Tuesday Garden Party and Bloomin Tuesday

Good Tuesday morning blogging friends. It's rainy here and has been for a few weeks now. You won't here me complain though. And it'll be OK when I get wet in the rain - I discovered that I don't melt. Go figure.

I'm gonna hook up today to a couple of memes so check them out at the end of my post.

It is hard this time of year to get anything interesting for you to see. Our gardens here in the south are mostly mundane with the same ole same ole this time of year. We are well into our summers here. So these are new photos of the same ole stuff blooming. A few I haven't shown in a while. Take a stroll with me...

The dianthus in all of the flower beds are blooming again. I absolutely love plants that are re-bloomers. Notice those pesky weeds there. They have roots three times the size of the weed. When I pull them often the root of the flower comes up and I have to pack it back down.

White dianthus.

 Red Verbena. All of my plants are happy with the abundance of rain.

I love this shade of pink verbena. 

 White zinnias.

 Portulaca is a good performer and multiplies and roots easily too.

Orange zinnia.

Strawberry dianthus.

Okra hibuscus. So far I haven't been able to get any seeds. 

 Raingardeners snapdragon.

 Bill McKnight dahlia.

Pentas.

This is one canna that escaped the dig up in the spring. All were transplanted but this one. I like that it is one plant but if I leave it here there will probably be 5 next year. The spot where I placed the transplants needs some tending and they will be blooming pretty too.

One thing I like about the very wet grounds is that when I do go out to pull a few weeds they come up with just a little tug. I'm a rain lover anyway and it gives me a good excuse to lay around with a book or just be lazy. And I like lazy sometime.

Ya'll go check out these blogs for more blooms: An Oregon Cottage - Tuesday Garden Party.

http://www.anoregoncottage.com/2011/07/tuesday-garden-party-corn-garlic-story.html

And Jean at Ms Green Thumb Jean for Bloomin Tuesday.

http://msgreenthumbjean.blogspot.com/2011/07/its-bloomin-tuesday_25.html

PS: Check out my new blog. Beccas Cooking. I'm looking forward to sharing some awesome recipes with you.

http://beccascookingspot.blogspot.com/

I Found a Couple of Blooms

Hooking up with Jean from MsGreen Thumb Jean for Bloomin Tuesday.

http://msgreenthumbjean.blogspot.com/

Can anyone identify this plant. It must have come from some seeds I spread but I have no idea. At first I thought Verbena but I don't think so. One of you out there will no it. It is tall and lanky and I only have 2 stalks. I bet it looks good planted in masses.

 Glad I found another Okra Hibiscus in bloom. I love their sunny look. Wish they lasted more than a day.

 Lots of zinnias blooming. These were on the same plant so it made a nice photo.

Glad to see another dahlia rearing its pretty head.

Bougainvillea are coming around for their third round of blooms. I'm loving this plant more and more.

I am so disappointed this year that this is all there is of my Johnsons Blue Geranium. Last year it was awesome and bloomed early in the season and continued into mid summer. This year there is barely a plant.

Check out my snapdragon here. The only foliage is on the tops of the plants and a couple of blooms. All I can figure is the dry conditions in Apr May and Jun contributed to their appearance.

 Here you can see better that the foliage is nearly gone. I watered the gardens but I don't think it was enough.

Love the sun against the clouds.

I am excitedly planning my next spring garden. Getting it all on paper. I love perusing the catalogs and dreaming of what I want it to look like.

What websites for plants and seeds do you prefer? I'm interested in checking out more sites. I use Bluestone Perennials and Park Seed.

We have had plenty of rain over the past couple of weeks.

Hope you all are having a great day.

A Few of My Pretties In October

I fugured out how to delete blogs thanks to all of you. Let me clarify that I am wanting to delete blogs 'I follow' who haven't posted in more than 9 months. I woudn't delete any blogs that follow me. 

Had a beautiful weekend. Still no rain here. It has been the driest Sept and Oct I can remember. There are burn bans and there have been some fires too. Last weekend a home on Dauphin Island caught fire and quickly spread to 4 other houses. Burned down 4 homes and left one standing that will need to be repaired. Luckily no one was injured which is not the case with a home fire this weekend. One person died. We need some rain here bad. There is a 30% chance tomorrow but after that no more chances of rain.

I've been keeping things going in the flower beds with the sprinklers. Everything seems to be coming along nicely in spite of the heat and lack of moisture from above.

I think my mums are going to do nicely. They are beginning to open now.

Begonias have been the best performers this year. They have been in bloom since probably April and are still blooming. They will bloom right on till the frost gets it.

Zinnia volnteers are everywhere. I pulled out the main plants from the spring and they self seeded and are coming up all over the place. 

Usually I don't have much success with the white shiny leaf begonias but they have performed beautifully this year.

Gerbera Daisy's have always been a favorite of mine. Normally they do not do so well in my gardens. These are new ones though so I'm enjoying their beauty.

Love me some snapdragons too.

Marigolds are good performers here.

 Love the color of the snapdragon.

Dianthus is a good performer giving flowers all summer long and into the fall. I put out 12 more Dianthus plants last week.

Pink begonia.

I did get out to a yard sale on Saturday. I could kick myself in the butt for not buying more of these figurines. This lady had a table full and they were all .50 each. No name brands on the bottoms but they are very nice.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this ornament. My daughter sold these when she was in 2nd grade many years ago. I had that ornament till just a few years ago. I lossed/broke it and then I found one just like it. Made my day.  (April do you remember this ornament)

 This was .50 too. They look just like Snowbabies and I couldn't tell the difference. But they had no name on the bottom. Good lookalike.

Loved the Granny holding her little puppy. This is me and Buddy.

I love a good Snowman. This one is well behaved.

I should have taken a photo after I washed these platters. These were a dollar for the pair. Who can go wrong with white platters and there are no scratches or chips either.

I have a thing for night lights and accent lighting. I loved these little mushrooms. I added a blue night light and like the effects. The night light was a dollar. 



Didn't do anything that I had planned this weekend. But oh well.... Spent the weekend by myself cleaning and stuff like that. I love it when I can mark off all of the items off my 'to do list' and I did that.

Have a wonderful and blessed day dear blogger friends.

This and That

This is what greeted me this morning. The sky was actually a redder sky than it shows. Beautiful non-the less.

I have admired this tree for a long time. It is at one of the clinics I go to. Just wanted to share it with you.

The tree is a water oak and apparently has never been trimmed. I like that it has been allowed to grow just like it wants to.

I can vision ladies back in the 'day' with their long dresses on waiting for a picnic under the tree.

This was the sky this weekend. So glad to see those clouds. They brought much needed rain to our area.

After the rains I found some things that wanted to shout - thanks for the moisture from the skies.
Begonias with a bug. He's just resting though.

A tropical hibuscus. It was very small when I planted it and it is going to take off in the spring. It is happy to grow now since I removed so much that was shading it.

This is one I saw yesterday morning...

I let most of my zinnias go to seed this year and I have little zinnias growing everywhere.

And they all have little buds on top of them.

This morning there were 4 of these babies open. They must be real proud of the rain.

The tree service came out yesterday and look at my pecan tree. The utility companies keep the trees cut back away from the utility lines and this is what my tree looks like now. They cut the side of it off. Oh well it'll grow back.



That's about it today.

Have a blessed day everyone.