six on Saturday, 24 June 2023

A few photos and an update for this week. It has been a week—in fact two weeks—of storms interspersed with hot, humid, sunny periods. The combination of rain and sun has set the stage for some good flowering. A few of the most striking appear below.

1. The gerbera daisy in the featured image is very much like the image on the right below, but with this morning’s rain drops. This is not a native plant, but it is a fantastic potted patio or deck plant. The two I have growing right now were closeout purchases from Tractor Supply that had only the saddest of buds buried deep down among the limpest of leaves. A little fertilizer, sun, and tender care and they are flourishing.

2. Another new (and cheap) purchase is this blanket flower, or Gaillardia. Only one was available. I need a few more. Nevertheless, it provides some much needed color in this spot. Native to North and South America, it is a perennial, so maybe it will survive the winter and can be added to next spring.

3. In the same bed where the blanket flower is, Echinacea purpurea, or purple coneflower, is spreading—slowly, but spreading. I just hope that the armadillo will not go grub hunting around their feet again. I treated this area generously for grubs, though. I value this Eastern and Central North American native not for its medicinal uses, although there are many, but as a pollinator plant.

4. The next plant doing well is my favorite kind of plant: a pass-along. This old style southern rose began as a cutting from a friend’s grandmother’s original plant. The rose’s lineage has extra significance because that friend was my Master Gardener intern class instructor nearly 20 years ago. The provenance of pass-along plants can hold interesting narratives of personal connections. The buds and flowers on this rose are small and don’t last long, but they are marvelously fragrant and beautifully delicate.

5. I have a few bee photos next. The focus is happily on the bees because I am not seeing many of them this year, and this concerns me greatly. Left and right below are bumble bees on an oakleaf hydrangea flower head and nandina flowers respectively. In the middle is a smaller bee (there are hundreds of types of bees native to Alabama) on a rosin weed flower. These are not honey making bees. They are the pollinators that many of our flowers, fruits, and vegetables depend upon.

6. The update that I mentioned at the opening of this post closes me out this week. My previous post spoke of the annoying armadillo digging holes throughout the garden. I thought that folks might like to have a very early morning (2 am CDT) look at him—and his raccoon friend caught on the critter cam later that evening (8 pm CDT).

As I have recommend before, please visit Garden Ruminations, the site of our host, Jim Stephens. You’ll find a link there for guidelines for joining in our Six on Saturday sharing, and interesting comments with links to interesting gardens in lovely places.