A bevy of beauties

My little sister is not a gardener.  In fact, she is militantly not a gardener.   Unless, of course, it suits her to think about landscaping her place in order to make it more saleable.   Then she is a gardener.    But not at a party, where other people who have beautiful gardens might want to talk about them.   After all, that would require her to listen to someone else talk.

Anyway, one fine spring day a few years ago when we were still more or less on speaking terms, she dropped by our place and found me knee deep in dirt, busy transplanting and mulching. 

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m transplanting some of day lilies and planting a few more that I bought at the day lily sale Jeri and I went to yesterday,” was my reply.

“Day lilies?    You already have some day lilies, don’t you?”

“Well, yes.   But these are new day lilies.”

“Well, I don’t see why you would want any more.  They are all orange, anyway.”  This was spoken in her dismissive “this is the end of this conversation” tone.

In refutation of that statement, I offer you this bevy of beauties, all blooming this week in my garden.   The first is named Double Bourbon.

This next one is called Hyperion.  It has a lovely scent, the flowers are six inches across.

Next we have Strawberry Candy, followed by Peach Candy:

Now this one is a miniature, the blossoms are only about 2 inches across.   She is called Little Sweetness.

Next one is Spacecoast Starburst.   I actually spent over $30 to acquire this beauty when she was a brand new variety.   Signs of obsession, I know.

The rest have names, I know, but they are lost in the mists of history.   The flowers are no less beautiful for being unnamed.

Now how could anybody say all day lilies are orange? 

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Baths? We don’t need no stinking baths.

Ruby was a dirty itchy dog, and so we decided a bath was in order.   She calmly tolerated our latest idiotic activity.   As soon as we finished and got her rinsed, she ran around the yard and found the ONLY place where there was bare dirt and remedied the intolerable cleanliness.  The result:

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Dancer in the labyrinth

One of the wonderful things about blogging is the way you come across new people when you are doing it.  I’m not sure how I found Tammy Vitale’s blog  in the first place, but I have truly enjoyed visiting it and getting to know her.   She is an artist in clay, and in addition to very interesting posts that include an inspirational “thought for the day” has an extensive photographic gallery of her works linked to her blog.  

I have spent a lot of time looking at her works, and I especially like her torsos.   Lately she has been making what she calls “Totems” as well, and I like them a lot.   She also makes a line called “Wylde Women.”  As soon as I started looking at these little women, I knew I had to have one for the labyrinth.   I have felt for some time that it needed  a “spirit presence” within it.

Well, there is now a Wylde Woman dancing in in the center of the labyrinth.

She is presiding over a space in our place that has become almost otherworldly in its energy.   It is also extremely wild right now, in desperate need of having the paths mowed.  Right now there are box turtles using it as shade and shelter during the heat of the day, and some silly rabbit mother has established a nest of babies there.   Not a very good idea, I’m afraid the resident predators have already discovered the “bunny mine.”

While I was walking the Wylde Woman into the center of the labyrinth, I noticed that there are several prairie plants that are getting ready to bloom.  The prairie coneflower is about waist high and has buds, the willow leaved sunflower is about shoulder high, and there are ox-eyed sunflowers that are almost ready to bloom.   The purple echinacea, black eyed susans,  and day lilies also have buds that will open soon. 

I took my camera along to photograph some of the things that are actually blooming right now.   There is globe mallow, which despite my attempts to encourage it to stay in the rock area that delineates the paths, insists on sprawling across them.

I had an extra asiatic lily bulb one year, and planted it out in the circles.   It seems to be very happy.

One of the prairie flowers that I have tried to establish is liatris, also called gay feather.  I’m not sure exactly how many tubers I have transplanted out there, but it is more than this one which has decided it likes it here.  I believe I shall keep on trying, these tall purple spikes are quite elegant.

Right now the sweet cicely and the fleabane are painting the whole labyrinth with great swathes of white.

I love the way this looks, but I know that there will be extensive labyrinth maintenance required very soon, as the sweet cicely is starting to go to seed.   I try to pull it out before the seeds start to fall off, they are quite a nuisance for labyrinth walkers as they are rounded burrs that cling to clothing for a hitch-hike ride to a new place to colonize.  Also, the center circle needs to have its border trimmed so that all the special rocks can be admired.  I also have some daffodil bulbs that “showed up” as I was transplanting some day lilies that need to be planted out there.

Maybe I’ll just go do that now.   That, or weed the vegetable garden.   Or dig the new flower bed by the sauna dressing room.

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