiful as salvias, but the foliage smells better in an inside vase.    

For more than 50 years a peony that once grew in my grandmother's garden has been divided and shared around the family. In Illinois, Peonies and Lilacs rule the month of May with both color and fragrance but they can't live here so I had to leave them behind.
Luckily, Grandma's peony still blooms in the gardens of my sisters and cousins. My sister Hannah cut three flowers that were just beginning to show petal color and tucked them into her suitcase. I recut them and put them in water, and the first one opened two days later. 

My sisters' daylilies bloom at the end of June and during July, but in Austin they flower in late April and May. The old-fashioned orange daylily bloomed with Larkspur in April but by the time my sisters came it was done and the larkspur was going to seed. 'Devonshire' had open flowers, with purple-blue supplied by Mealy blue sage.

 

I brought 'Prairie Blue Eyes' to Austin with me in 1999 and it still looks good. 

 

A passalong daylily from Pam Penick, 'Best of Friends', was having a spectacular year - nine stems with 8 huge flowers open at once

 The dwarf 'Vi's Apricot' daylily had been blooming for weeks, a passalong from a friend in Illinois. My sisters took divisions of this little flower home to plant in their gardens - even though Vi can no longer garden, her special plant will keep on blooming.

My sisters saw the buds of the citron daylily - the original plant didn't live through summer 2011 but I'd moved a small division near the house. One flower opened yesterday.

The Cenizo/Texas sage had popped some flowers - today it's covered in blooms

Hannah & Josie liked the 'Red Cascade' climbing mini-rose mixed into the Rosemary

They liked the two-tone flowers of 'Hot Lips' salvia

 

 

  

They wondered how tropical milkweed would do in Illinois

And liked the pure light blue of Plumbago with Purple oxalis

They were here when the Hydrangea x Bliss 'Sweet Carol' bloomed for the first time since 2008.

They got to see dwarf pomegranates forming

 and to see small Meyer's lemons growing on the tree behind the house

The garden was full of birds this week - we watched them from the breakfast room and in the garden- here's a white-winged dove herding a fledgling under cover

And before they left, they encountered a genuinely lovely Southern scent - Magnolia blossoms on the 'Little Gem' tree.

 

We had a wonderful time but the few days went by in a blur - the entire family group liked Trudy's patio

 But all too soon they were rolling the suitcases away 

Now it seems like summer instead of May... yesterday we got the first tomatoes of 2012. 

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose Blog... probably much too late for the roundup of GBBD posts by May Dreams Carol 

Ed May 25, 2012. The complete list is now up at Annie's Addendum. 

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day May 2011

For those of us who have posted for GBBD from its beginnings in February 2007, this is the fifth time that we're showing our May blooms. Participation in this ritual may now require alcohol ... one drink to celebrate those parts of the garden that are better after 5 seasons... and a second glass raised as consolation after viewing GBBD photos of dead-and-gone lovelies.Woe for the Passionvine, the 'Happy Returns' daylily, the Sweet Peas, the Malva zebrina AKA French hollyhocks, the gardenia, the single mockorange, the aloe in flower!

Most of my flowers are the same plants that have appeared here every May - their return is comforting and rhythmic, giving the illusion of stability in the garden, even in the erratic climate of Austin,Texas.

'Best of Friends' daylily from Pam seems happy and established: The small rebloomer known as 'Vi's Apricot' has been divided into several plants, adding repetition to the borders. A GBBD photo reminds me to appreciate the individual flowers:Hemerocallis 'Devonshire' has been here a couple of years and so has the orange Ditch Lily kindly passed along by Lori the Gardener of Good and Evil. The larkspur is an annual - first added in 2005. Last year there were just a few reseeded plants but this year it appeared everywhere!
After 5 years the 'Little Gem' magnolia has filled out. It was not quite in bloom for April GBBD but there have been dozens of fragrant flowers in the past four weeks. Today's bloom now fades as new buds swell: Four weeks ago the reddish purple Clematis by the back door was in full bloom. The very last flower opened today. On the other side of the back door there are Tropical Milkweed plants in bloom and the first flowers of the blue plumbago. The plumbago dies to the ground each winter. The milkweed can survive a mild winter but last February was not mild. I bought a couple of new plants in early spring and since then seedlings have appeared from last summer's plants - they'll catch up soon.

Salvia guaranitica grew near the back fence when we bought this house - we brought Salvia 'Black and Blue' with us in a deck pot and introduced them to each other in 2005:
With those two blues as background, a patriotic May border just sort of happened. The Shasta daisies came from the previous house, a pure red Salvia greggii was a passalong from my Divas of the Dirt friend Mindy. Salvia elegans/Pineapple sage seemed to fit in easily. A visit to the garden of Jill Nokes made me seek out Salvia 'Hot Lips'. Seeing 'Diamond Frost' Euphorbia in the garden of Pam/Digging made me want it- growing the Euphorbia last year turned me into a fan.

'Blue River II' Hibiscus grew in our Illinois garden, survived 5 years in the previous deck garden, and is now established here. It isn't in bloom yet but the buds promise many large white flowers.
The Bluebonnets & Texas Paintbrush that looked good for April GBBD are still flowering in the mini-meadow, joined now by the reseeding orange cosmos.
Last year I let too many self-seeded sunflowers grow wherever they sprouted. One of them shaded two small orchid-purple Salvia greggii plants at the end of the meadow bed, stunting their growth. This year the sunflowers are confined to another spot. The salvias are already responding to the space & light.
Another plant also appreciates the new Sunflower rules. Last year this Perovskia/Russian sage grew sideways in the shade - this year it stands upright, making a see-through mist of tiny blue-purple flowers. The magenta and white flowers of Rose of Sharon are barely visible at back-top of the fence. Between the Rose of Sharon and the lavender-blue Perovskia is another small-flowered plant tending more to pinky-lilac in color - Poliomintha bustamanta/Mexican Oregano
Up front in the Pink Entrance Garden the pink skullcaps/Scutellaria suffrutescens have rebounded after winter's deadwood was snipped off:

A native skullcap blooms in the parkway strip, Purple skullcap/Scutellaria wrightii. It's done so well that I bought a few starter plants to try in other places.


Last winter the 'Patrick' abutilon froze in its pot in the Secret Garden so this replacement 'Patrick' will come inside when it gets cold. The 2010 Patrick grew as one single stalk but this year's plant has been cut back to see if it will make multiple stems. I gave Patrick a Torenia for company.
Two plants surprised me this month - both native plants. For the April GBBD I photographed a newly planted Salvia regla/Mountain sage in bloom - but it had buds when I bought it so that wasn't the surprise. Now the established older plant has bloomed- it's never made flowers in spring before - only in autumn. Is this a result of our odd weather or did something about the new one having flowers trigger the bloom?Fragrant mistflower/Ageratina havanensis has always been an autumn bloomer, too - but this May I'm seeing Mistflower with Larkspur.
A recent surprise wasn't a flower - it was another bird sighting to add to those in the last few posts. Local bird expert Mikael Behrens identified this green visitor to the birdbath fountain for me... it's a female Painted Bunting. Seeing a colorful male would also be fun.

I'll bet you'll find many more surprises in the posts linked at Carol/May Dreams Gardens Garden Bloggers Bloom Day Roundup.

(added abt 3 PM on May 16th - complete bloom day LIST with botanical names and more photos has been posted at Annie's Addendum Broke 100 this month!)

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, June 2009

Welcome to Garden Blogger Bloom Day the monthly Floral Circus presided over by May Dreams Carol. Guess it's time to take a break from writing about what the Divas of the Dirt have been up to lately and write about what's in bloom at Circus~Cercis. Holding our GBBD meetings on the 15th of the month didn't work out for a few flowers - the White Delphinium ignored the calendar and bloomed for two weeks around the 1st of the month.

You missed 'Best of Friends' when it was at its prettiest - this photo is from May 24th. This pretty passalong daylily from Pam/Digging still opens flowers, but when temperatures graze 100°F every day, the flower color is paler.
You totally missed my new 'Devonshire' daylily bought at the Austin Hemerocallis Show and Sale. It had three stalks, each with lots of buds but they finished last week.


You've arrived just in time for the native Flame Acanthus blooming near the front door - another passalong from Pam/Digging.
At the end of the veranda these Blue Balloonflowers don't look too stressed yet... this is Platycodon grandiflora, carried to Texas from Illinois as tiny seedlings.
Cross the drive to the Pink Entrance Bed and see the first Coneflowers of the year- these are Echinacea 'Purple Stars', with natives pink gaura, Red yucca and pink skullcap, Mexican oregano, white trailing lantana, more balloonflowers and...one of the purple larkspurs which usually reseed in spring. In April 2008 they bloomed at 6' tall - this year only a few larkspur sprouted to bloom now.
In this border the Balloonflowers are Platycodon 'Miss Tilly'
Let's go see what's blooming inside the fence now - tropical milkweed in orange

It took the 'Acoma' crepe myrtles three years to reach the level of the fence - they look established now! That's a plumeria at left - no flowers but it has buds.
Down at ground level near the right crepe myrtle these passalong crocsmia from blogger MarthaChick are also in bud, rather than bloom. I let at least one of the wild sunflowers grow every summer on the edge of the vegetable garden. It doesn't seem to bother the tomatoes and peppers growing in the little garden behind it and shouldn't sunflower seeds for goldfinches count as a crop? .

The tomato crop isn't large but there are lots of 'Juliet' grape tomatoes and enough 'Early Girls' and 'Carmellos' so that one is ripe in time for dinner every day. I didn't plant the pattypan - it's one of those lasagna-composting bonuses from a chunk of squash added last fall. We've had two so far. The native coral honeysuckle has recovered from pruning and had begun a new bloom cycle.


Look at the shape of those flowers - no wonder the hummingbirds visit them.
The hummingbirds like the Salvia coccinea in the center of the back yard, too - that blur is a hummingbird and that lavender flower in the corner is another confused larkspur.
Sometimes the best color in an Austin heatwave is no color at all... it's White 'Fuji' balloonflowers and white coneflowers with silver gray Lambs Ears, a passalong from my friend Carole.
The color can be a surprise White Calla lily from a clump that hasn't bloomed in a few yearsIt's the White of the fragrant white abelia and the fluffy white crepe myrtles.



But my favorite is still White sails of the Blue River II Hibiscus, another plant carried from Illinois


The hibiscus reminds me of something else that slipped by in the last couple of weeks - my first blog post on June 7, 2006 was about them. These past three years of blogging have been great fun - thanks to all of you, especially MSS of Zanthan Gardens and Pam/Digging, the first garden bloggers I met and my inspirations from the beginning.

Carol will have links to all the GBBD participants and as usual, the list of all plants in bloom with my closest guesses at their proper botanical names can be found at Annie's Addendum.