Tag: gardening

Creative Life, Gardening, Photography

Happening in the Garden, #Six on Saturday

This post is in response to the Six on Saturday garden photo challenge hosted by The Propagator.

1.) Irises

Our irises seem to be at their peak right now. Driving to the house the other day, I was really happy to be greeted by all these irises.

2.) Peonies

Just a short while ago, I saw that the peony bush was full of buds about to open. Then, two or three opened. Now, it is full of big open blooms with frilly interiors. I didn’t frame this photo as accurately as I wanted, because of the sun blacking out my phone, but you can still see it’s a big, healthy bloom.

3.) Azalea

Our white azalea is also fully bloomed out. I don’t think it did quite as well last year.

4.) Chives

This is an unusual place to see a flower, but this is our chives in the herb garden. We have been buying some grocery store herbs still, because some of our plants are too small to harvest. We have plenty of chives now though. I love being able to go out to the garden and trim some for the recipe I’m making.

5.) Parsley

Italian flat leaf parsley is really great for a lot of recipes too.

6.) Peppermint

There’s a trend for a new style of salad with watermelon, feta cheese and fresh mint. It may sound odd, but the combination is really tasty. I made a salad like that with our fresh mint last spring and may need to do that again.

Creative Life, Gardening

Iris Photos, Plus Trying Butterfly Garden Seed Mats

We have several different varieties of iris blooming now in the garden. Although I shared some photos already for the purple theme in the Life in Color photo challenge — excuse me, Life in Colour photo challenge. (I should use the British spelling since our host, Jude, is British, and that’s the way she spells it.) This post shows one more variety and close-ups of the irises wet from the rain. I really like how these turned out.

I took these photos yesterday and later helped Dad with some planting using butterfly garden seed mats. This is our first time planting with this method, so I will have to post an update when we see what results we have. The seed mats came in packages like in the photo below. We ordered them online but no longer remember from where. Sorry.

According to the package, the seed mixture is 34% crimson clover, 28% zinnia, 28% cornflower, 6% catchfly, 3% gloriosa daisy and 1% plains coreopsis.

First, we broke up the soil a bit with a cultivator …

and removed a few weeds.

I didn’t want to dig up this violet, but Dad said it needed to go. So, I took a photo of it before saying “Farewell.” Later, Dad took pity and transplanted the now flowerless plant to a pot with soil.

After we raked the soil a bit, we laid out the seed mats and pinned them in the corners with soil staples.

We laid out two of these along our picket fence, covered the mats with top soil and watered them.

And now we wait …