Hosta Flowers

I have to admit that I've generally ignored the hosta flowers, beyond noticing the many white spikes along the fencerow at this time of year.  But hostas are actually the backbone of our garden, planted along 200 feet of an old stone fencerow.  We have easily 400 plants of 300 different varieties, so I thought it was high time I should take a closer look.  I was pleasantly surprised at the results.

Hostas are best known for the leaves, which do well in shade, and come in a variety of greens, sometimes with some white, and with varying textures.  The leaves range in size from 1 inch to more than a foot, forming plants from 6 inches wide to 6 or more feet wide!  And we have a lot of them!  The flowers are actually all very similar, but this was one of the most striking when I took the macro lens and tried to get some close-ups.

 

Viewed from the side, individual hosta blooms on the spike of flowers are quite beautiful, and they come in a range of colours from mostly white through to purple (above) or blue (below).  And looking closely you can see that the stamens also vary in colour, from yellowy above through reddish brown here, to blue below.

You almost have to look up inside the blooms to really see them, and have to get down on the ground with your camera to get a picture. Perhaps someday I'll post some pictures of the varied leaves too.

Only in some varieties do the stamens and pistil seem to unfold like this, while the petals bend backwards, giving this sort of an open view of the flower.  I have a whole new appreciation of hosta flowers now.

Apparently deer appreciate hosta flowers too, because we've lost a large number of the flower spikes (before they really bloomed) to the deer who come for a succulent snack in the dark!

This is the view you usually see walking by the fencerow, with about 15 different hosta plants in this picture.  This is just a tiny corner of our hosta collection, so I guess I should be paying more attention to them. At one point I knew a great many of them by name, because I transplanted all these from another garden when we moved here.  The profusion of blooms does catch your attention, but they have always seemed rather nondescript to me (in comparison with other flowers in our garden).  Looking closely gives an entirely different impression.

Check out other close-ups at Monday Macro2.

A few More Day Lilies

Although I like the bright ones best, we have quite a few other day lilies that contribute to the garden colour in late July.  I have to admit though that I haven't guarded the labels very carefully, so instead of risking getting the names wrong, I'm just going to let the pictures speak for themselves today.

And finally, a small corner of the riot of colour in our garden these days.  These are mostly 'Saugeen Sunrise', our favourite.

Back to the Garden - It's Day Lily Season!

It's the brightest season of the year in the garden.  As long as the day lilies bloom we'll have bright colours to flash in the sun.  In fact, parts of the garden are a riot of colour right now.  As you can see by the pictures I love the bright colours.  Anything orange appeals to me!

This one is 'Saugeen Sunrise', perhaps our favourite day lily, a very prolific bloomer.  To show you how naive I was as a gardener, I didn't realize just 3 or 4 years ago, that each bud on a day lily blooms for one day - thus the term day lilies!

 

This one, a little plainer orange, but just as bright, is 'Start Me Up'.  To me they were all just nice flowers, but I'm gradually learning the names of the ones that particularly appeal to me.

The third orange one, with a deeper reddish 'throat', the area in the centre, is 'Orange Electric'.  I'd just go on buying the bright coloured ones, but there are lots of others.  I'm just biased in my preferences.  It's the very same with my wife's other hobby, quilting - the brighter the better.

These three blooms together are 'Across the Road'.  The number of buds on a day lily stalk, and the number of stalks on a plant together determine how often it will bloom.  Better plants produce more stalks with more buds and therefore bloom for a longer period.

'French Twist' has an unusual interesting texture to the red leaves.

And finally, 'Scotch Rock', one of the darkest flowers we have, a deep royal purple colour.  They're all simply beautiful.  If you get a chance to visit a day lily garden at this time of year, please do so!

Skywatch Friday

Since I discovered 'Skywatch Friday', I find myself watching the sky much more closely.  We have a lot of somewhat hazy days, but when you get the right conditions the sky is truly beautiful (or ominous - right now we're under a tornado watch and severe thunderstorm warning).  But these photos are from one week ago today, when it was sunny, clear and very blue for my paddle into Bell's Lake.

As we started, just after 9 a.m., the sky was totally clear and brilliant blue, perfect conditions for a nice canoe exploration!  Some pretty great reflections too!

After about an hour, a few fluffy little cumulus clouds had begun appearing in the west, slowly moving our way, but not enough to block the morning sun.

Within what seemed like only a few minutes the fluffy small cumulus clouds started spreading and multiplying.  I understand the basics of the sun warming the morning air, the warm air rising and clouds forming.  But I presume the air temperature must reach a threshold up there at cloud level where clouds suddenly start forming all over the sky.

By the time we were finishing our paddle half an hour later, the sky was dotted with white clouds from horizon to horizon.  I watched during the rest of the day, and quite quickly in early evening the process reversed itself, and all the clouds started disappearing until the evening sky was totally blue again.  An interesting sequence of cloud formation, spread and dissipation over the day, that I noticed all because I'm keeping a closer eye on the sky.

 Check out sky pictures from around the world at:

And I'm linking to Weekend Reflections here:

Canoeing Bell's Lake

Last Friday I had the chance to canoe into Bell's Lake, a small undeveloped lake near here that seems like northern wilderness when you get in there.  It's not very large, but completely surrounded by forest (except for two old boathouses), mostly with a swampy shoreline and dead trees falling into the water, and beautiful scenery, at least on the bright sunny day we enjoyed.

Parts of the route were narrow channels like this, and parts widened out into actual lakes or large inlets.  We were followed along the shore by both kingfishers and kingbirds, and saw at least one kingfisher dive into the water to catch a tiny fish, though usually they quickly flew away, squawking their raucous call.  In the second picture below you can clearly see the white band across the bottom of the tail that marks the kingbird; it's an insect eater, catching them on the wing while swooping out over the water.  The first picture is the kingfisher, with its distinctive dark and reddish bands across its breast.

 

 

You have no idea how hard it is to hold a canoe steady in the water, trying to get a picture like this one.  I was in my single person canoe, in which I use a kayak paddle, and there didn't seem to be any breeze blowing, but as soon as I got in position the canoe seemed to instantly slip out of position.  I tried several time to get this patch of water lilies in the foreground of this picture, and even then ended up with a blurry background!
 

My partner in crime spotted these flowers on the shore of an island, and thought I should venture in among the dead branches to get a picture, so I ducked my head and did my best to appease him.  I believe this is actually a swamp rose.

There were lots of reflections too,sometimes of the entire horizon, and sometimes of the dead trees along the shoreline or in the water. Made for lots of photo opportunities.

We only paddled for two and a bit hours, but this is clearly one place I'm going to come back to.  A fascinating shoreline, wildlife, and an easy paddle, only 15 minutes from home.  Thanks Steve.

Kemble Women's Institute Monument

Before I take you back to our garden where the day lilies are now blooming in profusion, I wanted to celebrate a striking monument I found on my drive up to Georgian Bay the other day.  This is the monument to the Kemble Women's Institute - now, believe it or not, the oldest operating Women's Institute in the world!

The monument takes the form of a huge slab of limestone set up as a table, with a chair at one end - I'm sure reminiscent of many Women's Institute meetings.  The Kemble Women's Institute was formed in 1897, the third in the world, and is now one of some 500 in Ontario alone.  There are 9 million members worldwide.  Here the monument is located at a lookout on the upper edge of one of the bedrock escarpments that run up each side of the bay, providing a beautiful view.

While the plaque gives the information, the unique setting of the table is what struck me as memorable.  As the last line of the plaque says, "The table is set.  Come sit and ponder .... making a better community for all". I'm sure that my own mother and both my grandmothers, and probably numerous aunts were members of a nearby Women's Institute, working to make their contribution to their own local community.

The view itself is spectacular, although it was grey clouds early in the morning when I passed by.  You're looking east across Owen Sound Bay, a narrow bay off the much larger Georgian Bay, across to 'Coffin Hill', one of the many outcrops of the Niagara Escarpment that is such a striking feature of the landscape in this part of the province.

Keppel Henge

To continue the story of Keppel Croft Garden, perhaps its most fascinating feature is the Keppel Henge that has been erected in the field behind the garden.  A genuine stone circle on a mound surrounded by a ditch, this is a henge designed as a way to celebrate the millenium in 2000.
 

This is the view as you approach the henge.  It was designed to throw shadows that would indicate celestial events such as the solstices and the equinox, usually tied to sunrise or sunset.  Thus each individual stone has a name and is placed in such a way as to be astronomically in the correct location, while the taller thin 'Pointer Stone' is in the centre to cast a shadow.

You approach the field through another bit of whimsy, this interesting gate which certainly leaves you with the feeling that you're going someplace special.  Then you follow a mowed trail through the tall grass until you emerge into the henge.

The stone closest to us in this picture is the Winter Solstice Stone, while the stone on the left is the Winter Sunset Stone.  On the far right is the Winter Sunrise Stone, and second from the left is the Summer Sunset Stone.  Note the allignment of smaller stones running south to north in the centre, all of which have a purpose.

The pointer stone is marble rather than limestone like all the rest (which came from a local quarry), and it is taller, and on a small mound in the centre of the circle.  Construction of the henge was a major undertaking, especially in getting all stones in the astronomically correct locations, and was accompanied by appropriate ceremony.  A fascinating garden feature!

As if that wasn't enough, there are two analemmatic sundials nearby.  In this one, your own body becomes the gnomon casting the shadow.  The smaller vertical stones represent the hours of the day, and the flat concrete date scale is the base on which you stand - in slightly different positions depending on the month of the year.  The plaque on the taller post provides the instructions..

    

 Here I'm standing on the month of July, and my shadow falls between 11 and 12 a.m.; it was just past 11.30.  I'm so intrigued by this I'm thinking of trying it in our own back yard.

There are a number of other small constructed 'zen' stone gardens along the path through the field, which look to me like fascinating pieces of art.  The henge is just visible in the background right against the trees.

 And of course there is more whimsy as you leave the field through the thyme garden.

Remember the cobble beach I said the garden was built on?  This is the beach today; millions of perfect skipping stones.  The ancient beaches Keppel Croft is built on are at a higher level, from a time when glacial lakes pushed the shoreline higher, but imagine building a garden on a bed of stones!

This is what lets Big Bay claim to be the 'Stone Skipping Capital of Canada'.

The Keppel Henge and the sundial are a project of both the Keppel Croft gardeners and a neighbour.  You can find a lot more interesting details on the garden's website.  All in all a very fascinating place!

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