These colorful flowers are on a goldflame honeysuckle plant. Hummingbirds frequently visit this vine’s gorgeous flowers. In North America and Eurasia, 180 species of honeysuckle have been identified.
Macro Monday
This delicate beauty is sweet alyssum. Sweet to see and sweet to smell. Most common as a white flower, this dwarf variety has lavender purple blossoms.
Macro Monday
This peninsula of flowers was seen in the Old Mill district of Bend, Oregon. The gardeners do a great job maintaining these picturesque flowerbeds. They brighten up even the darkest of days.
Friday Flowers
Bright nasturtium blossoms up close in our High Desert garden. These flowers look pretty and they taste good. They have a distinctive spicy flavor.
Macro Monday
Bachelor buttons up close in our garden. I never knew they had so many colors. This flower has such an interesting structure – like a bouquet of tiny trumpets.
Macro Monday
Last year we started to create a new garden space in our backyard. After a lot of work, it’s looking like a garden of plenty now.
This is how it looked several years ago when we bought the place. The house included a fenced dog run with a heated doghouse.
Some of the beds in our newly-created garden are bordered by rocks collected on our property, and others are store bought. Smaller rocks we collected on our rock hounding adventures decorate the edges of the raised beds. See the obsidian from Glass Buttes?
This year we have lots of flowers filling in the spaces between the fruits and vegetables. The flowers include sunflowers, Bachelor’s buttons, sweet alyssum, clematis, hollyhocks, nasturtium, and poppies.
The sunflowers grew so tall, we had to clip through the bird netting to allow them to reach their full height.
We’ve had a great crop of veggies including kohlrabi, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and beets.
The raspberries we put in last year are finally producing. We had a few strawberries this year in the garden and they were tasty and sweet.
The garden is fenced with two kinds of fencing and bird netting, but we still find unexpected visitors. This tree frog looked very comfortable around the beet plants.
Our fruit and vegetable garden has filled out and the rest of the landscaping has too. Here’s what it looks like now.
The spruce trees are huge and the birds love them. The Russian sage, the large shrub with purple flowers in the middle of the picture, is more than six feet tall.
Like many of you out there, we are putting more time into gardening this year. Our repurposed dog run has been transformed into a garden of plenty.
Macro Monday
Friday Flowers
A single flower
With petals radiating
Captures warm sunlight
To share on overcast days
Illuminating us all
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – One single flower
Here’s a view of a chive blossom up close in my garden. We have a bumper crop this year!
Macro Monday
Right now I have a rainbow of soft colors in my garden. Many plants are blooming in the high desert.
This lupine has delicate shades of purple and peach on the same plant.
My purple sage shrub started blooming last week. This plant is a member of the mint family. If you crush the leaves you’ll get what some refer to as a “mildly intoxicating minty aroma.”
This a sweet little carnation with dusty green foliage and small blossoms in varying shades of pink.
The orange globe mallow has small blossoms that contrast well with its muted green leaves. The large heart-shaped rock adds a nice accent. I Like Rocks! shows examples of other rocks in my garden.
This is a cushion spurge plant. I love the soft yellow blossoms and colorful variegated foliage on this ‘First Blush’ variety.
I recently featured a close up of another spurge in my yard. They are cheerful little plants. 🙂
I always appreciate the soft colors in my garden, but even more so now.
Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
Hans Christian Anderson
This pretty plant is the first to bloom in my garden in the spring. The tiny flower of cypress spurge is framed by bright yellow bracts.
Friday Flowers
Sunshine’s Macro Monday (SMM)
Friday Flowers
These coneflowers’ colors are fading as summer turns to fall. Their form is still beautiful and I look forward to seeing them bloom next spring.
I’m treasuring Friday flowers with a friend before the weather changes. It was warm and sunny here yesterday but snow is predicted this weekend. The weather in the high desert is always interesting. 😁
Friday Flowers
Friday Flowers
Color & texture surround you as you sit on this comfortable bench in Bend, Oregon.
Pull up a seat challenge
Wordless Wednesday
It’s always a thrill to see these lacy-leaved springtime cosmos in the morning sun.
A Photo a Week Challenge – Flowers
Friday Flowers
The color has faded in these blossoms but they are still beautifully framed by the long spiky leaves on this chive plant.
Friday Flowers
Winter seasons: Softened and accentuated with snow
Spring seasons: Bursting with renewal and change
Summer seasons: Filled with abundance and beauty
Fall seasons: Painted with foliage and fruit
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Seasonal
A colorful border full of flowers on the last day of summer at Oregon Garden in Silverton, Oregon.
Friday Flowers
Other times, you’re doing some piece of work and suddenly you get feedback that tells you that you have touched something that is very alive in the cosmos.
Leonard Nimoy
Friday Flowers
Friday Flowers
Pretty purple pansies.
Friday Flowers
Here are some pictures from the High Desert Garden Tour located in Bend, Oregon. Lots of colorful gardens out there!
There were gardens with winding paths and comfortable places to sit to take in the scenery.
You can get plenty of ideas on what colorful plants to plant in borders on this garden tour.
Or maybe you want potted plants on wheels that can be moved to where you can see them best.
After looking at all of those colorful plants on a hot July day, it made me want to jump into a swimming hole. Maybe I could have taken a quick dip in this backyard pond on the tour. 😉
If you want to see the featured gardens on the garden tour next year, check local nurseries in Bend for tickets for this July event. The tickets sell out fast! Next year will be the 25th year of this annual event.
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Colorful
These colorful ice plant blossoms brighten up my garden in the spring and summer months. This a drought resistant plant that the bees love. The small succulent leaves are interesting too. Ice plants are a low-maintenance ground cover plant that does well in areas with hot, dry summers.
I saw these apple blossoms in the McCoin Orchard near the trailhead for the Gray Butte trail. This orchard, near Terrebonne, Oregon, was originally planted in the late 1880s and it was rescued by range specialists 100 years later.
There’s a nice hike here with some spectacular views of the country. The close up views of spring flowers are great as well.
The smell of moist earth and lilacs hung in the air like wisps of the past and hints of the future. Margaret Millar
Friday Flowers
Here’s a photo I took in the early morning hours of a daylily splashed with rain. It looks like a perfect little cup of gold.
You get a two-fer today since this is being posted under Friday Flowers and Cee’s Flower of the Day . Enjoy!
This lupine flower stands tall and stately in my garden. Though different from its wild cousins, it is just as beautiful.
Friday Flowers
Bright yellow flowers on a currant shrub with colorful flags flying in the background. The bridge passes over the Deschutes River in Bend, Oregon.
See my post about one of the short, easy trails in this area here.
Friday Flowers
Friday Flowers
