What's blooming today?
A lovely Clematis Jackmani in the rain.
My oldest clematis vine is the Jackmani. Each year it grows in two directions along our wooden fence and reaches 15 to 20 feet each way. It’s huge. I drape the vine across the top of the fence as it gets fuller and heavier and when it blooms there’s a rich thick carpet of deep purple flowers.
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Wordless Wednesday
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.
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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.
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:
I wonder what funky photos the rest of you came up with?