In Bloom In the Garden - Early May Edition

My mother and I were talking on the phone yesterday and she told me that she missed my blog. Clearly, I needed to get back to editing photos and writing again if even my mother was concerned! So here I am again, months and months after my last post.

I don't have a fantastic reason, or a million new stories to share, but I've finally had a couple of adventures and am editing the photos that go with them. Today, after reading a gardening magazine, I realized that I should probably go document what is currently blooming in my yard. I took pictures in April, but still haven't edited those. Perhaps this will get me started!

I have been gardening fairly constantly since the temperatures warmed up to 70 degrees in mid-March. I ripped out the majority of the plants in the Bees Below Your Knees garden and replaced them with blue and orange flowering plants and a few Blue Fescue grasses. The crazy floppiness of the 'Blue Hills' sage and the rampant wildness of the Keys of Heaven were making me feel a little twitchy. Also, I had a burning desire to see the California fuchsia's bright orange blooming near some cool blue, and started thinking of what else I could put in that 21' L x 3' W space that would look coordinated and low maintenance.

Bees Below Your Knees, now in orange, yellow, blue and purple (Not that you can tell from this picture...)! April 13th, 2012

If you click to enlarge, you'll see lavendar, knautia macedonia, California fuchsia, Johnny Jump Ups, Blue Fescue, Phlox subulata, 'Walker's Low' catmint, columbine, prairie tickseed, 'Rocky Mountain Blue' penstemon and a few leftover 'Johnson's Blue' geraniums. Considering that I just installed it in March and that the plants were all roughly pulled from locations all over my xeric garden, a good number of these plants are already blooming in May.

Here is what it looks like a month later, May 12, 2012.

I went to the Cactus and Succulent Society plant sale in late April and bought a pile of plants for my pots out front and for the deck.

Click to enlarge the above image

I'm beginning to wonder if I need a Gardening Intervention. When I saw the huge range of succulents I really wanted one of almost every type. Instead I filled a flat and called it good.

In the first image, the largest pot:

1. Starting from the back right corner: the strappy plant is a Red Yucca. It's actually a perennial that I will lift and put into the garden in the fall.
2. Middle right: Echeveria lauii.
3. Rt corner front: red sempervivum.
4. Middle front: echeveria 'Lilacina' 
5. Bottom left corner: Crassula volkensii 
6. Middle left: Graptoveria species
7. Behind Graptoveria: echeveria 'Black Knight' 
8. Behind and to the right of the 'Black Knight': Cotyledon orbiculata
9. In the center of the pot: Senecio talinoides 'Blue Chalk Sticks'

Squished in here and there are some random sedum that overwintered in a pot. They should fill in over the summer and look all spiff.

The next two pots have Red Yucca, 2 different forms of cobweb sempervivums (Cebenese and Baronesse), a 'Blue Boy' and an 'Oddity' semper, along with more sprigs of sedum that overwintered well. I love tough plants.

Sempervivum bowl 2012.

This pot was filled and overflowing with Oddity, Blue Boy and a surviving 'October Daphne'. I pulled everything out and started over. Now it has 3x October Daphne, 4x Blue Boy, 3x Oddity, 3x Limelight, 5x Baronesse cobweb, and 1x red I-can't-remember-its-name sempervivum, plus 2x Angelonia sedum and a good looking flat rock from the garden. Did I take a picture before I ripped it apart? Of course not.

My strawberry pot of sedums and sempers got a tiny refresh as well. I'm continually surprised at just how often my plants survive despite me. Whew!

Then there are the flowers going off right now. Here's a selection.

Top: Johnny Jump Ups, Flax, Keys of Heaven

Middle: Siberian catmint, Japanese honeysuckle, culinary sage

Bottom: Columbine, 'Walker's Low' catmint, Bleeding hearts

Top: 'Johnson's Blue' geranium, phlox subulata, 'Bowl of Beauty' peony (closed since it was so overcast)

Middle: Candytuft, Prairie smoke, Spiderwort

Bottom: Knockout Rose in hot pink, Carolina Allspice, Halls' honeysuckle

I've got tons more work to do editing the long shots of the garden, so I'll get to those. I also have a story about a trip out into Colorado's prairie where I helped to fix barbed wire fences with my girlfriend. I'll get to those in the next few days.

I hope you've all been well, while I've been working away in the kitchen and the garden!

P.S. Hi mom!