With the power vested in me by my billion followers, I declare Thursday to be:
🎺 🎺 🎺 🎺 🎺
Nothing But Pictures Of Flowers Day!!
(Leavened by the occasional cat, perhaps.)
View of the corner lot with big rocks, a carpet of"Red" (really fuchsia pink) violets (Viola Odorata) and a few daffodils. (2017)
"Nippon Moon" herbaceous peony (big white petals with a yellow center) and purple Spiderwort (little three-petaled flowers springing from a center of thin, strappy leaves) in 2016.
Corydalis Solida "Beth Evans." (Tube-shaped little flowers with red base, pink middle, and orchid-y markings inside. With ferny leaves, 2016)
Calendula (aka the "Pot Marigold"), alongside a square paver with pebbles inside. A bright yellow-orange, daisy-like flower. In theory it's a late summer bloomer, in practice around here it's completely on its own schedule. This is an 11/2015 photo. In this same spot, its great-grandkids are about to open again.
Fall Cyclamen (small pink flowers which kind of hang like a moth about to alight on something, with diamond-shaped, marbled leaves and short dark stems). Expensive, but great because the leaves stay around all but one or two months of the year.
You can grow cyclamen inside, but I've never tried because all my cats are salad-eaters. :D
Daydream tulips. Start out pale yellow like this, but within a week of opening they turn tangerine color. Also, they multiply. Not all tulips do. (BTW, divide and multiply frequently mean the same thing in gardening circles. English is weird.) No year for this photo, but probably last spring.
Orange Martagon lilies, with brown freckles and red "dusting," on the petals. Several hang from a single stem like little lanterns and the petals are *recurved*: fancy-talk for *curling backwards instead of forward*. Midsummer 2017.
Also yes I did paint my house purple and the bank couldn't prevent it. :p
Canasta Tulips. Radish-red with a white fringe on the petals. In their later stages they'll look like a chorus line from *Little Shop Of Horrors* :D (Shot taken yesterday.)
These have come back every year for 17 years, but rarely in the same place twice. Squirrels always think they know how to landscape better than you do. 🙄
#Cat break, as promised. This is Zoe the little gray tabby. She's relaxing behind the Cardoon plant (think a thistle which grows 4-5' tall when it's happy). Her humans moved away last year and gave her to someone. I wish it was us, but my cat hated her and she kicked his butt in a fight once despite her small stature. :D She was shy but accepted a sprig of catnip from me occasionally. Glad she allowed this shot in '17 before her departure.
Colchicum (2014) - Streaky lavender-pink, with six slightly pointed petals. They send out their leaves in the Spring, but their flowers in the Fall. So I think of them as part crocus, part toadstool.
Day Lilies: pale yellow with maroon centers. (2014) If you're bad at growing things, go on Craig's List and start out with day lilies. So long as they get a *little* water in dry weather they're unstoppable workhorses.