Yard Pictures: Purple-and-White Garden

[ysabetwordsmith]

I took some pictures of my yard today.


This is the purple-and-white garden.


This allium is blooming lavender. I love these things because they're so pretty and herbivores won't eat them. I think these are from the 2 Months of Alliums Mixture. There was a blue one blooming earlier but it's done by now.


This one is pink. Those tiny green dots in the flowers are seedpods beginning to form. Usually my ornamental alliums set a lot of seed.


This one is hot pink.


A bumblebee is visiting these white alliums. She was very enthusiastic about attending to each one of the many tiny flowers. :D This is the first time I managed to photograph a bumblebee this year -- the earlier ones refused to settle anywhere. Alliums are great for photographing insects because they have all those flowers in one place. I'm always happy to see wildlife enjoying my garden. \o/



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Comments

[chestnut_pod]

Allium flowers are so cool!

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

They have fascinating shapes. A majority seem to be pom-poms like this. Some are flat, some are open spires, and a few have bizarre spidery tendrils going everywhere. If you're a fan of structural flowers, alliums are good for that.

[pensnest]

I have a bunch of purple alliums now—last year each bulb produced one *big* pompom, but this time there are clusters of smaller ones. I'm guessing the bulbs have split? They are fun flowers. I kept three big dried ones from last year because of the wonderful drama of the dried heads.

Hmm ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

That's probably what happened. I was intrigued to know that some alliums, like elephant garlic, form a single huge bulb first and then in a later season develop into cloves. If that's the case, then you should be able to divide by cloves, spread them out, and get big blooms again later.

Re: Hmm ...

[pensnest]

I hope so! When there are new flower beds I shall see whether the alliums will divide. There will be quite a lot of expensive planting, and saving money on alliums will be good.

Re: Hmm ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yeah, the smaller alliums are affordable, but the bigger ones are really expensive.

[cmcmck]

Stunning!

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith]

When I look at the pictures, often I think the yard looks messy. But wildlife loves a messy yard, and I'd rather have bees humping my blossoms than have a yard that looks like a magazine cover.

[shirebound]

She was very enthusiastic about attending to each one of the many tiny flowers.

So wonderful!

[jazzyjj]

Thanks for sharing these. The image descriptions came through nicely with my screen reader. Regarding the garden out back in my building, it's doing pretty well. A neighbor and I were out there yesterday and he transplanted some things. I'm still pretty rusty when it comes to taking photos using my iPhone, but perhaps one of my neighbors can help me and I can post at least one of them here for all to see.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Thanks for sharing these. The image descriptions came through nicely with my screen reader. <<

Yay!

>> Regarding the garden out back in my building, it's doing pretty well. A neighbor and I were out there yesterday and he transplanted some things. <<

That's good to hear.

>>I'm still pretty rusty when it comes to taking photos using my iPhone, but perhaps one of my neighbors can help me and I can post at least one of them here for all to see.<<

It's worth a try.

[yourlibrarian]

Pretty!

And yes, I have another post I could make but I didn't realize that the community would take the tag. Normally if you try to add a tag that isn't already canonized in a community it doesn't post any of your tags, so I haven't been trying.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>And yes, I have another post I could make <<

Yay!

>> but I didn't realize that the community would take the tag.<<

It says in the profile that tagging is open to all members here. Usually they don't mention that.

>> Normally if you try to add a tag that isn't already canonized in a community it doesn't post any of your tags, so I haven't been trying.<<

I haven't seen that happen, it usually just omits that one tag.

Re: Thoughts

[yourlibrarian]

It's happened to me several times when I've posted to recs so I hadn't thought of adding to most communities. (I didn't happen to have a recs set ready anyway, or I know the tag could have been added at recthething)

[semielliptical]

I love the different colors of your alliums!

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's a very diverse collection. Alliums bloom in white, yellow, blue, purple, pink, and almost-red.

[pameladean]

These are lovely. I like allium flowers so much that I have never yet harvested any garlic or onions when I planted them. And these are much fancier than garlic and onion flowers, amazing though those are.

I've got some giant globe alliums in purple and some cerulean ones, smaller. They didn't come up at all for a decade and suddenly have decided to revisit the upper world. The color is amazing, but I feel they are very elfish uncertain plants overall.

Thanks for the photos.

P.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>I like allium flowers so much that I have never yet harvested any garlic or onions when I planted them.<<

I just cut the leaves off the garlic chives and regular chives, and they grow right back. Same works with many other alliums.

>>I've got some giant globe alliums in purple and some cerulean ones, smaller.<<

Those sound pretty.

>> They didn't come up at all for a decade and suddenly have decided to revisit the upper world. The color is amazing, but I feel they are very elfish uncertain plants overall.<<

That matches my observations. :D