Flowers and berries
Took these photos the weekend of the 4th, uploading in a more timely manner than I did with the last batch of yard photos! LOL!
First of all… I accidently left the soaker hose going overnight on the berries a couple weeks ago. It was really dry and they needed water, but probably not quite that much. Thing is, though, that the right amount of water at just the right time will make the berries HUGE when they ripen. Huge as in monster sized!
Not a very great photo, and they weren’t all that large, but most are at least as large as my thumb. A few are monsters. :) We are way overloaded with berries again, I think next year I’m going to put a sign out for “U Pick Thornless Blackberries. Cheap.” They are starting to wind down a bit, and the bugs are getting them…. so we are being more selective of what we try to pick. We get japanese beetles, but now there are also Big Green July Beetles. 4x the size of japanese beetles, and love fruit. Will fly out and whack into me so hard that they almost knock me down. :)
Seriously, though… I am tired of picking berries and washing them and etc. The neighbor who promised me he’d come pick berries has never shown up. Pfft! No jam for him! Of course I haven’t been real great about helping pick his garden, either… but I can only use so much squash and cukes. I have yet to make pickles, just hope the cukes in the fridge will be okay until this weekend.
Anyhow. All of my lilies bloomed this year, including for the very first time my tiger lilies planted from the bulblets that they grow on the stem. I’m so happy… those weren’t that old and I wasn’t expecting blooms for a few more years. They are so pretty, always have been one of my favorite kinds of lily.
I had planted stargazer lilies last year, but they didn’t do well and didn’t bloom at all. This year, even though the grass got away from me in the flower bed… and even though it’s all full of dillweed… every single stargazer bloomed, from the ones I thought I’d killed last year to the new ones I planted this year. I really love the pink stargazer lilies and they smell good, too. (and I’m sure I’m going to be really sorry about the dillweed next year when it =really= takes over!)
Plus! One of my stargazers is an albino! Or almost an albino. It’s supposed to be that brilliant pink like the others. I thought the buds looked a little pale, and they were for a reason.
None of my sunflowers are what they are supposed to be… it’s like someone swapped the seeds in the packets. I planted Apricot Splash and Cherry Rose… and what I have are plain yellow (but multi-blossomed and pollenless) and a yellow with red at the centers, also multi-blossomed. I know darn well what Cherry Rose looks like, and it doesn’t look at all like these two. It’s a double sunflower, and dark pink. Hmmpf! My volunteers look to be Russian Giants… tall, huge stems like tree trunks and just your basic yellow sunflower with a single blossom. I’m thinking some of these fancy sunflowers I grew last year must be hybrids that went back to parent on the seeds. Oh well! No good photos of the sunflowers, I tend to get out there too late in the day with the camera. One of the giants is a bug magnet… every sort of bug is on it drinking it’s sap out of the stem. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen… wasps, bees, beetles, ants, butterflies, all hanging out together on the stem of the sunflower. I have taken a few photos of that, but the EW factor of bugs keeps it off my blog, lol!
Speaking of bugs, last night I got to watch a cicada come out of it’s shell. I’ve never seen that in person before. Cicadas have to be one of the ugliest bugs ever… and the beetle type shell they emerge from isn’t very pretty either! I documented that with camera… took out a good halogen light so camera could focus and not use up the batteries on flash. It was quite interesting. Newly hatching cicadas are beautiful colors of green and white! Bright dayglow green! I had to move him before his wings got stretched out, so that he wouldn’t be run over by Ron leaving for work. Tried to take one more photo and the cats finally saw what I was looking at. Sorry bug, you just became a cat snack. Just like the sphinx moths that come to feed at my Four o’clocks every night… cats get em.
Well, it’s time to eat, feed the pets and get this uploaded. My daughter left Tuesday morning, and arrived on the coast of southern North Carolina this evening…. she text messaged me to tell me she got there okay. I was worried… it’s a long drive to do in 2 days. Wish she could have stayed here longer, we never got to make pickles or do tie dye, both of which I need to get doing! This weekend for the pickles, maybe will fit in some dye work, too, hot as it is. :)
hugs,
Vyx
OH Vyx. Silly me. I didn’t know what those things on the stem were. When do I remove them. How do I plant them. I just bought my first set and would love more Tiger Lilies!
When they fall off easily…. like nature intends. I have tried both burying them very shallowly and just leaving them on top of some potting soil in a pot… OUT of the sun. They will sprout when the time is right, and at first they look like corn growing. I think burying them but shallowly probably works best. Well drained soil.
The first time I saw those bulblets I thought they were some kind of plant TICK, lol! They get about the size of a garbanzo bean or larger when they are “ripe”.
hugs,
Vyx