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Balloons in the garden

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Wordless Wednesday

Balloon Flower Purple

The Balloon flower is a pretty flower once it becomes established in your garden.

I have three of this bluish purple kind, as well as two white balloon flower plants and one pink balloon flower plant. Yes, I love balloon flowers. Can you tell?

In the lower right corner I think that you can see a bud forming. The petals are folded in and as the bud grows it looks like a hollow ball or a balloon. When it finally opens the flower appears as above.

Unfortunately the flower, once it’s bloomed, doesn’t last long – perhaps a day at most. The flower dies quickly and droops like a wet rag.

I’d just finished picking off a bunch of dead flowers before I took this photo. That’s why there’s so many flowerless stalks. When a dead bloom is plucked off it’s stalk a milky white substance drips from the damaged stalk to heal the wound.






Bi-color Monkshood makes a lovely addition to the garden

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Bi-color Monkshood buds

Monkshood Aconitum

Our bi-color monkshood has started to bloom. It’s a lovely flower. A little unusual looking but lovely just the same. I should have tried to get a photo of the foliage as well as it’s quite nice.

I grow two types of Monkshood. The second type doesn’t bloom until the end of August thought – it’s the Azure monkshood and it’s absolutely lovely. Don’t worry there’ll be photos when it blooms.

Bi-color Monkshood Mature Flower

Monkshood Aconitum

I grow this monkshood in the far corner of my garden near some roses and our very very slow growing holly tree. It spruces up the area when it’s in bloom.

Do you grow any unusual or less common types of plants?

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Clematis Flowers turn into Funky Seed Heads

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This weeks theme is Funky

Plants and flowers can be pretty funky and good thing too since that’s this weeks Photo Hunters theme!

Take this Clematis seed head for example. This clematis vine develops very large bluish purple flowers. When the flowers are finished they turn into these funky almost woven seed heads.

clematis hybrid Seiboldiana seed heads and flower

As the seed heads age each thread that makes what I’ll call this woven ball appearance begins to get fuzzy. Eventually this seed head will be a fuzzy ball somewhat similar in appearance to a a dandelion seed head.

Of all the clematis vines I grow this one makes the most unusual looking seed heads.

I both of these photos on Thursday. This last one was taken at about 8 pm in the evening as I stood under the bamboo trellis that the vine grows on:

clematis hybrid Seiboldiana seed heads

I wonder what funky photos the rest of you came up with?

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