Seeing Green and Other New Things

I meant to do a post on my hostas for Pam's Foliage Follow-up (always on the 16th of the month) but this and that conspired to keep me from it (and from reading everyone's posts; seems I can't keep up this time of the year!). Then Gardening Gone Wild reminded everyone of the deadline for their latest Picture This contest featuring the color green so I decided to expand my original idea for the Foliage Follow-up post to include the other green things I'm seeing this month. (And to show you a few special little flowers.)

So what is green besides a great shade that compliments most flower colors? Strolling about my back yard I see several different shades of yellowish green in my lettuces (top and below).

There's also that cooling blue color the iris leaves have.

Here's another shade of blue green with some red and cream thrown in.

Lady in Red Hydrangea

Speaking of red, does this sorrel even count as a green?

Red Veined Sorrel

But let's get to my hostas. I'm not a collector of them but I do enjoy them. They provide a lot of variety to my shady areas and a few even do well with sun. Most of the hostas I grow are on the small side on purpose. I guess I'm not ready to commit to the big blowsy ones yet. I've got five hostas, none of which should get larger than 2 by 2 feet (I hope). Back to blue green, here's one with a great name, 'Elvis Lives'. Not only does it come back to life every year like its namesake, it even takes about two hours of intense summer sun each day.

'Elvis Lives' Hosta

Another very blue hosta is 'Blue Wedgwood', my newest purchase just this spring (so it's still rather a baby).

'Blue Wedgwood' Hosta

My entry for the PT contest really isn't that great when it comes to the color green. But I love the texture of this mystery hosta, my first hosta purchase and unfortunately, not named.

Anyone know the name of this hosta?

Here's a hosta of the lime green variety with an appropriate name.

'Frozen Margarita' Hosta

And lastly, a hosta I purchased last year which almost bit the dust when the "graveyard grasshoppers" discovered it. It has a darker green leaf with cream colored edging.

'Patriot' Hosta

So that's it for my focus on green. Now I'd like to show a few new blooms that have me excited. Last year I planted one Dame's Rocket plant, Hesperis matronalis. It never flowered but this year, after moving it to my so-called rose bed (which contains a lot more than just roses), it's putting on a nice show.

Dame's Rocket

This is an old-fashioned plant that I wish we would see more of. Mine is about 2 feet tall and it has a very sweet delicate scent. They say it self-seeds. I hope so for I'd like a few more of these.

Here's another newbie for me that I wish you could see in person.

'Electric Blue' Penstemon

This is Penstemon heterophyllus and again, was planted last year with no resultant blooms. It's kind of a short scraggly plant but the intensity of the blue color, combined with the lilac at the base of the blooms is heady. My camera can't really capture that blue color very well so you'll have to take my word for it.

Since I'm on the topic of colors once again, I thought I'd share this so-called yellow iris (variety unknown).

I say so-called yellow because around town there are yellow irises blooming with much greater intensity than mine. After I downloaded this image I realized that when the blooms get a little old they start showing some rather pretty brownish veins.

And lastly, I've already shown you this pretty mystery nasturtium in another post.

Unknown variety of Nasturtium

But I wanted to highlight it again because now that it has quite a few blooms, my nose has picked up on its fragrance. It reminds me of the smell of a grandmotherly perfume!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2009. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.