A Well-Watered Garden

We took a walk through the conservation land behind the house, and found that while we were taking a respite, others were very hard at work harvesting pollen from the Prairie Asters: Such a beautiful office to work in:

Here are some photos of last summer's (2014's) Hollyhocks. They are the same that were photographed in 2013 , but they bloomed even more profusely last summer. In the grip of winter, photos of flowers like these seem like miracles.

We planted three types of roses in the spring of 2011: Memorial Day hybrid tea, which are a beautiful old-fashioned pink with a lovely damask scent, Moondance floribunda, which sadly did not survive last year's brutal winter (all I have of them now is the photos), and Pink Promise hybrid tea, which really have flourished the best of the three. They have very strong thick stems and massive light pink blooms. Our roses do best in early spring and late summer, when the Japanese beetles are not active. Is there a reason why the two hybrid teas survived the winter and the floribunda did not? It could have just been the placement - maybe Moondance got slightly more wind and cold then the others. These photos were taken of the Pink Promises last fall (2014). Happy Valentine's Day!

While we are in the grips of winter, I thought I'd catch up on posting some photos from last summer. There were two kinds of daylilies that were particularly beautiful. The first have been on the property for a long time - before we moved in in 2010. They are peach, with yellow centers and a rosy ring in the middle. As far as my research can tell, they are "Bunny Eyes" hemerocallis. If anyone recognizes them as something else, please do comment: There is a visitor in the photo above. We planted the second variety, "Just Plum Happy", in the spring of 2013. They didn't bloom much that summer, but this summer they really started to flourish: So pretty.