Garden Bloggers Bloom Day for May

The daylilies are here!

It's that time again - Garden Bloggers Bloom Day hosted by Carol, and daylily season in my backyard! When I went out early in the morning to snap photos for this Bloom Day, I discovered the daylilies were a little shy about opening. Apparently the 46 F morning temperature was not to their liking (though it was to mine). So I had to wait a couple hours for the sun to warm them up, risking blowing out the photos because of the more intense light. No matter; it's nice to see the daylilies at all after this up and down weather!

Don't ask me the names of any of my daylilies. Some I inherited and some were passalongs. I've only got one with a "real" name.

You can tell that all of these blooms were not quite open.

I have a couple of favorites daylilies in my yard, and this is one of them. It's very floriferous and always the first to bloom.

Little Women rose in a pot

This Little Women rose is the one that bloomed for me indoors this winter. Not bad, eh?

Regal lily buds

Probably in a couple of weeks these lilies will be open. I'm really looking forward to the fragrance. At last year's garden bloggers fling in Buffalo, I got lily envy. In general, the ones they grow in Buffalo won't do well here. But the Regal lily is supposed to be a good Southern heirloom lily. I hope these guys stick around and are not just a one-year triumph for me.

Allium sphaerocephalum, drumstick allium

Speaking of envy, two years ago at the garden bloggers fling in Chicago I got a good case of allium envy. Growing those great, big-headed alliums down here is also supposed to be difficult. But I really wanted to try at least one, so I went for a much smaller allium, the drumstick allium (aka purple-headed garlic). Soon they'll all be blooming.

Camelot series foxglove

My foxglove are almost over for the spring season as you can tell by the last remaining blooms on this stalk. This is a Camelot foxglove, a Louisiana Super Plant. They did just OK in my garden but I'm not averse to trying them again in another location.



'Belinda's Dream' rose

The 'Belinda's Dream' rose continues to bloom away. It went through a rough patch from thrips, I think. You can still see some of the brown petals. In fact, I read that there has been a big outbreak of thrips in our state. Instead of spraying for it, I just waited it out. Sure enough, after having one bloom period of balling and brown petals, it seems to be over.

Verbena bonariensis

Now let's get to some of my blooming pollinator plants. The pollinators are getting active and so are their plants. Verbena bonariensis always starts the ball rolling. I'm sure next year I'll be regretting that I let this one get so big. They really seed out a lot!

Gaillardia x grandiflora ‘Goblin’

Notice the stippling on the leaves of this gaillardia? Lace bugs I think. They're becoming quite a nuisance in my garden.

'Zagreb' coreopsis

mystery poppy

I'm not sure if poppies do much in the way of helping pollinators but the biggest mystery to me is how this poppy got there. I scattered some passalong seed in my border bed, quite a ways from the raised bed where this is, but then I promptly dug up the border bed area for a tree. Somehow this one lone poppy ended up in my raised bed, along with three larkspur I also didn't plant there. Weird.

'Victoria Blue' salvia

'Blue Charm' veronica

This is my first year for veronica. It's very attractive to the bumble bees.

Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'

The 'Black and Blue' salvia has already got hummingbirds flocking. Love, love, love this plant.

I have many more plants blooming this GBBD - other roses, tomatoes, peppers, a few little straggler sweet peas, petunias, daisies, Stokes' asters, 'Caradonna' salvia, 'Goldsturm' rudbeckia (just starting and only a few) and still a few blooms on the blue-eyed grass. Hop on over to May Dreams Gardens and see what's blooming in the rest of the world. And if I get to it, I plan to post on more of the daylilies and maybe even show you the veggies while they're still looking good and not beat down by the summer!

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2010. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.