Well, here goes my first attempt at documenting the flowers happening in my garden on bloom day (the 15th of every month), a challenge put forth over at May Dreams Gardens. Our USDA hardiness zone 7 garden is in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range. To be honest, I didn’t think there would be many flowers because we haven’t had much rain since July, I don’t irrigate much, and we had a record number of hot days this summer. Not a recipe for flowers, right? But, as we will see, there were quite a few more than I expected.
Weeds
Let’s start with the weeds. These always bloom, no matter how dry it gets.
Annuals
Most of my annuals are of the self-seeding types. I don’t usually plant a lot of them intentionally, with the exception of this Bolivian Sunset gloxinia this year.
Bulbs and corms
Dependable, rugged stand-bys. A guaranteed burst of color, regardless of the weather.
Miscellaneous late-blooming perennials
I prefer the orange/brown single flowered varieties of gloriosa daisy like this one, but they are hard to find. Seed mixes almost always yield only yellow-flowering plants no matter what desirable colors it shows on the packet/website, which makes me think they are always mislabeled. Oh well. You’ll see a whole bunch of the regular yellow ones in the background.
Rock garden flowers
The surprisingly hard texture of carline thistle flowers. Each petal is very stiff, like a strip of thin, dried bamboo or straw.
All of that pruning of my shrubby hare’s ear earlier this spring has paid off (here). Lots of flowers on a very tidy bush.
Easy to overlook the tiny flowers of the small leaf creeping wire vine. Worth a closer look in my opinion. I like an underdog flower.
I noticed the related shrubby tororaro was also blooming at the same time. This was the best picture I could get – the little bee seems to be enjoying it anyway.
Oh my gosh, that was 50 flowers! Way more than I would have guessed given our hot, dry summer and how little I watered this year.
I love your collection of plants, so many goodies! Thanks for sharing.
It looks like we share a lot of the same plant choices!
I love that you started your first ever Bloomday post with the weeds! Your Bupleurum fruticosum is looking fantastic and I love the little Muehlenbeckia axillaris flowers—excellent photo.
Something unexpected for everybody. Hopefully not a huge faux pas, but I do like veering towards the unexpected and the reality is that I neglected weed management this year. Now, I just need to reign it in. 50 flowers was a bit over the top.
I love your blog name – and your blog’s subtitle. There’s a lot in flower in your garden. We share many plants, like Amaryllis belladonna, Daucus carota, Trachelospermum and Muelenbeckia. I’ve never had flowers on the wire vine, though. I don’t have a prayer of growing some of the other wonderful plants you have in bloom due to the increasingly dry conditions of my garden, like Fuchsias, Geranium ‘Rozanne’ and Phygelius. I used to grow all 3 of those in my former garden but sandy soil, climate change, and water restrictions have made that too difficult here. I even have a problem getting our native California poppies established! In the years before climate change became more obvious, Los Angeles County got an average of 15 inches of rain a year – and there were no irrigation restrictions. In the 2021 “water year” we got 4 inches of rainfall and in the 2022 water year (which ends this month) we’ve had 8.63 inches. Needless to say, many of the flowers I love are giving way to less thirsty plants.
Best wishes in getting some rain as summer turns into fall!
I’ve been looking to your blog for ideas on where to go with my garden in the future. We are on our own well and probably won’t have water restrictions for a long time. But, I am keeping watering to a minimum because if the well goes dry, we are in a lot of trouble. We’ve had 27 inches of rain this year. Puts things in perspective compared to your situation. Ideally, I’d like to achieve an attractive, no water garden, but it’s not realistic for me yet as I am unwilling to let go of some of the thirstier plants that I want to keep around. I water new plants for the first 1-2 years and I have three perennial beds that get watered once a week. The rest is pretty much on its own. Still, I cannot imagine it being so dry that you can’t get California poppies established. We are surrounded by Douglas-fir plantations, so the risk of fire is also on my mind a lot. This climate change situation is scary. Glad you got some rain recently.
I’ve been thinking of weeds a lot lately. They are so tough, and truly – my life would be a lot easier if I just decided to consider them garden-worthy. That little oxalis is adorable. I don’t know why I keep trying to pull its brittle stems out. The root always seems to remain – especially when it’s this dry.
I’m a big fan of the Bupleurum – one of the most fantastic pollinator plants I know! Another fave is Teucrium chamaedrys. And, as you said, Oregano…. I’m not familiar with the creeping Teucrium you posted, but it too, is lovely.
It is definitely much harder to weed when it’s dry. It would be a lot easier if we could just enjoy the weeds. They can be pretty, but that oxalis is so prolific and it gets into the tiniest cracks. You remind me it’s time for me to try Teucrium chamaedrys again. I’ve got a pot of the yellow-leaf variety, but I think I would rather have the green-leaf variety on this one slope that I have.