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Please continue to update us on your gardens. As we head into the solstice the gardens must be coming into vibrant production, flowers and vegetables. Please do share. This thread will stay up and active.
In the next day or so Meitou and I will post our next 'Expressing Creativity' post. So please stay tuned for that.
This is a Hoya Carnosa (Porcelain Flower, Wax Plant). It only flowers for about 3 or 4 days per year, for me anyway. (Impermanence!) The first couple of days it looks like this:
This is a Hoya Carnosa (Porcelain Flower, Wax Plant). It only flowers for about 3 or 4 days per year, for me anyway. (Impermanence!) The first couple of days it looks like this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]6526[/ATTACH]
Then it turns to this;
[ATTACH=CONFIG]6527[/ATTACH]
This plump pink one reminds me of some kind of candy. Although I won't eat it.
Gassho
STlah
James
I had one of these until last year, it's a fascinating plant, the flowers are not like any I've ever seen, as in James's photos, they start out looking as if made from wax, then transform into soft velvet. If any of you come across one, I'd recommend buying it for the fascination value alone.
Again thanks everyone for continuing to post, I feel I'm getting to know people as much, if not more, through this thread as anywhere else on the forum. As Anne said, we'll shortly be posting a new topic but I'd like to see this one constantly updated as the year turns.
Gassho
Meitou
Sattoday lah
Gassho
Meitou
Sattoday lah
PS I'm also posting by way of an experiment, as I've never been able to post directly from my phone as the images were too big. I've had to install a separate app to resize photos, why is that! I've yet to find a photo editing app with all the usual bells and whistles that also includes a resize function, annoying. If anyone knows of such an app, free, please let me know.
Last edited by Meitou; 06-18-2020, 08:01 AM.
Reason: Predictive text bloopers
In the edible portion of our landscape my wife always includes sunflowers for their beauty and eventually an offering to the birds. This year among the common sunflowers ( 6 to 8 ft height) were volunteers of Mexican Sunflowers which we may have planted 3 to 5 years ago and produced flowers. So some seeds dropped off and stayed dormant until this year
In the edible portion of our landscape my wife always includes sunflowers for their beauty and eventually an offering to the birds. This year among the common sunflowers ( 6 to 8 ft height) were volunteers of Mexican Sunflowers which we may have planted 3 to 5 years ago and produced flowers. So some seeds dropped off and stayed dormant until this year
[ATTACH=CONFIG]6529[/ATTACH]
Doshin
St
Thank you Doshin and Anne for the sunflowers - always such a joy
James, Those amazing flowers look like decorations on a child's birthday cake, both phases. WOW! I cannot believe they are plant matter.
And Doshin, I planted both the regular tall sunflowers, which have yet to bloom and the dwarf ones in pots (pictured). My garden this year has sunflowers and blue corn. I am growing both for their aesthetics, not food. Although I do have kale and lettuce, mustard and Swiss chard (which is being eaten by something before my eyes!). But sunflowers offer so much pleasant and joyful exuberance to a garden. And I love the Mexican sunflowers.
And Meitou, you will have a lovely crop of grapes this year. beautiful.
Gassho,
Anne
James, Those amazing flowers look like decorations on a child's birthday cake, both phases. WOW! I cannot believe they are plant matter.
And Doshin, I planted both the regular tall sunflowers, which have yet to bloom and the dwarf ones in pots (pictured). My garden this year has sunflowers and blue corn. I am growing both for their aesthetics, not food. Although I do have kale and lettuce, mustard and Swiss chard (which is being eaten by something before my eyes!). But sunflowers offer so much pleasant and joyful exuberance to a garden. And I love the Mexican sunflowers.
And Meitou, you will have a lovely crop of grapes this year. beautiful.
Gassho,
Anne
James, Those amazing flowers look like decorations on a child's birthday cake, both phases. WOW! I cannot believe they are plant matter.
And Doshin, I planted both the regular tall sunflowers, which have yet to bloom and the dwarf ones in pots (pictured). My garden this year has sunflowers and blue corn. I am growing both for their aesthetics, not food. Although I do have kale and lettuce, mustard and Swiss chard (which is being eaten by something before my eyes!). But sunflowers offer so much pleasant and joyful exuberance to a garden. And I love the Mexican sunflowers.
And Meitou, you will have a lovely crop of grapes this year. beautiful.
Gassho,
Anne
~lahst~
Yes that flower is pretty amazing. Again it only happens a for a few days. A work friend of mine brought it back as a cutting from Poland. I always called it the Polish Plant. There's an app called "PlantSnap" where if you take a picture of any plant it can show you a few candidates for what they think it is so you can identify it if you don't know what it is.
I always grow Swiss Chard but couldn't find any this year. Sunflowers are always great I grow a similar perennial called a cupplant (silphium perfolium). In the aster family but it doesn't look anything like an aster. It grows over 10'/ 3m tall, big yellow flowers but I'm terribly allergic to the foliage.
Below is one of four of my grape vines. The grapes are just starting. The grapes get a little better tasting each year but I usually feed the grapes to the birds and chipmunks. I just like the foliage. I just noticed some holes in the leaves as the pests are making themselves at home. Don't get me started on gardening. I'm definitely an obsessed nut case.
The wax plant/porcelain flower is so cool!! It doesn’t even look real!
The rambling old garden rose on our property that the people before us planted, the densely packed deep pink petals and the heady fragrance are an amazing work of art to me
Here in the northern hemisphere we are into summer. The saying goes 'knee high by the fourth of July' if you want corn by the fall. And this blue corn is chest high now! And starting to put our tassels. It is a heirloom variety of corn that a friend gave me from her crop last year. garden.JPG
The kale is wonderful roasted until crisp with olive oil and sea salt and the purple lettuce nice eaten straight from the garden.
Just an update on my garden here in the SW U.S.
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