Oklahombres

ne other Camellia graces our east flower bed not far from where our tea plant is located. This east bed is one of our favorites because it gets good sun all morning and is sheltered by the harsher afternoon sun. Being up next to the house, extra warmth is provided in winter. This last feature is important to all in the genus Camellia, as most are just barely hardy this far north. A couple of decades ago extensive Camellia hybridization programs were producing varieties that were more cold hardy. One USDA project, headed by Dr. David Ackerman gave us a series of Camellia hybrids, named the “Winter” series. Each selection has the word “Winter” in its name. The one we chose for our landscape was the bright pink variety “Winter’s Star”.

My wife was out Wednesday shooting the lovely fall colors around our place, and noticed the first open bloom of our “Winter’s Star”. We hope you like it. It is not a large shrub, only about 30 inches all around. It should grow a bit larger with time. It will bloom well into November, provided there’s no early winter blast. Any freezing temps overnight will only sully the open or about-to-open blooms; the tight blooms will go ahead and open up on subsequent days.

Have a good weekend, and I hope to see you in church on Sunday.

nder our kitchen window grows one of the darkest green shrubs in our landscape. Evergreen and trouble-free, and slightly informal, it needs no special care, and other than nipping back a stray sprout now and again, it has never needed pruning in all of its dozen or so years of gracing it little niche in our world. Perhaps my wife’s favorite shrub, Camellia sinensis is essential here. I believe it has reached its mature height at about six feet, maybe a little bit more. Its top-most branches just barely wave around the bottom of our kitchen-sink window.

Every morning that little wave reminds us it’s tea time. We wouldn’t even think of trying to harvest the leaves for making that tea. You cannot imagine what intense labor is required, the time involved in curing and processing, and how many tea plants are required to make it all happen. That doesn’t even take into consideration the soil type and climate required to make a great cup of black tea. Various regions in India and China are where tea mainly comes from. The whole enterprise, from harvesting to processing, is done by hand labor. If it were easy, everybody would be growing it. We love it for its dark evergreen foliage, and an extended bloom period in the fall. Notice in this first pic the unopened buds. This soldier will bloom for another two or three weeks, and it has already been blooming for almost a month. A frost toward the end of October may spoil a few blossoms, but any unopened flowers will go ahead and provide perfect blossoms after it warms back up in a day or two.

Our tea plant has been blooming since mid September, and as you can see by the pics, the honey bees have been having a field day. As the bees gather nectar, their hind legs are picking up pollen as they tromp around the anthers. Officially white, the blossoms are largely hidden by the forest of yellow pollen-laden anthers. Notice in this last pic how much pollen this greedy gut has gathered around his hind legs. I’m sure he had exceeded his DOT weight limits, as he was flying low with his legs dangling down when he flew away. He wasn’t the only one. Even though it was—and has been for some days—a cold and cloudy day, this tea plant was a buzz with honey bees, all in a frenzy to stock up against the soon-to-arrive winter.

I am so very sorry I missed last week’s Friday Photo. Beside the fact that my main computer was in the shop getting a new keyboard (some of the keyssss kkkept sttticking) and track pad (it’s hard to mimic that in a similar fashion), it was a very busy week. My wife had shot some good ones, and maybe I’ll post a “missing episode” some day if I get the chance. In the mean time, now is the time to make plans to get out in the yard this week end. I looks like the weather is going to finally break around here. Have a good weekend. Live in light of His return, and I hope to see you in church Sunday.

don’t know what the name means, but “glossy abelia” sounds so beautiful that the plant just has to match, and it does. As the modifier implies, this abelia, Abelia x grandiflora, is indeed glossy. The tiny one-inch by half inch spearhead-shaped leaves are glossy dark green in summer, turning almost dark copper by fall. Abelia is evergreen, but just barely. Harsh winters will make you wish it would shed those tattered old leaves for bright new ones, and it usually does. Glossy abelia is a moderate growing shrub, reaching twelve feet high by six feet across in six or seven years. We have had these two specimens quite awhile, but we moved them to this present location a couple of years ago, so they have been trimmed back heavily. They trim up into hedges quite well, and like full sun to light shade.

The light-pink blossoms of glossy abelia are small, but the cumulative effect set off by the slick green foliage and copper calices of previous blooms makes it quite showy from mid summer until frost. You may note a resemblance of the blossoms to the blossoms of beautybush, Kolkwitzia amabilis, which was featured a while back on this site. They are both belong to the Caprifoliaceae family, which is made up primarily by the numerous honeysuckle species.

Enjoy a great weekend. As the growing season winds down there is much that needs to be done outside, so get to it. I hope to see you Sunday, as God’s people gather to worship Him.

ell, you may remember that I promised “wildlife” with this week’s Friday Floral. I wasn’t able to pull it off, as my intended subjects were occupied elsewhere. I’m not referring to spiders—as the title above might lead you to wrongly guess—but to the bright yellow butterflies that work over every red blossom in sight around this time of year. They appear to be enamored currently with the cardinal vine climbing the fence by the garage. How about a dead leaf?

The spider lily, like the surprise lily featured back in August, is in the genus Lycoris, and emerges seemingly out of nowhere. Unlike the surprise lily, however, the spider lily produces foliage shortly after the blooms fade and die.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but the surprise lily produces its broad amaryllis-like foliage in the spring, which dies away by mid summer. The foliage of the spider lily is darker green, and much more narrow, resembling the foliage of liriope. You can see last year’s foliage in some of the pictures making a nice mulch at the base of the flower stalks.

The spider lily, Lycoris radiata is also known by the common name “hurricane lily,” as it arises out of nowhere just as hurricane season begins in earnest. Most of these photos were taken by my wife on Tuesday. She’s not keen on all the settings, but if you leave the camera on auto, she has a keen eye for composition and consistently captures more interesting shots than I. Enjoy, and don’t forget to click on the images to get a larger picture.

Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you in church Sunday.

alvation can have many meanings. One might be saved from embarrassment or saved from starvation. One could be “saved by the bell” or saved by God. To be in good health is to be saved from sickness. Well, I’ll quit beating around the bush. This weeks picks are all of beautiful flowers in the genus Salvia, and salvia in Latin means to be well. Some species in the genus are reputed to have medicinal qualities. Some have culinary qualities. Almost all in the genus have quite a distinct aroma. All in the genus have that snapdragon look. You know, the bottom part of the bloom hangs down, looking like a monster getting ready to take a huge bite out of . . . a leaf or something.

Many plants make up this large genus, including garden sage and the annual red salvia. There are many perennial species too. The specimens in our landscape have been blooming steadily all summer long, and will continue until frost. These are all perfectly hardy here in zone 6b, but the trick to keeping them over winter is to refrain from trimming them back after the foliage dies back. Wait to do your trimming—and they will need it—until the spring.

I promise, next week we will get back to lilies. I have some lined out that you will think are plastic, but believe me, they are real. If all goes well, there will be some wildlife in the scenery as well. Stay tuned. Don’t forget that you can click on each individual photo to get a much larger image. Enjoy, and see you Sunday.

es, I know. This is Saturday. Well officially, but I haven’t gone to bed yet so this is your Friday Photo. You figure it out. Maybe I’ll tell you about it at a later date.

et’s take a break this week from lilies.  I still have a few to show you, but a pattern break is in order. I’ve put this blossom off a couple of weeks, and one more week will be too late.

The only thing better than blossoms in the landscape is blossoms connected to something edible, even if you don’t eat it. This week’s pics are just that. A solid clump of garlic chives anchor one corner of our little kitchen garden. This eighteen-inch high herb has resided there for over a dozen years, undisturbed, growing slowly. It does tend to scatter seeds around, attempting to start colonies outside its original sphere, but the missus and I won’t allow it.

Garlic chives are the corresponding bookend to regular chives. Your common garden chive—the kind you chop fine and sprinkle over a lavishly-buttered baked potato—is a spring beauty, and the blossoms are even edible. The purple pom-poms can be broken up and sprinkled over a tossed salad to add color while lending a hint of, well, chives. The foliage is tubular, and the clump multiplies by bulb offsets. Even if you only have room for a couple of tomato plants, you need to squeeze in a clump of chives somewhere. I think we posted a shot of chives earlier this year. Check the gallery out and see for yourselves.

Garlic chives are just like the regular chives, but different. They bloom in late summer, not spring. As far as I know, the blossoms are edible, but I don’t know if they are prized as such. The blossoms, though quite beautiful, are too large and open to be considered pom-poms, and the foliage is flat, not tubular. The clumps enlarge by way of bulb offsets, but their main means of escape, as I have already mentioned, is that they readily multiply via seeds randomly scattered in the early fall. You really should make room somewhere for this clump too, but for the life of me we almost never use garlic chives. That is what garlic is for, for heaven’s sake. I guess what I am trying to say is that we grow it because it’s a tidy little garden herb that sports a mass of beautiful white blossoms in late summer when the rest of the vegetable garden is a bit drab. And the bees love them too.

Enjoy God’s beauty outside this weekend. Dig in the dirt, pull a few weeds, and by all means, plant something. See you Sunday.

reamy-white clouds of Autumn clematis have emerged atop many road-side trees in the last few days. They look nice out there, but I wouldn’t want them climbing my trees. They don’t do any real damage, but they look best from a distance, in somebody else’s trees.

In keeping with the lily motif, here are a couple more of our rain lily varieties. I couldn’t decide which one to pick for this week’s photo, so I decided to show you both. First pink, with Zephyranthes ‘Grandjax’, a hybrid between the heirloom standard Z. grandiflora, and another hybrid Z. ‘Ajax’. Starting with one bulb a dozen years ago, this pink beauty is now a solid bed two feet deep and fifteen feet long. It primarily multiplies by way of bulb offsets, but a few seedlings show up in odd places. I have dug them up only a few times to re-space the bulbs. The foliage is flat and thick, and the three-inch diameter flowers rise only slightly higher. And yes, they are like all rain lilies, in that they bloom like gangbusters just after a summer shower. I was only able to find these two blooms in the border on Tuesday since it hasn’t rained in almost a week.

This next little darling is one of my favorites, Zephyranthes reginae, Valles yellow rain lily. Purchased about the same time as ‘Grandjax’, this yellow rain lily has been much slower to multiply. This is mostly due to the fact that it multiplies from seed, not bulb divisions. Any time I see the seed capsules about to burst open atop the old flower stalk, I break them open and scatter the seed in open ground and scratch the dirt a bit. After the same passage of time, I have a clump about one foot by two. The foliage is tubular and far more sparse than ‘Grandjax’. The mass effect of this clump is not quite as appealing as the other, but I just love the dainty light-yellow blossom which are only slightly smaller than their pink cousin. The bulbs need to be planted beneath a carpet of some kind of low-growing ground cover to improve the appearance, but we haven’t found anything suitable. Any suggestions?

Have a good weekend. Get out and enjoy the last month of summer. As the days slowly begin to cool down, it becomes a bit more fun to be out in the yard, and there are plenty of projects out there. Don’t forget to be thankful to God. See you in Church on Sunday.

have never seen rain like this in August. Most years in Oklahoma you need a stick of dynamite to dig a hole in the ground when August rolls around. It has always been a bitter-sweet affair: wishing the drought and humid heat would go away, but realizing that means autumn, and then winter is just around the bend. Not my favorite season, whine-ter. I know that there is still one more week left in this month, but except for a couple of days at the beginning, this has been one of the most pleasant Augusts I can remember.

Summer plus rain always means one thing around this writer’s lodging: rainlilies, Zephyranthes sp. We have seven species/varieties here, but there are dozens more, ranging from pure white to peach and deep pink. This week’s pic. is of one of our smaller rainlilies, the fairy lily, Zephyranthes candida. The rush-like foliage tends to burn a bit on the tips by this time of year, but I think it is from a rust (fungus) rather than from heat/moisture stress. The fairy lily usually doesn’t bloom until late July or early August in this area, but continues until late into the fall. My wife took this picture early in the week after it rained. Yes, that is why they, as a group, are called rainlilies. The day after a rain they send out a battalion of blossoms, lasting only a day or two, and yes, you can trick them into blooming by watering them the day before you plan to have guests over for dinner.

If you know your Latin and Roman mythology, you will know that Zephyr was the god of the west wind, thus a zephyr is a gentle westerly breeze. The slightest wisp of wind will send these delicate blooms dancing. The species name, candida refers to color, namely white.

All of these semi-tropical bulbs can be grown here in Oklahoma, but not much further north. Most of them are native to South Texas and Mexico. They are super easy to grow, and some spread more quickly than others, needing to be dug and separated from time to time. A good way to meet new neighbors is to share some as you get acquainted across the back-yard fence. They are much more appealing than sharing huge zucchini.

Get out and enjoy God’s creation this weekend. See you Sunday as we meet to worship and adore Him.

uite a few of the blooms I have featured on Fridays recently have been called “lily” but have not been true lilies. Well, today you get the real deal. There are about 90 species in the genus Lilium, probably the most famous among them being the Easter lily, Lilium longiflorum. They typically show up as attractive potted plants around the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. The pure-white blossoms symbolize the spotless Lamb of God as no other can. A native of Japan, it naturally blooms around November. It has to be artifically “forced” to bloom at Easter.

This week’s pic is of a near relative of the Easter lily, the Formosa lily, Lilium formosanum, a native of, you guessed it, Taiwan. It was introduced to the west in the late nineteenth century. If all you saw was the bloom, you might think it to be that of an Easter lily, except that the trumpet is a bit longer. This is no mere potted plant, however; no escapee from the parlor, growing outside for the summer. This is the giraffe, the giant redwood, of the genus Lilium, in some cases reaching six or seven feet in height. Click on the picture and notice the foliage in the back ground. That is a six-foot holly hedge. Talk about back of the flower border; this one is made for it. In fact because the plant in bloom is so tall it really needs a fence  to grow up against for support in windy areas. Have you ever known Oklahoma not to be windy? It’s kind of like asking “Is the Pope Catholic?” I’m saying stake it to something if you don’t want to be sad.

Only requiring the afore mentioned support, the Formosa lily is very easy to grow, readily started from seed. If you start the seed early enough in the spring, it usually blooms the first season, an uncommon feat for most perennials. In fact, Formosa lily can become quite a nuisance if you don’t cut and remove the quite attractive seed pods before they split open in the fall, scattering the many seeds everywhere you don’t want them to sprout. In just one year the front of your flower border will look just like the back. Blooming a few weeks in July and August, the Formosa lily is a joy to see. Its Easter lily semblance always reminds me of our Savior.

I had to include this shot my wife took of our Don Juan climbing rose. She has fond memories of her grandparents back yard where the same variety of rambling climber engulfed their tool shed. Her grandfather was a avid fisherman, and from time to time he would bury a few fish skeletons at the base of his roses for fertilizer. They were magnificent. When it comes to care, roses are just the opposite of the Formosa lily. They need a fair amount of spraying to keep the bugs and fungi at bay, but it is well worth the trouble.

We had a much-welcomed shower Monday night, into Tuesday, so we will be spending our Saturday out mowing and weed-eating. Hopefully there will be time to enjoy the landscape some too, and rejoice in God’s creation. You get out and enjoy it too, and give thanks. See you Sunday at church.