Fertilizer Friday -- Stargazer Lilies, Dahlias and Others

I have some flowers to flaunt for Fertilizer Friday! So let's get busy!

This Primrose is still green and flowering in my garden. That should give you some idea just how cool our summer has been.

Liatris in the back garden is flowering, although the one in the front is done.

Echinacea 'After Midnight' is flowering, love those dark stems!

Coreopsis 'Red Shift' has just started flowering. This is a tall, sturdy perennial Coreopsis.

The outer edges of the petals are actually much more yellow than the picture. As the fall weather cools, the flower should shift to all red.

My Lobelia cardinalis looks good with the dark foliage of Chocolate Joe-Pye Weed behind it.

Red is such a difficult color to capture, it always looks so bright. I know there are tricks, someday I'll haul out my camera manual and really learn how to use all my camera's features.

I bought this dark-leaved Angelica back in the spring at one of the spring sales. Now it's flowering.

Like the Lobelia, it also has the dark Joe-Pye leaves behind it.

Another species Echinacea in the sunny perennial bed. It is the only one there, so it gets kind of lost. Next year there will be lots more (at least, that's the current plan).

The single Rudbeckia in the same bed has just started flowering.

I'm wondering if I should just start thinking of this as a fall flower.

Panicum virgatum 'Rotstrahlbusch' is sending up seedheads. Soon the foliage should start to redden.

Snowberry/Symphoricapos albus sports a few of the white berries that give it its common name.

The flowers on this whitish Stokesia laevis 'Mary Gregory' never open any further than this. I'm kind of disappointed in it, I may shovel-prune it.

One of the Dahlias I got at a plant swap this spring is showing off pretty peach-colored flowers.

Love this Dahlia too, it's called 'Arabian Night.'

A long-time favorite, from the very first year I started gardening, my Stargazer lilies are looking and smelling pretty glorious.

 

Well, that's pretty much it for now. Although we have had some pretty hot days in the 80s lately, and warm nights, I do think the garden is winding down. As I posted previously, I am already thinking about next year!

Check out Tootsie Time's Fertilizer Friday post for lots more pictures of what's flowering all around the world!

Odds and Ends

There are a few new flowers out in my garden. The Echinaceas have just started blooming, and the Rudbeckias are right on the verge. My Stargazer lilies are blooming too, and my daylilies are finishing up. I took a few pictures, but I didn't like the way they turned out. Maybe I'll try taking them again tomorrow and post them for Fertilizer Friday.

Instead of a post today that focuses on my own garden, I thought I would haul out some odds and ends of all the many garden tours I went on this past spring and summer, from gardens that I didn't have the energy or the creativity to do an entire post around. Even when a garden is beautiful, sometimes it's hard to come up with anything of substance to say.

So, this is basically a pictures-only post. Even when words fail me, usually my camera doesn't. Not that I'm a whiz with that either. Maybe I'll comment if the mood strikes.

Whew! Did you actually make it all the way to the end here? Bravo!

Those last two images are Abutilon flowers in the garden of PNW gardening guru Ciscoe Morris. Last Sunday, I got together with a great group of gardeners who all garden and blog in the Seattle area -- a group with the humorous name of SAGBUTT (Seattle Area Garden Bloggers United to Talk). First we met for conversation and food (and mimosas), and we followed it up with a visit to Ciscoe's garden, which was holding an Open House, via the Northwest Horticultural Society.

I first read about SAGBUTT online about 2 years ago, when I first started blogging. It was kind of defunct for a while, but when I met one of the founders, Melanthia Peterman, at the Fling last month, I encouraged her to start it up again. So she did. Melanthia writes a garden blog called Garden Muse. We had a lot of fun at the meeting, and planned many more monthly meetings and trips to area gardens.

If you garden and blog in the Seattle area, and are on Facebook, check out the group's Facebook presence here. Or if you're not on Facebook, and you're interested in joining us, send me an email at alison dot conliffe at gmail dot com.