Camera Lens – Revisited

Again, I am not a photographer, merely someone who likes to take pictures.
With than disclaimer, I thought I’d show different views of the same flower bed.

Top photo is with no zoom on the lens of my Nikon Coolpix L620
(whatever that means!).
In the middle photo, the picture is zoomed in half way.
At the bottom picture, the zoom is all the way.
I stood in the same place for all three photos.

Personally, I like the last picture, as you can get a good view of two particular flowers.
Garlic chives bear white flowers, and the pink ones are an unnamed succulent.
While the chives flowers are pretty, imho, they are getting a bit invasive.
I will have to decide who stays and who goes during this winter’s garden rearrangement.

The middle photo is not bad, you get to see the mish-mash of plants in this bed.
I find myself studying my beds in the summertime,
trying to decide how the plants can be moved to show better next summer.

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Passionate Purple & Pink

Both of these wildflowers found my garden.
They are seasonal and have multiplied.
Sometimes you just get lucky!
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Here are eggplant and potato flowers
from the vegetable garden.
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Lupine and Foxglove reseed freely.
I never know where they will appear year-to-year.
They are always welcome additions.
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Years ago, I planted Garlic in my flower beds to fight bugs,
I think it will come up forever.
Agastache, or Giant Hyssop, is supposed to be deer resistant,
but I don’t trust those animals.  Some of the plants are fenced,
some are not, so far all are surviving.
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Short and tall exemplars.
Bellflower is peeking out between Bergenia leaves.
Its own leaves are the serrated ones in the back of the photo.
These Hollyhock blossoms are ‘doubles’ with extra petals.
A neighbor gave me these plants a number of years ago,
and they are finally blooming.

A Proliferation of Purple and Pink

Lamb’s Ear makes a lovely ground cover and cut flower.
It can be invasive, which I control with minimal watering.
Another perk of this plant is that deer ignore it.
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Lavender looks so pretty when in bloom!
I fell in love with the view of a hillside of lavender and have been slowly moving seedlings (if you don’t deadhead lavender, it loves to go to seed) into a pattern on the downhill side of my house.
This has turned into a slow project, but one I have had fun pursuing.
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This perennial geranium is a cranesbill.  Such a funny name.
It too will reseed, and I cannot imagine deadheading these small flowers.
The baby plants are easy to discard, if you don’t want to share them with other gardeners.
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These sage flowers were tricky to photograph.  I finally discovered the perfect background was right in front of me.
This is a yearling plant that I purchased when I noticed the original was looking a little feeble.  Sure enough, this spring, only one came back to life.
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When I started flower gardening, I planted many garlic cloves in an effort to deter deer from nibbling my greenery.
Now that fences (flower jails :-))have been erected around vulnerable plantings, the garlic is not so needed.
But, they are rather pretty at this stage of life.

Blooming Herbs

French cooking thyme & onion (not garlic) chives.

Trying desperately to get the vegetable garden planted by the end of May.
The beds are tilled up, tomorrow morning they will get raked smooth, then the watering system can get hooked up.
I’ve been saving vegetable and flower seeds for many years, in zip-close bags in the refrigerator.
My plan for this year is to plant all the seeds I can – they won’t save forever.
Will keep you posted on my latest grand idea 🙂

Garlic Chives

These look and grow almost identical to onion chives.  There are a couple of differences, though.  For one, the garlic chives are blooming now, and the onion chives bloomed over a month ago.  Another difference that can be seen year round, is that garlic chive spears are flat, where the onion chives are tubular or round. 

And then there is the taste.  Ah, now there they do differ.  The taste and smell of garlic chives is distinct and will never be confused with onion chives.

These are a nice addition to the kitchen garden.  I also plant them around my roses to help deter aphids.