Tag: plants

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Summer Flowers

Christine

We had a lot of gorgeous sunflowers this year, as well as some other really nice flowers. The garden got started so late because of all the rain, then I neglected my plants because of the major life upheaval. The plants were lucky mother nature was looking out for them, raining a bit almost every day for most of the summer.

Unfortunately, since I was too tired to tend, weed, or even water the plants, I also didn’t get around to taking any pictures of the garden this year. I wish I had realized this a few weeks ago, because the front bed looked really nice all planted with tomatoes, zucchini, swiss chard, marigolds, basil and cosmos. This was my first year of making a concerted effort at companion planting, too. Oh well. There’s always next year.

I did take a picture of some cut flowers Lewis brought into the house for me one day. Pretty red sunflower, some cosmos, calendula and a black-eyed susan.
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Mower Damage

Christine

My next door neighbor has been super sweet by mowing my front yard and my little strip between our houses when he has his riding mower out. I am so grateful for even that little bit of extra help. That’s why I feel bad for being upset over this:

It looks like he bumped the trunk of my purple leaf plum with the mower. He probably doesn’t even realize he did it. I’m not mad or anything, just worried about the tree. What if it doesn’t heal, or gets disease or bugs?

Otherwise, it looks full and happy and healthy.

We planted it last April, and it looks so much better. I can’t wait for it to get tall enough to provide a bit of shade and privacy on the porch.

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First Signs of Spring

Christine

I’m relieved to see new buds on my purple-leaf plum tree. I was mildly worried about it making it through the winter. I haven’t really been watering it because we’ve gotten a fair amount of precipitation this season. But it got a good solid start last spring, and I think we can rest easy now.

And I am very excited to see all those buds on my lilac. I think I had four blossoms last year, and I’m hoping for even more fragrant blooms this spring.

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Collecting Cosmos Seeds

Christine

As far as I can tell, this is one single cosmos plant. It will bloom continuously all summer, and into early autumn. And what pretty blooms they are.
I have mostly orange ones, but cosmos comes in all kinds of colors: red, orange, yellow, white, pink, purple…

Most of the orange cosmos I have in the yard this year are from seeds that I collected from last year, or ones that have self-seeded the last two years. I only ever bought one packet of all orange cosmos, three years ago. The seeds are so easy to harvest that I don’t see myself ever buying cosmos seeds again. Unless I want a color other than orange.

I did still have one packet in my seed box, that was left over from 2005, of a cosmos mix. It is Burpee’s Cosmos Bright Lights Mix. Since it has reds, oranges and yellows, I’m going to try to collect seeds mostly from the patch where I planted these. That way, I’ll have more of a variety next year.