7 posts tagged “flowers”

I was very conscientious about only buying plants that were supposedly unattractive to deer. Things like daisies, cone flower, daffodils. But when I got bulbs last fall I bought a Lily bulb too because I really liked the picture on the package. I thought maybe the deer wouldn't notice it in between all the other "deer resistant" greenery and flowers. I planned to spray the lily with Plantskydd just before it bloomed on the hypothesis that while they might miss seeing the leaves they would probably spot the huge orange blossoms.

Here's the lily as it appeared in mid-June, the stem over two feet tall and crowned with seven or eight flower buds. I loved the look of it then and anticipated taking fabulous photos of huge orange flowers.

Daddy Long Legs

I dragged my feet on the stinky Plantskydd spraying just a little too long and the deer got there first. A third of the leaves are chomped off and there is only one bud left. Oh well, maybe next year..

Lily after being munched by deer

It's Earth Day. Show us something you love about our planet.

Daffodil

Footprints

Last fall my landscaping project was the Big Rock Garden. This is what it looked like in November. The new plants looked so small and sparse that it seemed there would be nothing left after the winter. I added some bulbs to guarantee that something would be there to grow come springtime. So far this spring everything seems to have survived except that I can't find any sign of the Goldenrod, the tall grass thing to the right of the rock has no green shoots yet and the Lavender (planted despite discouraging comments by the garden centre girls) looks dead. Maybe it didn't like being buried under a snowbank for more than two months.

The bulbs I planted are Narcissi, Snowdrops, Siberica and a Lily. Snowdrops bloomed before the snow was gone and their flowers have all gone now. The Narcissi and Siberica are flowering now. The Lily has poked a fat shoot out of the earth and I expect it will flower this summer, if the deer don't eat it first.

The Bulbs Came Up

Narcissus

Daffodil

Every night just after supper we go for a short walk. Sometimes we stay on the paved road in our subdivision but usually we follow one of the trails back into the bush behind the houses. A few days ago I took my camera along and here are some of the things we saw.

Trail Lined With Broom

I Saw Something In There

Burned Log

We Recycle

Daisies in Broom

Purple Foxglove

White Foxglove

The weather has not been very good for painting outdoors this week but the painters did manage to get one coat on most of the outside of the house.

First Coat of Paint

This is my office. My view to the south is our front yard, the roadway, trees on the other side of the road, and between the trees further uphill on the other side of a field of Broom, a couple of our neighbour's houses.

My Office Window

Unfortunately, on sunny days the light and heat make it impossible to work at my computer. I've ordered shades for the window.

The Scotch Broom is in full bloom all over the place here. The stuff grows anywhere where the ground has been disturned or fill put down. It doesn't seem to like shade so it's never right underneath trees. Broom was imported from Europe in the 1800's and here on Vancouver Island it's considered a noxious weed. It spreads really easily from seed and crowds out native grasses and plants. Once the plants get established they are really difficult to uproot.

Broom

Broom Field

Rhodo

We've had this Rhodo in front of our house, the house we just moved out of, for at least 20 years. It's always been a skinny, awkward plant, sprawled over an impressive amount of space but never with enough leaves on the brittle branches to look good. These things are supposed to produce lots of big white or pink flowers in the spring but ours never produced flowers on the ends of more than five or six of its long, mostly bare stems. Some years it had no flowers at all.

Beech in its Spring Colours

We moved out of the house on April 30th. On May 15th I went back to the house to check it over, air it out and pack up the last few odds and ends that were left behind.

And the Rhodo picks this year to put on a big show! It was covered with big fat bright pink blossoms. I took a few pictures.

Rhodo Blossoms

I'm taking a Photography Art class and part 1 of last week's homework was to photograph a colour. I was assigned magenta. We were to walk around outdoors with our cameras and take pictures of lots of different things in our assigned colour.

At first I thought it would be impossible to find magenta coloured objects outside and looked around inside my house until I could find something to take outside to photograph, my Swiss Ball. Turns out what's a mauve ball indoors looks much bluer outdoors. Then I got a manicure and picked magenta polish which actually looked more like a pinkish-plum colour inside the salon. And I just happened to have my camera with me on a grocery shopping trip when I found these gorgeous flowers and ornamental cabbages.

While almost all of the images displayed here have been tweaked in Photoshop, my Photography Art instructor will see the untweaked versions complete with exposure problems and bad white balance.

Magenta Cabbage

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Magenta Cabbages