Not bad....

...it's only been a little over a month since my last post. Which means I missed July. But I have a good excuse. It's summer in Colorado which means the relatives come visiting, and I got a double whammy with relatives from both sides of the family. It was lots of fun and only slightly hectic.
It's a good thing it rained so much or my garden might have felt neglected. This is my new favorite garden ornament, an Everlasting Allium. Pretty cool, huh?

The canna lilies that I bought at Home Depot are blooming their heads off. I have three in the little pond and these two in a corner. Everytime a bloom fades there's another one waiting in the wings. I'm thrilled.

Here's a closeup of the red one. Those emerging buds look a lot like birds-of-paradise, don't they? I love this carmine-red color.

I found this yellow jug at a garage sale on my way to work last Friday. (I'm always late on Fridays). I thought $5 was a decent price for it.

I think the Nicotiana Sylvestris looks like candles in the dusk. Or maybe like clusters of candelabras. I'm really fond of these towering flowers. I don't have as many as I used to because my little maple tree is getting bigger and shading more of the front bed. But these few really make me happy.

OVERRUN BY OVERSEEDING

See all these baby seedlings? (Ignore the dead bush.) I didn't plant them, but I'm responsible for them. Every year I rhapsodize over a Nicotiana Sylvestris I planted several years ago. Its heady fragrance in the evening, its startling size, its huge sprays of white trumpet-like flowers. People would stop and ask me what it was. And every fall I would sprinkle the dried seed heads from it over the rest of the beds hoping for new plants. Nada. Zilch.

Except for this spring. Suddenly they were everywhere. About a hundred of them. Bemused by this sudden explosion of nicotiana, I let them grow. And grow. Now I am overrun by tobacco plants and I can't even smoke them. Some of them are still babies, others grew into teenagers and young adulthood, grew tall and flowered like their parent. I haven't seen the small junipers I planted for about 6 weeks now. The miniature roses are hidden under giant nicotiana leaves. The Canada Goose decoys look like humpback whales cresting a sea of green, and the Japanese anemones are vying for air space to unfurl their blossoms.

I transplanted some to the back yard, the side yard, and next to the pond. I sent some back home with my brother-in-law when he came to visit. I'm getting ready to pot them up and leave them on the neighbors' doorsteps like babies in a basket. When fall comes, there's going to be a lot of digging-up going on around here. Hope I'm up to the task or Nicotiana Sylvestris will become my new nemesis of the garden. And I won't be doing any overseeding this fall. In fact I think I'll collect the seedheads carefully and seal them in plastic bags on their way to the garbage bin lest any stray seed fall on this suddenly fertile ground!

EARLY TO RISE

I got up too early this morning: 5:15. On weekends I can pop out of bed at the crack of dawn but on workdays there's not a chance of that. Read the paper, decided I was still sleepy and went out to the back porch where I could watch the birds at the feeders and do some dozing. Enjoyed the early morning chill and thought about where to transplant some Nicotiana Sylvestris later.



This is Nicotiana Sylvestris. I love this plant. Much larger than its smaller cousins, it gets about 4 to 5 feet tall in my zone 5 climate. At night it smells heavenly. This spring for the first time I have a zillion baby Sylvestris which need to be transplanted to other areas of my yard. I've never tried to transplant these before so I'll see how it goes.