I’m ready for some more flowers!
These lovely daylilies are a variety named “Rose Lyric.” I bought this plant on a whim when ordering from one of my favorite daylily farms, Bloomingfields Farm. Most nurseries don’t offer this particular plant, and I don’t understand why as it is a stellar daylily.
With blooms of rich red that don’t fade, and deep golden-colored throats on each flower, it makes a glorious display. I especially like that each clump produces scads of blooms, not just one or two, and it blooms for weeks instead of just a few days.
To my surprise, this daylily blooms prolifically in heavy clay soil while only getting morning sunlight. It even has richer colored blooms under those conditions than it did when I had it planted in “nice” soil and getting uninterrupted daylight.
The bunnies love this daylily, too – but not to eat! They hide under its nice thick clump of leaves.
I don’t know about you, Oh Best Beloved, but I need a nice warm-looking flower photo today.
It was 15 degrees below zero here last night.
-15F.
That’s cold enough to freeze the whiskers off a bunny, especially as the wind chill was at -28F.
This purple coneflower (botanical name: Echinacea purpurea) is from a clump I started from seed a little over twenty years ago. The red daylily (variety unknown) next to it was a little bitty rather pitiful-looking root I got free through a mail-order nursery at the same time. Both have thrived and multipled, yielding a large clump of each that happily grow together at the side of our house. The goldfinches love the seed heads that the coneflower form, and use them as a food source from autumn through spring.
Ya gotta love plants like these – beautiful and virtually maintenance-free.
Oh – and the bunnies don’t like them.
All together now: awwwwwwwww, poor bunnies!
Yes, I know it’s Saturday. This post was supposed to be made yesterday. Best intentions and all that.
*Sigh*
Where was I?
Ah. Yes. Flower Fridays. I decided this summer to not post a “Garden Walk” as I’d done a year ago. My intent is to instead brighten up the winter with summer photos of the various flowers in our gardens that survived the nibbling attempts of several determined bunnies.
Of course, I’ll also post on occasion here-to-fore previously unseen photos of said bunnies, too. Fat bunnies, I might add, bunnies made fat and sassy from mowing down flowers willy nilly, flowers that every garden guide guaranteed are quite bunny proof.
HA! No one consulted MY bunnies as to their culinary tastes. Which can be summed up as: if it’s considered a flower and Judy paid for it, it’s delicious.
Anyways. Back to flowers. The flowers that didn’t meet their demise as Bunny Happy Meals…
This lovely flower is a Tiger Lily (botanical name: Lily tigirnum spendens. This is the first year I’ve trying growing them, and I’ve fallen in love with these beauties. They come in orange, yellow and red.
The bunnies, btw, absolutely love the red variety. I didn’t get a single red bloom as those plants were mowed down to the height of my rabbit fencing by James and Juan. Those two rascals stood on their hind paws and streeeeeetched as high as they could to grab leaves and pull down the plants to nibbling height.
If they’re worth that much effort, what makes tiger lilies look so special from a rabbit’s perspective?
Huh.
It looks sort of like an alien out of a late night SF flick actually… doesn’t it?
Happy New Year!
Do you remember those Highlights magazines from when you were little, Oh Best Beloved, where you had to find hidden objects in a picture?
If you don’t remember, you’ve either a) never had to sit in a doctor’s waiting room or b) are very very young, relatively speaking of course…
So, here’s a chance to relive your childhood… courtesy of James the Bunny, son of Stewart, who is in his favorite hiding spot.
Can you find the bunny?
Look closer.
And closer.
There he is!
(If you can’t see him, blame my poor little camera which did its best but just doesn’t have the optical zoom oomph to take a better image!)
This was the scene looking out of our front window yesterday morning. It might say “autumn” on the calendars, but around here winter has settled in to stay. Last year was our third snowiest here in northeast Wisconsin ever since the National Weather Service started keeping records. We had around 87 inches of snow. But, hey, records are made to be broken… we’ve already had twice as much snow this year as had fallen last year by this date.
Couldn’t we do something different this year and break the record for, say, warmest winter?
*sigh*
I’m guessing not.
This is what our back yard looks like now. That’s a lotta snow for this early in the winter. The large black and white blob in the center of the yard, btw, is a gorgeous loon windspinner that Michael gave me for my birthday this year. Besides being fun to watch, Loony is a great wind vane, moving to face into the wind with the slightest breeze.
James the Bunny (son of Stewart) has become our yard bunny for the winter. Stewart moved across the street this summer and Petunia also found new digs. James was my constant companion for the second half of the summer and early autumn, hopping about very happily when I was in the yard. He’s now become quite curious about Michael’s comings and goings between the yard and his workshop, to the point where Michael has to be careful to not step on him.
One of these days Michael will hear a soft tapping on his shop door… and when he opens it James will blithely hop in and claim a spot right in front of the heater where he can warm his toes and ears.
If he asks for a glass of carrot juice, that’s where we’re drawing the line.
Garden, Village Life, bunnies | JAS | 
January 23, 2009 4:30 pm | 
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