I’m sorry it’s taken so long for me to post any of the promised photos. My computer and my camera have been having abrupt issues communicating and I’ve only been able to upload some of the photos so far. Here are a random selection of a few of the uploaded ones.
Rudbeckia ‘Toto’ and dill (the latter grown from seed)
On the right is one of a copious number of lavender buds. I wish I could share some big impressive trick about the dill, but really all I’ve ever done with dill is just take a handful of seeds and broadcast them in a general area, and then repeat it a couple times if I want to seed it in various places. This rudbeckia was one I got at the farmers’ market this year. It has done the best out of the six ‘Toto’s; some of them seem to have totally died. Let this be a stark reminder to you that if you purchase rudbeckia after it’s already warm out, plant it promptly and keep it well-watered while it’s settling in. Rudbeckias, especially the cultivars that tend to be grown as annuals, don’t react well to stress, and in particular, have a habit of reacting to hot, dry weather by developing mildew on their leaves. Not only is it not pretty, but if the plants are still small, just a day or three is enough time for it to spread enough to kill them. (And I even watered them more often than other plants, moreso after they developed mildew; apparently it still wasn’t enough.) At least my ‘Toto’ tragedy has led me to be more vigilant of the ‘Indian Summer’ rudbeckias (also purchased at the market) and they’ve all survived so far.
Dianthus ‘Inchmery’ blooms with pansy blooms
California poppy foliage on the left; agastache ‘Acapulco Orange’ foliage on the right.
Lima beans and garden beans with lemon verbena
The limas (a bush variety, I think ‘Henderson’s Bush’ but I can’t remember for sure right now) are on the bottom of the photo, the leaves with the rounded dip in them. The garden beans (vining kinds; I’ve always primarily grown garden bean varieties that are either pole beans or vine well enough to grow on poles) are the leaves that look somewhat similar but are less rounded in appearance, to the left and above the limas in this photo. The lemon verbena is flopping around in this shot. This year’s lemon verbena has had a lot of trouble staying horizontal. I’ve tried putting a stake in the middle of it and it still seems to flop over even with the stake there. I suspect it’s because last year I bought one that was leggier and that seems to have actually made it adapt better to a windy site than the one I got this year, which was shrubbier (more like lemon verbena’s natural form). On the far right are some leaves and a bloom stalk of the sea holly, which develops new buds every single day but still hasn’t opened any of them.
One of my many beloved salpiglossis plants (center), backed by pansies, violas, a ‘Tangerine Gem’ marigold, and a California poppy:
The salpiglossis (AKA painted tongue) pictured here was the first to bloom; these were its first blooms.
Pansies and creeping snapdragons:
The coloration of pansies and violas is so fascinating to me. The blue and yellow one varies in how much yellow it has depending on some factor I have yet to determine (amount of sunlight? temperature when the bloom is forming? I don’t know).
Chive blooms starting to fade:
In the background are a ‘Profusion Fire’ zinnia bloom (orange on left), two buds of a pinkish California poppy (right), and a bloom of ‘White Lily’ verbena (upper left). ‘White Lily’ turns out to be fairly susceptible to some kind of mildew; one of my two plants has a pretty bad infection and the other has a mild one, and they developed it so fast that the bad infection sprang up literally inbetween times I checked on the plant.
I love the pansies and violas!