Tonight, I finally did it. I got the city irrigation water connection all the way hooked up to my sprinkler system, and it’s running. This is awesome! No more $200 water bills in the summer! Now I get all the water I need for about $30 a month.
Also, I discovered a few more flowers that I didn’t mention in yesterday’s post about what’s blooming now:
- Mexican Evening Primrose (the pink ones that are invasive — I left a few pieces of it in the flowerbed).
- Missouri Evening Primrose just started today. This is an isolated specimen that came from the old wildflower mix, and it has yellow flowers. I just learned what it is today when it bloomed. I believe it’s not invasive like the Mexican one. Perhaps I should propagate it by cuttings and add some more yellow to my flowerbeds.
Many flowers are blooming in my yard right now, but it still hasn’t reached its peak. Here’s what I can remember is now blooming. I hope I haven’t forgotten too many:
- Lavenders just started last week
- Golden coreopsis has been going for a few weeks
- Indian Blanket Flower started in the past week or so
- Campanula glomerata is beginning to open its purple flowers
- Salvia ‘East Friesland’ has been blooming well for several weeks, maybe a month
- Foxgloves have been going well for at least two weeks
- Pink Simplicity roses are starting to bloom, but I have trouble with that hedge not blooming well
- Yellow Simplicity roses have been blooming quite well for over a week
- Shasta daisies are just now opening a few flowers, but the real bloom season is on the way
- California poppies have been the best performers so far, blooming for most of the past month. The orange ones that reseed each year are doing great. My new pink ‘Summer Sorbet’ ones are still small and growing, with no flowers yet.
- Nepeta transcaucasica plants started blooming this week
- Anthemis tinctoria have begun opening their yellow flowers this week
- Shirley poppies are blooming here and there where they volunteered
- Malva sylvestris is blooming quite well now. It’s probably at its peak, and they started blooming probably two weeks ago.
- Lamium white and purple are going strong — they started the week before Memorial day but they’re probably at a peak right now.
- Pansies are still blooming well although the heat is hurting them
- English daisies are fading away but still a few flowers
- I have a few small Delphiniums, which are blooming very well now, probably for about a week so far.
- The three Dianthus clumps I made by dividing the original one are all in bloom now. Looking good.
- Some of the Coreopsis tinctoria (Plains coreopsis) are starting to flower just in the past few days
- The Linden tree is flowering, which is not much of a show, but it smells good!
- Achilleas are starting to flower just in the past few days
- My Stella D’oro daylilies are coming into their peak, having been building up for a week or so.
- The Johnson’s Blue geraniums are blooming pretty well, but I hope there’s more of a peak coming.
- Blue Flax is still going fairly strong, with blue flowers in the morning. These have been blooming most of a month.
- Catananche caerulea has really started blooming well in the past five days or so.
By the way, I’m sad to see my Rocky Mountain Penstemon dying. I think it got too moist in last week’s rainstorms. Or perhaps too much compost mulch is smothering it. It’s in a bad location anyway. I think I’ll try to take some cuttings off of the shoot that’s still alive and see if I can propagate it.
I’ve broken down, and for the first time in my life, I bought and planted some petunias. OK, they’re not the gaudy awful ones, they’re just a salmon-pink (’Hurrah Salmon’ variety), with medium sized flowers, and I want them to fill in spaces in the front walkway flowerbed. I did that on Tuesday, I think. But many of them are looking sick today. I don’t know if they got too much water when it rained yesterday or if they weren’t hardened for sitting in the sun or what. Bummer if I lose them.
I also put some Vigoro Azalea fertilizer on that flowerbed and all over in the front flowerbed below the rock retaining wall. It was a high phosphorous ratio fertilizer.
I’ve noticed that plants getting large are blocking some of the sprinklers from reaching other plants. I have two daylilies in the front that are dying because of the obstruction. I’m going to try raising some of the those sprinklers with two-foot tall extensions to see if that helps, but I can only do that in the back of the bed, not the front.
My clematises have a few flowerbuds on them now. Well, the one that gets more shade is doing better. The other one doesn’t have buds yet.
The rose hedge in back is starting to bloom, but it’s still sparse. I think aphids are getting to the buds when they’re little and causing them to fall off. I will spray a systemic pesticide on them today.
I’ll also be spraying malathion on the apples, cherries, and nectarines today. Need to do it again in 10-14 days.