Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: September 2014

Seemannia hybrid

Bit by bit, the garden is recovering from a brutal winter.  It may not look like much from above: there are a couple of empty spaces where palms used to grow, the hardy banana (Musa basjoo) hasn't grown nearly as big as it did last year (see Everybody loves my big banana), and the figs were killed to the ground and are coming back from the roots, but hidden underneath all that foliage are some plants that are just now hitting their peak.


View of the garden from our roof deck

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: August 2014

Okay, enough with the long blog posts for now!  It's time for a quick-and-dirty blog post with pretty pictures and not much else.  These are some of the plants I had blooming in my garden today.  For more information about any of them, feel fee to post questions in the comments section!  For many more photos, click here.  For more Garden Bloggers Bloom Day posts from all around the blogosphere, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.


Spigelia marilandica, second bloom after deadheading a few weeks ago


Spigelia marilandica


Asclepias tuberosa, also reblooming after deadheading


Honeybee on Asclepias tuberosa


Clerodendrum bungei, one of my beautiful monsters


Lobelia cardinalis, still going strong


Aralia elata has been dropping tiny white flowers all over everything for a month


When was the last time you took a close look at the flowers of Liriope muscari?


Begonia grandis 'Early Bird', my own early-blooming selection of the species


Hosta plantaginea, "August lily", night-blooming and wonderfully fragrant


Datura wrightii, last night


Datura wrightii, this morning


One more because I can't get enough of those daturas!


Morning glory (Ipomoea sp.), growing as a weed


Sphaerorrhiza sarmentiana (Gesneriaceae), blooming on my windowsill at work

Two very different gardens

Lily, Pine Ridge Gardens

While visiting my family in Buffalo last weekend, I had the privilege of visiting two very different private gardens: Pine Ridge Gardens in Orchard Park and Smug Creek Gardens in Hamburg.  Both are participants in Garden Walk Buffalo but since I was in town for such a short time, the owners were gracious enough to accommodate me on a weekend day when they were not normally open to the public.  I wish that my photos could do justice to these gardens; it was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for garden touring, but not ideal for photography.  I had to adjust the contrast in some of the photos but I hope they give some idea of how wonderful these gardens are!