6 on Saturday – 20JUL2024

Chris Mousseau

A quick Six for a busy and beautiful weekend – to see six things in gardens all over the world take a look at our host’s site – Garden Ruminations.

Mid July to mid August is prime coneflower season, including in my island bed which is chock full of mostly self seeded purple and white Echinacea purpurea as well as E. pallida. Butterflies, like the Red Admiral in my feature photo, above, have no problem landing on the spikey cone.

A nursery owner gave me seeds, many years ago, of an Echinacea cross he had done, saying it was Echinacea x paradoxa x tennesseensis. The plant has narrow leaves, the flower petals are also narrow and a lovely orange. I had it growing in several spots but for some reason only one plant emerged this spring. Happily I collected seeds last fall, planted them in pots sunk in the herb bed and they germinated. No flowers yet but hopefully next year. Thinking about it though, there are so many other coneflowers in my yarden, I can’t help but wonder if some cross pollination occurred….now I’m Really looking forward to see these in bloom!

…my orange coneflower…
seedlings…

New to my garden this year is this double pink annual poppy – seeds were collected last year from a plant that appeared in a community allotment garden I was working in.

My last to bloom daylily – Hemerocallis ‘Moussaka.’ It hasn’t done much in the six years I’ve had it, aside from produce a few beautiful flowers each July, of course. But the clump hasn’t grown much and it’s easy to miss if you’re not looking. I should likely move it to a more visible spot, closer to a pathway perhaps.

True lilies are also in peak bloom, including these white and purple orientals:

Dahlias – I have just five this year, but they’re all quite happy, as are the earwigs that hide amongst the flower petals…

And look -that’s six! Have a lovely weekend everyone!

21 Comments

  2. On the very bottom of the Red Admiral’s wings I ‘see’ a Kitty’s forehead, eyes and nose. Poppy is really pretty. (My pink stargazer lily had a blossom today). Earwigs might be happy in the Dahlias, but totally ruined a pink one of mine. I put duct tape, sticky side out, around a new, large Dahlia pot…hoping I’ll catch some ‘wigs.

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  6. It’s been so long since I’ve seen some pretty flowers I’m drooling with envy. The Red Admiral on the coneflower is my favorite. They’re all pretty, but who can resist a butterfly?

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  9. What is that white dahlia? It looks familiar. An associate purchased a rather expensive dahlia a three or four years ago, and it rotted within its first season, after only a few big flowers. It was ‘Cafe au Lait’, which was a fad at the time. He got six bedding or ‘annual’ dahlias with it (three of two cultivars), and some of them are still blooming.

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      1. ‘Arctica’ or ‘Artica’? I remember that name, whatever it is, probably because it is such a splendid white. We have stored ours over winter also, but we do not need to. When I was a kid, I was not even aware that they were supposed to be dug and stored. They just stayed out in the garden, and got divided when they got crowded.

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