At Last- A Nice White Marigold!

I've been checking out 'white' marigolds (tagetes) for years- heck, I remember way back when I was a kid in the 60s and Burpee put little seed packs in potato chip bags, asking that if anyone grew a white marigold from them, they would buy it from the lucky grower- and haven't been impressed. They germinate poorly, take forever to grow, and when they finally bloom, I only get one or two flowers out of them. I don't know if our extremely long summer days have something to do with this- a lot of marigolds are day length sensitive. This year, I tried 'Snowdrift', and I'm quite pleased! It germinated quite well, grew quickly, started blooming at the same time as the little Lemon Drops, and is making lots of new buds. I'll be buying this one again!

Of course, no marigold is truly white. Snowdrift is a lemony-cream, like all the 'white' marigolds. But it's close enough to stand in for white in my landscape!

Sundogs!

Tonight's sunset:

We've been having some pretty great sunsets lately because of the fires in BC, but this is the first one with sundogs!

My First Hybrid!

Most gardeners, even those who do a lot of propagation, don't create their own hybrids. I, however, seem to have had the dubious honor of involuntarily creating one.

I've grown the malva 'Mystic Merlin' a few times- the hollyhock like malva that's purple with darker purple stripes. Sadly,. it did not prove hardy here, and the relics were thrown onto the compost heap, where a couple came up a few years ago. We also have lots and lots of a common weed, malva neglecta. They grow all over the compost heap. Short, almost round leaved, ground cover-y, with tiny pink flowers.

The two engaged in illicit pollen swapping.

The next year, we had what appeared to be regular malva neglecta- short, almost round leaved, ground cover-y weeds. Then they bloomed-  with large, purple with darker purple striped flowers. Huh, we thought.

The next year they returned, looking the same. And again this year. They are a stable hybrid.

I guess if you've got to have weeds, they might as well be pretty ones.

My Seedling Lily

A few years ago, I bought some seeds for trumpet and aurelian lilies. While only two of them germinated, I'm thrilled with how they turned out:

It bloomed last year, but the bloom (yes, single) was much smaller. I don't know if this is full size yet or not, but it's fragrant and looks like something that shouldn't even be able to live in this climate!

And the Heat is Upon Us

As expected, the weather went from constant rain to over 90F with little in between. There has been a frantic scramble to pull weeds and plant things- a scramble that is still not completed. I'm not sure we'll ever catch up this year. It's overcast today and we have the day off, so I'm hoping I can get most of the remaining annuals in and a lot of the weeds out. The weeds are so bad this year that by the time I get around the house weeding, the spot where I started is overgrown again. And with this heat, they are all going to seed.

Most of the roses look shabby right now, although some are starting to rebloom. The delphiniums are ragged; not quite done with their first bloom so I can't cut them back yet. The daylilies are what look best right now.

 This is "Double River Wye"- I think. I bought it as an orange double, and this was the only yellow double the vendor had at the time, so I made that assumption. I've gotten many, many misnamed plants from that person, and I never seem to find out until quite some time later.

We've been dividing iris like crazy; the other day we were at a job dividing iris when it started to thunder. We ignored it. Then the sky just opened up. It poured rain, it hailed huge nuggets, the dog ran, we ran under the garage lean to (with a pile of iris, so we could keep working) and waited it out, not that we could have gotten any wetter than we already were. It rained so hard on the metal roof that we couldn't hear each other talk, even yelling at each other. Even though it was still above 70F, I was shivering from being wet. Extra bonus: because we left the windows open when we left for work, everything by the windows on the west side of the house was soaked. Including a box of fabric. Yippee.

They cut the hay and got part of it baled today before it started raining- again. Now hopefully my allergies will back off!

Summer may finally be here..

It's been a long, rainy month, one where everyone had work for us to do and we were taking care of the neighbor's alpaca farm, too. So our garden got grown over with well-watered weeds and we had no time to pull them, and the plants in the greenhouse grew tall and didn't get transplanted into baskets, bigger pots or the yard. Things are in an embarrassing state. But I think we may finally be through with the rain for awhile -next you'll see me complaining about the heat- and we should be able to get things under control a bit. The sky gave us a promise with our last rainstorm, anyway...

Bring the Animals Two by Two

We've had a wetter than normal spring, so much so that we have yet to get the vegetable garden planted. Two thirds of the garden has been- quite literally- underwater, a state which normally isn't true, at least after, say, mid-April. When Tim rototilled it two weeks ago, the tiller got stuck and couldn't be pulled out by hand or by ATV - it took the tractor. Not a lawnmower type garden tractor, either. A bulldozer type tractor, albeit a fairly small one, was necessary. I have this bad feeling that once it stops raining, the ruts from that will harden instantly into concrete and stay that way until next winter's freeze/thaw cycles loosens it up again.

We did get the peas in today (they are transplants, not seeds) and some of the brocolli and cabbage. It's very late to be planting those things. The normal mode here is to go from rainy and cold to 90 F within a few days, and the cool weather crops will start suffering. It's even been too muddy to get much weeding done in the flower garden, while the well-watered interlopers have grown like, well, weeds. I don't want to fertilize until the weeds are pulled.

As you can figure out, all these means that when the weather clears, we will be weeding, planting and fertilizing on fast forward, not just in our yard but in the yards of customers whose jobs keep getting put off because of rain. Stay tuned to see if we survive!