Blooms July 2021

 

The usual beauty from Grevillea 'Peaches and Cream'

Blooms for July:  most of the usuals, a few newbies.

Lavender 'Meerlo'  has its very first flower ever:  

Also, so far its only flower.  The plant is large and healthy.  The foliage is beautiful and sweetly fragrant, so if it doesn't want to flower, no problem. 

 New growth on some of the Leucadendrons are not flowers, but are as colorful.  Call them honorary flowers.  I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to grow Leucandendrons.  They are stunning, gorgeous, takes-your-breath-away plants.  Maintenance is basically zero. 

Leucandendron 'Blush' :

 Leucadendron 'Wilson's Wonder':

Smaller growing Leucadendron 'Harlequin', after sitting for nearly a year hiding behind a daylily, doing it only knows what, has new growth. 

Flower cluster (and some mildew) on Lagerstroemia 'Ebony Embers'.  Leucadendron 'Sylvan Red' in the background:

Rhodanthemum 'Casablanca' is still blooming.  I looked to purchase more of this wonderful low-grower all winter and spring, but didn't see a single one for sale, so I collected what might be seeds from some of the spent flowers and made a haphazard effort to plant them.  No seedlings as yet.  The species version gave me a single seedling this past winter, which is doing well so far.

'Casablanca' with Agave 'Blue Glow' in the foreground: 

The small flowers of Clematis viticella are delicate and dainty, but the rain drop-like buds are no less charming:

 Double purple-power with Trachelium caeruleum

Until rabbits attack, anyway:

 'Polish Spirit' offers another round of growth and flowers:

    

Toothless Aloe dhufariensis.  Toothy Agave parrasana as background.

An elegant Aloe native to the Arabian peninsula.  Provide hot conditions.  It looks unhappy in our mild winters, even though it is planted where, even in winter, it gets brutal reflected heat from asphalt and concrete.

The flowers have a grace to their lines.  Agave titanota 'White Ice' in the background:

I saved and planted a single rosette of hybrid Aloe 'Cynthia Giddy' after digging out and discarding a bin full.  The current plan is to allow it to form a large cluster of rosettes again, this time adjacent to the street where they can be more easily groomed and reduced as needed.  Its long period of bloom (months) feed many hummingbirds and bees. 

Giddy, up:

Variegated Aloe noblis

I got rid of a lot of 'Rooikappe' because it offsets like mad.  A lone one here and there is just right--perhaps keeping it very dry will curb its offsetting habit.

Oops, offsets already.  Not dry enough?

Rose 'Ascot'

Begonia 'Irene Nuss'

Rose 'Golden Celebration' was a rooted cutting in a 4" pot in January. 

It's now shoulder-high: 

Worth the wait and the asking to obtain it, the marvelous color of (my ID guess) Agapanthus inapertus ssp pendulus 'Graskop'. 

Oh, yeah!

Two more flower stems emerging, too. 

One more new Agapanthus--'Indigo Frost'.  Big box store visit for paint supplies had a single interesting plant, and this was it.  After buying 'Twister' a few weeks ago, I wondered if  'Indigo Frost' was better.  After buying the 'Indigo Frost', online investigation revealed 'Indigo Frost' is a "more marketable"  name for 'Twister'.  Oh, well.  More to plant in the eventual blue-and-white planting bed. 

 

Dahlia 'Tahitian Sunset'

'Cafe Au Lait', again

Polarized Dahlia?  What was a red-striped yellow Dahlia became about half red flowers and half yellow.  

Just please get along, okay?

 

While we have not (yet) suffered the terrible heat that occurred further inland, it's been hot enough to spur a mass of flowers from the Bougainvilleas.  I've been cutting them down to the stump or trunk every couple of years.  This works well to keep them in check.  

B. spectabilis, down to a stump two years ago.  Big enough.

B. 'Imperial Thai Pink', cut back to the trunk this past fall.  It may need hard cutting back every year instead of every other.  The tuteur is its support:

 As vividly pink as pink gets:

All that pink is bract.  The actual flowers are tiny:

Vigorous Salvias 'Black And Blue' and 'Amistad' need hard reductions too.  But like the Bougies, are joyful in flower:

 One gardening task I managed to complete, despite summer weather, was reaching up underneath the Russellias and cutting out all the old dried, brown stems.  Plenty of new ones left, flowering for the hummingbirds.

The two new 'Superb' Grevilleas that replaced the two old ones are settling in, growing, and blooming.  Soon the hummers will be fighting over them once again.  The hummingbird fights shifted first to the three Grevilleas in the back.  Next, to the 25' tall Agave marmorata flower stem.  

They'll be back here soon:

The Agave's flowers are pretty much spent:

The plant itself is shrinking and collapsing inward.  Nothing to be sorry about--it lives on in new offsets of itself.  Agaves are immortal. 

The lavender seedlings patiently nurtured most of winter and spring are now starting to flower. 

Senecio mandraliscae's not-attractive flowers are blooms for the bees and tiny native checker butterflies.  "Not attractive" is putting it mildly.  Insects love them, even if I don't, so they stay. 

Limey-yallery green flowers on Sideritis cypria and new growth on Leucospermum 'Yellow Bird' seedling.  

Note to self:  that limey-yallery color looks great with the blue-ishly-silvery Sideritis foliage: 

One of the new-this-spring Calylophus 'Southern Belle' survivors.  Bought seven.  Four grew, two died, one got mowed down by a rabbit.  Given a little galvanized wire protection, the mowed one is coming back. 

Dry heat?  No problem.  Rabbits?  Grrrrr!

The Stephanotis jasminoides vine is now more substantial--a plant, no longer a struggling seedling.  I grew it from a seed off the original plant, which died during the long drought of 2011-2016.  Eventually it may cover some of the pergola. 

 It's heading in the right direction:

The fragrance is heavenly, something of a cross between jasmine and orange blossom.  Mmmmmm!

Too early for July Bloom day, probably gone before August's, Lilium lancifolium flowers are still a few days away.  It's one lily that will grow here and come back year after year after year.  (Ten, at least, so far.) 

 Post-flower, 'Suffolk Red' grapes, a first!  I wonder if we get to taste them or if birds and rodents will get them before we do. 
 

Myrtus communis.  The bumble and carpenter bees love these:

Protea hybrid 'Sylvia' seems early this year. More usual in August.

Slightly smooshed by the branch above, but striking all the same:

Happy July flowers!