As the ladies of my quilting bee left on Friday night, I heard one of them say that it was like walking through a meadow. A friend took this picture of the flowers at the sidewalk a week ago. The ox-eye daisies are all volunteers. I grew them in the center box of the herb garden on the north side of the house, and the chipmunks felt they’d look better at the front door. Each year they come up in new places. I rip them out, and they come back. A friend was horrified to hear me say that I planned to rip them out when I divided the iris. I couldn’t convince her that we’d have a full crop again next year.
Leucanthemum…….ox-eye daisy….about15-18 inches tall….very hardy, deals well with dry, clay soil. Buy one packet of seed and you, too, can have a meadow, forever!
Comments (12)
I love the ruffled iris in the foreground (as well as the chipmunks's daisies). I planted some of those irises a year or so ago. Most of them died but the survivors bloomed beautifully this spring.
Posted by Cop Car | June 6, 2005 12:15 AM
Posted on June 6, 2005 00:15
P.S. It does look like a meadow--a lush, beautiful one. What are the deep violet blossoms? I have a problem seeing deep violet (especially on a computer screen), so I cannot make out the shape of those flowers.
Posted by Cop Car | June 6, 2005 12:18 AM
Posted on June 6, 2005 00:18
Gorgeous! I am so jealous!
Posted by Susan | June 6, 2005 9:40 AM
Posted on June 6, 2005 09:40
The everything that is not white is an iris, except for the blue to the lower right corner, and that's perennial cornflower...centaurea montana, I think.
Oh....there might be a tiny bit of pale purple all the way at the back where I have some volunteer Dame's Rocket growing.
Susan, April, May and early June are the peak of my gardens. I wish I could get this kind of display with perennials through out the year. I'll fill in with annuals when I divide the iris, so we'll have some color, but it will be restrained compared to the iris season.
Posted by buffy | June 6, 2005 12:40 PM
Posted on June 6, 2005 12:40
Cop Car, Iris don't need a lot of attention, but they do need to be planted so that the top of the corm crowns out of the dirt. Is it possible you planted them too deeply?
We'll have to talk about iris and see if we can figure out why they died.
Posted by buffy | June 6, 2005 12:41 PM
Posted on June 6, 2005 12:41
Well, they probably were planted at the correct depth--until I got around to mulching around them. I was too lazy to "re-plant" so that they stayed above the mulch. My fault!
Posted by Cop Car | June 6, 2005 9:13 PM
Posted on June 6, 2005 21:13
Next time, pull the mulch away from the corms, so they get air, or you can just put the mulch down in a circle around the plants.
Posted by buffy | June 7, 2005 9:53 AM
Posted on June 7, 2005 09:53
Buffy would be horrified to see how my irises are planted (covered unless they have heaved out), and how the mulch covers anything that isn't green.
Haven't lost any and it looks like I'll get a good show this year.
Posted by bogie | June 10, 2005 4:32 AM
Posted on June 10, 2005 04:32
Bogie--Buffy would be horrified only at the thought of your climate. I can leave irises on top of the ground and they live if they get moisture enough to keep them. Buffy must have her irises surfaced on the top. You have to bury them 6" underground! You're about to your frost free date, now, aren't you?
Posted by Cop Car | June 10, 2005 7:46 AM
Posted on June 10, 2005 07:46
Yeah, it would be culture shock for me to move to NH. I know your "summer" is a lot shorter than ours, and I'd have a LOT to learn to bring my perennials thru the winter.
Posted by buffy | June 11, 2005 7:56 PM
Posted on June 11, 2005 19:56
Cop Car is being a smart-alek. We passed our frost-free date about 12 days ago - so there pffft!
Posted by bogie | June 12, 2005 5:07 PM
Posted on June 12, 2005 17:07
Wowwwwwww....TWELVE whole days ago!
Posted by buffy | June 12, 2005 5:11 PM
Posted on June 12, 2005 17:11