Zinnias, Roses, Joe Pye Weed, Day Lilies and Fancy Echinacea: This Week in My Maryland Garden

Welcome to my garden! This will likely be my last Tuesday "This Week in My Maryland Garden" post but I'm excited to share that this week will also begin "Floral Fridays" where I'll still post some of my own flower photos but also photos from the gardens I visit during the week. (Hint to my local friends - if you invite me over and have a garden I will likely ask to take pictures). I hope you'll enjoy the new feature of "Floral Fridays" on my blog!

Above is a super close up photo of one of our giant purple / pink zinnia. I'm hoping there will be a good bloom to enter in this year's county fair. I love gardening but am not so into it that I can engineer blooms for certain dates.

Some of our roses. One of the good things that game from the emergency excavation of our yard this spring is that now, instead of having our rose bushes scattered here and there around the yard, we have a concentrated rose garden.

Our "Little Joe Pye Weed" is just starting to bloom. These plants are supposed to grow "only" to four feet tall and tend to be butterfly magnets. This is our first year with this plant.

This bi-color day lily might be one of our last day lilies of the year. I love having a long day lily season so we have a wide variety of the flowers with early, late and mid season bloomers.

When we saw this fancy red and orange echinacea (coneflower) we just had to add it to our collection. We might have to start an echinacea garden (like the rose garden). The butterflies and bees just love echinacea (coneflower) plants and we enjoy their many colors.


Hope you enjoyed my garden photos and God's amazing creation! Also hope to see you this Friday for my first "Floral Friday!" May God bless you!

Heat Beating Flower Photos: This Week in My Maryland Garden

This morning's walk around my Maryland yard garden showed which flowers can really handle the heat. We've had another heat wave here with triple digit temperatures so I was happy to see so many flowers blooming. Here are my best five floral photos of the day. As you may remember from last week, we have a lovely orange echinacea (coneflower) plant and the bees have found it.

The zinnia plants I started from seed in April are doing great and providing us with lots of "purple" and red flowers. Oddly enough the ones started in March have yet to bloom.

White echinacea (coneflower) with funky petals. Bees and butterflies seem to love echinacea plants of all colors.

 White rose of Sharon with a fiery center. Hummingbirds and bees love these plants.

Drought tolerant day lily. We have a lot of day lilies blooming but I think this is the only variety that hasn't made the blog yet. The day lilies seem to love our Maryland soil.

Hope you enjoyed this week's photographic garden flower tour! I'm thinking of either changing "This Week in My Maryland Garden" to "Floral Fridays" or adding "Floral Fridays" as a separate, new feature (focusing on flowers wherever I happen to be on any given Friday. Which would you prefer to see? May God bless you this summer and always!

Flowers After the Storm: This Week in My Maryland Garden

Red Zinnia Photo By Phyllis Wheeler

We lost power for four days, all the food in our refrigerator and freezer and had a few downed tree limbs but are thankful that our power is restored (and with it the blessing of air conditioning). Many people are still without power so we're praying for them and all of the emergency workers who are hard at work trying to restore power to everyone. Thankfully, our flowers don't need electricity or gas to grow. We did lose a few plants and had to stake a bunch that didn't need it prior to the storm (and a big shout out for my hubby who got that all done before I even knew it was necessary!) but the bulk of our garden is intact and we're thankful for that too. Above is the first of our red zinnia blooms from the seeds I started outside in April.

Purple/Pink Zinnia Photo By Phyllis Wheeler

Here is a "purple" zinnia bloom - the first of it's batch, which I also started in April. Two others are blooming and they're all the same color so I guess we aren't going to have the dark purple represented on the seed packet but they do match our pink roses and are pretty so I'm still happy. Regardless of color, it's always special to see the first bloom on any plant I personally grew from seed.

Sunny Rose Photo By Phyllis Wheeler

Here is one of our sweet smelling yellow roses.

Rose of Sharon Photo By Phyllis Wheeler

One of our first rose of Sharon blooms of the year, along with a bud for a future flower. I love the hibiscus like blooms on these plants.

Butterfly on Purple Coneflower Photo By Ben Wheeler

The storm split our giant mother echinacea (purple coneflower) plant but my husband got creative with some stakes and trellises and the plant still seems to be doing just fine. There were bees, butterflies and moths swarming all over it this morning. It's definitely a great plant to have in a butterfly garden.

I hope you weathered the storm well if it passed through your area. May God bless you!