On to the front garden

At a time when things in the garden are changing and also appearing out of the blue I am sad to say I did not get to walk through it today. Instead I stayed inside with DH while our DirecTV satellite installation was completed. Others are bookworms. I am a TV slug. I love movies, a few shows like The Closer, Fox News, football and small doses of other sports that DH likes. But mainly I hate the huge bills that Cox Cable was sending us every month, so the change was made, and I like it.

However, that leaves me with no memories or photos of today. The missed photos of ‘Polonaise’ yesterday were followed by more missed photos today. Is distressing too strong a word for my feelings? Well, maybe you understand. I do have some photos from Sunday, so I’ll just pretend today didn’t happen. Ooh, I don’t like the sound of that. Here’s Sunday.

This is the northeast corner of the circle which is situated in full southern sun. It’s almost a vanity shot with some gratuitous boasting thrown in. Leaves, leaves, and more leaves…and green leaves! I cherish spring for the leaves it brings, but I apologize if it’s a boring blob. To me it’s dense foliage. What could be better, I ask you? Or until now, rarer? Maturity brings all kinds of improvement, you know, and bushy rose bushes have been a wishful dream for me, so I can only hope leaves are here to stay. I don’t think you can see clearly the distinction between the bushes. I’ll tell you what and where and maybe with a zoom capability you can see where one ends and the next begins. Bottom right: ‘Clotilde Soupert’; bottom left: ‘Souvenir de Francois Gaulain’; above him: ‘Duquesa’; to the right: three bushes of ‘Hermosa’; top middle: ‘Pinkie, Climbing’; far left: another ‘Clotilde Soupert’; and top left: ‘Clotilde Soupert, Climbing’. These are my leafiest roses. Glorious, aren’t they?



‘Le Vesuve’ is on his way. He’s not quick out of the gate because he loves the heat, but above him yesterday was a veritable cloud of flower buds. I eagerly wait.



My volunteer larkspur forest. I’ve been assuming that they would all be purple because that’s the color they were last year. What a pleasing surprise when I saw that they are also lavender and pink. I do hope that the breeze blows their seeds absolutely everywhere. The pink one on the right sprouted from a vacant rose pot. I never even considered pulling it out – even to transplant.



This is ‘Lilian Austin’. She was a tiny thing after pruning. Her eagerness to get going is a nice surprise. She’s blooming on new growth that is only a few inches long.



Another ‘Lilian Austin’ bud.



The grande dame of my daylilies, ‘Sherry Lane Carr’. Some of you may not know that my affinity for this daylily is rooted in her name. You see it’s almost the same as mine. Change one little letter, and you get Sherry Jane Carr, the girl I used to be before marriage changed everything. Seeing this daylily’s name in print still catches at my breath and makes my heart flutter. It must be the thrill of fame – sort of, or at least as close as I’ll ever get. Anyway, this plant is a division of one that was buried about three feet back, under ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’. I dug up that plant in February, I think, divided it in two, and they never missed a beat. This one has a budded scape. The other original plant that I did not divide but which is really quite huge has six scapes on it… the last time I looked anyway.



‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ or 'Borderer' and friend. Looks too peachy to be SDLM, but I can't be sure.



Does anyone else buy packaged bulbs and bareroots with the best of intentions and then sort of forget them? I really need to stop buying them because so many don’t make it into the ground. This new sprout is a dahlia ‘Le Baron’, one of three planted about ten days ago. Hopefully, the other two will pop up and join this one.



The first Purple Coneflower blooms don’t look as shabby as first blooms usually do. They’re a welcome sight.



And more are coming.



‘Softee’ is underway. She’s a miniature that grows in a pot. By the way she’s almost thornless and quite healthy and pretty.



‘Le Vesuve’ again.



This is ‘Anda’, a small polyantha single. This flower is about two inches across, maybe a tad less, and the petals have a habit of rolling on one edge or the other for a rather unique look. Her color is really deep red which usually explodes in my camera as fuschia. I think she’s darker than this photo shows, but at least it’s red – on my monitor anyway. She gets some black spot but not terrible.



The ‘Queen of Beauty and Fragrance’ again, followed by the nightmare of every rosarian.



This is a balled flower of SDLM. It will never open, sealed shut by untimely moisture and/or thrips. This time I think it was moisture in the form of Saturday night’s downpour in the middle of a thunderboomer.



he-he. No, it’s not a very grainy photo of the garage wall. It’s a photo of the bird netting I “installed” so the two clematis vines would have something to hold onto – hopefully. I didn’t expect the mesh to be this small, only half inch. Hopefully, that will not be an impediment to their climbing. I also put some of the netting on ‘Maman Cochet, Climbing’ since her companion clematis ‘Duchess of Albany’ has had to lay on the ground for two years unable to grab hold of that Tea Rose’s thick canes.



This one is ‘Henryi’ (closer to the camera above).



And this one is ‘Westerplatte’. Hopefully, the snapdragons on both sides of them will keep their rootzones cooler.



This is clematis ‘Princess Diana’, already to the top of the four-foot obelisk.


So cottage-y. Hopefully, this ethereal sight distracts from the big hole on the left side of the garden…


…where ‘Maggie’ is just getting started.


Gardeners can’t have it all all the time. There’s always something not quite right – or very wrong. We hope no one else notices.