June Blooms and More

 After the spring bulbs, June blooms put on quite a show, too. This year our spring flowers failed due to the lack of moisture, but the irrigation system is on now, so the June flowers are glorious. It's hard to pick a favorite. 

Most know this beauty as  Aquilegia, but here in Colorado we know our state flower as Columbine. In our garden they self seed and we never know what colors will show up, but our favorite is the periwinkle. They bloom, profusely and grow in large clumps, looking breezy and spectacular.

Ours range in colors from this vibrant purple to a very pale yellow.

Iris are another favorite, too. We dug up our big clumps in the front garden and moved them to the vegetable garden where they live for a while. We have a horrible Canadian thistle problem in the front garden so we're moving all the desirable plant material ignorer treat the aggressive noxious weed. This one lives in the flower bed on the north side of the patio.  It has such a rich color.

The bleeding heart is waning now. She always struggles in the spring with its lingering freezes, but this year she didn't freeze clear back to the ground. She was large and glorious this year. The bumble bee forages for a meal, begging me to takes its photo.

While pink is always my first choice and I have a really hard time passing up pink flowers, orange in the garden adds such drama. Today's Monday Mosaic brightens up the post with the newly blooming poppy, another favorite little spot of orange, a geum, and finally a delicate, shade a loving potted begonia that hangs in a basket on the patio. 

I'm waiting for the peonies to pop open, the roses to blush, and the tiger lilies the strut their stuff. Next week--we think. 

There is plant drama inside, too. I've always kept African violets and have a new collection going on my kitchen table. They like filtered light with a northern exposure, but we don't have any windows on the north or south sides of the house, so these get the best light in the kitchen with its west window until the summer sun get's too strong. 

I have to admit that I love orchids almost as much as I like violets, but they seem to be quite an extravagant guilty pleasure because once they have bloomed out, they are not a very attractive plant and usually end up in the compost pile for lack of dramatic blooms. I have been told that, "If you can grow violets, you can grow orchids. Sure.

The Head Gardener loves orchids, too, so one year for Father's Day I purchased him a moth orchid or Phalaenopsis. She lived in the bathroom for a long time with a bit of southern light, but she bloomed out and then just sat there. My daughter has her orchids in a western window in a bathroom where they bloom profusely, so I decided that instead of composting this old girl, I'd move her to the office west window.

Months later my husband called me into the office to show me his discovery. The orchid had a new bloom stem growing at the back of the plant next to the window. With original bloom stem still in place, she forced a new one. In this photo, you can see the tiny bloom buds that were just forming. We were so excited. I wish I had found the stem earlier so that I could have trained to grow straight and tall. 

Soon the first blooms appeared at the bottom end of the bloom stem.

And more blooms. We were so excited.

By now the stem was nearly bloomed out, making it so heavy the the long, heavy stem reseted on the peace lily. Then one day in an effort to take photos I broke off the bloom stem. Oh my, I was so disappointed and upset with myself. Darn it.

I put the bloom stem in water and placed it on the table with the violets where the blooms lasted for weeks. Even if they were still attached to the mother plant, the blooms eventually would have faded, so I enjoyed seeing it everyday in the kitchen.

I loved to take its picture with the late afternoon sunlight filtered through the transparent petals.

And then they are gone, too.

But wait. Not all of the buds had bloomed at the very end, so I just kept the stem in the water to see what would happen and guess what?  There are buds on the very end that will bloom on a stem that is just in water.

But wait there's one more surprise. While it's not a a very good photo, the Mother plant is doing to bloom again, too. The broken bloom stem has sent out a second bloom stem that is loaded. I've done reading on the moth orchid and have not seen this behavior. In fact, the literature says that the plants bloom once a year in just the right conditions--maybe.

Hmmm. Is neglect one of those conditions. I water once a week. that's all I do. 

So. If you bring home one of these beautiful flowering plants, place it in a western exposure--well in the northern hemisphere, anyway. 

Yes, it's a weird photo. It's just water as it drips out of the bottom of one the hanging baskets. I just like to photograph water to see if I can. Sometimes I can get a good image.

I like to take pictures of POP the pony, too. 

And I close with a dog picture--Brody. Just because we 💕💕 dogs. 

Thanks for visiting.

Have a wonderful week.

I'll be joining Angie for Mosaic Monday. See you there.