Veggies and More Plants

I've saved the veggies and a few more plants for a second post, so you're not overwhelmed with pictures.  Things are coming along well all over the garden and we're ready to have some beans for supper, along with the carrots and beets which we're already enjoying.

This is our most interesting carrot!

Potatoes are doing great!  I've never seen purple potato flowers before.

   

My favourite dish of miniature Hostas, in part because it's on a little cart and so much closer to my eye level.  And there's just nothing subtle about the great big ones.  This seems very delicate.

The Hosta flowers are very pretty.

I think my favourite flower is the Cleome, so delicate and so unusual.

And the most unusual flower we have has to be the Bear's Breeches, almost pointy enough to be a big thistle, and with unusual hooded blooms.

Now you're gonna have to allow for three posts on 'My Friends the Weeds'.  If that's not of interest, come back in two weeks!

Back to the Garden - It's Daylily Season!

The garden is flourishing like never before.  And the Daylilies are the highlight right now.  But there are a lot of other interesting flowers in bloom, and veggies getting slowly ready for harvest.  Here's a quick look.

The other day Mrs. F.G. took my camera and went out to capture the garden in the morning sunlight.  I think this shot is particularly beautiful.

When I go out into the backyard the first flower that hits me in the eyes is this emerging Sunflower, still only half size and a little wonky, but unfolding fast.

Once I've descended to the patio and I'm sitting in the sun, it's the Lavender I notice, just at its best.

But it's the Daylilies that dominate at this time of year, and we currently have a range of them in bloom, from yellow through orange and red to deep purple.  Enjoy.

A Field of Flax!

 On our way home from Collingwood, we drove the back roads - for local readers that's up Scenic Canes Road, through Ravenna, north through Heathcote, back into Clarksburg and west on Frogs Hollow Road, a nice drive compared to Highway 26.  And we were immediately drawn to examining the fields of crops.

This field we noticed made us stop and do a double-take.  We pulled into a field access and got a picture.  It's a field of flax, the only crop I know with a blue flower.  It's widespread on the eastern prairies, but very unusual to see in southern Ontario.

Across the road was a field of winter wheat, now coming into seed.  It will be the first crop harvested, usually in August around here.

There were several fields of corn, 'knee-high' now and flourishing.  It probably won't be harvested until November.

And there were several bright yellow fields of Canola.  In the distance you can see the slopes of the Beaver Valley.

We stopped in Clarksburg when we saw a sign for ice cream, but we couldn't find anyone to sell it to us!  Meanwhile I sat and looked at this artistic moose outside an Art Gallery.  I wondered why they had chosen to feature a moose, as it's not found around here.  Maybe it's actually part of the art.

We're not immune from the spread of E-bikes and E-scooters either, though I've never seen an E-scooter around here.  I had an E-bike myself, really enjoyed it.

We headed west towards Frogs Hollow Road and passed this vineyard, the town of Thornbury's water tower and Georgian Bay in the distance.

We were tired by the time we drove down the hill into Meaford, and for once I got peanut butter and jam for supper, a favourite of mine which I suggest more often than is allowed!

Off to Collingwood

Friday we were off to have lunch with my cousin in Collingwood.  She has two friends in Wasaga Beach who she comes up to see each summer, and she's kind enough to contact us and try and arrange a lunch.  We met in Collingwood out on the pier where the old grain elevators stand.

We stopped at Subway on our way out of town and picked up some sandwiches.

But when Mrs. F.G. went to the door she encountered this!  The huge Rogers internet outage had left many places with no electronic banking services.  We had to ransack the car and our wallets to find enough money - we're just not used to carrying much cash after the pandemic.

Then it was Grandma Lambes to pick up some cookies.  Mrs. F.G. had packed some picnic veggies to go with these.

We drove east past Blue Mountain, no snow left on the ski runs now.

 

And through Craigleith where you get a brief look at Georgian Bay.  Notice the Nottawsaga Island Lighthouse? 

The pier turned out to be too windy and cold so we retreated inland and sat at these picnic tables outside the old train station which is now a museum.  I love the architecture of these old stations.

The main street of Collingwood is extra wide, wide enough for large patios outside restaurants, and angles parking.  But in the summer it's just too busy for words.

Blue Ridge Meats has their own mascot outside.

At the end of the street, as we turned left, you could see the inner harbour lighthouse straight ahead.  With my fancy new phone camera I was able to get a good telephoto shot through the traffic.

A Few More Garden Shots

Here are a few more of the flowers blooming in the garden.  They're not paired shots for comparison of the zoom, but still, these were enormously easier to take with the new phone camera, all while just sitting in my chair.

Our only sunflower starting to form its seedhead.  I just love the details of flowers as they emerge and develop, and the fuzziness on this is amazing up close.

A Blue Flag Iris.  This is the native plant, not quite as showy as the bearded Iris, but very pretty nonetheless.

One of our biggest Hostas starting to bloom, the first of many.  The first Hosta bloom marks the start of several weeks of flowers we'll see.

And one of our tiniest, growing in a pot, about ready to bloom.

We have two tiny rose bushes.  This yellow one blooms forever, well into the fall.

The other even tinier bush is a red rose.

There isn't quite the contrast or clarity I'd like, but as a test of the new camera, and taken from 6 feet away, I think it's amazing - the centre of a Coreopsis bloom.

This is another one where the contast isn't very good; it's often difficult to shoot white flowers like this Columbine, especially is full sun.

And finally, our first small Delphinium.  This is the first year we've had Delphinium, planted only a few weeks ago; it will grow larger in future years.

I've found two other advantages of the new phone camera.  First, I can now easily download all my photos to my desktop, right into Lightroom.  Previously I had to email individual photos to myself, and the downloading was tedious.  Secondly, I'm finding I can crop photos without losing quality as fast as it happened with my previous phone camera.  That's a big advantage to me.

On the other hand one limitation is the difficulty of holding the phone steady at very long zooms.  If I'm trying to take a photo at a long zoom, the flower may be waving all over the place.  I may have to do a test of the zoom at different lengths.  Of course the other limitation is getting used to the new operating system when moving from an apple phone to an android phone, but I'm finding the important stuff is easy to pick up.

A New Phone!

My current (until Saturday) iPhone has been giving me grief, freezing up for no reason when I'm using the camera.  So on Saturday we drove into Owen Sound and checked out phones.  I'd been reading the reviews and had my eye on the top-of-the-line Samsung, the Samsun Galaxy Ultra S22, which is reputed to have the better camera, considerably better than the corresponding iPhone 13.  Nothing that the clerk said changed that opinion.  In particular, Samsung has a much better telephoto/zoom function, something that would really help me sitting in a wheelchair and unable to get close to many subjects as I'd like to.

So I went out into the garden to test it, and here are the results.

Our biggest Clematis is just coming into bloom, and I always like close-ups.

And how's this?  These are both from 10 feet away!

Similarly for our Daisies, from about 6 feet.

We have a beautiful delicate Clematis with tiny white blooms that is just starting to flower, here growing up a trellis in front of the Sugar Maple tree.

At the last house this scrambled all over the old stone fencerow.

Petunias at the front door, from 30 feet.

And from sitting in my chair beside the flowers.

The flowerhead and two flowers on a succulent in the front garden.

The yellow Primrose taken from about 6 feet, through the living room window.  So far I'm pretty pleased with my choice.  It's an enormous benefit to be able to get close while not leaving my wheelchair, and I feel the pictures are sharper too, while downloading them into my desktop is enormously easier than the previous cumbersome process I was following.  More test photos tomorrow.