Hummingbirds and me both
love these gorgeous summer flowers!
![IMG_1243[1]](https://susansflowers.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/img_12431.jpg?w=611)
Above are my earliest blooming lilies,
from late June.
Below are Turk’s Cap style flowers.
These are my favorites – so distinguished!
![IMG_1332[1]](https://susansflowers.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/img_13321.jpg?w=611)
Lilies are very low maintenance.
And reliable bloomers every summer.
![IMG_1329[1]](https://susansflowers.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/img_13291.jpg?w=611)
Above flowers appear to be
what is sold as Easter lilies in the local stores.
Trumpet style lilies.
![IMG_1351[1]](https://susansflowers.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/img_13511.jpg?w=611)
Last lilies of the season.
They look similar.
I have no idea why one is so much taller than the other.
Sometimes a thought or a photo strikes me.
Not enough for a full blog, but sticks in my head.
I think, wonder and philosophize. So much to ponder in nature.
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Secondary Colors
Purple (foxglove), orange (California poppies) and green (leaves) are secondary colors, they are painting mixtures of the primary colors of blue, yellow and red.
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How do you photograph the scent of a particularly aromatic flower?
You cannot.
Plant and nursery catalogs, as well as winemakers,
go to great lengths to describe the smell and taste of their product.
But words can never do justice to what the nose senses and our brain feels.
Aromatics also stir memories, positive and negative.
While the lilies pictured above may bring fond memories and smiles,
Rue, pictured below, would probably more often bring on negative thoughts.
Thus, it is aptly named!
I shared a photo of porcelain lilies before they were fired in my kiln.
Here are some ‘after’ pics.
Water lilies made of colored porcelain, ‘floating’ in a ceramic rock of four clay bodies including porcelain and three stonewares of different shades of brown.
Calla lilies of colored porcelain in a ceramic rock ‘grotto’, also of four clays.
Besides growing flowers, I am also a clay artist and potter.
Today, I made calla lilies of colored porcelain clay.
The flowers are small, about an inch long (not including stem).
This is a new item for me, I am not sure how the colors will look after being fired in my wood-fired kiln. I’ll show you in a month, after the firing.
Because daylilies are so easy to grow, I have them in many places around the ranch. This particular photo shows part of a long line of daylilies, planted under photinia plants. The bed includes a row of bearded iris behind the daylilies, and columbine which reseeds wherever it can get a foothold.
A winter project is to remove the ground cloth that lies below the orange daylilies, which flower now in early summer, and plant yellow daylilies that would flower in the spring. Tulips could be planted in between, as this area is fenced from deer (if you look close, you can see the fence behind the photinia trunks).
Later in the fall, I go down the line of daylily plants and pull out armloads of spent flower stalks, which come out easily once they are dried and turn brown.
These periennals are so easy to care for. I have found them to be disease-free, and the only pests they attract are deer. In some places these plants get irrigation, and in other places they are left to mother nature. No matter what, they easily multiply.
susansflowers 