About Me
- Pamela Clare
- I grew up in Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, then lived in Denmark and traveled throughout Europe before coming back to Colorado. I have two adult sons, whom I cherish. I started my writing career as a columnist and investigative reporter and eventually became the first woman editor of two different papers. Along the way, my team and I won numerous state and several national awards, including the National Journalism Award for Public Service. In 2011, I was awarded the Keeper of the Flame Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism. Now I write historical romance and contemporary romantic suspense.
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Sunday, May 31, 2009
A stroll through my garden
We're getting to the time of year where the "What's blooming now?" feature on the left column here won't be enough to show you what's happening in my flower garden. I'm a lover of flowers, particularly the flowers I've chosen to grow in my garden — antique English roses, Rocky Mountain wildflowers, irises, lavender, delphiniums and so on. Because I'm such an "olfactory" person — I have a very sensitive nose — everything must have a smell. And when it's all in bloom, the scents mix together in the sunlight and I get drunk just standing on my own porch sniffing.
I took a quick stroll this morning and snapped some photos of what's blooming right this very second.
Stef, the peonies above are dedicated to you. They're such a lovely rich, red color, which is a perfect contrast to their deep green foliage. They just started blooming yesterday.
White iris is one of my very favorite scents. I could stand there all day with my nose in the blossoms, huffing like an addict. When Benjy was little he saw these from a very boyish point of view as the dust and light and fire from an explosion. (Hey, I'm not a boy. Don't ask me.) He started calling them "flak explosions" when he was about eight or nine. So that's what we still call them. LOL! Nice explosion, huh?
Sage is sacred to Native people here, and I grow a ton of it. White sage is really what I wish I grew, because it's the preferred form of sage for smudging and praying, but I love these tiny purple blossoms. This plant is perhaps five feet across and six feet long. It stands about two feet high. And when it's in full bloom, it seems to buzz from all the bees.
The dry climate and heat are great for growing California poppies. I love the rich orange color of these tiny flowers. They're just starting to pop, and they'll bloom all summer, though they get rather leggy by August.
Penstemon is a Rocky Mountain wildflower. It has slowly been spreading through one part of the garden, and I'm encouraging it. You can see the park-like green of my lawn in the background. It won't stay that way. It's too hot and dry here in the summer. Also, I think you can catch just a glimpse of the first Stelle del Oro daylily to bloom this year in the background.
Near the street I have irises of mixed colors behind a very tiny, dainty flower called Snow in Summer, which somehow defies the direct sun to bloom most of the summer. I just love it.
The first rose to bloom this year is Blanc Double de Couvert, a lovely scented rose with a bright white double blossom. It survived this past winter, which combined unusual extremes of heat and cold and dryness, better than the other roses, which all died back to the ground. Our climbing rose, which was 12 feet tall and last year must have had a thousand white roses on it also died back to the ground. Lamentation! It's only about two feet tall and has maybe forty buds right now.
I'm now more than two-thirds done with Naked Edge and hope to have another chapter done before I go to bed tonight. That puts me on target for finishing by mid-July and hopefully holding on to an early 2010 pub date.
Have a lovely spring day, everyone!
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16 comments:
I LOVE the flowers, Pamela! Gorgeous. Unfotunately, my yard is about the size of a shoebox, lol, so I don't have the luxury. But I'll live it through your pics ;)
Oh thank you Pamela for the peonies (my favorite!) they are gorgeous! As is your garden. It must take a lot of time to take care of it but given the results, it's so worth it!
stef
Hi, Barbara — Thanks so much! I love them, too! You'd be surprised what you can grow in a shoebox. LOL!
We're growing organic veggies in between the flowers this year. So there will be green beans next to my butterfly blue delphinium and broccoli in among the hollyhocks, not to mention zucchini by the daylilies and summer squash next to the rose bushes. It's an experiment. We have an entire side yard on the south side of the house that was a veggie garden before I started writing. We're thinking of putting it into use again to grow what we eat the most.
Hi, Stef — I was hoping you pop in and see these! I took two shots of the peonies thinking of you. Benjy is my garden angel. I taught him how to garden when he was little. I bought him his own little shovel and called him my "garden buddy." Now I'm the garden buddy. He gets out there and handles the weeds and the watering, while I bring him ice water. LOL! He knows how much I love flowers.
I'm obsessive!
LOVELY!! My yard is currently a riot of colors from the late blooming tulips & rhodedendran (several plants) as well as the lilacs that are coming over from the neighbor's yard. The wisteria is just starting to show it's color as well.
My jasmine didn't survive the winter, which I'm heartbroken about. I'll get that replaced eventually. At the moment Sammy & I are focusing on our herbs & veggies. Sammy was thrilled to discover some green strawberries on his strawberry bushes this morning. *G* And I just snipped some cilantro to make some pico de gallo & a taco salad. YUM.
okay. I am now officialy REALLY jealous of your garden ms. Clare. The flowers are breathtaking!I especially love the white iris and the sage.They're just really beautiful!wish our house has a graden like that.LOL!i'll just stick with our dining room centerpiece! ^-^
Lovely pics, Pamela. What gorgeous peonies! I have an old white Festiva Maxima we dug from my grandmother's garden, and the fragrance is out of this world. Also a pink Sarah Bernhardt and another darker pink, but the white smells best. They're two or three weeks away yet. No roses for another month. Sigh!
Absolutely beautiful! I love them all! I'm surprised that everyone doesn't stop at your house just to smell the flowers. LOL
Hi, Ronlyn — Your yard sounds so lovely! Those are largely flowers that won't grow here. Too dry, too cold, too hot. I love, love, love jasmine, so I'm so sorry that it died! But YUM on the cilantro. We just started that. We've got some green strawberries, too, but I suspect the squirrels will get them before we do. Fuzzy little berry munchers! We grow several things just for birds and squirrels, it seems. Raspberries, strawberries and some berry I don't know what it is that the robins love.
Hi, Ronna — Thanks so much! Wait till my roses bloom. There are a few weeks in June where almost every plant in the garden is blooming. I go nuts. LOL! And dining room center pieces can be really nice, too. :-)
Hi, Linda — You should post some photos of your flowers on the Yahoo site. You're a member, right? I'm sure everyone would love to see them. I only have the three red peony bushes, and I don't even know what varietal they are. I've seen pink peonies and I would love to have some! One of these days...
Hi, Debbie — Thanks! We do get a fair number of people stopping by or just plain stopping when they're on walks. If I'm outside, they almost always say something to me. Some of them have said the look forward to watching my garden every year, which makes me feel really good.
Of course, Benjy is the muscle behind it. I got him a T-shirt once that says, "Real Men Grow Roses." LOL!
Ms Clare, this is off-topic here, but pertains your post on piracy.
Have you seen this at telereads?
Perhaps it's worth a shot?
Pamela, the flowers are BEAUTIFUL! I tend to kill most of what I try to grow but have been making the extra effort because the hotel where I work (and live) has to look nice always!. We had a close call with aphids but a friend gave me a great tip on how to deal with them, I was so surprised it really worked! So the roses are saved, yea. But the gardenias, I am sad to say, didn't make it, I am pretty sure I know what I did wrong but...too late for them.
I tried a little herb garden out back and something ate my chives! They were mowed down like a weed eater got them.
I don't know about Colorado but we have these very large black grasshoppers called black lubbers that were breeding like crazy here last year. The fruits of their labor are making an appearance already. I was hoping all the rain we had would put them off.
Pamela, I did post an album of garden pictures on the Yahoo site - check them out.
Thanks for the link, Azteclady! And nice to see you here. I'll check the link out this evening.
Hi, Eugenia — EW! Large black grasshoppers? I'm used to our regular old sized green ones, but what you're describing gives me the creeps! We deal with aphids using lady bugs, but we don't have that much of an aphid problem. Colorado's full sunlight is very discouraging for them. I'm glad your roses were saved. Too bad about the gardenias, though. Those don't grow here. Sadly!
Hi, Linda A — Your photos were wonderful! Thanks for sharing those! Your garden is truly beautiful, and the peonies are incredible! That delphinium looks like the same one I like so much. Is it King Arthur? I think you must get more moisture than we get. Lovely!!!
Wow wow, what a gorgeous garden mix you have there! I'm so jealous! I love flowers but I can't grow anything for the life of me. I even killed a cactus once :(...and the ironic thing is, my ethnic name means "flowers"!
Benjy and I were just talking about your blog so I just popped in to see what was new - the garden looks beautiful!! My favorite is still the Blanc Double de Couvert, though, because I got to smell it. :) So glad to hear the writing is going well!
Hi again Pamela, I'm not sure about the delphinium - it was part of a mixed lot I bought a few years ago. We do get a lot of moisture here, and our yard is quite shady, which makes growing some things a challenge. Still, I wouldn't trade the woods for anything - I'm so glad we didn't lose them in the fire last month. Now if the deer would only stop eating our hostas!
Hi, Tabitha — One of my favorite quotes is: "There is still time to be what you might have been." If you start slowly, you can probably garden like a pro. I killed a cactus once, too. Yep. LOL!
Hi, Lucy — So nice to hear from you! Doesn't it have a pretty rose smell? I wish you were going to be here to see the rest of the rose garden bloom!
Hi, Linda — The hostas are lovely! You've done an amazing job of contrasting foliage. It looks like something out of a gardening magazine. I know shade is challenging — I actually have almost no shade — but the results are so lush and lovely. And the forest... I'm so glad it didn't burn either! I loved your photos of the forest in the fall. Beautiful!