Summer delights

I've been taking too many photos and posting too few. Playing catch-up now. These are flowers from my garden, a friend's garden, and across the fence in an neighbour's yard.

A hibiscus with a bee hiding inside.

Pink hollyhock. With a masking tape bandage, where the wind bent the stalk.

Scarlet runner beans. Always a delight.

A yellow dahlia, with a few bugs.

The back side of a dahlia.

And a cheerful stand of dahlias.

White sweet pea, with a hint of pink.

So red! I like the way the runner has grabbed onto a spider web for support.

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Una serie de flores, algunas de mi jardín, otras del jardín de una amiga, otras vistas en el jardín de una vecina.

1. Flor de Jamaica, Hibiscus spp. Con una abeja escondida en el centro.
2. Malva loca. Con una venda de cinta de pintor porque se dobló el tallo.
3. Las flores de ejote (judías) "escarlata".
4. Dalia amarilla con unos bichitos.
5. Dalia vista desde abajo.
6. Un grupo de dalias muy alegres.
7. Guisantes de olor. Una flor blanca.
8. Y una roja. Me gusta como el estolón se agarró a una telaraña para sostenerse.

Pink. Just pink.

 So pink ...

Cosmos and bud.

Hollyhock by the staircase. And buds.

A small pink rose. Planted last year; loaded with blooms now.

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Flores color de rosa en mi jardín:

Cosmos, con botón, Alcea, también con botones, y una rosa pequeña. Sembramos este rosal hace un año, y ahora está cubierto de una multitud de flores.

Hope it lasts

It's raining! In summer, that's always a reason to celebrate, but especially now, in fire season, with fires raging all across BC.

My hollyhocks are happy, too.

Ahhhh!

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¡Está lloviendo! En el verano siempre nos alegra la lluvia, pero aun más en esta temporada de incendios forestales, con incendios en gran parte de la provincia.

También están felices mis Alceas roseas.

Turtle under a blanket

Turtles live for years and years. Even clay ones. This one has inhabited my gardens for over 20 years, providing cover for slugs and sowbugs, and support for baby plants. (For the slugs to eat, as often as not.)

The snow is warm, he says; it keeps the wind off.

The dry stalks are last fall's nasturtiums. And the green leaves in back are next spring's hollyhock, hoping for a warm winter.

Intermission

Hollyhocks and petunias

And blue skies.

Seeds for next year coming along nicely.

And rusty birds.

A small bright spot between the doom and gloom of this week's news.

Weather report and a smart hollyhock

They call it "active weather". Here in BC, that means rain; pouring, pounding, piercing rain. Horizontal rain, at times, as the wind picks up. New gullies carving themselves out in driveways, the streets littered with branches and pine cones. Flattened gardens, tossing boats in the harbour, mud slides, roaring creeks bearing fresh logs. In flood areas, such as Bella Coola, residents are battening down, emptying basements, gassing up the generators.

(I remember my mother, years and years ago, tying the canoe to the front porch, and ferrying all the neighbourhood kids to the bottom of the school hill, in Tahsis.)

With this round of October storms, so far, we've been lucky here in Campbell River; the Lower Mainland has seen many large trees uprooted, power outages, and one death. We've just had heavy rain, but they're warning us of winds gusting to 80 km/hr tomorrow.

I've got my candles ready, and enough food cooked for three days, ready to eat cold, if the power goes out. The trees in the front yard have been pruned and the debris cleared away yesterday morning; we're prepared.

So is my tall hollyhock. I went out this afternoon to look at the garden; most of the plants are lying on the lawn or in the mud. But the hollyhock, taller than I am and planted on an upper level, bent almost double and ducked underneath the roof of the carport.

It's not raining here. A lucky spider came along for the ride. (On the leaf between the two buds.)

If possible, I'll get out tomorrow and take weather photos.

Purple wall

I'm pretty sure this wall was beige and boring the last time we saw it. Now look at it!

Hollyhocks, live and dead.

The wall faces a pass-through from Beach Grove, Tsawwassen to Boundary Bay beach. What little landscaping there is has been swallowed up by weeds and grasses. But a few flowers soldier bravely on.

Unidentified, so far. (Acanthus. Thanks, Earl Cootie!)

This plant looks familiar, but I can't put a name to it. The flowers bloomed along a tall stem, like foxgloves. Now each dried flower holds a seed pod about the size and shape of an acorn, but with the texture and colour of a horse chestnut. I brought two home as an aid to identification, and left them on the kitchen table while I busied myself with supper preparation. I was alone, so I was startled to hear a loud click behind me. One of the seed pods had popped itself open and thrown a seed halfway across the room.

The seed was the same glossy brown, but otherwise like a misshapen, hard, dried pea. A couple of hours later, the second pod went. Pop! and the seed ended up in the living room.

The leaves are long, with many irregular, alternate, sharp lobes.

Back to the purples:

All the remaining hollyhocks were in deep reds and royal purples.

Crayola colours; Cerise to Amethyst to Grape.*

Grove snail with distant purple wall.

*For Clytie; there's a purple heart here.