Flower Garden Update, August 12, 2011

The weather wasn’t very kind to our flower garden but thanks to automatic low pressure irrigation all plants are doing well with few exceptions. I forgot to feed Lobelia and it does show, big time! I just hope that with some TLC and good fertilizer they will be full of gorgeous bright blue flowers.

Dahlias started to bloom in middle of July and now they are all in bloom. We bought the tubers last fall and all 5 were described as Diner Plate Dahlias. Well, three of them are more like little girl’s teacup saucer size and one of these small flower Dahlias is about 6 feet tall! Still, they are quite showy and will last till first frost. At least they did last year.

Hemerocalis were a bit of a surprise as to how slow they were to bloom and how fast they faded. Right now there are not that many flowers. Marjo fertilized them so here is hoping that they will bloom again.

Zinnias that I have started from seed last February are just spectacular! So many flowers and so tall, they are taking over our deck stairs and had to be tied because they were spreading so much.

We leave the spent and dried flower heads on because American Goldfinches just love the seeds. They are quite acrobats, hanging upside down from those small flower heads. In addition to Zinnias seeds I give them sunflower heads from our branching sunflower. When the head turns brown I cut it and stick it into flower box on our deck railing. Interesting thing is that only females and immature males will feed oh sunflower and only mature males feed on Zinnias, for whatever reason. I just can’t figure out why.

Also, couple hummingbirds are visiting few times a day and each has its own resting spot: one is on top of dead leader of our Fir and second one likes our hanging basket hook.

Climbing roses are in full bloom, again. Marjo did some great pruning and they are just beautiful.

Two years ago I started hollyhock from seeds and this year it is over 9 feet tall and growing. Flowers are not the largest I have seen but they are quite unusual dark purple, almost black, with bright canary yellow center. I think that next year the flowers will be much larger.

Hollyhock is in between evergreens.

Note: I am quite late with this post as I have started on August 6^th. I got new computer on 7^th and had to install bunch of programs plus move lots of files. Unfortunately, some older (12 years old!) devices will not run on 64 bit Windows 7 OS. On top of it all I have to get used to new operating system and new version of MS Office (2010). It will be a while before everything is back to normal.