Garden Pictures

Hi everyone, We are having a terrible time here at the moment, the surrounding fields are flooded and my poor garden is suffering also, I have uploaded some photos to my album for you all to see, these were taken on Friday. There are also some pictures taken around the village and also of my garden these were all taken in the summer last year! I hope that your gardens are doing better than mine?
 

doin' great, but it really liked the rains we got the last couple of weeks off and on. now if it'd just keep up here and there, it'd be great. bet you enjoyed the sunshine for that little bit. i did have to pull up some pokeweed that had sprung up in my flower garden unfortunately, not enough to fix and eat--just the one. maybe i should have left it to reproduce among my flowers and i'd have a good mess of it to cook.

Good morning wildflower, to be honest I had to look up pokeweed, as I had never heard of it, we don't get that one over here in England.

We have enough weeds so you can keep that one! Enjoy your day!

lol! pokeweed is part of the nightshade family--sub-grouped in deadly nightshade. it must be cooked just right to avoid illness or death. it seems ghastly thought to some, but i grew up with it as food; part of the southern/rural traditional cooking of our family for generations. maju said it was the national tree in argentina and posted pics--it wasn't same of course, but the whole thing was great fun, and cool to know there is tree by that name, also. hope you have a wonderful weekend!! chat at ya later--wendy

Hi wildflower, thanks for the information, very interesting, it is OK if you know how to cook it but I should imagine that you have to know what you are dealing with. I have obviously heard of the nightshade family, my grandfather always told me not to touch the deadly nightshade berries, but I also have heard that so people have made wine with them, now that does sound interesting, I love a drop of wine!

kat tree, there are actually more plants in the nightshade family then most people realise. and not all nigtshade categorized plants will make you sick or kill you. many do not realise that peach trees are part of this family, hence, the reason for not eating the almond-like pits that contain natural equiv. of arsenic. there are 1700 different herbs, shrubs and trees in both tropical and temperate climates and are also part of the genus solanum (the potato family)."specifically speaking, the one plant by only that name is a eurasion origin plant as a prostrate or erect herb with small clusters of white flowers followed by bunches of poisonous black berries, or the bittersweet." --the volume library-volume 2

Wow!! Wildflower you are great at passing on info.....ahh!! I just love this site...you learn something new every day....cheers Katy

Hello wildflower, thanks again for the
interesting information, I really didn't know that the solanum was part of them, I knew that
solanum was connected to the potato, when you look at the leaves they look so similar!

Thanks

it's amazing how many natural poisons there are in the world around us that we could just by chance handle and get done in by, but don't.
there, too, amazing to me how many poison and non-poison/nutritional things can exist within same family! and lord, i do love potatoes--have to keep it moderate, though, 'cause they love my waistline, too!

katy, thank you, but really there are others who do so much better on the info--think some of my problem is that i cram too much from every subject into brain and have to go excavating to get it out else when something enters, another thing gets pushed out. well, it keeps me trying.

I love potatoes too, but they will be in short supply around here, as most of the crops have been wiped out with the floods, just one farmer who lives at the end of our road was on the news yesterday, saying that most of his 60 acres of potato crops has been lost! And those that have not rotted in the ground are suffering from blight because of too much rain, so It doesn’t look good.

kat tree--so sorry to hear that--how very messed up the weather has been this year! for everyone everywhere it seems--but some so much more than others. i hope your hangin' in there and please relay my thoughts to your neighbor if you get chance--will be praying.

Thank you wildflower, I will covey your thoughts to my neighbour when I see him, that is very kind of you.

So how is the weather over there in the USA, and how is your garden doing? The plants in my containers are doing well, but I have had a lot of problems with the lily beetle, they have really given my lilies a battering this year, it would be interesting to know what problems you have over there with pests?
 

wow. well....that depends on which area of the u.s. a body wishes to know about. the dadblamed late frost did enough damage as it was, all over the country, then there were the wildfires in geogia, alabama and florida all at once with the accompanying smog that billowed out over surrounding states. kansas, parts of alabama, arkansas and texas have had some heavy flooding. california is divided between floods and drought. here in tennessee i'm pretty much having to water flowers every day to keep them good--drought statewide here, but so many lakes and streams, etc. here that no water restric. yet. get couple of days of rain every 2 to 3 weeks--this season should be 2 to 3 days every week--so pretty backward. tornado hit oil refinery in ks. the other day-- caused oil spill and thousands of barrels of lost oil. and all the while the presence of the usual natural disasters this time of year, normally, have either been conspicuously absent(hurricanes, quakes,etc.) or just plain backward from the usual areas.

few of my celosias decided to get fried and give up the ghost--even watering just roots and being full sun plants--they didn't like unusual heat this year, yet the shaded ones are doing well. go figure. this has not been a good year for almost any bulbing plant in tennessee--irise, tulips, buttercups, etc. although, my gladiolus and dahlias are still doing well. (glads are past blooming season,now)moss roses, daisies, forget-me-nots,
bachelor's button(also now past blooming), and bougainvilla have all been hardy enough to do well with little less water, as well as my marigolds and cockscomb. have had to baby my impatiens that came back from the dead and my begonias. killed 3 of my rose-buses--one of them is coming back. one had to be tossed due to fungus, and one i'm desperately hoping will come back next year as it got fried,too. cathedral bells and mandavilla are doing great--day lillies bloomed one week and went caput.so, win some, lose some. lilac bushes are really struggling, though. have a few others that are holding up for now,too. very long answer to your question, i'm soo sorry.

Hi Kate.. here where I live, our weather is really nice mostly year round.We do get heat in the summer, but only temporarily. We have minor earthquakes most every day, and wildfires north and south of here.

As far as bugs go.. we have snails of course, earwigs( pincherbugs)cutworms. One bug however, is a horrible bug that I have not seen one of this summer, thank God. I dislike them immensely. They are a type of beetle, a flying one. They eat grass roots from lawns, and fruit. They fly around like slow kamikaze pilots.They freak me out, I've broken a shovel before killing one. I read up on their life cycles, where they lay their eggs, how they mutate etc.. I hope I have rid my garden of them all together. Maybe our winter was too mild I dont know.. anyway, I call them June bugs.. they come out in June, and die by mid September. Metallic green, heavy bodies...loud wings...ewww. I dont mind birds wings at all, but I do these. Here's a pic of 1 from last year....

Ahh wildflower.. I also have Cathedral bells, and Canturbury Bells.My purple morning glories are everywhere right now, a few snapdragons

i love snapdragons. and we get june-bugs, here, too. annoying little buggers--and Lord, so are the loud, voracious cicadas

i took some sun flowers seeds from last year and planted them along side my screen house,they done well we'll have to swat the bees but the birds will have fun,anyway i got 1 yellow snapdragon that wintered over in the middle of my sun flowers. and there it sits looking so pretty

I love snap dragons, I have the minatue ones as well.
The bees love the flowers on my Lavender. I took a photo of one with my bug catcher filter on my camera on a lavender flower...but cant put it up here, its to big

Hi sunny... if you email me the pic, I'd be happy to resize it for you, and send it back to you.

mmmmmmm. sunflower seeds. sunflowers, themselves, are one of my most favoritest flowers, but haven't been able to get good spot and time to plant any this year--well, few, but some vines popped up outta nowhere and choked 'em--so, try ahain next year.

Thanks Maureen, I have to get my very busy daughter to show me again how to connect my digital camera to the computer again. I forget.

All my bulbs are all in bloom at last. I love the perfume of the jonquils.
I dont put my Daffodils in a garden bed I have them all over the front and backyard in differant spots. A mowermans nightmare