Garden Bloggers Bloom Day -- August 2010

It's the 15th of the month, and you know what that means . . . . Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. The premise is to post photos of what’s blooming in the garden on this particular day. May Dreams Gardens hosts, and provides a list of participating garden blogs.

The extreme heat and strong storms last week took a toll on the gardens, but the hardy (and a few delicate) plants are still standing and blooming. I think we're still a couple weeks early on the bloom schedule because a few of the things that are blooming are "fall" plants. Here’s what’s blooming in Auntie K’s Garden today:

The fall blooming anemone I purchased two years ago (as a tiny start) is blooming this year. It's still small, but eventually will fill the space with beautiful foliage and lovely pink blossoms.







The sedum have started blooming, too.







And one of the New England Asters has started budding.









Natives are still going strong: Purple Coneflower, White Coneflower, Ratibida, Anise Hyssop.








Knautia Macedonia (pictured), Stella D'Oro, and Lychnis Chalcedonia (not pictured) are having a second bloom.





The beautiful Leopard Lily, alternately called Blackberry Lily, (Belamcanda chinensis) has started to go crazy in the sunny boulevard garden.

The volunteer sunflowers and cosmos are both still going strong, too.

Mystery Flower from Saved Seeds

My neighbor, Barb, is a seed saver. She has container after container of seeds on a shelf in her basement. She saves seeds from Marigolds, Icelandic poppies, phlox, bachelor buttons, cosmos, and lots of other plants – mostly annuals, but some perennials—including this beautiful orange flower.

Neither of us had any idea what it was when she came over a few years ago and sprinkled the seeds over the tulips in the sunny boulevard garden. She described the then unknown flower as pretty orange flowers on long flat leaves. She was convinced they’d look fabulous with the Russian Sage I’d just planted. We planted the seeds and I waited!

I’d gotten the long, iris-like leaves for a couple years, but no blooms—not even a hint of a flower stem. When the leaves appeared earlier this year I wondered if this would be the year they would bloom. I confess that I had my doubts. But, bloom they did, and beautifully.

I was wandering through a local nursery last weekend (it was raining so I couldn’t work in the garden) and saw my “seed flower!” The tag said Leopard Lily! And, even though the name says lily, it’s in the iris family. I can’t decide what’s more thrilling – finally knowing the name of the flower or having it bloom and set seeds.