Plants I'm Growing: First Blooms--Penstemon, Cleveland Sage, Teucrium, Coreopsis

Because of the recent late rains, which discouraged walking around the garden, and a fair amount of work in the past few days I've missed the first blooms of 2011 on quite a number of flowers, but I note here that in the past week the red penstemon under the apple tree, several varieties of coreopsis, coyote mint, Cleveland sage (upper photo; I believe this variety is "Allan Chickering"), and the low-growing Teucrium cossonii have all come into bloom. The prettiest time of the year has been extended this year by cool weather and rain.

Plants I'm growing: First Blooms--Coreopsis (2010)

The first Coreopsis bloom of 2010 opened this morning, looking rather cheerful in the gloom and rain. Coreopsis bloomed first on May 7 in 2009--giving some indication of how much the unusually cool, wet weather this year has retarded flowering of at least some plants in the garden. A year according to Coreopsis was 385 days.

Plants I'm growing: First Blooms--Coreopsis (May 7, 2009)

First blooms yesterday on some of the Coreopsis varieties in the garden.