Tag: Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day

Bloom Day in November: dill(flowers) and sunflowers

Cindy at enclos*ure10 Comments

The quiet flowerworks in the mind of God . . .

— Howard Nemerov, from “A Sprig of Dill“

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

A dillburst in the flower borders.

During the summer, I transplanted a lot of small dill plants from the vegetable garden to the yellow areas of the flower borders.  Unfortunately, dill really doesn’t like to be moved, and it really doesn’t like it during the dry season.  So all the little plants just remained little.

But lately, after six weeks of rain, they are growing and a few have begun to bloom.

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ureI’ve always thought that dill is a nice ornamental plant.

Eventually, that variegated ginger — of which you can just see a bit  above and below — will be huge and dominate this area (and there is another very small one hidden to the left of the dill bloom below).

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

In the meantime, I’m hoping that the dill and Missouri primrose will self seed here as long as there is space.  (I will help it along, and I’ve also been sprinkling about Verbena bonariensis seed.)

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ureI was pleased to get the picture above.  The yellow of the primroses is usually too intense for my camera to capture any details.

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ureAbove, the dill blooms/seadheads are beautiful even as they fade to tan.

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ureIn our vegetable garden, the dillworks continue. . . .

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ureIn the background are blue-green Russian kale.  Some of the next batch that I grow will also go into the flower beds — like these at the Smithsonian’s Butterfly Habitat Garden.

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

This Bloom Day, I also got interested in the after- blooms of our sunflowers.November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

Below is what one of them looked like at the end of summer.

November Bloom Day in our Rwanda garden/enclos*ure

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is the 15th day of every month. To see what’s blooming in other garden bloggers’ gardens, please visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

October Bloom Day: home again

Cindy at enclos*ure5 Comments
View from the living room.
A double variety of Rudbeckia laciniata.
Graptopetalum in bloom.
Americans in Kigali: purple coneflowers grown from seed.
A Crassocephalum (vitellinum?) native to Rwanda.
Unknown shrub rose in the pink border.
An unknown white rose — our only scented rose.
The sunflowers bloomed while we were gone.
The cherry tomatoes waited for us.

We returned from three weeks of travel on Saturday night.  Not a minute too soon, as a steady trickle of water was flowing from below the master bathroom sink and probably had been for a couple of days.  The bedroom floor and two carpets were soaked — welcome home!  Thankfully, the furniture and the rooms below were fine.

Until that moment, however, it had been a great trip — especially since I was able to visit Loi of Tone on Tone and his beautiful shop of Swedish antiques in Bethesda, Maryland.  And in Madison, Wisconsin, Linda from Each Little World and her husband, Mark,  not only took us on a tour of their lovely garden, but gave us lunch.  We had very interesting conversation about art collecting and Wisconsin politics.

I was also able to go and pull invasive weeds at Dumbarton Oaks Park in Washington, D.C., and meet the great Ann Aldrich and some of the other weed warriors of the DOP Conservancy, which is supporting the National Park Service in restoring this Beatrix Farrand’s masterpiece.

Back at home, about five weeks into the rainy season, our grass is green again and there are a lot of flowers.   Being away, however, has opened my eyes to a number of problems that daily familiarity was hiding, so now back to work. . . .

To see what’s blooming in other garden bloggers’ gardens this October 15, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

After some rain

Cindy at enclos*ure8 Comments

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain. . . .

— Robert Creeley, from “The Rain“

Our garden on August 31, at the end of the dry season:Our garden in the dry season/enclos*ure

And on September 11, after several days of rain:Our September garden in Rwanda/enclos*ure

Much better. After the first rain or two, everything seemed almost sparkly.

Below (click on any of the thumbnails in the gallery) is a little tour of the borders along the upper and lower lawns, taken on September 11 — just before sunset — and yesterday afternoon.

Looking southwest from the upper lawn.
Kniphofia uvaria and a Kalanchoe. . .
with an orange Lantana camera in the background.
A pot of Graptopetalum with yellow daylilies behind it.
An orange blooming tropical hibicus in the foreground.
The upper lawn beyond the steps. A large Euphorbia in the background.
Walking to the tall pot in the last photo and turning: Cape plumbago, yellow Abutilon, variegated groundcover irises, and a double Rudbeckia laciniata in the foreground.
Turning back to the steps, Cape plumbago and shasta daisies.
Looking down to the next level of retaining wall, a large white rose in the back and (I think) a (purple) Thunbergia in the center.
Walking down the steps, looking south. There are also cream Russelia equisetiformis and a blue blooming Salvia (I think it’s a Salvia).
At the bottom of the steps, looking back at the south retaining walls.
Looking South on the other side of the lower lawn.
Those are pink Pentas in the foreground.
Going back to the top of the steps and looking northwest about sunset.
Looking down on the next level of retaining wall: blue blooming Salvias, Eranthemum nervosum, and a variegated ginger.
Walking down the steps, looking north.
At the bottom of the steps, looking back to the north retaining walls. There are red Russelia equisetiformis above and yellow daylilies and Rudbeckia below.
Walking across the lawn and looking north.

I think this will be my slightly early Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day and Foliage Follow-Up submission for September. Please go to May Dreams Gardens (Bloom Day on September 15) and Digging (Foliage Follow-Up on September 16) to see what’s happening in other Garden Bloggers’ gardens.

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for August

Cindy at enclos*ure1 Comment

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer . . .

by our water hoses.

We are just below the equator here in Rwanda, so technically it is near the end of winter — and of the long dry season, which began in May and normally ends in September.

But last night there was a light rain for about seven hours, so today I don’t need to water anything in the garden, not even the new plants.

The cutting garden (left) and the vegetable garden (right).
The cutting garden (left) and the vegetable garden (right).

We’ve really cut back on watering this year, anyway — none for the grass and a lot less for the planting beds. The grass is going brown, but we still have a lot of flowers, particularly my stalwarts, yellow daylilies and pink gerbera daisies.

The vegetable garden with kale, sunflowers, Missouri primroses, nasturtiums.
The vegetable garden with kale, sunflowers, Missouri primroses, nasturtiums.

My biggest project in the last month has been to tackle our mess of a vegetable garden, which has consisted of several not very productive, but very wide and long raised beds.  Their dimensions just weren’t manageable, so we’ve dug new paths and now all the beds are about 4′ x 5′.

Orange nasturtium in our vegetable garden.
Orange nasturtium bloom in our vegetable garden.

Growing among the argula, lettuce, kale, strawberry, and tomato plants are also celosias, nasturtiums, Missouri primroses, and sunflowers.

Sunflower (one of the shorter varieties) in our vegetable garden.
Sunflower (one of the shorter varieties) in our vegetable garden.
The garden with celosia, feverfew, supports for tomatoes and beans, with lettuce gone to seed in the back.
Our still rather disorderly garden with celosia, feverfew, supports for tomatoes, with a row of lettuce going to seed along the back.

Recently, I tried to grow American hardy hibiscus from seed (in the vegetable garden, where the soil is best), and, despite the fact that I have always read that this is a very easy thing to do, only about ten seedlings appeared from two packets of seeds, and for weeks they have remained at 2″ tall.

Nothing at all came up from a packet of black-eyed Susan seeds; only one plant from a packet of Verbena bonariensis.  However, alpine strawberry seeds have produced about 15 plants.

Lettuce flowers.
Lettuce flowers.

I have also done well with re-seeding lettuce, dill, basil, garlic chives, and coriander and with rooted rosemary cuttings. I have high hopes for my cherry tomato plants, many of which have clusters of tiny fruit.

Feverfew in the vegetable garden.
Feverfew in the vegetable garden.
Celosia in the vegetable garden. The fading blooms are full of seeds.
Celosia in the vegetable garden. The fading blooms are full of seeds.

In the long flower border along the lower lawn, I have one bloom from several purple coneflower plants that I have grown from seed.

The first coneflower bloom.
The first coneflower bloom from plants I grew from seed.

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is the 15th day of every month.  Check out May Dreams Gardens to see what’s blooming in other garden bloggers’ gardens today.

Bloom Day in July: tropical hibiscus

Cindy at enclos*ure8 Comments

About 8:30 this morning:
Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day in July, tropical hibiscus in our Kigali garden/enclos*ure

Five hours later:
Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day in July, tropical hibiscus in our Kigali garden/enclos*ure

Well. . . aloha.
Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day in July, tropical hibiscus in our Kigali garden/enclos*ure

This is the second bloom I’ve seen on this particular tropical hibiscus. None of my others are this flashy dramatic.

Surrounding it are several Justicia brandegeeana or shrimp plants, which are always in bloom.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day in July, tropical hibiscus in our Kigali garden/enclos*ure

This is a small planting bed near the entrance to the front terrace. We removed* all the old clipped shrubs from this area early last summer, but in a combination of fatigue and indecision, I just cut this bush to the ground, thinking it could die (or not) in place.

A couple of months ago, I noticed that it had sent up two stems and that flower buds were developing.  I was a little amazed about a week and a half ago when the first one opened.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day in July, tropical hibiscus in our Kigali garden/enclos*ure

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day in July, tropical hibiscus in our Kigali garden/enclos*ure

It goes well with the shrimp plants, so I’ll just leave it here and keep it pruned to about 4′ – 5′ tall.  The yellow-flowering plant in front of it is a Missouri primrose (Oenothera missouriensis).  It is an American native annual that self-seeds around the garden.

Cactus in our Kigali garden/enclos*ure

On the opposite end of the showy-ness scale, I discovered last week that our cactus-like Euphorbia (above and below) is blooming.

Cactus in our Kigali garden/enclos*ure

The flowers are a little over a 1/4″ across.

Cactus in our Kigali garden/enclos*ure

Cactus in our Kigali garden/enclos*ure

GBBD — the 15th of every month — is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. Click here to see other garden bloggers’ mid-July flowers.

*It was among the bushes on the right in this photo. It was always clipped, so it probably hasn’t bloomed for a long time.