As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


You are here: Home / Archives for midnight

Wild flowers by a shallow creek

by

Join Green Thumb Sunday

Join

Chris and I took our puppy over to SunnyBrook Park yesterday so that she could see the horses they keep there.

While we were in the huge park we took a walk along a nice stream and Midnight, her water loving self, had to jump in the water!

I stayed on the bank and wandered around taking pictures of both Chris and the dog in the shallow water. I was also doing my best to fight off a hoard of mosquitoes! I wasn’t happy about that!

While I was taking pictures I noticed a few clumps of flowers. I’m not sure what they are, but they’re lovely:

IMG_4827

The plants grow to 2.5 to 3 feet tall and grow in clumps. They look like this:

IMG_4832

The area they were growing in was kind of shady at 5 in the afternoon. I have no idea if it gets bright light in the morning but I suspect there’s more light earlier in the day than when we were there.

Anyone have any idea what kind of flower this is? (Reminder I’m in Toronto – USDA zone 5b, just in case you need some climate info to help me figure this out.)

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!






This is the Life!

by

Ah …. I’m sitting here in my backyard at the patio table enjoying this beautiful day while surrounded by the beauty and lovely scent of my garden.

I couldn’t ask for anything better!

My husband is here beside me reading a magazine while we both keep an eye on our almost year old Labrador retriever.

Midnight, our Lab, has spent some time in the garden with us, but barely ever off leash. This is in part because our fences aren’t all that high, and well … she still likes to explore all of the garden beds. This time however, we’ve let her off leash and brought out a few of her toy bones to chew on. She’s being good and seems to be enjoying the time outside as much as we are.

My only worry is that she might try to bite a bumble bee and then get stung! You see she’s fascinated by bugs, and like most dogs tries to snap at them and eat them when she sees one! I don’t want her stung, nor do I want to find out if she’s allergic to bee stings (like me!). Plus, the bee population has taken a hard hit this year so there’s no point in letting our dog needlessly kill a useful insect.

We were expecting an overnight guest this weekend but he had to cancel at the last minute. To prepare for his visit we tidied up the garden, watered it and finally got around to putting our Tiki torches in the garden last night. The torches give the garden a “Survivor” kind of feel, and they also help keep the mosquitoes away since we use Citronella oil in them.

Do you spend time just enjoying your garden and or using it to entertain guests?

Do you ever bring your laptop outside to your garden so you can blog or read your email?

Want a peek at my garden?

by

Join Green Thumb Sunday

Join

In the middle of July (July 14th to be exact) I decide to take a couple of shots of the backyard, front yard and my planted boulevard garden. Would you like to see what my garden looks like this year?

Here’s a shot of the backyard:

My backyard garden

It’s not the best shot. We had our patio table umbrella down due to all the rain storms we’ve been having. Our table gets tipsy in the high winds and I don’t feel like going through the pain and expense of having to replace the table glass if it falls, so no umbrella in bad weather! The green tube on the table chairs is for collecting rain run off from the rain spout so that the area closest to the house doesn’t get flooded in a heavy downpour.

The tall tree on the left – well the tallest in our garden – is the Rose of Sharon tree. It’s in full bloom at this very moment, but two weeks ago when I took the picture it was only just starting to develop buds. It’s blooming a little early this year. I’ll get some pictures of it soon!

My box turtles are enjoying a daily snack on the flowers. They are edible. If you have a Rose of Sharon or a Hibiscus bush you might even want to try using the flowers in a salad or as a garnish.

There are a large number of plants in those flower beds! The main plants are of course roses, lavender, salvia, hostas, clematis, balloon flowers and annuals such as petunias and portulaca’s. If you’d like to see a not quite up to date list of all the plants we’re growing in our back, front and boulevard gardens have a peek at my What’s Growing page.

Just click on any of the pictures for a larger view.

I’m pleased with how my front yard is looking so far this year. Our Lab puppy, Midnight, did a lot of damage to the grass in the early spring so we’ve tried to keep her off our tiny front long over the last two months and the grass has been growing back nicely. We helped it out my reseeding of course.

my front yard and garden

Our puppy still tries to bite at the roses, grasses and some of the other plants in the front flower beds as she walks by, but mostly she just sniffs at the plants. It’s quite funny to see her smelling a rose. I think she likes them! At least if she ever tries to eat a rose I know they are non toxic!

IMG_4122

The front boulevard is coming along nicely. I don’t know if you remember my earlier posts about cleaning up the boulevard garden in the spring. We had to remove thick sunflower stalks and lots of weeds before I could plant some new plants this year. It was a mess! It’s nice and tidy now!

planted boulevard

The sunflowers are beginning to bloom as are the pink Dahlia, daylilies, malva and gayfeather. Cosmos have come up this year as well. I haven’t planted cosmos there for at least three years and they were absent the last two, but I guess there were still some viable seeds in the ground and they decided to grow this year so there are cosmo plants scattered among the main plants and they are beginning to bloom now as well.

I have Marigolds and Alyssum planted along the edge of the boulevard and we’ve trained a few Morning Glory vines to grow around the No Parking sign that mars my boulevard garden.  Our neighbors seems to enjoy our planted boulevard quite a bit.

Overall I’m quite pleased with how well my garden is doing this year. It’s been fairly hot this month, yet we’ve had a record amount of rain (and storms!), so the plants are getting lots of water, free nitrogen in the air from all the lightening storms and some good heat to get growing. I actually think I’ve only watered the garden twice this month. Yay! I’m saving money on water too!

I think I’ll make up some of my famous Alfalfa tea later today and let it brew for a week or so. The garden has been doing so well I haven’t thought of using my secret sauce (great organic fertilizer that alfalfa tea is!) on it yet this year, but at least one dose won’t hurt it at all.

How is your garden doing so far this summer? Has the weather been good for it? Have you been getting a lot of rain and like us haven’t had to water much?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

Meta