Flowers for Friends

 Sometimes it's fun to pretend that I'm still in the farmer florist business. 
Coming out of a rough week, I needed some flower therapy!
My husband took the kids--school, swimming, other fun stuff--and I had a flower day!

My older daughter and I went out first thing in the morning and cut wildflowers on the dunes: lupine and vetch. It was cool and misty--perfect flower cutting weather! 
Not sure if that's actually allowed, but no-one stopped us.

Then I bought flowers from a couple different stores.
I came home, processed them, and put them all into 5 bouquets--just wrapped with paper.
It seems that it's easier to give flowers away if they're not all fancy in a vase.

Or I should say--it seems like it's easier for other people to accept a gift of flowers if it's not done up all fancy, for whatever reason. So, paper-wrapped. Check.

Filled up 2 buckets with my bouquets. 

It made me really happy to have buckets full of flowers again!

This time I didn't really find a bigger flower to be my focal, so I went with the green hydrangea, filled in around the sides with alstromeria, mums, mini carnations, tulips, and snapdragons. Then I put the lupines and the vetch around the outside; I really liked the little bit of wildness that they added.

I was so happy with the way they turned out!

Top view.

I took them to 5 different ladies that I'm becoming friends with, or hoping to become friends with. :) 

I had the time to stay and chat, so I did at a couple of the stops.

It was such a good day.

Flowers + friendly connections = healing for my soul.

My husband and kids were home before me. They had a good day too.

Swimming, a new 3-D movie at the museum, and lunch from the taco truck.

A Few Words About Yucca

We just got back from a short trip to Mesa Verde National Park. We got to see the amazing cliff dwellings and other structures built by the Ancient Pueblo people hundreds of years ago. 

It was a great trip! 
The scenery was absolutely gorgeous. 

There was pale yellow rabbit brush, scrub oak in glorious shades of orange and red, various types of wild grasses that had all bleached out to a creamy color, red sandstone, burned out trees in shades of black and gray, and also yucca plants. Yucca looks similar to iris foliage—except the yucca leaves come to a point on the end that is quite sharp—especially once those tips have dried.

Rewind to 15 years ago. The first house we purchased was very small. I almost said “tiny,” but at 750 square feet it was bigger than today’s tiny houses tend to be. Anyway, it had 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. That was about it. This was the first time I had a yard of my own, and I started experimenting with gardening and growing flowers.

One of the first things we noticed was the enormous yucca plant next to the cement walkway from the driveway to the porch. I wanted to plant bulbs there and possibly some pretty shrubs. The yucca had to go. So my husband and I dug it out. It came back. We dug it out some more. Came up again. It turned out that pretty much any piece of root you left in the ground would generate a new plant. We were frustrated. We dug it up AGAIN. Folks, we lived in that house for 2 years and we must have dug that plant up 5 or 6 times. It was a beast!

Now on this trip to the high desert mesas, I was confronted with yucca again, this time in its natural habitat. It was beautiful. It truly was. It’s tall, spiky leaves provided the perfect contrast to the softer, rounded forms of the rabbit brush. The green complemented the other fall colors just beautifully. The plant itself, with the tendrils of fiber coming off down the length of each leaf was beautiful.

The mesas had burned several times in the last 30 years, and there were signs documenting the different fires. Guess what was one of the first things to come back? That’s right. Yucca. It is as tough as nails (as we found out, much to our chagrin!) In my flowerbed, this trait was not appreciated. In a place where fires are a frequent issue—it’s essential. We learned that yucca plants also produce their own antifreeze, and thus are pretty much evergreen, even though they are not woody shrubs.

In addition, we learned that to the ancient Native Americans, the yucca plant was everything. The flower stalks, flowers, and fruit are all edible. The fibrous leaves were used to create everything from clothing to baskets to ropes and nets. The root will lather up in water, and was used as soap.

So what did I learn from this experience?

Every plant has its place. While I still don’t think yucca is a great flowerbed choice, in its natural environment it was beautiful and perfectly suited.

Plants are useful beyond just their pretty flowers. What?! Says the flower farmer in me. It’s true, though—and I knew that, but it was a good reminder. Just because we can’t see the value in a plant, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The exception to this may be bindweed. I am still searching for its value!

The traits you may find frustrating in a plant could be the very traits that ensure its survival in its native habitat, where other life depends upon it.

Also, now my husband wants to plant yucca at our house, so we can be prepared for any disasters that may come along. I told him as long as he plants it at the back edge of our property, along the fence and across the ditch, go for it! If he does, it will still be there when we’re long gone.

Big Sky Wildflowers

 

Well, folks, Big Sky country did not disappoint! We went on one hike in particular that was so beautiful. The weather was perfect—in the 70’s, with a light rain that stopped just as we got on the trail. It was late afternoon/early evening when we started off. Within a few minutes of the trailhead it felt like we were in the wilderness, but with a nice trail to walk on. :)

Every direction I looked there were beautiful wildflowers of all sorts. It was fun to identify what I could. Many wildflowers look very similar to their cultivated cousins, as you might expect. Lupines, wild roses, columbine, and wild geranium were all easy to figure out.

Wild columbine. There were some that were white and yellow, as well (as you saw on the title picture.)

We were in bear country, with 2 sightings reported on the trail we were hiking within the last week (!) We had all of our kids with us; thankfully, my little 2 year old was in the hiking backpack. The rest of us stayed close together and kept talking to make some noise. My husband and I both had bear spray, but we didn’t need it. Didn’t see much of any type of wildlife, except for the backside of a deer that my daughter spotted as it ran off into the brush.

Good times in Big Sky. Do you try to identify wildflowers on your hikes?

End of August Views

Welcome to my garden!

I am in Utah, USA, zone 5b.

A hearty thank you to Helen over at The Patient Gardener, who was our End-of-Month-View hostess for so long.

Here we are at the end of August already!

We have now lived here nearly 3 months, and while we have made progress in some areas, there hasn't been much in the way of flower planting yet.

I am still working on getting future flowerbeds marked out.

Let's start out front, shall we?

This picture is notable for the green lawn, which means that we FINALLY got our outside water hooked up! I can hardly believe the lawn has come back the way it has.

It was so dead, it crunched when you walked on it.

Now it needs a mowing.

Neglected corner #1.

Those are Asiatic daylilies in the tub.

An actual established planting area, but it definitely needs some attention.

Lilac in the foreground right side, rose bed in the middle.

Aspen in the back.

After 2 weeks of daily sprinkler water, it seems this back grass is truly beyond hope.

On the other side of the house in back: another neglected corner.

I'm planning to claim this one for flowers!

Right across from it, we have this little corner o' weeds, bordering the vegetable garden.

Yes, plans are afoot for this space as well.

View towards the back field, which is still all dead crispy grass and dirt, at the moment.

Oh, and some weeds.

That white structure is my son's soccer goal.

At least this area is being used for something right now!

We plan to add a sprinkler system and grass, all the way to the back fence.

We would also like to plant a couple of oak trees back there.

Moving into the vegetable garden now:

2 very small ripe tomatoes.

Only the 2nd and 3rd we've gotten this year. 

The bigger pumpkin plant, of the 2.

Alas, the pumpkin on it is still just the size of an orange. 

Look at this, though!

The plant sticking up behind is not a weed, but a sunflower.

The entire bed was planted to sunflowers in June, but the pumpkins were planted in their place when it became apparent that none were coming up.

Well, what do you know? 

We will have a sunflower at some point....unless frost kills it before it blooms.

(Not to be pessimistic or anything, but from what I hear we have less than a month left to first frost.)

The smaller of the pumpkin plant, with a few cheerful flowers.

As it is very unlikely they will produce actual pumpkins this year, I am just enjoying their beauty.

End of the garden, looking toward the orchard.

A view of a few tantalizing projects in progress.

More to come on those soon!

We may actually get a few peaches this year.

They're small, but look like they may be almost ripe.

End of the orchard, with half a compost bin built.

Also, a dead tree sticking up in the middle.

Weeds, I mean wildflowers in the back ditch.

Hey, I'm taking flowers wherever I can find them this year!

I still enjoy the views of the cornfield and the mountains out back.

The corn is a couple of feet taller than me!

As you can see, we still have quite a long ways to go here.

We love the big space and have plenty of ideas to fill it up.

Stay tuned!

Steve over at Glebe House Garden is our new host for End-of-Month-Views. 

Head over there to see more gardens!

A Few Wildflowers

My daughter, who notices wildflowers like me, wanted me to take some pictures of the flowers we saw along the trail on a hike a few weeks ago.

I didn't have my identification book with me at the time.

As it turns out, it wouldn't have helped me all that much anyway.

This time around I had to google the name of the hill we hiked and "wildflowers" to figure these out.

Happily, I pulled up a couple of sites that had a list with links to multiple pictures of each one.

It took some time to click on all the links, though!

Then, once I found them on the website, I was able to find them in the book.

One drawback of using a book is that the book generally has just one picture of each flower, so if it doesn't look quite the same or is a different subspecies, it can be hard to match them up.

Scarlet gilia or skyrocket

(Ipomopsis aggregata or Gilia aggregata)

Harsh paintbrush (Castilleja hispida)

[As near as I can tell.]

I knew it was a paintbrush flower.

Little did I know how many varieties there would be!

Penstemon attenuates

Spreading dogbane or mountain dogbane

(Apocynum androsaemifolium)

Phew! That took some research!

There is definitely a sense of satisfaction when you've finally found the match, though.

Like finding a new friend: "Oh--there you are!"

It remains to be seen if I'll be able to identify these next time we're up there.

Do you like knowing the names of plants that you see?