Don't be fooled. Inside this thin coating of sweetness is a fiery core of total insanity.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

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.