Today's Flowers - July 19

One of my new Tropicanna canna lilies has graced me with a flower. It's the only one, of the six lilies I planted, to have a bloom, so far. I'm hoping that all of them will mature enough to bloom before summer ends.

I bought the lilies more for their foliage color than for the flower, but I do like its bright orange. It's a perfect accompaniment to the leaf colors.

Today's Flowers is a weekly Meme created by Luiz Santilli, Jr. and may be found here. Please visit to see others' lovely flower photos. If you have a flower photo of your own to share, please join us.

Bits and Pieces

Not a whole lot going on since the last post. It's rained, off and on, during the last couple of days, so the yardening has been curtailed. I did manage a walk around between showers and noticed that my newly planted canna lilies seem to have settled in. There's new growth on several of them, as evidenced by the tightly curled shoot shown below.

I'm baby sitting my gardening daughter's dogs, Snuggles and Buddy, while she is away for a few days. Snuggles, about whom I wrote a couple of times last year while she being adopted and undergoing treatment for heartworms, has made a full recovery and is a sweet, sweet dog. True to her name, she does like to snuggle, and nearly pushed me off my side of the bed last night. Of course, the dogs sleep with me! The cats don't like it much, although Squeak did nest down on my other side sometime during the early morning hours.

Snuggles


Buddy

Raccoons, again: Just before dark last night, I watched two raccoons crawl up my back fence from the drainage ditch that runs behind my lot. They hoisted themselves into the Japanese Weeping Cherry tree (some of the branches overhang the fence)and except for shaking and trembling of leaves, they became invisible to me --- but not to Buddy. I almost could not get him to come back into the house. He paced the fence line, tried to climb the Cherry tree, barked (of course), and did his own sort of grid-search across the back quadrant of the yard. I eventually just let him wear himself out and decide on his own when he was ready to come back inside. I did later see one of the raccoons walk across the top of the fence from the Cherry toward my fig tree; s/he may have supped on green figs. I don't know if the raccoons camped out in my yard overnight, or went on to greener pastures. There is an unfenced garden next door with some tomato and squash plants, just waiting to be munched upon.

That's about it. It's cooler today, but the humidity is still high, making for not too pleasant walking around outside, and the mosquitos are very pesky!

More, later.

Look around -- "happy" could be anywhere

It doesn't take a whole lot to make me happy.

Yesterday morning about 7:30, I spied a single hummingbird trying to find nectar in some of my remaining day lilies. Since I did not yet have a hummingbird feeder up, I paid a visit to my local garden store yesterday afternoon and purchased a new shepherd's crook (7') and a basic red plastic container for nectar. I make my own H.B. food, 4 parts filtered water to 1 part sugar, boiled and cooled, which I did immediately upon arriving home, and put up the feeder yesterday afternoon.

My first "happy" for today happened at 9:32 a.m. while I was looking out the window, watching the variety of birds that visit my regular feeders. Lo, and behold! There at the new feeder was a beautiful little hummingbird. He/she lingered to take multiple sips of my homemade nectar, then flew off into the trees. I'm hoping s/he spreads the news that the new feeder station is open for business.



For some time, I have had a yearning for some Tropicanna Canna Lilies, and had been searching various Internet plant catalogs. I thought the price asked was a bit steep, but had almost resolved myself to order a few bare-root plants to be shipped in the fall. However, Fate stayed my hand, and I did not "click to order." A good thing! Because...

...I had another "happy" yesterday afternoon whilst browsing the plant section of above mentioned store. There, on sale ( I love sales) were Tropicanna Canna Lilies. Since I had already picked out a perfect spot for them, I bought four of them.

Gardening Daughter visited a little later in the afternoon and said she had spied some of the same, but nicer plants (she thought) at another garden shop, and drove me to said facility. She was right! They were much larger plants, in lovely condition, although at a higher price than what I had paid for the others. I bought two, anyway.

A serendipity at this other shop was a pallet full of odds and ends of mulch, top soil and sand. Some of the bags had tears, and daughter thought they might be on sale for half price, so she inquired. Amazing! The whole pallet, as is, no additions, no subtractions, could be had for a paltry $8.50. We came home with 3 bags of top soil, 1 bag of sand, 12 bags of cypress mulch and one bag of pine bark mulch. All will be put to good use in my yard.

Daughter has just showed up at my door to help me plant the items purchased yesterday, so that's another happy! I'm always happy for the assistance.

More, later; I'm off to work in the yard!