August is blooming (and swimming)!

Posted on August 5, 2023 by Mominthegarden

Hi there! All of my pictures today were taken in the two minutes of sunshine that we were blessed to have! 🙂 I hate to make the weather such a terrible topic, so I’ll just mention that the rain has persisted. Oh sure, we’ve had some breaks here and there. I even managed to go on a fairly dry bike ride the other day. But boy has it rained in between! You know who loves that, right? HYDRANGEAS! They are looking mighty fine. The roses are the main flowers unhappy with the wet situation.

The sunflowers continue to bloom and show off their beautiful faces. The dahlias are starting to pick up the pace of their blooming (not all have bloomed, yet, though). Three of the blooming varieties (American Dawn, Totally Tangerine and Copperboy) were planted specifically for creating sunflower arrangements. I used them for the first time today and was delighted with the result!

Otherwise, I’ve been trying to get in and tidy up the garden, a little at a time. I’ll get there – eventually! Do join me as I partake in the Six on Saturday meme, hosted by Jim at Garden Ruminations.

I hope you enjoy the tour!

In Peace,
Dana

1 – Dwarf little lime hydrangea. These guys are so happy with the wet weather we’ve been having! They do not get big, which is exactly why I chose them. They start out white-green, then go more lime and they now have shades of pink. They did not look this nice last year, when we had very little rain and they were being watered by me.

Clockwise from top right: Buddleia BUZZ 'Dark Pink' Butterfly Bush, Delphinium Shelby and Monarda Fireball (bee balm)

2, 3 & 4 – (from top right) Buddleia BUZZ ‘Dark Pink’ Butterfly Bush, Delphinium ‘Shelby’ and Monarda Fireball (bee balm). I gave the dwarf butterfly bush a super hard pruning this year. I was doubtful for a while whether it would bloom. But blooming it certainly is! It is a lovely fuchsia color, offset nicely against the yellow potentilla flowers. I know I’ve mentioned the ‘Shelby’ delphinium before, but it is still blooming beautifully, so I had to give it another shout out. Finally, the Monarda ‘fireball’ is a new favorite. It smells lovely (I have a thing for scented plants!) and attracts bees – hence, it’s nickname ‘bee balm’. The color is supposed to be red, but it is more of pinkish hue of red.

A flower arrangement of sunflowers and coppery/orange dahlias in a pottery container

5 & 6 – A flower arrangement of sunflowers and dahlias. How fun is that? And what a great use of a pottery biscuit jar (we’ve never put cookies in it). The other flower I hadn’t mentioned is the Verbena Bonariansis (groups of tiny purple flowers with long stems). Dahlias: Totally Tangerine, Copperboy and American Dawn. The coloring on the American Dawn is a lot more coppery than the coral I was expecting – but I do love it! I like to grow sunflowers that have smaller flower heads, which are more manageable in arrangements. There is a nice mixture of sizes here, and colors. And both sunflowers and dahlias have a nice long vase life!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Did you have any favorite flowers?

A turbulent July is nearly gone

Posted on July 29, 2023 by Mominthegarden

Hi there! And I must say that we are quite happy to say goodbye to the soggy month of July. Thankfully, it did pass quickly. I’m full of hope that August will be nicer!

Speaking of bad weather, the rain also rather messed up my lavender schedule. There were many delays in harvesting it, due to the rain. Thankfully, I was able to harvest most of it. The good news is that it dried out really quickly and I’ve already made a couple of lavender wreaths. 🙂

The other news for July is that my dahlias are finally starting to bloom! They have grown big enough for me to stake the area and provide supports for them. I did this after some strong winds completely broke off one of my plants at the base, leaving it useless for this season (and with loads of teeny tiny buds on it!). I had everything set-up to do, but didn’t think they were big enough yet… Lesson learned.

I’ll be joining Garden Ruminations for our Six on Saturday meme. I hope you’ll enjoy the tour!

In Peace,
Dana

1 – Lavender wreath. I’m going to say that all of my wreaths are bespoke, because no two are alike! They tend to come out a bit quirky, swishing here or there. One thing I definitely do, is completely cover the wreath in lavender. I like to use a huge amount! This one took a few hours to make. I used floral pins to keep the lavender in place on the straw wreath.

2 – Delphinium ‘Shelby’. This is such a lovely two-toned blue with purple. They are short stems, thankfully. This has helped them with our windy weather.

Collage of dahlias clockwise from top right: 'Creme de Cassis', 'Wizard of Oz', 'Hartenaas', and 'Totally Tangerine'

3, 4, 5 & 6 – Dahlias! Clockwise from top right: Creme de Cassis, Wizard of Oz, Hartenaas and Totally Tangerine. It’s still early days for them, but I’m so excited because they are all just so lovely! Some of the plants are relatively short, too, so I’m hopeful they won’t be damaged in poor weather. I can’t wait to work these guys into some flower arrangements! Stay tuned!

Thanks so much for stopping by. Do you have any favorite dahlias that you think I should add to my collection? 🙂

This isn’t an Irish summer!

Posted on August 13, 2022 by Mominthegarden

Hi there! Welcome to my blog. My family and I were away on a wonderful holiday to Greece last week and we’ve come home to the most amazing weather here in Ireland! This is not your typical Irish weather. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had some beautiful summers here. But the weather is usually mild (read: not hot) and we wouldn’t typically get lots of consecutive days of sunshine. So while we could really use a good rainfall at this stage, the abundance of blue skies and sunshine is such a welcome treat. As for the garden, well, it is thirsty. Very thirsty. Rain is in the forecast and I’m really hoping that it gives the garden a good drink (at night, of course!).

The flowers are definitely suffering because of the lack of water. Mostly they just bloom and die (quickly). I’m trying to capture them as much as possible while they look good! I have a bunch of dahlias that are all blooming together, which is so pretty to see. The delphinium is one of my favorites simply because the colors are so striking (more so when having two complementary colors). And I could not resist cutting some of my sunflowers. What a collection of colors there are!

I do hope your summer is going well. It is flying by much too quickly. I’m joining the Propagator for his ‘Six on Saturday’ meme. You might see some flowers from last week (different pics, of course!) – that means they are my favorites!

Enjoy the tour!

bowl of blueberries and bouquet of delphinium Shelby and Blue Ocean

1 & 2 – Blueberries and Delphinium Shelby (in the center, light color) and Blue Ocean (darker color) and Kitty. What a difference it makes to cover your blueberries to protect them from the birds! We have never had so many blueberries to eat ourselves. 🙂 Poor birds, but lucky us! The delphinium are in pots on our deck. I love their colors.

3 – Dahlia Café au Lait. What a stunner this one is. I have a few different tubers and one produces pink-tinged flowers and one produces cream-tinged flowers. If I were to critique them I’d say that they’re a tiny bit too big, and would be more ideal a little bit smaller – for arrangements, at least. But I do still like them very much! These are in containers on our deck. The dahlias in the ground are *almost* ready to flower…

4 – Lily Magic Star. At least that’s what I bought! I’m not sure it looks like magic star, but it is very pretty. I love scented flowers. Love, love, love them. This is also in a container on our deck and is really putting on quite the show.

5 – Gladiolus Pink Parrot on the left and Rose Supreme on the right. I have to correct my post from last week as I named Rose Supreme Pink Parrot. These are in pots on our deck (I sense a theme here). The deck flowers provide a beautiful sea of color for me to look at when I am in our kitchen. It’s my favorite view from inside the house!

vase of sunflowers yellow, brown, burgundy in sunshine and at sunset

6 – Sunflowers! Wish I could tell you exactly which varieties these are, but since I switched and swapped and tried quite a few at the start, I’m not quite sure. The brownish ones are Clarets, I think there are some called ‘sunny flowers’ and some called ‘Waooh!’. I like them because they are smaller and manageable for vases. Each stem has many flowers on it at every stage – from tiny buds to mature flowers. For this reason, I don’t really like cutting stems. But I do have a lot this year, so a few vases now and again is fine (right?). The top two pictures were taken in the evening, right after I cut them and about 15 minutes apart. The sunset lighting really changes everything. The bottom full photo is from the following day, and it was so windy that my husband is actually holding the vase for me! All to get the perfect picture 🙂

Thank you for stopping by! Which was your favorite flower?

In Peace,
Dana

Enjoying the warmth of Summer

Posted on July 16, 2022 by Mominthegarden

Hello! Welcome to my blog. It might have taken its sweet time in getting here, but summer is definitely gracing us now! The garden seems to be happy about the warmth, but could certainly use a good soaking (preferably over night, please and thank you). I would say that July is definitely a time when the garden is at full throttle. I’m mainly deadheading roses, weeding, and watering at the moment. I try to get a small gardening task done in the morning and another one in the evening, in order to stay on top of things. I’m not really staying on top of things, but it’s nice to think I am. 🙂

More lilies have bloomed this week, and the sunflower bed is starting to show color as more flowers are starting to bloom. It seems there are a few different varieties, which I’m happy about. I had very poor luck with my early seedlings this year and did a few different plantings as the first batches didn’t survive. So honestly, I’m glad to have anything at all.

While I haven’t found a place in the ground for my delphinium yet, they still look very pretty in containers. My goal would be to eventually create a sheltered spot for them. This is not the easiest of tasks given our windy location, but we’ll see.

This is also lavender season! The flowers are perfect for either making wreaths with now, or cutting to dry for use later. I know what I’ll be doing all day tomorrow!

Have you noticed the difference in the garden as seen in the feature image, above? It’s really filling in. The sunflower bed is all the way to the right. They aren’t very tall, but there are lots of them.

I am joining the Propagator for his Six on Saturday meme. Feel free to join in!

Enjoy the tour.

1 – Sunflowers. In the collage above, the top right picture shows Sunflower Helianthus Ester. The other three pictures in the collage are of Sunflower Claret F1. Funny store here, the new Claret F1 seeds that I bought this year didn’t survive. So these Claret sunflowers (non-yellow) are all from my own seeds from last year’s flowers.

As for the second picture, that relatively short sunflower grew from our compost, so I’m not sure of the variety. It is in our ‘Rainbow garden’, sitting pretty next to the Erysimum Bowles ‘mauve’ plant, and in front of the globe artichoke plant.

lotus dream mix lilies with Scepter'd Isle roses — Lotus Dream lilies with Scepter’d Isle David Austin roses

2 – Lotus Dream Mix lilies. It really seemed like overnight that these lilies decided to open up. They are highly fragrant, and I love the scent! These pictures don’t show it, but quite a few of my lilies were eaten this year by an unidentified bug/worm. I’m just glad that they weren’t all destroyed.

3 & 4. The rose bed and Boscobel David Austin roses. Although the first flush of roses is now just about finished, since the Boscobel roses were late starting, they still look fabulous! They are a salmon-pink color and (of course) beautifully scented. This bed really shouts out ‘pink!’ and I love all of the different shades. The Lotus Dream lilies are also in this bed.

5 & 6 Delphinium Cobalt Dreams and Shelby. The top picture is of Cobalt Dreams. I planted them from seed last year and kept them in a container all season. Before the cold weather came, I planted them next to the playhouse as that is the most sheltered ‘sun’ spot. They overwintered well, even came up in the spring. But the Bleeding Heart plant completely covered them and they stopped growing. So we dug them up (three plants, actually) and threw them in pots. This is the first one to flower this year. It is beautiful.

The second delphinium is called Shelby, and also quite beautiful with a blue ruffle outer layer. I bought this at the Rare & Special plant fair in Cork this spring. I have it in a container, and it seems to be happy enough. A big ‘to-do’ for me is to create a sheltered ‘sun’ spot in the garden so I can have these lovely plants in the garden and not just on my sheltered deck.

And that is a wrap for today’s Six on Saturday. Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed the tour. Which was your favorite plant? 🙂

In Peace,
Dana

Mom in the Garden

Enjoying life. In Ireland. With my family.

Tag Archives: Delphinium Shelby

August is blooming (and swimming)!

A turbulent July is nearly gone

This isn’t an Irish summer!

Enjoying the warmth of Summer