Garden Flowers This Week

garden flowers

Garden flowers are delightful, especially when they survive Albuquerque’s spring winds. These flowers are blooming this week and have maintained pretty good shape. The hybrid tea rose, ‘Gemini,’ is blooming (the first HT to bloom), but shows what wind can do to rose petals. Above all today, I’m showing some survivors in the high desert…

Cinnamon Delight

First is the unusually colored ‘Cinnamon Delight.’ I grow this in a container on my patio. It blooms almost nonstop from early spring until a hard freeze in the fall.

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Miniature rose ‘Cinnamon Delight’
Climbing Earthquake

Next is the miniature rose, ‘Climbing Earthquake.’ Ralph Moore, hybridizer of many roses (mainly miniatures) hybridized this lively little beauty.

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Miniature rose ‘Climbing Earthquake’
Spring Fling
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Miniature rose ‘Spring Fling’
Marmalade Skies

The floribunda rose, ‘Marmalade Skies,’ can produce very large sprays of roses as well as well-formed single blooms. Sprays are developing. Maybe in a week or two I’ll have some pictures of those.

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Floribunda rose ‘Marmalade Skies’
Pansies

You know I’ll show pansies when they are blooming. 🙂

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Pansies
Autumn Sage

Autumn Sage requires very little care in the high desert. Hummingbirds, especially the females, it seems, prefer it over the hummingbird feeders.

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Autumn Sage – loved by hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies
BeBop

I cannot keep from smiling when ‘BeBop’ is blooming. I also laugh about the time a photographer who didn’t know roses (“you have to grow them to know them”) told me I should have waited until the wind stopped blowing to photograph a similar bloom. The petals grow this way, and to a great extent are how it got its name.

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Shrub rose ‘BeBop’

I hope you have a great week enjoying the garden flowers where you are. 🙂

Spring Blooms

spring blooms

On this weekend of many different celebrations, religious observances, and good weather, is there a better time to celebrate spring blooms? Probably any time flowers are blooming is a good time to celebrate them. I photographed these in my yard this weekend.

Here in the high desert roses are beginning to have buds. However, they will not bloom for a few more weeks. Therefore I have planted flowers that bloom earlier – and later – than roses.

‘Nelly Moser’ is a well-known clematis that grows up one of favorite roses, ‘Mermaid.’ The rose provides good support for the clematis. In addition, it provides shade for the roots. The two coexist quite happily.

spring blooms
Clematis ‘Nelly Moser’

Earlier this year I showed some blooms of the dwarf peach, ‘Bonanza.’ The peaches are now forming. You can see how many tiny peaches are packed onto the branches. If I want good-sized peaches and healthy branches, I must thin these out this week. Otherwise, the peaches would be very small, and so many could weigh down the branches.

dwarf peach 'Bonanza'
Baby Peaches that Need to be Thinned

Pansies are remarkable flowers. They grow well all through autumn, go dormant in the colder parts of winter, and joyously burst forth in spring. They come in so many different colors. Each bloom seems to have its own expression.

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Wake-Up-Bright Pansies
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Magenta Pansies

The weekend has been beautiful in Albuquerque. Wishing you a beautiful week wherever you are.

Spring Flowers on a March Morning

spring flowers peach blossoms

Spring flowers are everywhere around town this week. The temperatures have warmed considerably.

Neighborly Dog

First, however, my neighbors’ dogs, Sampson and Inoki, greeted me this morning, as they always do. Sampson decided this would be the day he would try posing.

dog
This is the first time Sampson has allowed me to get a full picture of him. His ears are like that, not back because he is unhappy. He and his brother Inoki are really sweet dogs.

Pansies

Now, to spring flowers…Around this time in March my pansies begin to wake up. Within about two weeks they will be overflowing their containers. For now I am happy with a few bright faces here and there.

spring flower pansy
Pansy

Pear Buds

Bradford pears are blooming all over town. I do not know what my pears trees are. They were here when I bought the house. But, they bloom much later than the Bradford pears. One produces pears that people enjoy. The other is the required pollinator. It produces small hard pears loved by birds but not people. Works out perfectly… My pears are only in bud today, but some will have fully open blooms by the weekend.

spring flowers pear buds
Not quite flowers yet, but some will be out by the end of the week.

Dwarf Peach ‘Bonanza’

The dwarf peach ‘Bonanza’ is at peak bloom today. It has been spectacular this year. If we don’t have a hard freeze later, I should get peaches this year. If I thin them, I will get good sized peaches. If I do not thin them, the branches will become weighted down with small peaches that make lovely spiced peaches (canned) for the holidays. But, for now, I’m enjoying the beauty!

spring flowers peach blossoms
Peach Blossoms

Finally, thanks for taking a stroll through my yard and looking at some spring flowers and a neighborly dog.

Spring Color

Spring Color

Spring color is everywhere in Albuquerque. Everything looks so fresh. The roses are a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. Because the weather is not hot yet, the roses haven’t become crispy critters, as they sometimes do. Everything around town seems colorful and clean. Of course, nothing beats a sunrise here! A riot of floral color makes things that much better!

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Miniature Rose ‘Cinnamon Delight’
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Riot of Color with Spring Flowers
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Brilliant Southwestern Sunrise

Spring Has Sprung

spring pansies

Spring Has Sprung: Easter and April Fool’s Day in Albuquerque, 2018

Spring has sprung in Albuquerque! Although the sky was overcast most of the day, the temperature was pleasant and no wind was blowing.

The dwarf peach ‘Bonanza’ had begun to bloom when we got a hard freeze. I was afraid no peaches would form this year. And, for a variety of reasons, I had not photographed the tree at the height of its bloom. But, one bloom was left today. An extra bonus was that I could see one or two peaches were just beginning to develop!

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Bloom of Dwarf Peach ‘Bonanza’
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Tiny Developing Peach

Although the flowering Bradford pear trees around town have bloomed out, the pear trees in my yard have just begun to bloom. Some of you may remember that I have a pollinator pear that produces fruit the birds love. The smaller tree produces pears that people love.

spring pear blooms
Pear Blossoms

Pansies and crocus (the crocus from a couple of weeks ago) round out today’s spring offerings.

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Crocus
spring pansies
Pansies
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Pansies

Finally, I hope you have had a wonderful day wherever you are!

Spring Garden

spring garden

Spring Garden

Spring garden – on a beautiful Albuquerque day like today being out in the garden is always pleasant. Today was an especially pleasant and interesting spring day. Friend and fellow photographer Tim Price, whom many of you know from his blog, TandL Photos, took me to an early morning appointment with the eye doctor. We then came back to the house and sat out on the patio, just enjoying the day, catching up on life, and looking for beautiful and interesting things to photograph.

This is the first part of a two part “tandem blog.” The second part is here, “Lizard Love.

spring garden
Sky Even More Beautiful than Usual
spring garden
Reliably Colorful Pansies
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More Reliably Colorful Pansies
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White Clematis Beginning to Bloom

Continue reading “Spring Garden”

Pansies – a Sure Sign of Spring

Pansies – one of the early spring flowers here in Albuquerque seemed to be at their peak today at the Albuquerque Biopark. Actually, there were also glorious bulbs, flowering trees and shrubs, and color everywhere. This post will show you the pansies. They always make me smile, and I hope they brighten your day as well. Other images from today will be posted in subsequent posts.

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Purple and blue pansies
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Pansy
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Multicolored pansies
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Pansies (or something in the pansy family)

And, finally, the pansy I call “the Rohrschach pansy.” 🙂

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“Rohrschach pansy”
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