July 15th, 2008
GBBD 200807: July 2008
Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.
July 15, 2008
I seriously considered not participating in GBBD this month. Nothing to see here, folks. Just move along. Come back in the fall. Yesterday Austin temps hit 105F/40.5C and even the plants that had been holding tough against our 27 (who’s counting) days of triple-digit heat finally gave up. I have to remind myself that that’s no attitude to take. It’s GBBD, dammit. Something must be blooming and even death and decay have their own beauty, if we look for it.
New for July
Only one new flower opened in July, a perennial black-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia fulgida. It’s not quite established yet and it’s had a few days when I wondered if it would make it. I don’t even like black-eyed Susans much. But since it’s the only thing growing, I have have to like it.
Between GBBDs
One flower bloomed between GBBDs and so didn’t show up in the inventory for either June or July. It was the last remaining bulb of some drumstick alliums–the little ornamental onion with the big name, Allium sphaerocephalon–that I planted years ago. It was a small pathetic flower and I might as well face the fact that they have bloomed themselves out. All that’s left are thousands of tiny bulblets.
Complete List for July
The list of all plants flowering today, July 15th 2008, at Zanthan Gardens.
- Antigonon leptopus
- Canna ‘Bangkok Yellow’
- Cosmos sulphureus
- Duranta erecta
- Echinacea purpurea (doing well all month)
- Engelmannia peristenia/pinnatifida (one flower)
- Erythrina herbacea (coral bean) rebloom
- Gaura lindheimeri (doing very well in a pot)
- Hesperaloe parviflora (mostly gone to seed)
- Hibiscus syriacus (flowering well)
- Lagerstroemia indica ‘Catawba’
- Lantana montevidensis
- Lavandula heterophylla ‘Goodwin Creek’ (a few tiny flowers)
- Malvaviscus arboreus
- Nerium oleander ‘Turner’s Shari D.’ (one flower left, needs to be cut back)
- Oxalis triangularis (purple)
- Polanisia dodecandra
- Plumbago auriculata (one flower)
- Rudbeckia fulgida (two flowers)
- Ruellia
- Tradescantia pallida/setcreasea
- Vitex (a couple of flowers
- waterlily ‘Helvola’ (a few flowers every day since June GBBD)
- Zephyranthes grandiflora (one flower where I watered the other day)
by M Sinclair Stevens
July 15th, 2008
Looking at your picture, I am suddenly thirsty. I’d need some iced tea if I came to see your garden in the heat. But I love your attitude and you do have some blooms! That’s a pretty good list, though I do realize that some of those plants are probably barely blooming.
As you noted, it is bloom day, and your excellent records are a great example to us all.
We could start with iced tea and then quickly move to frozen margaritas. The garden is a much more pleasant place after a few margaritas. — mss
July 15th, 2008
I love black eyed susans. I like to cut them with grandmother’s pincushion flowers to put in vases together.
This is the time of year you should be traveling in England.
Soon…the trouble with leaving the garden is that it won’t survive more than a couple of days without some kind of watering. I don’t have an irrigation system. — mss
July 15th, 2008
MSS, I’m glad you have at least a few flowers blooming. Rudbeckias have grown on me, mainly because they can be such good summer bloomers. My biggest problem here, with those and other summer annuals is funky foliage. That’s about the only advantage I can see to your not getting more rain: fewer problems with mildew and fungi. I hope the heat breaks soon. You know it’s bad when Austin weather makes Houston’s look good!
Cindy, you have so much going on in your garden right now. And it seems you’re picking up stuff from the nursery all the time. I don’t know where you find the energy or the inspiration this time of year. — mss
July 15th, 2008
Did I read that right from Cindy, “When Austin weather makes Houston’s look good”??? Yikes! You do have lots of things to list in bloom, a little macro magic of your camera could have made it look lush and tropical! We have to give the echinaceas a medal for best all around plant. Yours still looking good in spite of those temps and the dryness, ours too with so little rain. I didn’t used to care for the black eyed susans either, but the garden cries out for yellow with all those purple flowers and it lasts so long. Not a close up beauty usually, but good from inside an air conditioned abode. Thanks for making the post, we would have missed you.
Frances, those two photos were the macro magic. This is what it looks like when one steps back to take it all in. — mss
July 15th, 2008
Oh, this heat!!! Even if we do have things blooming, it’s so miserable to go outside and enjoy them. Even at 8pm at night since it is still in the 90s!
Just get me to the fall.
Right. It’s hard to go outside to enjoy the good stuff where we find it. I don’t mind the plants going dormant. I wish they would go completely dormant. But it’s too hot to want to take care of them, or do all those hardscaping projects I need to do before the real gardening season kicks in again. — mss
July 15th, 2008
Ugh, I can’t imagine the heat!! Great photo of your black eyed Susans.
I think gardening is the one hobby where we spend a lot of time on our hands and knees in order to appreciate the universe. — mss
July 15th, 2008
I completely sympathize with your sentiments. This heat is absolutely brutal! Your rudbeckia looks much happier than mine if that provides you any solace.
I’m on the same page with Bonnie as well – fall cannot come soon enough for me. I have had quite enough of summer.
Amen. Fall is always my favorite season. Summer is like our winter and fall is like our spring. — mss
July 15th, 2008
I could not live in Austin! I am miserable once it hits 85, let alone 105. You have a great attitude, MSS, and I know that when my garden is winding down this fall, I can still enjoy yours.
Happy Bloom Day!
All winter long when the northern gardeners kept telling us Austinites that we lived in paradise (just because our ground doesn’t freeze), we tried to explain about summer. Still, I couldn’t face months of snow. I’m just glad we have the internet and can visit each other’s gardens in the off season. –mss
July 15th, 2008
I just returned from a 3-week vacation, and there just wasn’t the time or energy to do a Bloom Day post in this heat. I’m with you—fall is our salvation, if we can just hold on until then.
FYI, some lowlife has hijacked my blog to attack another server, resulting in my server shutting down my blog and my email account. My guru is trying to straighten it out, and I hope to be back online soon.
Pam, that’s terrible! How does a blog get hijacked? We’ll be checking with you to find out what happened and how you fixed it. In the meantime, I’ll work up a good curse. — mss
July 16th, 2008
This reminds me of Greg Grant’s description of weather in Texas:
We have five seasons — four the same as other folks have, but not at the same time:
Spring comes in mid-February and lasts about three weeks.
Summer starts in March and runs until early May.
Hell starts in late May and ends in October, if we’re lucky.
Fall starts in November and runs through January, with occasional 1-day “winter events”.
We’re in Hell, folks, and it will last until November.
Thanks for sharing Greg Grant’s excellent description. I used to think that hell lasted from July 4th to Labor Day. But in the last few years it has been creeping into September and even October. –mss
July 16th, 2008
We had a tiny cool front with drier aircome through yesterday, and I was able to work in the garden without calling the EMTs. We might get one more day of nice weather. I wish I could send some your way.
You must have worked some magic. It’s overcast today and not as hot. Maybe it will rain. At least it’s not sunny. — mss
July 16th, 2008
Beautiful — love that single dot of pink in the top photo. 🙂
That’s the rainlily that bloomed among the orange cosmos after I watered the Mexican feather grass. Most people will say that rainlilies can’t be fooled by hand watering (that is that they will bloom only after a rain. That has not been my experience. — mss
July 16th, 2008
Our climates must be similar at this time of year, I also have almost nothing growing in the garden. I wish Autumn gets here fast 😉
Some years it is like Portugal in Austin. Other years are very wet. So if we plant too many Mediterranean-type plants, they get mildewy or rot. Every year is different here. But autumn is always welcome. — mss
July 16th, 2008
You’re more intrepid than I am, MSS – and I sure understand about being grateful for plants and flowers that will survive, even if they are nothing we’d choose on purpose. That’s how lantana sneaked back into my garden.
It’s funny that of the plants we have in common, a few will only bloom for you and others only bloom for me!
I didn’t get a bloom day post together this month but am following in your footsteps, trying to compile a list of what’s currently in bloom using botanical names.
You’re a scientist every month while I get so entranced with certain flowers and photos that I don’t keep good records.
If I get it together it’ll go on the Addendum.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
I’m looking forward to visiting your garden this week. It always seems like Eden to me. Even though we don’t live that far apart, we do grow (and kill) completely different things. — mss
July 16th, 2008
MSS, thanks for the sympathy and the curse for the hacker. I don’t really understand how my blog got hijacked, and neither does my guru. Bluehost wasn’t helpful in resolving the problem either. Their take was that it was our problem to solve. So DH spent the night upgrading to a newer version of WordPress, and we just pray that it will be less vulnerable to hackers.
So did someone break your password and login to your account? And what did the attack consist of? spamming someone else? — mss
July 17th, 2008
I don’t know what you’re complaining about. At least you have flowers in bloom. It’s not like your garden is buried under 4 feet of snow (like mine was in February). :^D I do feel for you with that brutal heat & dryness. It seems no matter how much you water, there’s nothing to stop the drooping & crisping. At least fall’s not that far off.
I’ve often said that I couldn’t stand northern winters. And as miserable as I find our summers, I’m not ready to swap them for your winters. On the other hand when your garden is under 4 feet of snow, you don’t have to spend two or three hours a day working in it trying to keep the plants alive, right? They go dormant and you can sit inside reading garden catalogs and dreaming of spring. — mss
July 19th, 2008
I’ve just put up a post about pictures from other people’s blogs which have especially stuck in my memory.
Amongst these, I’ve mentioned your one of a path running between gardens.
I can’t work out how to make links to photos on blogs in situ so I’m wondering if you would mind if I copied it onto my blog – together with a link to yours.
I’d be grateful if you would let me know.
Lucy
LOOSE AND LEAFY
July 21st, 2008
I think we are going to see just how tough our plants are this year. it’s going to be interesting to see who comes back for the fall season. Anyway there is always room for change in the garden and mine may be ready for a bit of an update. I’ll be using some of the things I have learnt from blogging.