B is for Bet

Bloomin' Tuesday

This is my first time to participate in Bloomin' Tuesday over at MsGreen Thumb Jean's.  My sister Deb is a frequent participant--she has quite the garden! I have been working on my flowers for a couple of years. Several areas are coming along, but there's still a lot of work to do. 

It's been hot in the Upstate of South Carolina. In fact, it was 97 today!! Watering has become an almost daily activity by necessity if I want my plants to survive. I've lost a few along the way. One of my bachelor's buttons couldn't stand up to the hot afternoon sunshine where it was planted. I'm hoping it will still come back next spring.

The day lilies are still going strong. These are the tallest day lilies! They have done very well in this spot and will need to be divided next year.

 Below is a new perennial just planted this year: astilbe. It's doing ok. I have three of these on one side of my patio and three on the other side. The flower is a tall plume, sort of feathery.  I'm hoping they will grow and multiply and look better next spring.

Not everything is a bloomer in my garden--below is fatsia, interesting for its foliage. It's a new addition to my garden this year also, and it's grown quite a bit. I love the large, glossy leaves.  Fatsia is native to Japan and Taiwan.

I finally have a shade garden! and now I can actually plant impatiens, something I've never been able to do before because I've had such sunny areas to work with . Here's a pot of impatiens and a view of the entire shade garden area with hostas, ferns and a bird bath area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally my coneflowers. Last year the blooms were so heavy they fell over about halfway through the summer. This year I used some wire cones to hold the blooms up. It's working much better.

Hope you've enjoyed seeing what's blooming in my South Carolina garden in mid-June.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Estate sale finds

I've started a collection of McCoy flower pots over the last year or so. I first got two small yellow ones from Old Faithful Antiques on Wade Hampton. Then a week or so ago I got the  white bamboo-patterned one on the back left from Buncombe Antique Mall. The two in the center are the ones I got at Saturday's estate sale.

Here's a closer view of those two:

The estate sale was a huge one. A 93-year-old lady had died last year, and her children were finally selling a lot of her stuff. And she was a major collector of stuff! There were several more pots I would have loved to buy, but my budget was limited. I got these two at a good price--not  yard sale prices, but less than you would pay for them in an antique store or on eBay. 

I don't know what I'll plant in these two yet. Anyone have a favorite house plant that you'd like to suggest?

Blooms: the fuschia!

This is a new bloom for me this year: a fuschia. I have two hanging pots of them out in my backyard on my patio. It's ever-blooming (at least, so far). It has to be watered frequently (daily or every other day). 

According to the information I've found online, it is a  member of the evening-primrose family. It's native to South and Central America and New Zealand, and bears red, purple, or pink bell-shaped flowers that hang downwards. The fuschia was named for the German botanist Leonhard Fuchs.

I had no idea that the color fuschia was named after this flowering plant!

Anyone else have this flower in your collection or know anything more about its blooming habits?