My Verdi Glory finally started to bloom in the balcony. It took from the dahlia three months to start the show but it has finally started.
This summer has not been a good one for dahlias. Just the opposite of the last summer that made all the dahlias thrive. At least all mine seem to suffer from various matters like heavy rain fall, mold and pests.
Well maybe next year will be better. Must have few dahlias growing.
It is always nice to try something new in the garden but as important is to have something that you can count on. A flower that will not fail you no matter the weather.
Mallow has been there for decades and each summer it blooms with beautiful pink flowers. The only thing you need to do is to support the long stems against the strong rain showers that will so easily bend them.
I guess I should try another color since there are others available. Something to consider next spring.
This is the second summer when I can enjoy sunflowers blooming early.
Happy that I found Ruby. It grows fast and starts blooming as early as in July. About a month earlier than any other variety I have tried.
The color of the flower is nearly brown when it opens and it changes to a mixture of yellow, red and orange when days go by.
This is the first summer that I have planted irises. I do not know why I have not tried them before. To my surprise I managed to keep them alive.
Well not exactly all of them made it. I planted some in the autumn and some in the spring. Unfortunately none of the ones I planted in the autumn made it through the winter. It seems that the varieties I used were not hardy enough.
Luckily the spring planting proved out to be successful. The blooms are beautiful.
I guess I just need to find varieties that tolerate cold winters.
My first Xanthos started to bloom today. A new cosmos variety I have tried for the first time and I think it just became a longtime acquaintance.
Yellow is a totally new color to me when it comes to cosmos.
This year seems to be dedicated to annuals. I lost so many perennials last winter and had to quickly replace the empty spaces with something. Luckily had tons of cosmos seeds available to hide the damages.
My geranium finally started to bloom! It took months from the flower to recover from the darkness of a long winter.
The poor thing looked pathetic in the spring – pale and dry.
I started it from a seed and managed to enjoy its beauty last summer. Nice thing about the nano series is that it remains quite small. So in the autumn I took it inside and to my big surprise it survived.
That usually does not happen to my geraniums. The flat is simply too hot and dry. Happy that this little thing made an exception.
For the first time I managed to keep all my three chilies alive over the winter. Usually the long period of darkness and the cruel central heating is too much for them.
It means that I get an early harvest this year. The first chilies are already ready for picking.
And as I already learned last year the Hungarian yellow wax turns red when ripe. I guess I need to find another variety if I want other colors. Sadly do not have much space for wintering them. Need to figure out a solution for this limitation.
About ten years ago I bought my father a snowball tree. One of the most successful purchases I have made.
Ever since the tree has produced beautiful snowballs each year. Growing larger and larger each summer and producing hundreds and hundreds of white flowers.
Now I am considering to buy another since the tree has survived the winters and it simply looks stunning when blooming.
I do not know why but I have always loved columbines. I used to have only one pink variety which my grandmother had had for many years. I started to calculate that the variety must have been here more than seventy years.
As a child I used to like collecting the aquilegia seeds. That must have started my enthusiasm for columbines.
Currently I have several different colors and shapes growing. Not as many as I would like to have but I guess there is no limit to my greed.
All of them have been grown from a seed. Up here in the north it always takes at least two years to see the first blooms. Well, I guess waiting just makes it more worth while.
Spring came early this year. Normally we can enjoy tulips early June. Purple Prince started to bloom few days ago and it is just mid May!
It is a new variety I bought last year and one of the few survivors!
I can now see that I have lost most of my tulips. The winter was hard on tulips and only a handful of them could take minus 33 degree Celsius we had in January. The thin layer of snow could not give them the protection desperately needed.
Well a good reason to me to shop more in the autumn.
Gardening in the North 