Our Garden is More than Day Lilies!

Although day lilies are the current colourful highlight of our garden, we do have lots of other interesting flowers - too many in fact, it's a desperate struggle to keep up with it!  They're all perennials; we don't plant any annuals (except veggies), because we have too much to do coping with the perennials.

The dominant flowers at the moment, along with the day lilies, are the False Sunflowers.  They tend to spread, and we have left them to bloom, so they form big patches of bright yellow.

Trying to capture the impression of them with a narrow depth of field.

The white peonies were over fairly quickly, but the pink ones seem to last a lot longer.

The allium are still standing straight and tall.  These ones were white alliums, against the house.

We have several clematis, including this deep purple one that's out in full bloom now.

But I like this light blue bell-like one, all dangling down from the vines.

They're a few tiny pinks over in the scree garden.

A few milkweeds crept into the garden a year or two ago, and we've let them bloom for the Monarchs.

I love the deep pink colour of these tradescantia or spiderwort.

The foxtail lilies have been blooming for about three weeks.  Nearly 6 feet tall, the blooms unfold from the bottom up to the top over those three weeks.

An unusual plant, a very large bear's breeches, with sharp spines like a thistle.

And the biggest by numbers are the hostas; we have dozens and dozens.  They're all coming into bloom in these weeks, and every now and then we're allowed a brief look at the flowers before the deer come by to eat their salad!  We're digging up a few to take with us to the new house.

It's Day Lily Season!

It's day lily season here, the brightest time of year in our garden.  It's just glorious to go out and see what new varieties have come into bloom overnight.  We have a fair collection of different varieties, but we're not so serious that I remember all the variety names.  And I still can't get over the fact that each of these blooms only lasts a day, and wilts the next morning - hence 'day lilies'.  Here's a selection of what's in bloom now.

My love of bright colours comes through loud and strong with these, and Mrs. F.G. indulges me by buying mostly the bright coloured ones.  The summer weeks are already flying by, but it's a special time of year when we get days like this.  Out late last night, no time to post.

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The Old Hutchison Barn

We live in Hutchison's Corners, have I ever mentioned that?  We're met with a lot of puzzled looks if we mention that, but a few locals know where we mean.  It's named because a Bill Hutchison had a farm on the corner, with both the house and barn quite close to the road.

I remember the old barn itself; it blew down in a windstorm about 10-15 years ago, and has been a jumble of broken boards, beams and rubble ever since.  But the present owner is cleaning up the mess, so you can actually see the foundation.  What interests me is the pattern at the front and centre, where you can see the stonemason alternated diagonal lines of light and dark blocks of stone.

Here's a closer look though I should have moved the old door.  The light coloured blocks are limestone, and the dark are various sorts of much harder igneous or metamorphic rocks.  This is one of only two barn foundations I've ever seen where there was such an effort to create a pattern with the stone.

It amazes me how the old travelling stonemasons could do this, cutting blocks into flat sides and right-angled corners.  It involved a lot of heat and iron wedges I think, but the corners they created on these old barns 150 years ago are truly amazing.

Just look at these enormous blocks, much too heavy for anyone to easily lift.  The darker blocks obviously have a lot of feldspar in them (the pinkish colour), but to think how they could be cut into flat-sided rectangular blocks just boggles my imagination.

They weren't nearly as careful with the other sides and back of the barn, using any boulders they could find, but still cutting them roughly flat on one side and creating square corners where windows and doors are, and at the outer corners.  Virginia Creeper is crawling all over the walls.

The inside walls provide an even more motley pattern, with rocks from small to large used where they would fit, along with a lot of mortar.

Another inside corner, where the mortar is starting to fall away.  I was attracted to this barn foundation because of that unique diagonal pattern of blocks on the front, so I stopped by and talked to the owner when I saw him working outside to ask if I could come over and take some pictures.  I think he feels that cleaning up the old foundation could be a selling point for the property once he decides to sell.  

It's a large old bank barn, so you can stand on the bank at one end and look down on the walls.  The bank provided vehicle access to the loft for unloading hay.  Imagine a garden inside this foundation - that would be Mrs. F.G.'s dream!

There's also an old driveshed that avoided the windstorm and is still in use.  It was a perfect day to go over and take a close look at the old Hutchison barn foundation.

More Butterflies

I shared a few butterfly species last week; here are a few more.  There's about a month while first the Ninebark is in bloom, and then the Valerian comes into bloom, fragrant as well as good food for bees, butterflies and moths.  The more common butterflies are simply fluttering around it all the time.

The striking White Admiral.  We've had more than one of these around the garden for two or three weeks.

This is the Valerian that seems to attract the butterflies so much.  A tall plant, and a volunteer in the garden, entirely arising from last year's seed, it's so fragrant it has been used for perfume in the past.

I think this is an Eight-spotted Forester moth on a Ninebark blossom.  I only got one shot of it; thank goodness it was in focus!

And this is the Virginia Ctenucha moth, which arrives in a swarm and flutters all over the garden, easily more than a dozen of them all the time.

And this is a great picture (for me) of a Viceroy.  It mimics the slightly larger Monarch, but has an extra black line across the hind wing.

We had a pair of them feeding on the Ninebark one day, though I never did get a good picture of the two of them together.

And not just in the garden, but all over the property, even on the gravel driveway, we have dozens of these tiny skippers that appear to have four wings.  It matches pictures I've seen of the European Skipper.

In last week's post on butterflies, I showed our Ninebark shrub and its flowers.  This is the Valerian that has invaded our garden and sprung up between all the other flowers, so beloved by the butterflies.  It makes the garden look like a jungle for a month, but we let it grow for those butterflies.

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A Calm Day on the Bay

Unlike yesterday's photos, when we had stopped by for a walk in Memorial Park the day before, the bay was calm.  It was warm, and families were camped in the park and enjoying the beach.  Meantime, I noticed the sky as much as the water.

Memorial Park was given to the town of Meaford I understand, by a landowning family who still have a shoreline cottage nearby.  It's mainly a campground, including sites right on the water, a rarity for a municipal campground.

It's got one of those 'big red Meaford chairs'.

Part of the beach is rocky, but the east part is sandy, and a very nice day use area.

A fair number of people, but not a lot for July 7th, on a warm sunny day!

Far to the west you can see the big Niagara Escarpment headland that marks the Meaford Tank Range, more correctly labelled the Central Area Land Forces Training Centre for the Canadian army - or is it now the 4th Canadian Division Training Centre?  I think they've changed the name again.  In front of that is Meaford's harbour, with all the sailboat masts and the small lighthouse.

Another beautiful day on the bay!

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Georgian Bay Waves

Out late on a local garden tour tonight, so here are some quick pictures from Georgian Bay the other day.  We stopped by on the weekend, to drop off more books at the Net Shed, a book donation/purchase operation run by volunteer friends of the Meaford Library.  I'm working really hard at downsizing my library!

It was a stunning deep blue sky, but the nearshore water was muddy from the Bighead River which enters the bay just to the right.

There was a really sharp line between the muddy water of the river and the deep blue water of the bay.  And I caught a Cormorant flying by just as I took the picture.

Remarkably, it was in pretty good focus to allow this heavily cropped picture.

The waves were really rolling in on the rocks, so I stood there and tried to capture the splashes.

My last picture made me realize how many sailboats were out there once I got the image on the computer screen.  I'm going out to chase a few more pictures before giving you another crops update.