Garden Glimpses - Early October 2011

I have not posted many garden photos this year, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy in the garden, nor that I haven't added to my plant collection.  I wish I had taken more "before" and "after" photos of the garden beside the front driveway, but I am pleased with the progress I made in cleaning it up, and the new additions, mostly from Phoenix Perennials in Richmond, BC.  Here are just a few of them, which are blooming now.

This rosy beauty is Echinacea "Raspberry Truffle" :

This cheery yellow beauty is Echinacea "Now Cheesier".  I love coneflowers for their bold blooms, and strong stems which usually don't need any support :

This is a Schizostylis coccinea (Pink river lily).  This dramatic late-bloomer caught my attention last year at the UBC apple festival (which, by the way, is Oct 15 & 16 this year).  I bought a pink one, but I think I'll go back and buy a bright red one also :

I wish I had taken more photos of the other additions.  I'll try again next summer.

The back yard is not without its colourful blooms, also.  Most notably are the gigantic sunflowers outside my kitchen window, which the squirrels have not raided yet (although I'm sure by now they've figured out my work schedule, so know when the opportune time will be) :

I made this yellow / purple arrangement from some of the available blooms a couple of weeks ago :

Dreamin' of Spring

I had a chance to do an hour or so of garden clean-up on the weekend. The weather is currently quite mild, and raining off and on. It feels like we've been through the worst of the winter, which has been quite bearable so far. Not like last year's huge and continual dump of snow. So my thoughts are starting to turn to Spring.

Nearly all the garden bloggers I follow seem to be reading seed catalogs and ordering seeds. So I decided to poke around too, and be tempted msyelf. Except I know I already placed a seed order in the Fall, and have forgotten what I ordered. So instead of ordering more seeds, I actually ventured out and ordered some plants from Breck's. I haven't ordered from them before, but I found a $35 off a $75 order offer, they ship to Canada, and they take payment in CAD (they also have a US website too). So I ordered:

Double Pleasure Lily

Lollipop Helenium

Mexican Shell Flower Pink

Toad Lily

Toad Lily Mixture

I'm quite excited about the Toad lilies (Tricyrtis hirta) because I've been admiring them on other garden blogs recently.

I don't know if I've seen one in "real life" before - if I did, I didn't know what I was looking at. So I've ordered a few different colours. I am hoping to put them in my new garden bed.

I took a walk about the yard recently, looking for signs of Spring. The cherry tree (above right) shows healthy clusters of buds.

So does the rhododendron (above left).

In other spots, there are skeletons from the previous year's blooms.  The coneflower seedheads look pretty funky, I think:

The gunnera is safely tucked away behind its own leaves, to protect it from the cold.  I found the "recipe" or instructions last year for making cast concrete leaves from gunnera and other large leaves, and am really hoping that this summer I will make time to try it out.

Until then, I feel a bit like the gunnera.  Tucked away and waiting for Spring to arrive.

Stained Glass Swallowtail and Coneflower

The other day Kate of High Altitude Gardening made a comment about looking for a new winter hobby. One of the first things that came to my mind was to fiddle around with Photoshop and create "stained glass" images from the summer's garden photos. It is something I've been thinking of trying for a long time now, and I think her photo of a monarch butterfly on a zinnia hit me as one which could make a great stained glass image.

This evening I had a bit of quiet time to myself (I think the flu is trying to reclaim me, so I convinced the family to leave me at home, and I crawled back into bed for some 5 hours this afternoon). So I decided I'll try with one of my butterfly images. Here is the final product, which I'm pretty pleased with:

I've done a fair amount of work with Photoshop before, so was able to create this image in just over an hour. I'm happy to share my steps, and hope to inspire someone else out there to try it out, and if you do, please post me your link in the comments section, so we can all enjoy it. I am using Photoshop Elements 2.0, so the specifics may vary in a different version, but the concepts should be the same. I'd love to hear any improvements on the technique anyone discovers.

Step 1: Choose a photo. I chose this one, because there is "lots happening" in it, and several basic colours : yellow, black, green, pink/purple.

Step 2 : Crop it. I cropped to just one flower with the butterfly, and then did a "resize canvas" to add a bit more space along the bottom, so my flower petals would not be cut off.

Step 3 : Check settings. You want the "RGB" colour setting (Image > Mode > select "RGB Color"). Otherwise bad things happen to your colour.

Step 4 : Add another layer, and start drawing the outline. I chose the colour black (RGB = 0,0,0), pixel size 25, opacity 100%. There is a "Layers" tab in which you can make the background visible or invisible (click the eyeball icon), and that helps to be able to check your work as you go, especially on the dark areas. I drew it in segments, so that I could Ctrl-Z (undo) any segment that didn't look good. Note that I added in my own flower bud behind. When improvising, it is useful to turn the background off.

After I had the image, I segmented the background, also in the same layer (originally I started another layer, but then later had to merge them together, otherwise the fill function wouldn't work properly).

Step 5 : Fill the colour. At this point I had the black outline on top of the original image. So I could use the "eyedropper" to select a colour from the background image, adjust it as necessary, and then use the "fill" bucket to drop colour into the appropriate sections. This went fairly quickly, and was quite rewarding. At this point, any further adjustments can be made. Such as drawing in the antenna, which I originally couldn't figure out how to represent, and only when I saw the final product I realized how I could draw them.

Step 6 : Save the image. To JPG or whatever. Save your Photoshop *.PSD file also, in case you want to come back and adjust anything, and "reprint" the image.

The other alternative is to just "play" with all the built-in filters which Photoshop provides, and see if anything turns out really neat. I explored many of them, and found some potential with these ones...

"Glowing edges" is pretty funky:

"Cutout" looks like a silk-screen image (does anyone use that technique anymore? Most everything has gone digital, even much of the professional printing):

"Watercolour" had a pleasant effect:

Okay, your turn. Be sure to send me links to your images, and any tips or techniques you can share with the rest of us.

Puppy Flower Arrangement Fun

My sister, Rose, emailed me these wonderful photos of very creative flower arrangements in the shape of puppies. So delightful! I searched, and found lots of references to these flower arrangements on the internet, but no mention of the artist's name. I would like to give her due credit. It wasn't obvious which, if any, was the original posting, to provide a link back. So here goes, with just the photos (click any image for a larger view):




I was so inspired by these arrangements that on Sunday afternoon, when the sun broke through, I went out in the garden looking for flowers to try my hand at my own arranging. My dahlias would be perfect for creating the shagginess of the puppies. Here was my first attempt, with the center of a purple coneflower as the nose, and late-season (small) spikes of butterfly bush for pointy ears, the stems wrapped in wire to keep them together:

Hmmm, the eyes would be better if a bit more noticeable, such as with these black-eyed susans:

Hmmm, I like the butterfly bush ears, and how about a mature dahlia flower for the mouth? Yep, that's a "keeper":

Now my son was inspired also, he joined in with his own arrangement:

Here is a closeup, showing the perennial sunflower eyes, green nose from a bud, and messy hair from geranium leaves (the green variant of Victor Reiter which pops up like a weed everywhere in my garden):

So far so good, my turn again. This time, I left some petals on the coneflower, as whiskers, and tried a blue hydrangea as a head, and the butterfly bush ears. I don't know what it is, but it's cute, too. My son claimed this one for himself.

Hmmm, what about the bright shaggy yellow of perennial sunflower, and the yellow black-eyed susan for eyes? That's a good combination, too:

So by the end of our fun, we had three little flower "pet" arrangements, to keep:

Garden Related Glimpses : mid-Aug 2008

Here goes with some more garden photos, and other miscellaneous photos from August. Instead of my usual close-ups, here are a few wider views of my garden:

Here is our fairy house, with blooming lilies towering above it:

Here is my hummingbird corner, with a lush butterfly bush cascading over a clump of crocosmia, and a set of red monarda falling to the right:

Here is one of challenges I regularly deal with, blackberry vines reaching over the fence into my garden (those nasty things seem to grow one foot or more per day!). The large purple plant on the right is a purple sage. To the left of it, the straggly flower stalks of Stachys byzantina (Lamb's ear). I don't much like the look of the flowers, but I leave them for the bees (especially the little mason bees) which are all over them. To the far left, our red currant bush, which bore more than a 4L (1 gallon) bucket of berries this year:

I was very pleased to gather a large harvest of lavender flowers from my neighbour, before her landscaper removed the large plants this year. While I had the lavender drying on a number of cookie sheets and other trays on the kitchen island, the fragrance throughout the house was amazing:

I also made a batch of lavender jelly. I was very pleased with the natural colour of it (yes, just lavender, certo & white sugar, no other additives or preservatives). Oh, and did I mention that it tasted good, too? My 9 year old daughter has been asking for it on toast for breakfast ever since.

While I'm posting photos, here is one of Alouette Lake, BC, from above. My husband and I discovered this viewpoint while off-roading a few weeks ago:

Yesterday (Sunday) we took the kids canoeing from Barnet Beach across and up into Indian Arm, to escape the heat. It was indeed much cooler there, and ended up being a beautiful day to canoe, with only the occasional drops of rain. We spotted this harbour seal with her pup on the shore, mainly because a pair of kayakers ahead of us had already stopped to watch. Otherwise we may have missed them on the rocks, since they were quite well camoflauged:

Here is a closeup from the same photo, you can better see the mother seal with her pup (he was not interested in looking at us, so that is his back end, you can see the flipper on the right side):

Garden Glimpses : Mid July 2007

This afternoon we had a short reprieve from this week of rain, so I went out and filled a clear garbage bag full with weeds and trimmings. I also snapped a few photos, like this daylily from my friend Lily, which cheers up the back garden, near my compost bins:

This daylily from my father-in-law, Hemerocallis "Kwanzo", a beautiful triple orange, is a great contrast to the purple Campanula sprouting next to it:

I was happy to spot this fuzzy bumblebee on the purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea):


Here's that bee from another angle:


The purple coneflowers are so photogenic, I can't resist including another shot:


The purple coneflowers are great plants for the garden. They are perennial, don't need staking, don't spread throughout the garden, don't seed themselves liberally, and they are gorgeous, especially in mass plantings. I have a few small groups of 3 or 5 plants, but I am hoping to continue to add to my plantings, with the precious offspring I find on occasion, and starting more from seed.

This sunflower (Helianthus giganteus) seems to be taller each time I look at it. What a delight it will be when the flower appears!


The sunflower, as well as a small row of tomato plants, grow near the post between my espalier apple and asian pear trees.

The espaliered asian pear has produced a number of vertical shoots lately, so today I trimmed it down again. I prune out these shoots about once a month during the growing season. Since it has set fruit already, I feel confident to cut these shoots, and hopefully redirect more of the tree's energies into the fruit. Here is a pic before the pruning:


I know I posted a similar shot last year, but I love this cheery Liatris underplanting of my Fuyu Persimmon tree, which seems to still be trying to settle in (and then I hope it will surprise me with noticeable growth, and one day, some fruit!):

And finally, my garden moment was sponsored today by Simmons:


I was feeling very tired myself this afternoon, so I took a small rest at 2PM, which was ended before 3PM by a phone call (an automated recording, of all things!). My 8 year old daughter, who had fallen asleep on the bed beside me, continued to sleep. When I came downstairs, I found my 6 year old son asleep on his new mattress, which is still wrapped in plastic, on the living room floor (waiting for Daddy to finish assembling the new bed, which he did tonight). Amazingly (just short of miraculous), they continued to sleep until almost 7PM, so after finishing work at 5PM, I had lots of time in the garden to weed & take photos in peace!!!

Here is my son in his new bed, new mattress, new sheets. This is a big improvement, since his feet were already touching the bottom of his crib-sized bed!


On that note, I am going to close off, and head to bed myself. 'Night!

Garden Glimpses : Late September

Fall is my favourite time of year. What wonderful colours to enjoy in the garden. The contrast of warm sun during the day and crisp autumn nights, and fresh dew in the morning. Fresh crunchy apples and sweet pears to enjoy. Brilliant reds, falling leaves. What a wonderful time of the year!