Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.
September 2009
It rained. And rained, and rained, and rained. Between Thursday (9/10) and Sunday (9/12), Zanthan Gardens received over 7 inches of rain. We didn’t get much during the day on Friday (9/11) when it seemed to rain all around Austin but not in the center. But finally it began raining in the early evening and rained on and off all night. Then Saturday between 2:30 and 3:30 in the afternoon it suddenly poured and we got 2.6 inches in just that hour.
The skies remain gray and gloomy, the temperatures in the 60s and 70s. Summer’s grip is broken. Like a woman giving birth, we quickly forget the pain of delivery as we embrace this new life.
So much has died over the summer that my usually floriferous September has very few different kinds of flowers. It’s mostly the bulbs that stay dormant during the heat and only peek out after a rain. I’m starting to think this is the only kind of sensible plant to grow in Austin’s summer.
The rain brought out the rainlilies. I have four kinds, now: two pinks and two whites.
Zephyranthes ‘Labuffarosea’, a slightly smaller and paler pink rainlily. A passalong from Annieinaustin @ The Transplantable Rose
This thick-stemmed and thick-petaled white rainlily grows wild in my yard.
This small and more delicate white rainlily is a self-sown newcomer. It opened yesterday and is already beginning to curl its petals and fade today.
The Podranea ricasoliana is a rampant vine which smothers everything in its path–but it’s hard to find fault with it when it’s in flower.
Especially when the flowers look like this.
Transitioning from the pinks side of the yard to the red side of the yard is the pale pavonia.
But there is only one reason to visit my garden in September–oxblood lilies.
And more oxblood lilies.
And more oxblood lilies. I couldn’t be bothered to do anything else today but lie around looking at them.
Complete List for September
The list of all plants flowering today, September 15th 2009, at Zanthan Gardens. You can compare with GBBD September 2007 which was Austin’s unusually cool and rainy summer. I didn’t do a GBBD post in September 2008 because I was busy with work and the garden had already suffered the effects of the drought, even a year ago.
- Duranta erecta
- Hesperaloe parviflora
- Hibiscus syriacus
- Lindheimer senna
- Malvaviscus arboreus
- Nerium oleander ‘Turner’s Shari D.’
- Oxalis (purple)
- Pavonia hastata
- Plumbago auriculata
- Podranea ricasoliana
- Rhodophialia bifida
- Ruellia, the woody and the viney kind but not the passalong
- rose ‘Ducher’
- Tradescantia pallida/Setcreasia (purple heart) both colors
- water lily
- widow’s tears/true dayflower–some type of commelina
- Zephyrathes grandiflora
- Zephyranthes ‘Labuffarosea’
- Zephyranthes (tiny white)
- Zephyranthes (large white)
