Hello everyone! I hope this post finds you all well. You will notice right off the bat I am a day late with this post. The photos on this post were taken from the 12 through the 16th. I am going to “attempt” to write a new post each day I take photos, even if I only take photos of one plant. Ummm… I took photos every day but one last week and 44 on Sunday. So, I think what I will do with this post is kind of catch up with the highlights of the past week through the 16th. Well, maybe I will think about it and have it figured out by the end of this post.

When I was mowing last Tuesday, I spotted this tiny toad running for his life in front of the garage door. I stopped the mower and picked it up so I could move it to a safer location. Over the years I have seen many baby toads, but this one is the smallest yet.

 

The Mammillaria decipiens has even more buds now. They are probably opening by now but may be closed up by the time I take photos.

 

The Golden Calla Lily (Zantedeschia elliottiana) is now starting to flower. It didn’t flower last year so I did something different when I replanted the bulbs this spring. I read the instructions. 🙂 You are supposed to leave the upper half of the bulb exposed. I guess it must have worked since they are starting to flower.

Driving down a street today I saw a HUGE cluster of white Calla Lilies in front of a house. They were very tall and LOADED with flowers. Since I have passed by this house nearly every day and this is the first time I saw them, I guess they are newly planted there. I couldn’t tell, but they may be in a pot.

I am looking at the photo folders for each day… I already posted about the new bed at the church and new plants, so I can skip the 13th.

 

The Achillea millefolium in front of the chicken house are really doing well this year. I think I already posted about them before but I wanted to do it again. I know they are just a Yarrow and you can see them all over the countryside.

 

But, I love their flowers!

 

I’m not sure how tall this oldest Alocasia ‘Calidora’ is, but it is taller than me. I am 8′ tall, so the plant is pretty big.

 

The other two Alocasia ‘Calidora’ are looking very good, too. I gave a lot of Alocasia to Wagler’s last summer so I am down to just a few pots. Of course, this is not all of them…

 

Alocasia ‘Portora’ is one of the nicest looking with their darker stems and ruffled leaves. I purchased the great grandmother of these plants from Wellspring Gardens 10 YEARS AGO! She was almost 8 feet tall when I left her behind with a friend when I moved back to Missouri in 2013. I didn’t realize I could have just cut the leaves off and brought it.

I keep forgetting I need to re-pot the Alocasia gageana AGAIN. They are behind a shed I walk by every day when I feed the chickens, where all the plants on the front and back porch used to be. Every time I walk by, I say “I need to get those girls re-potted.” I need to take their photos, too!

 

As I was looking at the plants in the shade bed, I noticed the buds on the Hosta ‘Dancing Queen’ are different than the buds on the other Hosta. Strange I never noticed that before… Isn’t it odd how we can be around something so often and not notice certain details that make them unique?

 

Most Hosta buds look similar to this one on Hosta ‘Forbidden Fruit’.

 

Somehow I think allowing the native Rudbeckia hirta to have its way in this bed was not really a good idea. I moved the Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’ to this spot from the north bed a few years ago to see how it would do in more sun. At that time, there was only one Rudbeckia hirta in the bed… Ummm… This bed is along the northeast corner of the old foundation of my grandparent’s old house. The house I moved to after my grandfather passed away in 1981. This was my first Hosta bed back then. When I moved back here in 2013, dad and I planted some rhubarb and horseradish we got from a friend, Ross Hampton, in this bed. Ross was the former foreman at Marti Poultry Farm. There were a lot of surviving old Iris along the north side of the foundation, which I didn’t put there in the 80’s, that dad was mowing over. I moved them to the corner of this bed… I had the Marigold ‘Brocade’ in this bed for a couple of years, too.

 

I must admit the change in the Sedum kamtschaticum ‘Variegatum’ has been a transforming experience. We are are here to learn from our experiences and this plant has taught me a lot. When we are down and almost to the point of giving up we have to realize the power we really have and what we are really capable of. Who we really are and what we can do. We can give up, or we can choose to live! A few years ago, this plant was down to just a few stems and now it is AMAZING! It didn’t give up!

 

One thing you might notice is the color of the flowers now. In previous posts, they were yellow… Actually, the yellow petals have fallen off and these will become seed pods. Notice the swollen clusters at the top of the photo. This is a new experience for me.

On to June Saturday, June 15…

 

The Aloe maculata is very happy and is sprouting it’s first but for 2019. NICE! The Aloe maculata and I have a long history dating back to 2009 in Mississippi when a good friend brought me an offset from his grandmother’s plant. So, this is our 10th Year Anniversary along with Alocasia ‘Portora’…

Hmmm… Maybe I should do a 10th Anniversary post. I actually started blogging in 2009.

 

The Malva sylvestris seems to like it in this neglected spot. I have planted a few things in this area that have never taken off. I have even amended the soil with “the Good Stuff” and nothing worked. It looks like this version of the miniature Hollyhock is going to work… Hmmm… This could be a spreader if it likes it here well enough. Time will tell.

 

Now I have my work cut out for me… Now that the Celosia argentea var. spicata ‘Cramer’s Amazon’ seedlings are ready to transplant in their proper places. I usually put them in two rows along the wall but I may do something a little different. I’m not sure yet…

 

I’m not 100% sure, but the “missing” Rudbeckia hirta ‘Denver Daisy’ seedlings may be mostly in the yard along the bed… I will dig them up and transplant them to the bed and see what happens. It would have been nice of them to come up in the bed but… They came up much earlier last spring and were actually beginning to bud on June 3. Here it is June 15 in this photo!

 

I am not really happy with the looks of the southeast corner bed either. The Centaurea flowers are really neat but they are a bit sprawly. The Phlomis ‘Edward Bowles’ is still wondering why I relocated it, even though I told it why. I think it needs some fertilizer. If it doesn’t do well here, it may not return in 2020 and I have had this plant since 2013. It is nice to see the Nandina domestica (Heavenly Bamboo) flowering. The Echinacea purpurea on the left has done quite well and the flowers are beginning to open. I didn’t know the cultivar, but while I was writing captions on the photos the name ‘Magnus’ appeared in my mind. I thought, “‘Magnus’? Where did that come from?” I did a search for Echinacea ‘Magnus’ and sure enough it is a cultivar. I guess “someone” is helping me out. I guess I better listen and conclude this cultivar of Echinacea purpurea is ‘Magnus’.

I have done several things with this bed over the past three years that have worked well. I must admit, it certainly doesn’t have much PIZAZZ this year. YET… I would have bought more Angelonia ‘Perfectly Pink’ for this spot, but they were not to be found this year. You never know what will be available from one year to the next…

I think I will stop here since there are 44 photos in the next folder from Sunday, June 16… I will make another post for them then try doing a post a day. GEEZ! Once I catch up. It is Monday already but at least I didn’t take any new photos today… So, I will catch up with the next post, Sunday Photos on Tuesday. Oh, heck, it is already 12:12 AM on Tuesday.

I know I have been very bad about reading your posts for the past, ummm… Well, it has been a while. I have managed to read your new posts over the past few days and I will try to make time every day to stay caught up. I do have to make a post about an issue I am having with WordPress. I had a chat with customer service and explained the issue and he somehow got on my blog, in the reader. I copied and pasted the home page of one of the blogs I follow to show him the issue. His reply was, “That’s weird.” I told him I was thinking about writing a post about it but I wanted to see if it could be fixed before I did that. He agreed posting about it would be a good idea and said he would look into the problem further and email me what be figured out. It has been a couple of weeks and I have heard nothing and the issue still persists. SO, I will be posting about it this week. I hate to complain and I have really enjoyed using WordPress for the past 10 years.

Until next time, take care, stay positive, have fun and be thankful.