As the Garden Grows

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The lily bud

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Lily flower bud

I took this photo of a tiger lily bud about two weeks ago.

If you’ve been reading this site for a while you might remember that the first day that I decided to try out my new SLR digital camera it was raining lightly. I literally have at least 200 photos of flowers covered in rain droplets! I hope you don’t hate wet flowers because I’m sure they’ll be featured regularly!

That reminds me I must get out in the garden and take more photos, hopefully when it’s not raining. Our Rose of Sharon tree is in full bloom, many of the roses are re-blooming and I don’t know how many other flowers are blooming but there’s lots. It’s time for another photo session.






Butterfly Milkweed

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I noticed that my hybrid Butterfly Milkweed – Asclepias tuberosa – had started to form buds. I had noticed the developing buds about a week and a half ago as I took a walk in my garden checking on all the plants as I went.

Luckily I had my camera at hand and I was able to take a few nice photos of the developing buds:

Milkweed tuberosa buds

Butterfly weed is a herbaceous perennial that grows up to two feet in height. It dies back each winter and then re-sprouts in late spring from underground tubers.

Milkweed is slow to come up each spring. If you grow any form of milkweed you should always take care to mark the spot that it grows in each fall or at the very least try to remember where it was as it’s slow to make an appearance and you wouldn’t want to dig in the area and damage the plants roots.

Flower clusters of brilliant orange or red appear in midsummer. Once the blooms are spent attractive green pods develop. When the pods mature they open to release silky parachutes that drift away on autumn winds. This is how the butterfly weed propagates as the seeds of the butterfly weed are on these silky floating strands.

Each cluster has many flowers, several of these flowers will have an inner whorl of petals that are called the corolla and an outer whorl of sepals that is called the calyx. Butterfly Milkweed is a little different from other species of milkweed in that the sap is not milky nor are the leaves opposite.

Butterfly weed is a naturally occurring plant that grows east of the Rockies in North America. It’s preference is for well drained sandy soils.

If you’d like to grow these lovely flowers plant them in full sun to very light shade. Butterfly weed is hardy to USDA zones 4 – 10.

If you’d like to encourage butterflies to visit your garden this flower is a must as the caterpillars of Monarch butterflies feed only on milkweed foliage. Adult butterflies of many species enjoy sipping the nectar from the butterfly weeds blossoms.

I grow a few types of milkweed in my garden and every time I gaze out my kitchen window I see butterflies visiting many of my plants.

Artistic watering cans

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PSHunt
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Photo Theme.
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This weeks Theme is Fake

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When I saw this weeks Photo Hunters theme I thought to myself “what can I photograph that represents fake”. I had no idea. Sure, I could have done some obvious things, but I like challenging myself.

Luckily, my husband and I some time on Saturday to go to Toronto’s 40th annual outdoor art exhibition. My nephew just graduated from the Ontario College of Art – specializing in photography and he had a booth at the art show where he was showing his photos.

He never even shows his immediate family, his parents, his photographs, so we figured it might be years before we’d get another chance to see his fabulous photography so we went to the show.

I had no idea it would be so large! There were 500 artists exhibiting everything from photographs to sculptures in wood, glass, clay, and stone, pottery, paintings, prints, metal artwork and many other forms of art.

I brought my new SLR camera with me and as luck would have it I found some “fake” artwork that would be perfect for the Photo hunter theme.

Now, I know I’m behind in posting my photo hunter photos (on three sites) but I think I found great items to post.

The photo above is of watering cans. Clay or pottery sculptures. They are not functional but they are lovely aren’t they?

I took a lot of great photos on Saturday, many of which will be perfect for this site – funny garden related sculptures. You’ll love them. Watch for them in upcoming posts.

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