This Is As Good As It Is Going To Get This Year...

L'strife I've probably said it before, I love your garden, the red pathway lures you in, as I cannot follow you through it I have to be satisfied with a peep from afar..Relaxing and admiring sounds a good idea to me.

Lots of hot red what is the one that looks like a red floor mop.

All lovely, and I am especially interested to know what is the lilac flower in the 9th photo down, that looks like it has eyes in it like in peacock feathers.

Bjs that is Love Lies Bleeding. The Victorians were very modest morally and outward verbal social expressions of wanting or desire were taboo. They found away around it though sending nosegays to each other with each flower encoding an expression of emotion not accepted in the spoken word ....in short...they said it with flowers. There was even a code book printed (by an underground publisher) and in the book was a list of flowers and plants together with their particular meanings, most of it sexually related. This helped those arranging the nosegays in choosing the right flowers to get their point across without visably stepping over the morality line. The botanical name for this plant is Aramanthus c. Sadly it expresses the unrequited love, the hopeless love in the language of flowers......
Pamela Anne this is in one of my ponds and it is a water hyacinth in flower.

Ahh, thank you :) I thought it looked like it was in a pond. I'm hoping to do a little pond in my garden at some point. I think I know where it will go. So maybe I'll be able to find one of those for it. I think it's absolutely gorgeous :)

Think its on the banned list Pam, supposedly too invasice....

It is legal in the USA at least where I live. It is one of the fastest growing plants that I have ever seen. It cannot overwinter in my growing zone so I go to the pond supplier each spring and when I am asked how many do I want? I answer- Three plants, three will get me three hundred in a month. So why such a plant? Two reasons, they provide excellent shade and cover for the ponds that do have fish and they are super water filters. The pond in the picture is actually a pond filter that services a larger one. Water is pumped up from the lower situated large pond into the filter pond where the water hyacinth does the job of filtering the solid matter from the fish in the main pond
as well as processing the fish urine. The treated water then flows out of the higher placed filter pond down a stream with cascasdes back to the fish pond. At this time of year I take my grabber and lift about four plants out every day so my pond filter does not get choked and the same removal is done in any other pond that has this plant. The picked plants are then used for mulch. At the end of year just before my fish go dormant I cut the water flow off and pump the water out of the filter pond to empty it and scoop out the thick layer of fish sediment that had accumulated on the bottom to get a fresh start for next year. Oh, yes all frogs and tadpoles found in the muck are placed elsewhere. A well thought out arrangement on my part don't you think? If water hyacinth were edible, there would be no more hunger in the world. Alas, they can strangle the life out of a pond or lake, hence their control is of prime importance.

I think like a lot of things, people have just got rid willy-nilly and allowed it to get into our waterways L'strife, when I was reading the article there was another that I'm sure is already in my pond and has been for years, cannot think of the name though, its one of the oxygenating plants, keeps the water clear but oh goodness it soon clogs up the pond if not controlled...

That does indeed sound a very well thought out arrangement.

I didn't even know there was such a thing as a banned list! That is sad if it's on it, it's so beautiful. But I can understand it needing to be controlled.

Edit: I just looked it up, and found an article from 2011 that said in the UK it's not a problem, since it cannot survive our winters. But I also found another article that says the EU banned it in 2016. So I won't be able to get any.

The article also stated "Javanese sometimes cook and eat the green parts and inflorescence." So if you fancy trying it, you may find you have a tasty vegetable there you can use.

In some of the photos though not too discernible because it is now going out of flower is a noninvasive loosestrife which is legal to sell. There is an ordinance against the planting of bamboo in my area. I don't like to take photos of other people's private property and post them without their permission but I could show you a tragedy. Near where I live there is a homeowner who planted bambo in their back garden some years back. The whole area is now a solid stand of bambo which is now physicaly pressing up against that side of their house, the whole length of it. How in the world are they going to sell that property should they decide to do so let alone it has probably trashed its appraisal value for a mortgage.

I am experiencing the determination of bamboo for myself here. I have cut it at least by half and will cut more. Hopefully I can also diminish the root, as it is very fast growing and very strong too. I don't mind having it as it's very useful for cutting canes to use, but I can visualise how easily that happened to that property where you are. I definitely don't want to let it get any bigger than it is!

What is the flower in Image 9, please?

Shame about the ban on the invasive plant.

Hi Eirlys, it is a water hyacinth. I go into detail about why it is in my pond in a comment made which is seventh from the top in this thread.... It starts with "It is legal...." in the warmer climates this plant grows from 2 to 5 meters a day so get out of the way it'll run you over:) It was introduced into the USA at the 1884 Worlds Fair in New Orleans. It was a gift given out by the Japanese at their pavilion to the fair's visitors and in that heat it grew and became an utter disaster from then on.

Yes, I was thinking red is a theme here......I like red. :0)

Red is a major color in my garden because it attracts a large number of ruby throated hummingbirds. Though for the first time ever for these eyes this morning they were working on the light lavender colored hosta flowers. The hummers first appear the day my Monarda bloom. A three thousand mile migration and they appear to the day of blooming. When the Monarda flowers are spent my Lobelia cardinalis send up spikes of red and the hummers take the nectar from that to power their flight wing muscles. This year I came upon a packet of Cardinal flower vine seeds, an annual and it had covered my arbor and trellises amazingly quickly and the hummers love their red flowers too. These birds are now constantly in my garden and provide me and my visitors quite a show of air combat competition and well as chasing away bees and anything else that would come along to take their nectar away. When in an aggressive mood they do buzz (hum) quite loudly. The real heartsopper is when some of these flowers hang low over my ponds and to see a frog try to intercept one of these birds. They are very perceptive and quick and I have never seen a score on the part of the frog. So the more red the more I attract hummers to my garden.

I just love your garden, as long as there is no photos of anymore snakes lol. Not only all the wonderful plants but all the nick nacks that you have. See something different every time I look.

I'd love to see hummingbirds for real like that.

I am OK with snakes too - my daughter has a pet one (an albino corn snake) and I have a photo of myself with about a 10 foot long Indian python draped around me :D We get adders nearby here and maybe next spring I will get to go and see the babies, another thing I have wanted to do for years.

Be carefull Pamelaanne!
Linkslass, from your initial response to my blog...too bad we cannot yet post video. Then we could walk each other around our gardens. Perhaps in a separate GOYV (video) garden site made especially for that purpose we could post videos of the goings on and very important, how we do things in our garden with perhaps a 3 to 5 minute time limit on each individual video.
Jenlewis, yes I like to keep different and multiple focal points in the garden where each point makes the viewer stop and ponder or reflect a bit; similar to how one looks at paintings in an art gallery.

On the water Hyacinth; my sister was in China & in her pictures you could see huge areas of it on the waterways - plants on top of plants. It is a big problem over there.

Pamela, the banned list can be seen on DEFRA's site, it includes Rhodo's, Crocosmia, Rosa rugosa & others that you can still buy.
I wrote a blog about the latest invasive species just recently.

ty for all the info, Green Finger :)