Garden Bloggers Bloom Day July 2023

It's July 15, and I can't believe that this year is more than half over.  It's also Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, and it's time to share some of the flowers in my zone 5b Southern Tier of New York yard with my readers.

It's been warm and humid.  We had been in a drought, but we've had rain - fortunately, we've been spared the flooding people to our east in the Hudson Valley of New York (where my spouse grew up) and Vermont.   We haven't had the blasting heat of other areas, although today it will be (for us) hot.

July is day lily time.

I love day lilies and I have so many of them to show you.  There are too many for my small front yard (my back yard is too shady) and too many to show you today.  So let's get right to the flowers.

Day lilies:  I don't know the names of many of these.  Some are forgotten in the mists of time, plus I have purchased, over the years, a lot of unnamed varieties or varieties the local botanical garden got from a deceased grower where the family did not know the names.  My July 2022 GBBD post gives more details.

Fashion Police.

An unnamed spider variety purchased in 2022 from Lambertson's Brookside in Pennsylvania.  I am not linking to them because the owners are in the process of selling to a new owner (located in Honesdale, Pennsylvania) and most of their stock is with the new owners.

I love the melon color of this one.

Red. 

Pink with yellow ruffles.

Pink ruffles and a yellow throat.  For a while, I was on a ruffled kick.

Red and yellow.

A group photo.

Purple - this may be the first day lily I ever purchased.

I am not including several others but I must mention my earliest day lily, still going strong.

Have to make room for some of my non day lilies.  Here, variegated pink petunias and yellow lantana.
 

I have several hostas blooming - here's a purple flowered one.

Yellow loosestrife.  I bought this at a plant sale at our local botanical garden, and was warned it was aggressive.  Let's say I'm somewhat sorry I bought it because we have to thin it out each year, but it does have pretty yellow flowers.  And, it's purple when it first comes up in the spring.

A blurry zinnia.  They are just starting to bloom (we grow them in our community garden).

Tall phlox, which, this year, has a bad case of powdery mildew.  Time for baking soda and water.

 Last but not least (because I don't want to overwhelm you I'm tired), bee balm.  Victory.  After many years, I succeeded in growing this!  And yes, it's attracting the bees.

Thanks go, as always, to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for this 15th of the month meme.  Why not follow the link and find some other blogs with beautiful flowers for today?

Day Lillies of July Part 1

Presenting the day lilies of 2023 in my flower gardens.  Strap in!

Before I begin:  I do not know the name of a lot of my varieties.  Some were bought from our local botanical garden after they got them from the family of a deceased day lily lover.  They didn't know the names of some of them, and priced them cheaper and...yes, I'm cheap.  

Some are varieties from two day lily farms, one in Penn Yan, New York which is still in operation (Grace Gardens) and one in Pennsylvania which is mostly closed (retirement).   This post gives the names and origins of some of my day lillies.

I'm going to be lazy and just (mostly) post pictures today.  These pictures are from yesterday and today.

My earliest lily has already been blooming for over a week.
 

No name, just cream and purple.

May be called "Bubbly".

I've turned part of my front lawn into a mostly day lily garden and this ruffled variety is one of the stars.

This is an unnamed variety I purchased last year from a day lily grower in Pennsylvania  (Lambertson's Daylillies) getting ready to retire and close the business.

Did these flowers arrange themselves like this on purpose?

Orange and yellow, from Grace Gardens in Penn Yan, New York.

Red.

Yellow with a hint of green.

I love this shade of color.

One of my favorites.  It bloomed profusely last year but tends to be a shy bloomer.

A better view of the fifth day lily above.

I'll have more for you next Saturday, Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

Enjoy!

Postscript: My bed is actually becoming a bit overgrown with lily foliage.  I need to do something about it but not today.  Yesterday, it got up to 91F (32.8C).  Not hot compared to some parts of the country, but hot for us.  I'm just wanting to kick back today.

You, Too Can Give A Daylily a Name

I'd love to have a day lily named after me.  It's nice to dream, especially in these times.

I've been writing almost every year about the Cutler Botanic Gardens in Binghamton, New York.  Maintained mainly by volunteers, it was recently recognized as an American Daylily Society Display Garden.

It has also been an AAS Display Garden for many years.

 I've been visiting their rose and their daylily gardens for years.  This time, I went towards the end of the season.

One thing that has always fascinated me is how daylilies get their name.  It's actually complicated, but a nursery in Vermont gives you the chance to name one of their daylilies for a price. 

Or, I could hybridize daylilies and hope for the best.  This is something actually an amateur can do, although it can get expensive. (Incidentally, I've met the man who wrote the articles on how to hybridize that I am linking to. Small world; turns out he worked at one time in Corporate America not that far from where I live.)

Come with me now and explore the day lilies (and their name, in one instance) at Cutler that are blooming towards the end of the daylily season.

Like history?  How about Mary Todd. (Actually I don't know if this was named after Mary Todd Lincoln.

Not all day lilies are named after people.

Huckleberry Candy

 Highland Lord 

Peggy Jeffcoat . 
I did find the story of who this one was named after. 

I am not quite ready, with my small daylily garden, to start hybridizing.

But I could pay my money and have someone do the work.  But one more thing.  Besides paying that naming fee, you also have to buy at least one plant of your namesake.

One day, will there be a daylily called Ramblin' with AM?

Sunday Flowers on Saturday #SixonSaturday

Today, I bring you six things on Sunday, which should have been posted yesterday.  Time isn't what it used to be.  It stretches and warps, so being late isn't the problem it used to be.

I recently found out about Six on Saturday through Lisa's Garden Adventure, a garden blogger in Oregon whose blog I discovered through the April Blogging from A to Z Challenge.  Here's my six, located in my zone 5b gardens in the Southern Tier of New York State:

1.  Daylilies.  A lot of my front yard flower garden is devoted to them now as they grow so easily where I live.  This isn't quite as red as the picture shows, but is lovely nevertheless.  I bought these at Grace Gardens near Penn Yan, New York last year.  Daylilies, where I live, are almost carefree. 

Here, you drop them in the ground and they grow.  And that's it!  Seriously, that's it.  I wish they bloomed all through the summer but they don't, with a few exceptions.

I've blogged so many times about daylilies and the lessons they teach us - each bloom only lasts a single day.

Here are some other daylilies, from a few days ago.

This brings me to:

2.  Project Back Yard.  Spouse will have to help me.  Our shady back yard is being taken over and needs to be thinned desperately.  Spouse did a lot in the spring, but our back yard is being taken over by brunneria,  dead nettle, pink turtle head, and other plants that are wonderful in moderation, but not in quantity.  I have a bad back.  He has bad shoulders.  Not a good combo. 

So, why is there another daylily pictured here?  Because I have a bunch of day lily plants there, only the grand total of three are blooming this year.  Here is one of them.  I really need to have these divided.  Our yards are small, though, and finding room will be a challenge.

3.  Potpourri.  I really was going to make some last year and I didn't.   Then I was really going to this year.  I've prepared some of the ingredients.     I also had an experience using cat litter back when many of our stores were closed down.  My scented geraniums in a container - orange, nutmeg and pinewood, are waiting patiently for me.  I dried a few leaves but, once dried, they amount to next to nothing in size.  These remind me that I need to get going with this project.

4.  Containers need to be watered. Today we will have near record breaking heat.  Here are two of my containers.  The one close to the bottom are Bravo impatiens, which are a relatively new variety that are supposed to be resistant to the impatien downy mildrew blight that, for a time, almost made growing impatiens almost impossible.  They were a wonderful go-to, never fail plant for me.  In the background (next to the hostas) is a pot of coleus, another go-to plant for me.  I have a lot more container and hanging baskets, though, including...

5.  My strawberry experiment.  This didn't have a tag on it at the nursery, but I was attracted to this strawberry plant with a pink flower.  I had read about pink flowered strawberries and decided to try one.  It was supposed to be an everbearer (meaning, it produces through the gardening season - I suspect it's more like "dribbles through the season".)  The berries are tart but have good flavor.  However, now the plant seems to be sulking a bit.  Here is its only flower right now.  The white stuff is row cover (Reemay) which I'm using to try to discourage birds.

6.  We community garden for our veggies as our back yard (see #2) is way too shady.  (Although, this year we are growing cucumber and zucchini in our sunny front yard, in containers).   Peppers have been a success for us so far, but my spouse will not eat green peppers.  We have four different varieties and they are producing their little pepper hearts (so to speak) out.  But.  Nothing is turning red. 

Our dilemma - should we pick green, or wait?  (Peppers to the left, cabbage to the right.  This is in my community garden plot, which has a raised bed area for those with disabilities or other issues.  Spouse as a more traditional plot in another area.

It's a bit late to join this hope,  but I am going to do it anyway, since I was taking some pictures around my garden  yesterday-ish.  If you want to join into Six on Saturday next week (and I'll try to remember), here is the participant guide.

Happy....er, Sunday, and a shoutout to my cousin who turned 30 today and became engaged on Friday night  Happy birthday and may all your dreams come true!

Spring Things - The Pink and Yellow Celebration

Yesterday I walked on the west side of Binghamton, New York.  It was a crisp June day (it only reached 64 degrees) but it was a nice break from the rain we've been getting recently.

The spring flowers are slowly transitioning into summer.

First, this lovely front yard art from a couple of weeks ago.  I had to share this with you.  Bravo!

And now, some of the lovely flowers I photographed yesterday afternoon

The last of pink poppies.

Daylillies starting to dominate.  These may be Stella D'Oro but nowadays, there are so many varieties of yellow daylillies, it's hard to say.

And, pink roses.  I wish there was smell-o-blog; I would love so to share this scent with you.

What is your favorite late spring/early summer flower?  (and for my readers in the Southern Hemisphere...just three more months before spring...)  If you love to flower garden, let me know!

Groundhogs and Rabbits -This Means War

We have been waging war against one or more groundhogs in our back yard, and possibly a rabbit. And they are winning.

Up to now, groundhogs have stuck to some old reliable favorites, eating any kind of brassica we try to grow (i.e. flowering cabbage/kale), parsley, cucumbers, peas.  We wage a constant war of we fence, they get in, we fence, they get in.

This year, we tried putting pots of parsley and flowering cabbage up a couple of feet.  It worked for a while.

Last night we came home to find my petunias, the "sky blue" petunias that I bought from Burpees that turned out to be lilac, defoliated.  And the plants up high, they were all defoliated too.  I'm wondering now if we are fighting rabbits and groundhogs.

Something chewed through our fence.  As in "chewed".  It's a plastic fence. So much for that.

They are after our Jacobs Ladder, our brunneria.  They were eaten too.  We've put Remay cloth over them, hoping it will discourage whatever it is.

So, what's left?  Well, so far, the same petunias that I planted in the front yard haven't been (knock on wood) touched.  I also have some in a hanging basket, so I will still have some.

So our survivors include:  day lillies.

Astilbe (with a stray day lilly tht ended up in the shade.

And, in our front yard, the white marigold that was pounded into submission during our hailstorm earlier this year, is finally blooming.  It looks like a dwarf plant but somehow I don't think it is.

I have other pictures to share of survivors, which I hopefully will post next week.  I'll also be taking some pictures tomorrow for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - if anything is left when I come home from work.

It's really getting discouraging.  As we age, there is less energy to go around (and seemingly less time, too.)  The one good thing is - it gives me something to write about.  Sigh....