It blooms 'early' every year!

My Christmas cactus needs to be renamed to Thanksgiving cactus - because in the seven years I've had it, it has never bloomed for Christmas. Its buds start forming in October and I keep it outside as long as possible to keep it cool and slow the blossoms. By the middle of November, it has a few blossoms and it normally peaks just in time for Thanksgiving Day. This weekend I think its reached its maximum profusion of blossoms. Now the trick is to figure out how to make them last through the week so family can comment "How gorgeous!", and "What a beautiful cactus in bloom!", or "That Christmas cactus is so pretty!"- just like they do every year at Thanksgiving!

Blooming Beauties

It may be late October, but these daisies didn't get the memo it is time to make way for crimson, golden and rusty colored mums. There are actually quite a few stands of Shasta daisies that have managed to keep their pretty petals and bright centers since frost still hasn't happened yet.

My friend Cathy definitely has a green thumb and these bloom outside my study window at her house. Though I can't quite see them from my study perch, they are an incongruous breath of delight as I come and go each day.

Cooler Nights Ahead

The potted plants are still going nicely and its time to start to transition them inside before the inevitable frost arrives but not move them too fast and shock them with the indoors....so the covered porch is a great in-between place where they can enjoy the still warm afternoon sunlight of October days.

Fall's floral foliage....

The Last Chrysanthemum

Why should this flower delay so long
To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun
Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call
Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
The season's shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,
Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
Winter would stay its stress?

- I talk as if the thing were born
With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
By the Great Face behind.

Thomas Hardy

roadside stop

For two weeks, this pretty clump of flowers have been blooming bright, beautiful and orange.

I just know my sister in law is jealous and wished they bloomed in her yard.

Ahhh, promises of cooler days ahead....

Just seeing mums make me want to go get a sweater. Little need for one right now with temps in the mid 80s, though. Soon, though. Soon and very soon!

Empty rain guage

We can water the thirsty impatients in the flower bucket and even put a sprinkler on the lawn in the background - but it doesn't change the fact that we haven't had much in the way of rain all summer long. Here's hoping that will change a little bit in the next 24 hours.

Flower in the crannied wall

FLOWER in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies; -
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower - but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The bee and the butterfly

Dropped by to spy on the garden - or at least get what they could from the sunflower

It's a jungle in the garden these days! Tomato plants with some fruit beginning to turn from green to yellowish orange to the promised red.

Squash plants - zucchini and yellow summer squash are already producing plenty. It's almost a fulltime job to keep them from getting the size of baseball bats! Breads and casseroles are being made by the double batches.

Questions from the arboritum

I saw the Black-Eyed Susans, but did she/they see me?
Why are they Susan's flowers? and how did she get the black-eye?

Happy Tuesday!

We had measurable rain overnight, but the rain gauge was emptied before I got a snapshot of it. It's a hot, muggy summer day with the sun playing peekaboo through overcast and low clouds - but this zinnia and I got along fine for a few moments to take this picture for today's blog entry. I am content to go back into the air conditioned coolness and read for the evening. Hope all is well in your corner of the world!

Makes sense

"Keep your face to the sunshine
and you cannot see the shadow.
It's what sunflowers do" - Helen Keller

evening plans

It's too hot to plant now - but this evening these
dahlias, portulaca, and impatients will find a place
to bloom where they are planted for the summer.

What's up, Tiger Lily?

With apologies to Woody Allen and Peter Pan's loyal Indian princess companion, the many bouquets of naturalized blossoms are making the daily commute just breathtaking these days.

This particular display on a bend in the road near the bridge are especially picturesque, yes?

Yes, that was a rhetorical question.
Just enjoy.

Princeton's Pettoranllo Gardens

I took my book, dinner, and the folding chair I keep stashed in my trunk these days to a local P'ton park and found a shady non-air conditioned spot to enjoy 45 minutes between tutoring appointments. The flower covered trellis just added to the ambiance.

Raindrops on Daisys

Ooops, those aren't the opening lyrics of Rogers and Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things" but it is what I saw after a few afternoon thunder showers passed by this afternoon.

A perky patch of pink

At first I thought they were some sort of party favors just stuck in a rock circle.

But they are really cosmos that blossomed before growing
so tall they bend over from the weight of the flower on a long spindly stem.

They were just too happy for me to pass on by.

Those March and April showers

did their job very well this year, because the flowers during May are beyond gorgeous. These homeowners in P'ton made their yard look like a country garden magazine spread. With the little table cloth and bowl, I wondered if I might be offered a glass of iced tea of lemonade.

But I was not interrupted as I did my own photo shoot.

This picture of irises is for Amie in Scotland.

Pretty Iris Arrangement

Plant flowers however you like and enjoy them.
Just know if I see a clump of irises, that is my preference.
(and these aren't bearded, which is another factor in their favor)

Violas in the baskets

I should have gone for a closeup on a flower
but I went for the whole post.
I've had it since Kentucky and am slightly partial to it.