StillColour

Flowers on this purple leafed Tradescanthia only last a day, but there are many buds to lengthen their blooming season.

This gorgeous dahlia has only had a few blooms but they've all been stunning.

Yellow lantana has done very well this year.

My favorite blue morning glories are doing very well this late October. We may get a frost tomorrow night which will be their end, so let's hope not!

Even with half in the shade a red rose is still as beautiful.

The purple tradescanthia and yellow lantana look great planted together in the Victorian cast iron pedestal planters. They were spectacular  this year with geraniums, vinca, perilla, bright green sweet potato vine, and a few other annuals.

A nice row of glories!

"Banarama," the large yellow variety of dahlia in the garden has been a prolific bloomer.

Deep magenta rose changes to this gorgeous salmon-peach as it opens.

Blue morning glories bring the typical Autumn clear blue sky right down into the garden.

Tiny magenta Tea rose bloom is on its way out but it's still beautiful.

Happy Birthday Hoohoo

October 15th is always bittersweet for me, my late aunt Hoohoo's birthday. We usually have a frost before mid-October, ending our growing season, but this year, we haven't. I was able to go into my cutting garden and pick this beautiful arrangement of dahlis, zinnias, and a geranium bloom. Above, shot with the flash, every detail is clear and shadows are obvious. The table runner was woven by my dad on a small New England Morgan inkle loom. I was so lucky to have creative people in my family to teach me and encourage me to find my own creative outlets.

The same arrangement, turned around to show the other side. This photo was shot without the flash, but with the exposure time lengthened. Dahlias and zinnias and geraniums, oh my!

On This Day in 1925

October 15, 1925 —Gloria Isabel Sanborn was born to Anita and Charles Sanborn. I called her Hoohoo from the day I met her when I was 3 years old, fresh from Germany where I'd been born at the American Army base in Stuttgart and my only home for the first few years of my life. The story goes when our car arrived in Leete's Island my grandmother called out to her younger daughter and her husband who lived with her in the family home, "Yoohoo, they're here!" Apparently I mistook that as the name of my mother's sister and we immediately "clicked" with her first hug. She was my Hoohoo from that day on.

She and her husband, my dad's brother Bill, never had any children. Yes, two sisters married two brothers and we had a very small family all told. Hoohoo and I were pretty much inseparable and in a few years I would really need that when things went south in my life.

She bought me a pair of silver candelabras for my 6th birthday as I had already been playing the piano for four years by then and we stayed up late weekend nights watching Liberace on TV. She taught me to mix wallpaper paste, to match paint colors to fabrics, to plant daffodil bulbs, to dance the Jitterbug to 78s, how to wrap presents and tie a festive curled bow all by myself. It was understood I would never tell my parents how high the speedometer in her '58 Thunderbird went on the long straightaway between our homes in Leete's Island and Mulberry Point. We laughed like no one else was in the world; when I cried she held me and told me I was her little artist and that we felt everything just a little bit deeper than other people but that everything was going to be alright. We explored every square inch of the 200+ year old family home and acreage around it. We dug for antique bottles and what-have-you in the old gardens. We traced the lines of the old tennis court, overgrown with trees, and pretended to volley balls over the long-gone nets. We found wooden wagon wheels and old family Ford and Buick artifacts in the barn destroyed in the great '38 hurricane. We were thick as honest thieves.

She saw me excel in grade school, stumble in junior high, and graduate from high school and Vassar. She gave me her last Tbird, the powder blue '64, but her hourglass was running down. Her last ten years were spent battling cancer in almost every part of her body. I still have every letter she wrote me, every card she drew for me, every gift she gave me, including the envelopes. I even still have all those thing I gave HER as I got my gift of "saving things" from her.

I'm now a year older than she was when she died in '82, taken way too soon from all of us. So many things would have been different in my life had she lived, so many paths would not have been taken, but in the past few years I've been slowly becoming again the person she knew and loved. My demons will always be there. My past will always haunt me. I will always feel everything just a little bit deeper, but I also have a feeling everything will be alright. Hoohoo's little artist will make her proud.

Happy Birthday Hoohoo. RIP

The Bees' Knees

All In! Climbing into a white morning glory, this bee is going to get all the nectar. The bees are very slow at this time of the year and fly drunkenly when prodded. 

Honeybees absolutely adore this particular variety of dahlia, the simple single-petaled version. They have their pick of about a dozen different dahlias now but they mostly stick to these.

 I've seen as many as five bees on one flower! these two were still on the same flower the next day.

 

The centers of these simple dahlias are quite mathematical looking and ornate. 

This September Morning

I walk around the yard every morning while my flowers are blooming. I need to do it earlier than usual when the morning glories start flowering. They're all done for the day and closed up by about 11am. Above, a gorgeous new dahlia. I don't know the variety. It must be one that I saved from last year from the 4 four plants that never bloomed. It's a bright, fiery orange and pink.

 A yellow honeycomb butterfly bush, Buddleia x weyeriana

My palest dahlia this year. Nice against the brighter colored dahlias and zinnias next to them.

Pink dahlia. This is a very compact bush, only about 18 inches tall but has put out plenty of flowers.

Reaching for the sun two varieties of dahlias look great together.

These are two varieties of dahlias, too. That's why I like growing them so much. For one family of flowers they're so incredibly diverse in color, texture, size, shape, everything you can image. The leaves all look pretty similar though!

The one sunflower stalk that reached maturity has had a dozen flowers. They're not too large, but the bees love them anyway! 

 Nice pair of pink Morning Glories today.

These are the colors that are flowering right now, various shades of pink and purple. There should be blue ones very soon.

Sunflowers in the distance and two pretty purple glories.

Morning glory leaves are heart-shaped!

Little blue wildflower blooms on a vine-like stem and takes over after the day lilies are done and their leaves dry up. One doesn't cancel the other out with their roots either so I let them both coexist in the same space.

Bright orange zinna. They flowers are small but the stems are tall and really producing flowers right now.

Pink zinnia and friend. There are hundreds of bees in the gardens at all times. It's great to see, but I know their position in our world is precarious at best.

Endless Summer. I Wish

I walked around the yard on Thursday and made an impromptu flower arrangement. Liking to get at least two purposes out of everything I posed it around the apartment for an equally impromptu photoshoot. Here, in front of my 1930s moveable butterfly toy, Tinky Winky hangs around admiring the flowers.

  

In front of a portrait I've created of my mom at the age of 2. It's in a vintage frame with glass and I've matted it with dried flowers. I like the mix of old and new flowers here.

This variety of dahlia is called "Pumpkin Spice" but I think "On Fire" would be better. It's gorgeous in person, and it actually grew with its back to the sun, not facing it. It don't need no stinkin' sun, lol!

Lone Cosmos plant came up on its own this year. It's right in a corner of the enclosed garden, perfectly positioned.

Large "Banarama" dahlia will be open in a day or two.

This cream dahlia is planted in front of that magenta one. I have four more plants to flower, but so far I have several different pinks, two yellows, this cream, and an orange one. They're all different shapes and sizes, too.

From the same plant, this particular one has more than a dozen flowers right now.

Like a Celestial Alignment, these dahlias and a distant sunflower stack on top of each other from this angle.

Keeping with the space theme, these dahlia blooms remind me of those Hubble photographs of many galaxies together. Some are in focus and others aren't. The light from that faraway sunflower took longer to reach my camera, lol

 A pink morning glory has appeared! Here's in the morning shade.

In the sun!

The back of this morning glory, equally as interesting as the front. Bright pink is new this year.

Such a beautiful deep purple morning glory! So I have three colors this year, pink, purple, and blue. Well, there are wild white ones near them in the woods, but they're almost impossible to transplant. They grow at the bases of the wild roses with have so many thorns they're not worth getting near, lol.

 The back of the purple glory has a very vivid shade not visible from the front.

I have one sunflower that made it to maturity this year.

Pointing to the future.

This Morning at Pink Gardens

I gleefully share my gardens with the birds, the bees, and the butterflies. Here, the shimmer of this honeybee's wings can just be seen above him.

"Geranium Row" in the front yard. I made a border to the large central perennial garden with these pots of geraniums. The blue lobelia is on loan as I nurse it back to health after a deer "attack" at its home in Leete's Island. I'm sort of a plant whisperer to friends. These are the "annual" geraniums I winter in the attic. They're going on 12 years old now.

What I refer to as one of my heirloom marigolds. I have saved the seeds every year since the 1970s. I'm essentially growing clones every year. I have two different varieties but their blossoms always vary a lot on each plant. They're strong and obviously have good plant DNA!

This simple-petaled dahlia adds a lot of color to the garden.

The bees really love zinnias, too.

Fresh multi-petaled magenta dahlia. They change almost hourly throughout their lifespan. 

Bright orange zinnia. The flowers are miniature, about an inch wide, but the plants are 2-3 feet tall.

I planted some zinnia seeds in a pot of marigolds this spring and they're just starting to bloom together.

An almost perfect geranium globe.

 "Put a ring on it!" Each zinnia flower is unique. They're great fun to grow and peruse.

This pink zinnia has a full seven layers of petals. No cake frosting though!