Goodness, that was such a long post yesterday! I apologize if anyone got bored partway through. I didn't realize. I started the post in early July, and then just kept adding pictures as I took them. They're not all flowering right now, some I captured earlier in the month or later in June. I wanted to document when they flowered.
The general consensus of people living in the PNW is that summer starts the day after July 4th, which is also when the rains stop, as if a cosmic hose has been turned off. Although the rains stopped before July 4th this year -- actually it stopped back at the end of June while I was at the Fling in San Francisco, when the heat soared as well -- my foliage now mid-month is still looking pretty lush. By August, unless I spend a lot of time watering, things are going to start looking...well...not so lush.
By Fall, they'll be a bit crispy, despite weekly watering. In the summer, I like to water the entire garden at least once a week, moving the oscillating sprinkler around from bed to bed and watering each in sections, for about an hour at a time. The drought tolerant plants like the grasses and coneflowers do ok, but there are a few moisture-loving plants in my garden that usually go rather prostrate in the summer. I can almost hear them gasping "Water! Give us water!"
When that happens, I can usually pick the weeds out really easily. They're the only ones out there still standing straight and tall.
Anyway, here is some foliage that is still looking lush, which I'm sharing for Foliage Followup.
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| Bamboo Iris, received at the Portland Bloggers Plant Exchange and looking quite healthy. |
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| Blackberry lily, which is actually a type of iris, resembles the bamboo iris somewhat. An old favorite, it seeds about just a bit, and sprouts in a pot easily. The seedpods look like blackberries. |
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| Two blackberry lily fans have interlaced prettily. |
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| Flowers are coming, in next month's Bloom Day post. |
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| Panicum 'Blood Brothers' is looking quite red already. |
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| Helictotrichon wasn't a favorite when I first planted it. But I've grown to like its blue accent. This clump, and one other in the same bed, are looking lush. |
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| I moved this clump in the early spring, and it has lots of dead strands, which need to be combed out with fingers, a tricky, messy, annoying job. The strands always end up getting away from me and end up strewn throughout the bed. |
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| Nasturtium Alaska's variegated foliage |
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| Proven Winners Coleus 'Marooned' fades in the shade, but intensifies in the sun, and has nice red stems as well |
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| With Solanum quitoense |
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| My purple Melianthus, bought earlier this year while at Valley Nursery with Peter The Outlaw Gardener, likes the spot where I planted it. |
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| A second Melianthus, with plain blue leaves, is also growing quite nicely, surrounded by daylilies, Eryngium 'Jade Frost' and Monarda 'Jacob Cline.' |
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| A small succulent pot on top of my gabion pillars is looking good. The Aloe has a nice orange tinge to it. |
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| A second Aloe, whose companions have gone to the Great Gravel Garden in the Sky, is sporting even more orange, and has made a baby. I think it may be getting just a bit of shade. |
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| Those teeth are a bit off-putting. What might she do when I try to take her baby away? |
Pam Penick, who writes the blog Digging, hosts Foliage Followup every month on the day after Bloom Day. Foliage Followup is a celebration of the garden's workhorse, the interesting foliage, in combos or singly. Today she's sharing some interesting foliage that she saw in San Francisco on the recent Garden Bloggers Fling. Check out her post
here, where others who are participating leave their links in the comments.
