Festival in Yellow

I have daffodils everywhere!

And other things in yellow too. The Donkeytail, Euphorbia myrsinites, is starting to bloom in the rock garden.

More dafs. These are in the driveway bed. I just moved these bulbs here in the fall of 2024, and quite a few are blooming. (You can see some iris leaves looking healthy, and a bunch of grape hyacinth starting to bloom in the front).

The forsythia is just about perfect.

The "big bed" that I've been sort of trying to reclaim is full of daffodils- several kinds.

And here is fig buttercup. More on that another day.

There are even more clumps of daffodils in bloom in various other places. It's quite lovely. In fact, I need to get some of these patches split up and give a bunch of bulbs away.

It's been a few years since I did a "daffodil tour" to show all the varieties. Would you like to see that again? Some bloom earlier and some later.

I worked quite a lot on Confidence Camp today and did a few errands

See A Riot of Daffodils

Philadelphia Flower Show 2026 - Warm Colors

I need to do an easy post tonight, so I'll just show you half a color wheel with warm colors.

One thing that's so cool about the show is how lavish the plants are. Here are many shades of red and pink.

A spray of very orange orchids.

Orange shading to yellow in this Gloriosa Lily.

And yellow in another orchid.

I did get to my meeting. I wore a mask to help keep the germs to myself and stayed upright and contributed. But I've slept most of the rest of the day and hope to continue that all night.

I had been thinking I'd walk after the meeting, but there was too much snow in the woods, and I didn't have the energy.

See PFS 2026- Floramere- Block

The Color is Yellow

 Most of the leaves are down, but there is still some color to be found.

This planter of chrysanthemums is bright yellow.

Norway maples are an alien species, but they are the most common maples used for street planting. This one is holding on to a lot of its leaves.

The leaves that have come down are still pretty.

It was a hugely people-y day. Meeting with someone in the morning. Meeting with someone in the afternoon. Bell choir practice, followed by my return (since pre-Covid) to Ludington Writer's Group.

And I walked to do errands, edited, and wrote Chapter 35 in Vacation from Dead Mule Swamp, 809 words. I'm ready to call it a day.

And these gals were waiting outside the church after bell choir. There is a much-too-large urban deer population in Ludington. You can see how concerned they were about being "shined" in the headlights. Not.

Miles walked in 2024: 527.

See Orange We Glad?

More Yellow

 We'll do a few comparisons today. I'm starting with the Forbidden Fruit hosta. It was so not yellow last year that I thought it might have been mis-labled. However, it clearly did not get enough time outside. This year, it looks great. I hope it makes a baby soon.

Here's what it looked like last year. It was one of my almost free plants. Big difference



The next comparison is the sad little non-hardy Sedum mexicanam 'Lemon Coral' I got for almost nothing because it was beat up. As a reminder, here's what it looked like on May 20.



One month later, I am loving this. I will bring it inside for the winter, and hopefully manage to keep it alive.

It's similar to the Sedum 'Angelina' that Betsy gave me, which is hardy, but the 'Lemon Coral' is more yellow-green, so it's a color I would like to keep. This is the 'Angelina' starting to bloom. You can hardly tell them apart in the pictures, but in real life, the 'Angelina' is a bit more toward golden.

This is the almost free Corepsis I got last year that was all battered with many broken stems. Looking happy this year!

Edited my brains out, need to keep that up. We had 1.9 inches of rain over 36 hours.

See Color of the Day - Yellow

Color of the Day - Yellow

  It seems to me that most of the summer-blooming sedums have yellow flowers. Not sure if this is really true, or just the ones I own.

But right now, the rock garden is blanketed with yellow. This picture has two different plants, but the farther one is Sedum elecambeanum. I had some of this, and a friend gave me more. It's a great, reliable groundcover.

Also seen in that photo is Sedum sexangulare (the stalks have 6 sides). It's not one of my favorites, but it does add a lot of color when it is blooming.

Remember those fountain-like sprays of blue-ish sedum that look like spruce twigs? This is what they look like in bloom. Sedum reflexum

I showed you this before, but to complete the theme, and it's still blooming wonderfully, this is the Sedum 'Bright Idea.'

For the last shot of yellow, we have to go to the front flower bed. That mystery lily is looking great. Last year, it had three flowers. This year it will have four.

The heat got to me today. I have managed to do 3 hours of computer work and 30 minutes outside. Mostly I read a book and drank ice tea. I'd call it age, but this has been my heat MO for years. We may get some rain and a break tomorrow.

See SunSparkler Sedums

Cathie's Garden

I needed to run out to Cathie's house on another errand, but a side perk of that is that I knew she has a very nice garden. This was the first time we'd actually met, although we've been conversing via Facebook. She took one of my least attractive house plants before I went hiking. It's still really leggy, but it's very happy.

She has a whole patch of red Crocosmia. I tried to grow this once with no succes. It looks best in a mass planting like this one.

She also has a few stands of hollyhocks. I prefer these, the old-fashioned single ones. For a while the double ones were hugely popular, but I'm glad to see more of this kind now.

The deck planters are phenomenal! They are mostly Coleus and Bidens 'Stellar Blanco.' (white star). I thought at first they were Bacopa, but the leaves aren't right. You don't want to run into the wild Bidens species in the fall. They are the classic "stick-tights" with the two prongs like devil's-horns! I think the other flowers are a petunia.

I loved the hot color palette of her front bed. And what I really like is the little solar fountain she has in the birdbath. She says the birds love the splashing. You can barely see it squirting in the picture, but it sent water almost 2 feet in the air. I think my bath is too small for this, but it's definitely cool!

She must spend every minute gardening. She also has a pristine vegetable garden, all fenced about 10 feet tall. This is only maybe a quarter of it.

Now for my favorites. She is actually growing a lemon tree. I had no idea you could get away with that here. These are the flowers. Behind these, there were very (very) tiny lemons forming on the faded blossoms. Actually you can see one just to the right and below the center.

This plant was new to me, or at least I never noticed it enough to learn the name. It's a Petunia relative, Calibrachoa from central South America. The red and yellow together is stunning! This planting can also be seen in the picture with the birdbath.

Last night, my brain was just racing with ideas for my current project. I decided it was stupid to lie still and try to remember everything I was thinking of, so I got up and turned the comupter back on. Worked until 5 am. Slept until 10:30. That was fine, since we were having a thunderstorm anyway!

I also got a calendar widget installed on my desktop. That was WAY more difficult than it should have been. The Google one is apparently no longer available. I finally found one I like, although I haven't managed to customize the categories yet. I can only take so much frustration in one day.

See Margaret's Garden

Golden

  Definitely starting to look and feel a bit like fall. I walked my little 3-mile loop. Boring, but easy. Goldenrod was glowing in the slanting afternoon sunshine. Remember the strange plant I had so much trouble identifying a couple of years ago? Ox-Tongue? It's still filling in the roadside spaces on the corner where I first found it. I'm thinking the seeds got brought in with some fill dirt when they fixed that road. And, right in front of me, a golden leaf fluttered down to the pavement. For that leaf, the end of summer has come. In other news: I did pretty well at our little sales event. I've picked up another event for next weekend. I finished writing chapter 10 in The Lonely Donkey. I'm ready to chuck 2020 and start acting like an author who wants to sell books again.

See Ox-Tongue

Philadelphia Flower Show 2019 - Yellow

 
Yellow is one of my two favorite colors, and I sure enjoyed the sunny displays at the 2019 Philadelphia Flower Show.

This is one part of a huge commercial exhibit by Flowers by David. Not so much in this particular arrangement, but they combined the yellow with salmon pink, which sounds awful to me, but it really looked beautiful together.



Back to the World Cup exhibits. This is just part of one of the arrangements by Russia, but I like how light and airy it looks- like sunshine.



Pocket Gardens was another category of competitions in the Standard Flower Show. They were supposed to be on the theme of healing herbs. This one tied for the blue ribbon. It's called "Celestial Garden of Healing." The judges used words like "clever... detail... unusual herbs."



Here's another piece from the Czech World Cup entry. I like how natural it looks. I can imagine a trellis at the end of a porch.



Back to the pocket gardens, with the other first place entry. This one was my favorite pocket garden. I liked how everything tied together. It's called "Cascading Sunlight." Judges used words like "exuberant... exciting... powerful."

Today, I'll bring you an orchid. Can you believe I'm not so crazy about orchids? They get so much attention from the whole world... maybe I just like the underdogs because they get less recognition. But this one sure is yellow! It's a Cattlianthe Blazing Sun.



Here, it was gray all day, but just a bit ago, that yellow ball in the sky showed up. I didn't walk at all again today. A friend called and wanted to go to lunch so I did that and some errands. Worked on tape notes this morning, and stuff for the North Star magazine after I got home.

The new motor on the furnace pump is really noisy. Bummer. Debating whether to complain about it. For what it cost one might expect it to be quieter.

	See Orange
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