Tag: Flowers
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Container ‘Make-Over’ Brightens Composition
Remember the dreary rain bedraggled annual flower composition from an earlier blog? In the photo below the nasturtiums saved the day adding cheerful orange and yellow and its pale green leaves to brighten the somber composition of rust coleus and purple petunias. In the revised arrangement above, I’ve tucked in the low growing yellow…
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Yellow’s Cheerful Complement
Yellow Hemerocallis ‘Happy Returns’ and the yellow-orange Coreopsis brightens the purple spikes of Salvia and low mound of lavender blue Nepeta ‘6 Hills Giant’. A quick look at the color wheel illustrates the dynamic duo as ‘complements’. In the language of color, complementary colors intensify each other like a passionate affair. Yellow reads more yellow in purple…
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Rainy Sunday Saved by Orange
Donning my tangerine colored raincoat I headed out the door to church this solstice Father’s Day. I needed some cheering and the coat always does it. It’s been raining here in the Boston area for weeks or has it been months? Seems like it. I’m thinking Ken Kesey’s novel set in rainy Portland. It wasn’t the well-known ‘One…
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June Bursts
Growing up the house was filled with the sound of Broadway musicals. That’s probably why the refrain “June is bursting out all over” (which may be the title too) that applies so aptly to the garden this time of year serenaded me as I visited my garden. Just that refrain mind you. Have no idea what…
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Iris Steal the Show this Sunday
Purple Iris germanica with pink Dianthus, pink Rhododendren, blue Nepata, chartreuse Alchemilla in the front side garden Clematis montana ‘Grandiflora’ Adds to Deck View Today’s images were taken from the north west and north east garden areas. I couldn’t get them in the order I wanted so imagine being enchanted by the flowering clematis montana ‘grandiflora’ as…
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A Relaxed Human
Flowering Enkianthus ‘ Red Velvet’ frames the garden view Dwarf Iris in combination with Phlox subulata with Highbush Blueberry foliage behind Martha Beck reminds us that a relaxed human and a healthy human are one. (“The Easier Way to Diet” , The Oprah Magazine, June 2009). Further a healthy human stays trim effortlessly because the beastie brain doesn’t need…
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Maples and Pulmonarias, Acers and Lungworts
The swamp maples red glow brighten our New England woodlands now–its Acer rubrum’s spring color reminiscent of autumn. But its the Acer japonicum ‘Folicifolium’ bud’s that hold my attention just now. Long a favorite tree I planted one in my garden last fall. I’d never seen it at this time of year and while I anticipate…
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Daily Tread, or better named, Daily Treat
Some days the trek through the garden is quick –a passing glance checking in everybody. (The garden and its plants feel like a community of friends so the reference to “everybody” seems accurate.) Something unexpected stops me in my tracks–often with an exclamation of joy! This morning’s discovery that yesterday’s 70 degree heat brought the dwarf…
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Hamamelis Keeps Its Promise…kinda
Days after the snowstorm, the witch hazel in my garden bloomed. Sparsely. I was a bit disappointed. My expectations set too high, I realized a contrasting evergreen planted behind it would set off its few flowers better. Its second spring growing here I had hoped it would be covered thickly with brilliant yellow flowers. Last year it…
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Amazing Amaryllis Enchants
Amaryllis ‘Dancing Queen’ Single Flower She’s enchanting all right. But which dance? Has she waltzed into my awareness? Or tangoed? Maybe her style is not old world, but contemporary, more like Alvin Alley than Strauss. Yes, I realize one is a choreographer and the other a composer. Imagine ‘Dancing Queen’ on a dark stage, minimal set, dark green sheer panels…