Tag Archives: campanula

June flowers make me feel at home.

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My front garden had turned into a jungle by the time I returned after nearly three weeks away; I expected that, but didn’t anticipate all of the species that would get tangled together. Some of them, like the nigella and poppies, were way past their prime and I could simply pull them out.

Black Medick

There was a certain weed that had flourished under the asparagus fronds and was climbing by means of its yard-long stems up behind and over the germander, which is just starting to bloom. It also was growing in the cracks in the walkway. I knew I had seen it before somewhere, but never in this quantity, so I looked it up: Black Medick. I pulled at least most of it out, and added that to the green bin.

I bought cosmos and some shorter flowers to replace all the things that I removed; and a few basil, summer squash and zinnia plants to put in the planter boxes. Because spring was cool here, the Iceland poppies are still blooming, and welcomed me home.

The Showy Milkweed is blooming and the bees are on it.

In Greece, in addition to the live, rustic and thorny version of acanthus I’d seen on Paros, I saw plenty of carved acanthus leaf designs in the ancient Byzantine architecture in Thessaloniki. I came home to see my own plants looking more majestic than ever.

The lavender has come out, and the Mock Orange, and the little campanula that hides under the Mock Orange. The Golden Marguerite that I’d pulled out of the front garden last year — it returned, and was  aggressively invading my new landscape, so I cut it back, and stuck the clippings in a vase. After all that, and a few days recovery from jet lag, I’m beginning to feel myself again ❤

Disorderly and Beloved Garden

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This morning Mr. Glad and I sat eating our Power Pancakes together, looking out the window at a fat robin who was hopping and flying around the garden.

 

 

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Patty’s Plum poppy

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I could see that there are enough sweet peas to make bouquets for eight neighbors, if I would pick them. The seed beds where I planted hyssop and fennel early in the week need sprinkling.

And the south side of the yard is a jungle! For most of our sojourn here it has been a nuisance getting water to that area, because of having only one faucet and the difficulty of dragging a heavy hose to and fro without smashing plants.

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campanula and rhododendron

Last fall we installed automatic irrigation, and the plants that had learned to do with intermittent drought are loving the new normal and are having the time of their lives.

Today I will go out and pull up the lamb’s ears that have grown into the path, and trim back the valerian flowers from the same path. I don’t want to touch the campanula yet, as it’s in its glory.

yellow helianthemum w pincushion

The yellow helianthemum that grows now in the middle of the pincushion flowers, well, it has surprised me by blooming for a few weeks so far.

That makes four helianthema (doesn’t it make sense to call the plural that?) in our garden: yellow, red, pink, and orange. None of the others bloomed as long as this yellow one, but next time they show their flowers I’ll take pictures so that I can write one blog post about the lot of them.

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I picked one giant bouquet of the sweet peas for my next-door neighbor. She said that she has been noticing them coming over the fence, and that she and her granddaughter have been drying flowers to make greeting cards. I could see the gleam in her eye as she contemplated all the pretty flowers in that bunch.

As for me, I’m not being at all crafty these days, unless you count the neverending creating of order and space indoors and out. Lots of out-of-the-ordinary things are coming up for the two of us in the next few months, and taking some amount of time and mental effort in preparation. It all makes me treasure today, when I can be home and pull some ordinary weeds.

Gardening? I’m on it!

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pimiento peppers with nasturtiums

I thought I would skip this week’s discussion of The Hidden Art of Homemaking at Ordo Amoris, because what on earth — or about growing things in the earth — could I possibly say, that I haven’t said in my 115 blog posts that already have the tag “garden”?

But this chapter comes in springtime when it’s hard not to talk about gardening. I’d rather be in the garden doing it, but what do you know, it’s raining as I begin this ramble. And I happened to run across a couple of other blog posts as reminders that I haven’t covered every aspect of the subject.

kale with Mexican bush sage

The spiritual aspects of gardening are well treated by Vigen Guroian whose book is excerpted in  this blog. But I have a hard time making myself read about gardens or gardening, and if I wanted to convince a non-gardener to give it a try, I would just have them work in my garden with me a few times, and hope that they might by osmosis come to see the fun to be had.

If you don’t have a yard, as Edith says you can have a pot of something, and if you don’t want that, you can grow some sprouts on your kitchen counter. There are so many kinds of sprouting seeds available that you can grow a tasty and gorgeous salad in a week or so.

I do love to visit other people’s gardens and even look at pictures of my own yards of yesteryear, so I looked long enough at this Garden Rant post to see that it was about the gardener’s dismay when he realized that he had planted a dreadfully monochromatic and inartistic design.

His problem is the flip side of what I am careful about, the planting of clashing colors. What? you say, echoing my husband, don’t all the colors go together, as in God’s creation? It doesn’t seem to work that way in my gardens. Magenta flowers have caused me problems in the past – they don’t look nice with some of the red flowers nearby.

Once a bunch of bright red-orange flowers pretty much spoiled the look of my pale yellow and pale pink roses when they sprouted up in between, while the lavender bush in the same spot blended in nicely. So, I try to avoid mismatches and matchy-matchy. Most of the pictures I’m posting here are of nice contrasts in my own garden, but the one below is from our friends’ neglected beach cottage yard. It’s surprising how glorious these bright and wild colors look together. In foggy coastal areas it seems that whatever flowers you have are a welcome brightness, and they always steal the show by contrast with the white or grey skies.

Here’s a much quieter scene: Greyish Lambs Ears make a soft contrast to almost any bright color, as with these pincushion flowers.

 

And even the magenta rhododendron is nice with blue campanula. I have learned to think of my garden beds as individual paintings, each with its own color scheme that may change somewhat with the seasons. Some have magenta, while some on the other side of the yard have red.

unusual California poppy with Hot Lips salvia

Either color can go with yellow or orange or blue…

It’s fun creating landscapes, if you don’t mind surprises, and  w – a – i – t – i – n – g  for things to grow and bloom, and sometimes having to re-do your design or be happy with a missing part that died. If you take pictures or actually take paints to paper and save an image of the way your plants’ colors and textures have miraculously blended to become Beautiful, you can remember and enjoy your past gardens for years to come.