I visited Heronswood over the weekend, and briefly considered posting a few photos of flowers from that garden for Bloom Day, but reconsidered. One of the purposes of Bloom Day, after all, is to keep a chronicle of blooms and their differing bloom periods from year to year, and this has been quite a freaky year.
So, as Sammy J says in Jurassic Park, "Hold onto your butts."
Here are my blooms.
The first California poppy
Silene dioica 'Ray's Golden Campion' -- sown from seeds shared a few years ago by Nan Ondra
'Ray's Golden Campion'
Pacific Coast Iris -- one of the first plants ever put in the ground in my garden here, most of the tags have been lost
I do know this one is called 'Broadleigh Rose'
Planted too close to a Dasylirion wheeleri, which on a windy day does its best impression of a weed-whacker, this Pacific Iris's petals are a little chewed
Newly planted Berlandiera lyrata
Linum lewisii/Blue flax
Geranium phaeum 'Samobor'
Centaurea montana (and lady's mantle foliage)
Dicentra 'Gold Heart' -- with one withered heart right smack in the middle, a metaphor for life?
Dicentra 'Gold Heart' -- ignore the humongous pile of gallon pots protruding from behind the shed
Pulsatilla vulgaris/Pasque flower
Vine maple flowers
Camassia
Dicentra formosa/wild western bleeding heart
Ceanothus
Weigela, just starting to flower -- a not very interesting or pretty shrub, but it has pretty flowers the hummingbirds love, which gains it a reprieve from being yanked every year
Geranium renardii -- one of the first plants I ever bought at Dig on Vashon Island
Geranium renardii
Most of my Epimediums are finished, but this little clump is still going
Self-sown patch of Anthriscus sylvestris makes an airy scrim
I don't remember the name of this gold-leafed Brunnera, but the blue flowers seem bluer than 'Jack Frost' -- but that might just be an optical illusion
True Forget-me-not Myosotis alpestris (Brunnera, pictured above, is sometimes called False forget-me-not)
Another airy flower, Saxifrage 'London Pride', flowering from rosettes that I cut off last fall from another clump and simply stuck into the soil to root
Euphorbia self sows all over, into the recycled concrete wall
Euphorbia
Melica uniflora
Aquilegia 'Clementine Red'
Clematis blooming still in its pot -- I've already lost the tag, but I think it's Clematis montana
Saponaria ocymoides/Soapwort -- a sweet little perennial that self-sows and is wonderfully drought-tolerant for me
Lewisia, which I cannot keep alive in the ground, loves the great drainage of life in a colander
Interestingly, moss loves the colander too. Here, fruiting bodies called sporophytes protrude from the holes
Sorry -- you'll have to wait a little while to see my photos of Heronswood.
Carol at May Dreams Gardens hosts Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Check out her post here, where you'll also find posts from other bloggers all over the world also celebrating their May flowers.
