WEEKLY TOP SHOT - viper's bugloss

I just love this shot. I think it is the contrast between the rough gray bark it the background and the colourful and delicate blooms.

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CROCOSMIA - the three year wait

When I planted the Lucifer Crocosmia in the fall of 2009, I had not yet bothered to check what zone the Ontario cottage was, I just figured it was close to zone 6 (Toronto), so it was probably zone 5.  

Silly me.

The Crocosmia are not the only thing I planted at the cottage that was not meant for zone 4, but it is one of the few things out of its zone that has managed to not just survive, but to take off - it just took time.  Funnily enough  my neighbour in the city had a similar experience with his Crocs taking 3 years to really bloom well, and that was in zone 6.  

So maybe it is just the nature of the plant?

For the first 3 years the leaves came up with no blooms, (from about half of the bulbs I had planted). Since I like the foliage so much, I left it and let it grow up around the base of the tree with the hammock attached.  

It was interesting even if it didn't bloom.

2 years ago there were some blooms, but not many and they were scraggly, not like the vibrant ones above.

But this past summer they were there in all their glory.

Crocosmia is something I will miss now that I am in a zone 3, but I have a feeling that I may just try them one day here anyway, afterall people here say it is not so hard to push to zone 4...

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BIG BLOOMS

Some more pics that I had transferred from slides recently.  Probably from 1995 or so.

This is the original of the set.

And here it is brightened up a bit and cropped slightly. 

And finally cropped very close. 

My favourite is the second shot.
Keeping some of the darker colour around the edge provides contrast that is lost in the final, closely cropped shot.

What do you think?

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SATURDAY FLOWERS - old shots

Recently I had some slides converted to digital from my days of canoe tripping in the wilderness of North Western Ontario between 1990-94.

Thanks Beth at Beyond the Garden Gate for helping me to identify Fireweed, the provincial (territorial?) flower of the Yukon.  It makes sense since we canoed in remote northern Ontario.

I thought of Asters as blooming on meadows, butt this article on eHow says they can grow in bogs and swamps too. 

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