Forgotten Flowers

What's interesting about this photo is the time of the year this photo was taken, right at the end of February, after some of the winter's snow has melted away. A survivor from the 2009 growing season has stood tall and is waiting for spring to arrive. For how much snow gets dumped on the plant during the snowy months, for it to be in this good of condition was a surprise.

A Splash Of Color

Lets start your Monday off with a colorful macro shot.

To Brighten Your Day

Our weather around the Twin Cities has been a bit of a downer lately. Below average temps, lots of rain, a few inches of snow and very little sunshine. We just seam to be in a cloudy funk for the entire month of October. I'm posting some yellow color today. It's a contribution from swc of a giant sunflower.

Roadside Nursery

Almost Harvest Time

From my personal garden, it's getting close to harvest time.

Garden Flowers

Flowers from the garden of swc, thank you for the contribution.

Young Grasshopper

Spotted this green cadydid in my garden over the weekend resting on my orange lily's.

Blooming Day

Every year I wait for my Stargazer Lily's to bloom....this was the week! Naturally I had to photograph them in full bloom. I really need to find more of this type to plant or figure out if these can be split or how to grow more stems.

Roadside Weed

I spotted these purple flowers. I'm not sure if these are flowers or if it's some kind of weed. It was growing wild along the roadway I was walking on and thriving very well. Notice all of the thorns on the stem? I didn't dare touch these. Perhaps they are a cross between a cactus and a long stemmed flower....

Garden Tour 2009

From my garden, to my camera, to the blog. Fresh flowers on the rise.

Clematis

Referred to as the Queen Of The Vine, the Clematis.

April Showes Bring May Flowers

Or so the rhyme goes. No, the flowers in the photo are not recent. They were taken at the end of last summer. Currently, the leaves are almost full on the tress. Lilacs are starting to turn blue and purple. Tulips have it their prime and nearly all of the perennials have poked out from their winter long slumber.

Green, Green, Green

When I look at this photo, I see parsley in the front and a row of head lettuce or cabbage. Neither of which is correct, but that's what it reminds me of.

Will You Marry Me?

When I first entered this wing of the Conservatory at Como Park, the image I wanted to capture, I've seen many times before. When I realized I was also taking a photo of a marriage proposal, that made this familiar view a bit more unique. It should be noted that this gentleman is doing the traditional proposal, he has dropped to one knee to ask the big question to his future bride to be if she accepts.

Return tomorrow for the dramatic conclusion to this story....

Custom Made Flower Box

This one of a kind plant box, can be found in the West Side neighborhood of St Paul. It was made by my sister this past summer. She was looking to spruce up the front of her home and decided flowers inside a custom made flower box was the answer. It should be noted, my sister does work for a local filming company that creates television shows for the DIY Network. She is involved with the filming portion of the show, but my understanding is, she does a good portion of the hands on, off camera remodeling for the projects they are filming. Go sis!

Where Does It Lead Too

Down low on one of the paths in the Conservatory at Como Park in St Paul.

Interesting Links Of the Day: Redistribution Of Wealth Explained - a fabulous story

We Grow Em Big In Minnesota

These monster lily pads measure roughly 6 feet across!! From what I could see, each monster lily pad has a vine that attaches to the smaller ring which is just about in the center of the photo. I'd never seen these before and have no idea what their official name is. They can be found during the warmer climate months at the Como Zoo in St Paul.

Twin Cities Garden Tour Wrap Up

You see, in my yard, next to the driveway is this triangular shaped patch of dirt. We've tried growing grass, we've had a vegetable garden here. Each has done okay, but this odd shaped patch of our yard was really useless. Mowing the grass with a lawn mower in this area was awkward, the vegetable garden didn't have enough room to grow. So now we've come to flowers for this patch of land. Ahhh, this works great for this tiny area. We've transplanted a couple things in the spring, but need to fill in the bare spots yet. If you walk around to the back yard, I built about a 25 foot flower box that wraps around the back porch. You can see a bit of it in the smaller photos below with the white lattice fence.

  

Cottage Grove Garden Tour - Day 3

This is our third year with the Lily's. The year we first planted them, it produced zero flowers. The second year the Lily produced four flowers. This year, we had 18 to 22 flowers bloom. After a slow start, I would like to get more of these for next year as the aroma it gives off is amazing, not to mention the looks of the flowers. The stem on these Lily's is about 4 foot tall. We lost the tag of the exact kind of Lily, I've done a bit of Google searching and the best I could come up with was these are "Stargazer Lily's". Though the images I'm finding don't quite look exactly like my photos. Perhaps someone out there can identify what type of Lily it really is.

Garden Tour 2008 - Day 2

I'm not sure which of my plants leaves this is from, but the drops of rain caught my eye.

Twin Cities Garden Tour 2008

It's the 2nd annual, summer time, Twin Cities Garden Tour 2008! Of course it's held in the summer as the other half of the year in the Twin Cities is covered with a blanket of snow. The flowers on this garden tour do come from the garden located in my very own yard.

Small Things Growing In Nature

This is one of my favorite daytime shots I took using the macro setting. How large is this mushroom? About an inch to an inch and a half wide. There were many signs of growing mushrooms in the heavily moisture of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. There has been quite a bit of rain in the midwest as many of you are aware of. I was surprised when I returned from my week in the BWCA to find so much rain and flooding in many of the midwestern states.

More Colorful Photos From The State Fair Grounds

One more contribution photo from swc. These flowers can be seen as you enter the main entrance to the Minnesota State Fair Grounds. It's now been almost four months now since my garden of flowers and vegetables has been dormant from the cold climate. This colorful scene can only be found indoors during the long cold winter months. That's just how it is around here.

Wild Flower

I hate to do this, but I need to take a break from all of these cold, wintery photos and post a colorful photo taken back in August 2007 from the Minnesota State Fair grounds by contributor swc. These very large, hand grown flowers can be found at the main entrance to the grounds.

My Daily Photo Favorites: Portland, Maine | Torino, Italy | Riga, Latvia | Mumbai, India

Interesting Links Of the Day: St Paul Winter Carnival Treasure Clues | I Will Knot | Solar Hot Air Balloon | 50 Most Bizarre City Names Around The World | de-noted

Late Bloomer

The bees have been busy as of late, we have one flower bush that is just starting to flower. It's taken all summer long for these to start to bloom. The bees have taken to this flower and I cannot recall the name of it, but it has a very late summer bloom. I've seen about six to twelve bees roaming on the flowers, oddly enough, it's only this type of bee that I've seen on it.

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Run Through Your Wicked Garden

Two summers, well close to two summers it's been since we planted these flowers. Last spring we planted two plants, Lilium Hybrid 'Tom Pouce'. We watered it all last summer, there was the main stem, but it never produced any flowers. Up they grew once again this summer and sure enough, finally all that watering has paid off. I wish you all could smell this flower through your monitor. It has an incredible smell from five, ten, even fifteen feet away. It's very over powering. Thank goodness my allergies only happen during the spring season. The flower has to be six to seven inches wide. The stem is about 24 inches tall. This flower will be on our list to get next year and if it takes two summers for the flowers to bloom, it's well worth it.