Category Archives for Farm Flowers

Winter Flowers Day

December 8, 2010

Today is Winter Flowers Day.  So what kind of flowers do we have blooming right now?

Well, the peacocks are prancing around with flowery looking feathers.  Does that count?

picture of peacock

Peacock's Flowery Feathers

No, I guess not.  Well, how about something that started as flowers?  Like the red berries on evergreen bushes?

picture of heavenly bamboo

Heavenly Bamboo (Nandina domestica)

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picture of red berries on holly

Red Berries on Holly Bush

Okay, okay, berries aren’t flowers any more.  Well, sad to say, even my Lenten Rose is drooping in the cold weather, and no blooms there either!

picture of lenten rose plant

Lenten Rose (Helleborus orientalis)

So that leaves only ONE thing around here that still has a few blooms on it. . . the Camellia bush.  Right before Thanksgiving it was in peak bloom:

picture of camellia winter's star shrub

Camellia 'Winter's Star' in full bloom

However, we’ve had hard frosts since then, and only a few blooms are still hanging on.

Camellia oleifera 'Winter's Star' bloom

So that’s it, for Winter Flowers Day we have only a few ragged-looking blooms left on the Camellia bush.

Happy Winter Flowers Day anyway!

Winter’s Star Camellia

November 3, 2010

Every year around the last part of October my Camellia oleifera ‘Winter’s Star’ starts blooming.

picture of Camellia oleifera Winter's Star

Camellia oleifera 'Winter's Star'

I especially enjoy this because:

  1. It’s blooming when nothing else is,
  2. I love the color of the blooms, and
  3. I always wanted to grow camellias, but couldn’t until moving south.
picture of Camellia oleifera 'Winter's Star' bloom

Camellia oleifera 'Winter's Star'

There aren’t many blooms yet, so the bush doesn’t look too impressive.  Maybe later!

Bountiful Butterflies

August 11, 2010

I love Joe Pye Weed. It’s got such lovely soft pink flowers. And although I like to look at them, what is REALLY great is those flowers are veritable butterfly magnets.

They are especially popular with the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies.

yellow butterfly

Time for a sip of nectar!

I think it’s interesting that there are three color variants of the Easter Tiger Swallowtail.  The male is yellow, and he’s just a tiny bit less showy than the females, as he only has small red and blue spots on the inside of his hind wings, up next to the abdomen.

I think this is a male (I’m not an expert here!).

yellow butterflies

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) - Male?

The male comes in only the one color… yellow.

yellow butterfly

It's a boy!

The females can be yellow too, but have an area of blue between the black margin of the hind wing, and the yellow.

So I would say these are female swallowtails!

yellow butterflies

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) - females, yellow form

This one is definitely a female with those prominent blue spots!

yellow buttefly

It's a girl!

But here’s the thing… remember I said there are three color variants? Well, the female Eastern Swallowtail butterfly also has a black form.

black butterfly

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Joe Pye Weed

 So if it’s black, it’s female.  If it’s yellow, it could be male OR female.

black butterfly and yellow butterfly

Black or Yellow, take your pick!

Whether they’re black or yellow, male or female, they’re beautiful!

One Lonesome Sunflower

June 16, 2010

At least The Farmer did get ONE field mowed before the tractor broke down.  And the interesting thing is that somehow, there was one lonesome sunflower growing in that pasture.

One is the loneliest number. . .

We don’t know how this one little sunflower got there.  I suppose a bird dropped it from one end or the other.

What’s more amazing is that it managed to grow amidst all the tall grass!  I thought it was kind of cool to see it there.

Unfortunately, it seems removing all the tall grass around it contributed to the sunflower’s demise.  All the surrounding vegetation kept it from being noticed, I guess, cause the next day it was broken off at the bottom, like something cut or chewed it.

No more sunflower.

Other Interesting Sites:

Blooming this week…

June 9, 2010

Today it’s raining, but yesterday I took some pictures of a few of the flowers blooming around here right now.

Our trumpet vine is slow to break dormacy, but once it starts blooming it keeps it up for a long time.

Trumpet Vine 'Madame Galen' (Campsis x tagliabuana)

We have a volunteer Mimosa tree in bloom also.  We didn’t plant it, so I guess the seed just floated in from another tree.  Or got deposited in bird droppings.  At any rate, I guess a volunteer tree is a good thing in the Volunteer State of Tennessee.

Mimosa Tree (Albizia julibrissin)

There’s another picture of the same tree over on Anna Creates, which has a more dramatic looking black background.  (It’s also usable for making note cards if you’re so inclined.)

The butterfly bushes are also starting to bloom now, and like the trumpet vine, they will continue to bloom for a long time.

Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii Black Knight)

We have some different colored butterfly bushes, like red, and bi-colored, but this just happens to be the one I was looking at yesterday.

The daylilies have been blooming for some time now.

Daylily 'Fairy Tale Pink' (Hemerocallis)

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Daylily 'Perfect Peach Glory' (Hemerocallis)

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hemerocallis 'Stella de Oro'

Daylily 'Stella de Oro'

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Daylily 'Anzac' (Hemerocallis)

And to add a different color, the hydrangea has blue blooms…

Hydrangea

And though these aren’t blooms, it’s fun to see the little figs starting to grow on the Brown Turkey Fig tree.

Little figs...

There are all sorts of things growing now around the farm!

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