hazel's gardens so far...not dead yet!
 

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Here are some of the flowers I've had this year. I'm [I]verrrry [/I]happy...not too much carnage out there this year! :thumbs up

Just outside the back door, growing out of some rocks, is a wild geranium, one of my favorite wildflowers:

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The peonies seemed to really like our rainy spring...and even the dog raids didn't decimate them too badly (you might be able to see all the tomato cages I strategically locate in the garden...they keep the dog damage to a minimum! :laughing:)

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[CENTER][I][B][COLOR="Purple"]The black-eyed susans are loverly in the well garden:

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Back in the main garden, I had a surprise Sweet William come up (didn't notice that one even bloomed last year :rolleyes:)

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And the lupines bloomed for the very first time in 3 years!

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[CENTER][I][B][COLOR="Purple"]The Spiderwort thrived (throve? :o) in the spring rains. The plants are more than a meter in height and they're still blooming profusely:

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The Stella d'Oro lily is doing well, too!

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And the Daylilies coming up through the Spiderwort are absolutely breathtaking this year!

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[CENTER][I][B][COLOR="Purple"]Finally, a shot of strawberries and Salvia firecrackers in the Hummingbird Garden...

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...a shot of the new birdbath and the hanging impatiens before the phlox and the lilies grew up this spring...

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...and a shot of the entire Hummingbird Garden including the feeder stations for anyone interested in where hazel's hummmer friends hang out. :D

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The lilies on the right are still in bloom. The phlox on the left will bloom just about as the lilies are spent. The red flowers behind the firecrackers (in front where there is marginally more sun) are impatiens and will fill in even more by August. There is also a coral bells and pulmonaria hidden in back next to a columbine, a purple petunia that I have no idea how it got there, some purple violas and a volunteer common milkweed plant that is gloriously green but probably doesn't get enough sun to ever bloom. You can see hazel's brave milkweed halfway between the bird bath and the left edge of the picture.

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Ooooooo, Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, BEEEEEEAUTIIIIIIIIIFUL :thumbs up

I'm very jealous though.... other than Sweet William and Jacobs ladder my garden is nothing but GREEN.... the most lush green ya ever saw but not a flower in sight. A couple of warm and sunny days and things might be just beautiful but, no such thing anytime in our future (can we borrow the crystal ball Madame Hazel??) Not even the "wildflower" patch is showing a flower (but there are buds)

Heee, heee all the fencing etc. makes me smile... I have similar but to keep chickens out :laughing:

You must have the happiest hummers around :cloud9:
I love the bird bath!

I didn't think our flowers were ever going to bloom, either, but it finally warmed up enough to get 'em revved up.

The birdbath was supposed to have a bird on it, but when we unpacked it, it had a dragonfly. Luckily, hazel really likes dragonflies, too. :D

Mmmmmm, don't see any moldy fingers at work here. :thumbs up Gardens are looking very good!!! I like the hummer garden too. :D

[QUOTE=14+kitties;626905]Mmmmmm, don't see any moldy fingers at work here.[/QUOTE]

I agree......that darned Hazel has been trying to fool us all along. :p

She is actually a pro at gardening and she even has everything catagorized on her computer. :eek: Which I really hope you didn't lose, Hazel. :fingerscr

Beautiful gardens. :thumbs up

The spiderwort is very :cool:, I've never seen that one before

Great hummers garden :highfive:

What a great idea, a hummingbird garden, I love it!

Beautiful Hazel. Love the birdbath too.

Cindy

[QUOTE=14+kitties;626905]Mmmmmm, don't see any moldy fingers at work here. :thumbs up Gardens are looking very good!!! I like the hummer garden too. :D[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="Green"]I'd like to see a pic of that moldy thumb that Hazel is always bragging about, me thinks it is not so moldy. :frustrated:
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[QUOTE=rainbow;626948]I agree......that darned Hazel has been trying to fool us all along. :p

[COLOR="Green"]You are right on there Rainbow.
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She is actually a pro at gardening and she even has everything catagorized on her computer. :eek: Which I really hope you didn't lose, Hazel. :fingerscr

[COLOR="Green"]Can you imagine being that organized :yell:
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Beautiful gardens. :thumbs up
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I Agree.[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

I like the Spiderwort but it closes in the afternoon and I found my one plant got real straggly, does yours Hazel?

[QUOTE=rainbow;626948]She is actually a pro at gardening and she even has everything catagorized on her computer. :eek: Which I really hope you didn't lose, Hazel. :fingerscr
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Nope...the thumbnails were corrupted and I had to delete the affected files and reedit the scans, but I got them all back. whew! Now I just hope they stay put! :fingerscr

Thanks for the compliments, ladies, but you'll notice these are mostly single shots...if you back up, the garden is not that impressive :laughing: Amazing what a little editing can do...

For instance, here's the west end of the garden from a tricky angle:

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Garden looks lovely and full, eh? pftuiiiiiii Backup another few feet and all the gaps show :o:

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It's not particularly well-laid out, either. Some of it is that the shorter plants seem to be getting shaded out by the taller ones. hazel didn't make very good use of the sunshine. :rolleyes:


[QUOTE=growler;626969]The spiderwort is very :cool:, I've never seen that one before
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[QUOTE=Chris21711;627037]I like the Spiderwort but it closes in the afternoon and I found my one plant got real straggly, does yours Hazel?[/QUOTE]

They and the coneflowers are natives that I got through a local nursery dealing in native prairie plants, growler. Spiderwort grows in a lot of fields and parks around here...with plenty of water and some compost, it tends to bush out more in the garden than in the wild.

You're right, Chris--it closes in the afternoons...but the next morning, it looks bee-yooo-tiful again:

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Spiderwort is a naturally 'scraggly' plant, though, so I don't know if mine are or not. :D I like that look...matches my hair! :laughing:

[QUOTE=Love4himies;626980]What a great idea, a hummingbird garden, I love it![/QUOTE]

The garden was there and not doing well when we moved in. The pine was growing up and the plants were getting too much shade. They still are (lilies and phlox are both sun loving) but after we put up the fence to keep the dogs out, they seemed much happier.

The hummingbirds love the location and with the addition of impatiens and the salvia, they have both nectar feeders and flowers to train their babies on. :cloud9: Once the phlox blooms, they'll spend a lot of time at that, too.

The hummingbird garden is the only one that looks pretty nice as a whole. The well garden is so full of grass it's laughable...gotta try to do something with it next spring. Problem is, every time I've ever tried to get rid of grass in a garden, the rest of the plants die, too. :rolleyes:

I gotta edit garden pics this year too Hazel. Been too wet here to deal with the weeds in a lot of places and dealing with the puppies last summer already had me behind starting this year.
You still have some beautiful plants and you feed the humming birds too. Gotta like that.
I've got spiderwort and love the plant. The blue flowers are so striking. All native plants tend to look a little weedy, but they're a lot less needy, so in my opinion, the more natives you can grow, the happier you and the wildlife that feed on them are going to be. :D
I'm planting more and more native trees and shrubs too. Love to see the birds feeding on the elders. My neighbours mulberry was home to a family of orioles for weeks.

Cindy

I find the natives are much harder to kill accidentally, too! :laughing: So I'm trying to find more. Another thing I like about them is that the coneflowers, for example, are spreading into the lilies and spiderwort, and the spiderwort is spreading out... Another decade or so and I'll have no more bare spots! :thumbs up :D

How do you keep such a pretty garden without the dogs Digging them up??:eek: lol

[QUOTE=babymomma;627609]How do you keep such a pretty garden without the dogs Digging them up??:eek: lol[/QUOTE]

Constant vigilance! :laughing:

Actually, the hummingbird garden is fenced in so the dogs can't get at it...and the kennel garden has so many tomato cages in it that the dogs can't move around in it easily. Makes it easier for me to get them out before they do too much major damage...though I did lose half my white coneflower last fall and the peonies are always being raided when in bloom :rolleyes:

:cloud9: Pretty flowers Hazelrunpack. I think I'm just gonna print all those shots and staple them to whatever shrubs growing out of the mud I have remaining in the yard :rolleyes: :D.

I am so jealous!
thats all I wanted to say:frustrated:;)

your garden is beautiful! I wish I had a garden to garden, even though I dont really like to garden more than veggies....
well done, certainly a green thumb or two on you!!

[QUOTE=RolandsMom;627666]your garden is beautiful! I wish I had a garden to garden, even though I dont really like to garden more than veggies....
well done, certainly a green thumb or two on you!![/QUOTE]

I'll bask in the compliments and not fess up about my green (as in moldy) thumb! :laughing:

Thanks, [B]RolandsMom![/B] Btw, long time no see. How are you doing? :goodvibes:

[B]LP[/B]--You're lucky to have shrubs! :laughing: When we were in EC with the Trio (Cass, Ember and Cole) they managed to totally denude our 50 x 70 ft backyard of grass, shrubs and even a few trees! :eek: Made it much easier for the landscapers when we moved because they didn't have anything left to rip out! :rolleyes:

[B]LMP[/B], do you garden? Despite the pics, I need [I][SIZE="3"]help![/SIZE][/I] :o madame hazel is a nincompoop in the garden... :rolleyes: We've got a big fenced-in yards for the dogs and the Pack will keep them company...so they'll have plenty to do while you're whipping the flower beds into shape! :thumbs up [SIZE="1"]hazel doesn't cook with furniture polish, either, so the sausages are good at Hazel Run :p [/SIZE]

WOW Hazel - I'm impressed! Your flowers are gorgeous :D My fav is the Spiderwort - it's beautiful...

I like the spiderwort, too, Jan. :cloud9: A real plus is that it a lot of baby spiderworts came up this year :thumbs up I love a plant that doesn't need to be coddled...in fact, that trait is a necessity here since I'm so abysmally bad at coddling them... :o

Thanks for the welcome back Hazel.
Life is good. I am in a happy relationship now and Life got a bit busy! sorry I havent been around for a bit!
Glad to see familiar names on here! I dont think I will be participating as much as I used to cause I dont have so much time, but I will for sure be around!!

HOw long does your garden stay beautiful like that?

Ummmm...parts of it stay nice for...um...nearly a week at a time! :laughing: But new parts will be blooming and pretty through till the first frost--probably some time in October. (It's just that by [I]then[/I], the pretty bits [I]now[/I] will be really scraggly and wilted...so I'll have to do some more creative editing of photos! :laughing:)

Glad to hear that Life is good! :thumbs up And a [I]good[/I] 'busy' makes life that much more interesting, doesn't it? :D