June Bloom Day — Spicebush Edition
This June Bloom Day finds the garden needing some clean up and maintenance, but with plenty of things blooming. I like how the Brodiaeas look and the big spicebush in the back is really happy and the purple leaved canna in our gray water container is about to start blooming, but all of the spring bloomers still need to be deadheaded and there are bamboo leaves in all the plants, and the skunks have also started digging in the garden. I can hear them out there digging as I do this post. There are four young ones in the local family this year, an improvement over last year when there were seven.
Oriental Lily
This Oriental lily is probably the most accurate depiction of the state of the garden.
Lemon Lily, Lilium parryi
I have several Lilium parryi, the native Lemon Lily, grown from seed, now in gallon pots. This is their third year and my second flower. The flower doesn’t last long, but it’s really pretty.
Fried Egg Flower, Matillija Poppy
This year the Matillija poppies really remind me of fried eggs.
Monardella macrantha Marian Sampson
The Monardella macrantha is draping down into the foliage of some Clarkia. It might have my favorite red of all the California natives.
Scrophularia
The Scrophularia is a nice red if you put your face or camera about three inches away. Otherwise, it can be hard to tell that it’s blooming. I like the Galvezia from a little more of a distance.
Galvezia speciosa, Island Snapdragon
Calycanthus occidentalis, Western Spicebush
A couple more shots of the Spicebush which has completely taken over the area in front of the outdoor shower. The fragrance of the flowers is just barely noticeable, unlike the wisteria which was very strong. Interestingly, the fallen petals of the wisteria burned holes through the leaves everywhere that they landed on the spicebush. None of the other plants have that problem.
Nasturtium in the Spicebush
Spicebush and Canna
Thanks to Carol at MayDreamsGardens for creating and hosting bloom day. Click over for links to all sorts of other blogs showing off their flowers.
I’ve been keeping a list of everything in bloom in our garden each month, so I’ll be adding that to this post when I get a chance. It usually takes me a couple of days to add it.
Tags: lilium parryi, monardella macrantha, spicebush
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 6:02 am and is filed under garden bloom day, plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 15th, 2010 at 6:25 am
Love that L. parryi! It is a good year for lilies. Our Calycanthus (eastern) has finished blooming.
June 15th, 2010 at 6:57 am
Oh, I love that spice bush! I’m sure the fragrance is wonderful as well. As for that lilly, I’ll put that on the list for this fall. Who can resist?
Happy bloom day!
June 15th, 2010 at 10:46 am
How odd that the wisteria petals burn holes in the spicebush leaves! I’d love to find out why that happens.
If the Oriental lily is an accurate depiction of the garden, then the garden is just as beautiful when a little bedraggled as it would be when pristine. It just has more character now to go with its beauty.
June 16th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Great bloom day. Scrophularia, definitely not one of species to scream for attention, but the pollinators seem to find it just fine… I like the Spice bush a lot. If it were just a little more drought tolerant I’d have the perfect spot for it.
June 17th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Yay! Your garden looks like mine! I’ve been working on mine for the last couple of days, inspired by GBBD posts showing much more attended gardens. But yours is way more colorful than mine. My wide shots look mostly green.
Love the canna. Do you have a bucket by the door that you pour grey water into? We bring our grey water out to our azaleas and other things under our thirsty white pine. Collecting the water not only helps the environment and our water bill, it forces us to regularly water the plants that need it!
June 18th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Fried Egg Flower is a yucky name for such a delicate looking flower (I don’t care for fried eggs – can you tell). The canna is absolutely stunning – I’m adding it to my wish list.
June 19th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Thanks for the comments everyone.
Gayle – I’m not sure why the petals burn through the leaves. I can’t think of any other plants I’ve seen that happen with.
Sylvanan – I did a post about our gray water system early in the life of this blog. It’s just a pipe from the washing machine to a raised box where the cannas and few other plants are. I’ll add a link to it up in the post where I talk about the spicebush.
Meody – I agree that Fried Egg Flower is not an appealing name. I usually call them Matillija poppies, a much more elegant name, but some of the flowers have been looking very fried-eggy to me this year.