Tagged With: Black-eyed Susans

Black-eyed Susans

Black-eyed Susans

Black-eyed Susans

The black-eyed Susans are the predominant source of color (except for the color green, of course) in the garden right now. They are holding up their end marvelously, I might add.

Oh, and I passed the 20,000 mark on my camera today. This is photo number 20,004 (since Christmas).

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Black-eyed Susans

Black-eyed Susans

Black-eyed Susans

I’ve posted pictures that have Black-eyed Susans in them but today’s photo is just of them. To say we have a few is a bit of an understatement. The reality is that we have let them run riot and there are a lot of them in the back yard. They add so much color that we don’t really mind, especially around the patio. We’ve managed to keep one large and one small walkway through them, so we can get out into the yard. They are pretty popular with the pollinators, attracting bees, flies, moths, and butterflies. One interesting thing about them is the photos I take always look bluer than they look in real life and I have to correct for that. On the other hand, the leaves really do have a fair amount of blue in their green.

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Cathy In The Back Garden

Cathy In The Back Garden

Cathy In The Back Garden

With my back still bothering me, I stayed home today. I did put in a little time at work, mostly a long phone call to discuss a proposal that is being written for a project that includes a web site. When Cathy got home from work I asked if I could take her picture for my photo of the day. She agreed and I took almost two dozen shots of het with her flowers. Most obvious are the Rudbekia (the Black-eyed Susans). There is also orange and yellow butterfly weed Asclepius tuberosa) on the right. In front of that is the pale pink spider flower (Cleome). There are other annuals in pots and there is the red teapot lower down.

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Cathy Weeding

Cathy Weeding

Cathy Weeding

Cathy and I have been trying to recover from the small amount of work we did in the garden in 2018. This year has been mostly recovery mode without a lot of additions but a lot of pulling and digging, trying to get at least some parts of the garden back to more garden plants than weeds. It’s an up hill battle. Along the back fence there was a huge stand of goldenrod, pokeweed, and bindweed. Cathy dug up a bunch of roots a few weeks back and we worked a bit more on it this weekend. As you can see, the central bed is full of black-eyed Susan’s and we have the volunteer American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) growing there (the purple berries on the left). We dug out a bunch of weeds there last week, as well. Tomorrow I plan to dig up some roots that remain from the maple trees that used to be there.

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Winter

Black-eyed Susan Seeds

Black-eyed Susan Seeds

As we pass through the darkest days of the year, it’s good to remember the brighter times that are coming. In the summer, the yard was filled with colors, green, yellow, pink, red, and purple. In the winter most things are brown or grey. But the cycle repeats. The brown seeds grown into green plants that bloom in all the colors of the rainbow. But even the browns can be pretty. I wondered around the yard this afternoon and took a handful of photos, including this of black-eyed Susan seed heads. In a surprisingly short time, the yard will be in bloom again.

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Cathy’s Flowers

Cathy's Flowers

Cathy’s Flowers

The summer blooming period has really gotten underway at our house. That mostly includes black-eyed Susan and tiger lilies, both seen in this photo with Cathy. These are in the front yard. It’s our largest stand of tiger lilies which originally came from bulbils collected from my dad’s plants in Bethesda. We have a few in other parts of the yard, near the top of the driveway and on the south end of the house and every year there are a few more. This bunch it the most impressive, though, being right out by the road.

The black-eyed Susans here are a relatively small bunch compared to what is in the back yard. I like them, although we could have about half as many and still have enough. They are fairly aggressive and even Cathy has taken to pulling a few up each year. There are about 25 recognized species of Rudbeckia. Most of ours are probably Rudbeckia hirta, native to our region and the state flower of Maryland. Some of the others, with similar flowers, are less aggressive and might be a better alternative, if you don’t want a yard full of them.

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Our Back Garden

Our Back Garden

Our Back Garden

This is a good time of year for our back garden. If you don’t like orange or yellow, you might not like it as much, though. We have a few black-eyed Susans. The tiger lilies are doing well. This is a self-seeded plant that seems to be happy where it landed. You can just make out the half-barrel with some pink buds on it. That’s a rose called ‘Gabriel Oak’ and there is another rose in front of it, called ‘Rose de Rescht’ that I almost killed but which is doing pretty well again, planted in this heavy, concrete pot. The bright read below the tiger lily is a Mandevilla. Other plants include butterfly weed, geranium (Pelargonium, actually), various Sedums, and an ornamental grass, among other things.

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