More Flowers

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More Ketchup and Mustard. If only it had scent…

So, in lieu of actual content, because my brain is mush due to allergies, end-of-term work, and pre-loading two blogs for June, you get more flower photos today. Sorry.

I was poking around my favorite local native-plant and xeriscape nursery, and discovered this thing. The lady said they’d ordered it by mistake, because it’s a tropical version and won’t over-winter. I got it anyway, just because it is so odd. It’s a butterfly-bush, also known as buddleia.

No, seriously, it’s really a buddleia. Really.

Same plant, two weeks later. Those are “true carnations,” or dianthus, crowding in. Rain gauge for scale.

This makes two “odd” buddleia that grace RedQuarters. The other, a huge spring-flowering, left the visiting landscaper slack-jawed. He’d never seen such a thing, and was frantically taking notes about all our plants for his boss. In addition to measuring for two new flowerbeds. We have two that are literally falling apart at the seams, and they need to be replaced before we have a plant-va-lanche.

Like I said, strange but cool.

Mock orange. Its over seven feet tall and perfumes the entire yard.

The mock orange was another thing that had the landscaper staring in disbelief. You can’t see it, but there are two roses blooming inside this behemoth.

And for something slightly different. Remember that post about the different bees?

Honeybee meets salvia.

Now, fair warning. The next shot is 1) 20+ years in the making, 2) in a really, really unusually good spring, 3) after the flowerbeds have been tidied and trimmed, 4) on a cool day. If your yard doesn’t look like this, don’t sweat it. I can’t think of many places here in town that look like this.

Pulling back and shooting down half the length of the bed.

That’s the second Ketchup and Mustard, salvia, and more roses.

There’s a yucca hiding in there, and moss roses making an escape break by the rain gauge. You can’t see the snap-dragons, coreopsis, or gallardia, either. Again, twenty plus years of trial, error, composting, and grumbling about “why’d it die? It looked just fine yesterday, before the sirocco turned everything to plant-jerky.”

For those wondering, we water (if we have to) half an inch a week, and hand water with extra from cisterns if needed. It’s about time to add more mulch, to keep things cool and moist as we hit the hot time of the year.

16 thoughts on “More Flowers”

  3. Beautiful, I’m getting an allergy attack just looking at the pics.

  4. That’s a lovely collection of flowers.

    I’m more of a laissez-faire gardener. If it can’t survive the summer on scorpion sweat and lizard urine, it’s not going to be there next year.

    • We’re at that point. Roses get a little coddling, based on past experience, but otherwise? Everything is native or drought hardy. Stick it in the ground, and if it dies, scratch it off the list. The local tap water is almost the same as no water, because of the mineral content. What you see is 8″ of rain. 8″ of irrigation wouldn’t look nearly as good.

    • Thus spake a gardener of my acquaintance: “A weed is just a flower growing where you don’t want it.”

  6. Very nice! I can appreciate the work needed, to make such a wonder. Back to getting mulch in, after an extensive weeding and eradication job. The bergamot bushes might need replacement.

    • There are five bags of “Forest Mulch” lurking around the corner, waiting for tomorrow afternoon and Saturday.

      • Bags … I wish. Eight scoops (about a pallet of bags?); one down, seven to go. Yes, good exercise. This year, weeding was more like a facial peel, thanks to a couple nasty surface rooting weeds. I may add another hardy rose to the plantings, need some height and color to go with lilacs. Thx for the ideas.

  7. *sigh*

    #Goals

    I need to get some cuttings of the…Hanson, Harrison, something like that…the “Yellow Rose” or “pioneer rose” at the old homesteads in my dad’s home valley, and get a bunch of the wild roses from Washington, too.

    (They look just like pink ones to the left of the mustard and ketchup in the bottom picture.)

    I know my house will never be that nice, but I hope to make it echo the same beauty– add to the three varieties of lilacs that someone planted here.

    • Harrison’s Yellow is the yellow one. You can also buy it commercially. The Rose Rustlers made it available.

      • You can also buy it commercially.

        If you can beat the rush! I swear, NOBODY I can find (mostly online) can keep it in stock!

  8. I knew it was allergy season when my daughter asked, “Daddy, why are you crying?”

    There’s a downside to moving somewhere green after growing up in a desert.

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