Water Droplets on Verbascum

When I went out to the car this morning the grass was fairly heavy with dew. Generally I don’t like getting my shoes all wet walking to the car but occasionally it’s worth venturing out into the grass to see what else has been covered by droplets of water. In this case, a common mullein (Verbascum thapsus) was absolutely covered with little beads of water, its velvety surface increasing it’s holding capacity. The picture isn’t actually all that good, but it’s what I have for today.

Rose ‘New Dawn’

We’ve been in need of rain. I don’t pay particular attention to rainfall amount for particular months but generally April and May are pretty rainy. This year, May has been on the dry side. Recently the lawn has started to look like it often does in early August. Well, the rain came today (but of course, it’s now June). One downside to the rain is that it knocks the petals off the roses. The multiflora is pretty well finished, but the ‘New Dawn’ growing beside it on the fence is just really getting started. Here’s a picture of ‘New Dawn’ with drops of rain, a la Oscar Hammerstein.

Cathy’s ‘Stump’ Garden

Last year the county cut down one of the red oaks growing along the front of our property (but in the county’s right of way, so belonging to the county). Cathy put some planters on the stump and planted a few annuals around it. In the fall they came and ground the stump, giving Cathy fair warning so she could move the containers and so she knew the annuals would be destroyed in the process. Yesterday Cathy planted this year’s garden in the spot where the stump was, including two containers and quite a few plants in the ground. I took a few pictures yesterday but the morning light was on it as I was leaving for work, so I took a few more, including this one. I’ll try to get another picture of it later in the year, when everything has gotten established and filled in. In addition to what she planted, you can see in the lower right that there is a volunteer common mullein (Verbascum thapsus), an alien species introduced from Europe, Asia, and Africa. Cathy’s a big fan.

Sedum (Stonecrop)

We drove back from New York this morning and had no problems with traffic, thankfully. It has gotten pretty warm, although it’s still nice in the shade. I took some pictures in the yard this afternoon, including this photo of some Sedum (stonecrop) flowers. This is a fairly prolific perennial plant and has gotten established in the cracks and crevices around our front steps and walkway. It’s not so aggressive that it’s particularly invasive and it has a lot of these pretty (small) yellow flowers.

Tradescantia (Spiderwort)

Our spiderworts (Tradescantia) have begun to bloom. Ours mostly have very deep purple flowers, although we have a couple with pink flowers. This isn’t as good a photograph as I had hoped, but it does show two of my favorite features of the flowers, the blue stamen hairs and bright yellow anthers. Together, they combine to give the flowers an other-worldly look that I really like. I’ll try to get a better picture at some point, but this will have to do for now.

Iris ‘Eric the Red’

We have some large, bearded irises in bloom but this little one, a pretty, little Siberian iris called ‘Eric the Red’, may be my favorite.

Although it’s called ‘Eric the Red’ the petals are actually a purple color. One interesting thing about it, though, is that in photographs, the petals come out looking more red than they are in real life. In this image, I’ve corrected the color so it matches pretty well what the flowers look like.