110708 - Arrangement

After several sunny days in a row, the summer flowers are putting on a show in the gardens.

Yesterday afternoon, I made this arrangement of orange coreopsis, pink and red cosmos, and purple and pink candy tuft, which I have found do best in bouquets on the dining room table or the mantel where their unpleasant, "rotting cheese" odor is less likely to overwhelm visitors.

1011 - Coreopsis

A nursery off Ocean Beach in San Francisco offered this new coreopsis earlier this fall, and it has done very well at the top of the terraces.

I took this photograph in the middle of November. The plant is now covered in blooms and seems to enjoy our long, cool nights.

The flowers are about two inches across.

081026 - Amaranth

I took these photographs today of our two amaranths.

Earlier this year, I read online that a university in Minnesota planted their amaranths in May; and since our calendar summers are so cold and foggy, I decided to follow their lead.

I planted several in six packs in the nursery at the top of the backyard.

Unfortunately, the nursery became overgrown with the red dahlia and buddleia before I knew it. I was only able to save one six pack's worth of seedlings, and these are the only ones to have thrived once I planted them in the gardens. The flowers are up to eighteen inches long and feel disturbingly like a cat's tail.

Next year, I'm going to do a better job caring for the seedlings and hope to have a dozen or more in the gardens, especially since they've shown they do so well late in the year.

080318 - Winter Sweet Peas

Here's a short video of the fride (FRont sIDE) garden, front gardens and, especially, the winter sweet peas, so you can see how much they've grown in just a month.

Also, in this video, you can see columbines, delphiniums, two rose bushes, cabbage poppies, foxgloves, coreopsis, California poppies, tiny hollyhocks, and a second planting of sweet peas in the fride garden. These sweet peas are in partial shade, so they grow slower than the ones next to the cabbage poppies.

This video starts with an echium called "Tower of Jewels." It grows to nine feet, and blooms up the length of its stock, its flower clusters a show-stopping scarlet red.

080218 - Winter Salmon Sweet Peas and Cabbage Poppies

These photographs are for my friend in Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love is still in the clutches of Old Man Winter.

I took these photographs today in our front yard. You can see the winter sweet peas are not only working their way up their trellis, but they've begun growing flower shoots.

Sweet peas are one of my favorite flowers, so I'm looking forward to these going into bloom.

Phil calls the poppies in front of the sweet peas by their common name, "cabbage poppies." They are sold under names like "breadbox poppies" or "Turkish poppies." They grow to five feet or so and produce flowers the size of your hands cupped together to catch water. And, yes, they smell unmistakably like cabbage.

The yellow flowers in the next bed are coreopsis and thrive well in San Francisco. Between them and the poppies you can see a foxglove.