Plants I'm Growing--First Blooms: Roses, Phlomis Lanata, Cistus "Sunset," Sulfur Buckwheat

New flowers coming fast and furious in the garden. First blooms today on the large, pink, single-petaled climbing rose "Sally Holmes," on the pink, old-fashioned climber beside it on the back fence, called "New Dawn," on the rock rose called "Sunset," and on Phlomis lanata. First flowers on sulfur buckwheat (Eriogonum umbellatum) came on the 25th (below).

Plants I'm Growing--First Blooms: Scabiosa Farinosa, Sulfur Buckwheat, Echium Wildpretii, "Altissimo" climbing rose

First blooms today on Scabiosa farinosa, a leather-leaved mounding variety of Scabiosa that does well in our hot summers. Although this plant has a tendency to die out in the center, new growth will sprout from almost anywhere, so holes tend to fill in. It grows easily from cuttings, too. This plant bloomed on May 4 in 2009, so it's comparatively early this year. A year according to this plant was only 350 days.

The first tiny flowers in some of the clusters on our sulfur buckwheat plants (Eriogonum umbellatum) opened today, although the plants still look quite closed up. This plant bloomed on April 17 in 2009. A year according to sulfur buckwheat was therefore 368 days.

First blooms today also on Echium wildprettii--only a few an the long stem are open. It will be a week or so before this plant becomes a brick red torch, attracting bumblebees and hummingbirds.

One bud on the climbing rose "Altissimo" opened today as well. I love this sturdy, deep red, single-petaled climber. Stunning in full bloom.  This flower bloomed on April 6 in 2009, calculating a rather long year this year of 379 days. Despite the range in years calculated by the three coming into bloom today that I have data for, the average of the three comes to 365.6 days--very close to a calendar year.

Plants I'm growing: First Blooms--Sulfur Buckwheat

First blossoms opened today on the sulfur buckwheat (Eriogonum umbellatum) plants. These start out a pale sulfur yellow, but fade to a deeper yellow and then to orange and brown, a very attractive cycle of change. Drought tolerant, happy when neglected, beautiful. My kind of plant.