Flower gardens

I shot a few pictures of the flowers blooming in my garden this week. I just love all the purples and yellows at this time of year.




These daylilies are so fragrant! I picked some to bring indoors, and the wind blew the pollen all over me as I carried them indoors...

A Nora Barlow type columbine (there are two flowers side by side)



These are regular blue columbine which self sow all around the threadleaf Japanese maple; the blue and red are striking. Blue forget-me-nots bloom all underneath that maple, too, which I can see from my window but tree covers them up from here.

Japanese painted fern growing over tiny Iris cristata

These little irises are so bright and cheery

I was planning to cap off this post with a photo of my tree peony just beginning to bloom, all fat brilliant silk buds. As I was leaving for work on Wednesday morning I thought, Oh, I should go back in and get my camera to take a pic, but I was running behind as usual and I planned to take it the next morning instead. I got my pruners too and headed out on Thursday morning, but all of the tall stems were laying flat on the ground... sob... it was a victim of the crazy thunderstorm we got that night, that storm system that spawned several tornadoes an hour or two west of us. I am grateful that the only damage I suffered was the flattening of a bush.

A few of the lighter stems popped back up a bit, but all of the large blooms were on the ground.

Toni, my neighbor, who gave me this bush for my birthday a couple of years ago, helped me to tie it up and it has recovered some. The bouquet of blooms I cut for the office was gorgeous, but I promise myself to stake this peony next year.