What's Blooming This Week 5/28/08

This is my Arabian Nights dahlia, planted just this spring. That's why I love bulbs, they're so easy that just about anyone can grow them.
This is my Pentestemon, planted last year and relocated to the back yard this year. It is covered in white blooms.
My mountain laurel has buds on it! I'm very excited because I haven't ever grown one of these before. They remind me of summer in Northern Virginia, because I used to see them all the time when I went running.

Elle is still blooming away. It's one of the most photogenic roses that I have ever grown. :)

The Peppermint clematis blooms are still there, believe it or not. Some are a little worse for the wear but are otherwise okay.

What's Blooming This Week 5/16/08

Angel Face is still plugging away, in spite of a bad case of black spot. If you look carefully at the 3 o' clock petal you'll notice a small white spider that is peeking out. Unfortunately I think I got it when I was spraying it down with fungicide.

The Peppermint clematis is still blooming away. I'm waiting for the pompom in the center to open up, but the petals have unfurled and it looks more like a clematis bloom now.

This is my new Little Duckling clematis that I got for Mother's Day. Isn't she a beaut?

This is the Butter and Sugar siberian iris that I got last summer. I've had a devil of a time getting a good picture, because the white reflects back so much on the pictures that you can hardly see the yellow.

Oddities

Sometimes I am attracted to plants because they are just odd. One of the first plants that I got when we got our new house was the Peppermint clematis pictured above. It had a green center and whitish petals, and looked very different. We put it in the first flower bed that we built. Then we moved that bed the next spring. It started to grow and even got a few flowers, but then it died back. I thought it was dead so I dug it up and replaced it with a jasmine plant. But rather than throwing it out I put it in a pot and left it on the patio over the winter. Lo and behold this spring it started growing like mad, so when we rearranged the beds in the backyard I planted it by a shephard's hook with a windchime on it. It put on lot of flower buds, one of which you see above. This brings me to my quandry. The flowers are fairly small and they aren't brightly colored. I bought another clematis, Little Duckling, thinking to replace it, but I haven't. There is something that still appeals to me about Peppermint, and so it lives on in my garden. I think I'll plant my Little Duckling clematis under my other shepherd's hook with the hummingbird feeder.