Tag Archives: gardens

Summer Gardens in Auburn, PART One, Flowers

September 17, 2026black-eyed susans, flowers, gardening, gardens, massachusetts, morning glory flower, New England, rose, summer, sunflower, Uncategorizedblack-eyes susans, flowers, gardening, gardens, Impatiens, monring glory flowers, Nature, New England, roses, summer, sunflowershealy24yang

So, since I have a little time for a break between the two novels I’ve been working on, I thought I’d do a new post. This one celebrates the success in the gardens that Yang and I have had this year. First, I’d like to share with you how lovely the flowers have been.

We had lots of beautiful flowers this year. Toward the end of April, Yang kept up his tradition of putting in the Impatiens by the end of the driveway. Boy did those guys thrive all summer long! If you can believe it, they are still going strong now at the end of September! We had put in some pansies on the level above them, but now the pansies have passed. Happily, one of last year’s Mums has returned and I will soon find a companion to plant with it.

The Black-Eyed Susans were especially prolific this year. They were here when we moved in, and every year they come back. We’ve added some variations to the standard version, so there are some nicely differing versions. These are one of Yang’s favorites. He even keeps an old driveway spot clear so they can proliferate there.

We even have our share of roses. Years ago, my mother-in-law gave me two roses, one yellow and one pale peach. The yellow one is still going! sometimes I get two flowers; this year only one, but it is a lovely one. And it has such lovely associations for us.

Last year we also rescued some mini-rose -shrubs from our cemetery Memorial Day decorations for family. This year, the roses came back just lovely and the bushes, though still small are growing much bigger!

Our Morning Glories are quite a pleasure to see every day when we get up. I did buy some more seeds this year; however, I always harvest seeds from the orchid and magenta colored ones. There are so many deep purple ones (default color), I don’t need to save the seeds of those. I especially love when we get a hybrid, the orchid one with a streak of deep purple or even half and half colors. Later in the season, we also had white with pink centers and large blue or white with light blue streaks.

I also have flower boxes, which I love to arrange with complimentary colors and shapes of flowers.

We also had quite a crop of sunflowers. These pictures were taken before everyone had attained his full height. So, some are much bigger now. They were very gallant, fending off the June bugs that usually devastate them in particular. It didn’t hurt that I went out every afternoon before dark and sprayed a water and tabasco sauce mixture on them for a month. I’ll try to post some more recent photos later, though their flowers are now a bit droopy. The birds are enjoying the seeds, anyway.

I’m not sure what kind of sunflower this one is. I’ve seen the rusty colored sunflower as a single stalk and maybe one or two flowers. I’ve seen the gigantic, multi-headed sunflower before in yellow. I’ve never seen the shape and color combined like this before. Well, maybe on The Outer Limits. Anybody out there who can identify this one?

Well, anyway, let’s close with one of my favorites, a delicate wildflower. The Asiatic Dayflower. The shape is so delicate and the blue petals with the yellow stamens make a beautiful color combination.

Summer Flowers

August 2, 2019flowers, gardens, massachusetts, New England, rose, spring, summerflowers, garden statues, gardens, Nature, New England, rose, spring, summerhealy24yang

Though some of these summer flowers have passed, like the roses, we still have some beautiful flowers going strong in our yard. The sea roses bloomed gorgeously and gave us a lovely scent for about a month. Here you can see the pink ones coming into flower. Years ago we started with three bushes, then they propagated across the back slope of our yard so they now look lovely, as well as ensuring that Yang has far less space to mow on the slope. My mother-in-law also gave us a beautiful yellow rose bush that flowers with one bud, once a year. It’s a lovely, delicate yellow!

Nearby, we have a small statue of St. Theresa, the Little Flower. Before her is a lush flock of Moondrops, gifts from our friend Rosemary Adams many years ago. She also gave us the Coreopsis in our front yard perennial garden.

Our Peonies also did nicely. They surround a birdbath and are complimented by purple ageratum; pink or light purple asters; pink or white dahlias, and blue, pink, and purple delphiniums. Friend Ruth Haber gave us another batch of peonies for that garden that are a lovely dark pink with yellow centers. Let’s hope they bloom next spring! If you look closely, you can see the birdbath has a base shaped like seahorses!

Near the peony garden is our fishpond. There’s a mound next to it filled with all kinds of flowers surrounding a fountain in the form of a lady pouring from a jar into the filtering urn of lava rocks. You can see one side of the mound is planted with orange and yellow flowers. The other side has pinks and purples. We used to get a huge crop of cosmos every year for almost twenty years, then this year: nothing! I had to go out and buy more plants. Yang pointed out that the Goldfinches and Chickadees ate up all the seeds last fall! The little devils! At least the fish still enjoy the scenery, especially at feeding time!

We have lots of neat statuary accompanying our flowers. Here a fairy mingling with the impatiens. I love it when you pull up the driveway around sunset and the orange beams of the sinking sun flare out the red colors of these flowers. We also have a dragon who loves to consort with the fairy and flowers. Right now there are even some purple Canterbury Bells that sprang up as volunteers next to the dragon. Foxes, turkeys, deer, and hawks have also come strolling in and out of those woods behind our house.

Continuing the Asian touch we have with the dragon, we have a Buddha sitting next to and enjoying what we call the square garden. We have pansies, petunias, ageratum, snapdragons, and even a lovely yellow Columbine in there. Don’t the flowers on the columbine look like dragon heads? The green bushy thing in the back is a bunch of Bleeding Hearts that volunteered in there. They’re beautiful in the early spring.

On the back porch, we have two Chinese lions, male (globe under his paw) and female (cub under her paw). We thought we’d make this one a patriotic Chinese American lion. I love to mix the pinks, yellows, and blues in the urns to surround the lions.

For these window boxes, I tried to combine flowers of colors that complemented each other and they repaid me by bursting forth in lush blossoms in June and July. Now that we’ve moved into August, the blossoms are tuckering out and being assailed by evil caterpillars – which I assiduously TRY to pick off, the little stinkers! However, the flower boxes are still mighty nice to look at when I get up each morning. Here they are in full glory.

So, some of these flowery glories have passed, but now we have more beauties, with the Rose of Sharon trees in full swing and the lilies blooming later than usual, but adding necessary color to the yard. I’ll have to post more pictures later.

Late Summer Birds and Flora

September 15, 2016birds, Cooper's Hawks, flowers, gardens, hawks, morning glory flower, Nature, New England, pumpkins, summer, Uncategorizedcardinals, flowers, gardens, Gold Finches, hawks, monring glory flowers, pumpkins, summerhealy24yang

Summer is almost officially past, so I’m posting some images from my gardens. We have three kinds of morning glories flowering in our yard. We’d have four, if the large blue ones would flower, but they won’t. So, we have some deep purple, some magenta, and some orchid ones. I don’t know all the names of the types, but they are lovely. Every year, I collect the seeds from these flowers to replant them in the spring. Sometimes, we get some interesting hybrids. I managed to get pictures of one of my favorites. Sometimes the orchid morning glories will sport a broad, deep purple stripe, as you see here. The seeds will actually reflect the combined types. Orchid seeds are cream colored and purple or magenta ones are black. These hybrid seeds are usually cream with a black stripe. Sometimes, the orchid ones will also blend with the magenta to produce a pink flower. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the one pink flower I’ve seen so far, but I did tag the flower so that I can retrieve the seeds.

The birds have also been having a grand time in our yard. We’ve seen lots of cardinals, including the Daddy Cardinal taking the kids out for dinner. We also have Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, scads of Gold Finches and Purple Finches, Chickadees, Titmice, and Nuthatches. I even saw a hummingbird three times this year! One time was in early September! The young gentleman Coopers Hawks have since taken off and rarely visit now. We named them Shawn and Gus – I know you know that I AM telling the truth about that! In this picture, you can see one hawk in the foreground and if you look carefully, the other is in silhouette in the triangle of railings on the right.

The drought has certainly left my pumpkins gasping for life. I’ve seen so many pumpkin and gourd embryos wither and die. Still, some made it. Here is an odd shaped pumpkin, which some critter took a chunk out of. Still, the pumpkin lives and now resides on my sideboard in the dining room. The pumpkin below isn’t a rogue that needs to be caged to protect the other flora and fauna. The vine climbed over the garden fence and the pumpkin embryo became fertilized hanging over the outside of the garden. Since we found evidence of some creature trying to dig into the garden, we developed protective caging from milk cartons. The ploy worked, for this pumpkin matured and now resides in state on the what-not table in my parlor. You can also see a crown of thorns embryo ready to flower and be fertilized. The good news is that this little guy is happily growing away. Maybe I’ll have some more pictures of it later.

Here are some of our eggplants and peppers. These guys were delicious! Yang can cook! So, I guess the drought didn’t totally blacken my green thumb.