One a Day

For Friday's flower I'm flaunting the daylilies.
Daylily is the common name for the plants in the Hemerocallis family.


Right now I have 3 different varieties of daylilies in bloom.
The above one is a Catherine Woodbury, as is the last photo.


This orange daylily can be seen just about everywhere at this time of the year. I call it the ditch lily, as it can be seen along the sides of roads. But many gardeners have this one in their garden.


This is one of the yellow daylilies. I have a clump that blooms early in the spring and a clump that blooms about mid summer. As these were passed on to me from a friend many years ago I'm not sure of the variety, but I think Stella D'oro.


I really need to add some more colours and varieties to my garden as this is a perennial plant that requires very little work. You can spend all your time admiring the blooms.

2sDay Smoothies

It's 2sDay - the day when I post photos of things I have discovered that come in twos.

There's nothing better on a hot, humid 2sDay than two smoothies to take down to Port-a-my-yard-a!

Cool and refreshing.

Start with half a cup of vanilla yogurt.

Add half a cup of milk.

Add half a cup of fruit of your choice. I've used honeydew melon ...

... cherries and most recently strawberries.
Blueberries make a delicious smoothie too.

Add half of a banana, which makes the drink a bit thicker.
Somehow I missed getting a photo of the banana.

Blend for a couple of minutes and pour into a glass and enjoy.
Using a half cup of each ingredient makes one smoothie, so you need to adjust the recipe if you want more.

You can combine fruits to make delicious flavours too.
Frozen fruit can be used when fresh fruit is not available.

Labels: 2sDay, recipes

Thank you Skipper

Usually the trip across the road to the mailbox isn't that thrilling as it only produces those brownish envelopes that contain bills. On Thursday there is always an armful of flyers with all the latest sale prices. But today the mailbox had a gray bubble mailer envelope with my name on it.

What could it be?

On opening it up it revealed some wonderful items from British Columbia.
I had forgotten all about the 'Pay it Forward' I had joined last year.
Marilyn, aka Skipper, sent me some wonderful items.

There is a knitted scarf, so soft and delicate in one of my most favourite colours of brown, two knitted washcloths in another of my favourite colours (similar to a frosty green, and it doesn't show up the right colour at all in the photo) and a bar of soap with a felted covering. I think this will be perfect for cleaning my hands after working in the garden. Earlier this summer Marilyn organized the Victoria fiberfest and I'm thrilled to have two of the magnets made for that event. I had read all about it on her blog and some other Victoria blogs. I love the sayings on the magnets. How about you?

Back away from the yarn and no one gets hurt!

So much fibre ... so little time!

Thank you Marilyn, aka Skipper.

In return I'll be posting a Pay it Forward from this blog. It will include a bit of The Crafty Side of me and a bit of The Gardener Side of me.

The Unfurling

For Friday's flower I'm flaunting my zinnias.

Have you watched the unfurling of the blooms on the zinnias?
The more you look ... the more you see.
From a tight green bud to a gorgeous flower in a few days.
The colour and pattern combinations are endless.
Nature never fails to amaze me.

I've been taking photos of the zinnia buds over the past several days and put together a silde show, sort of like my own time lapse photography, so you can see the process.

After the drenching rain of Thursday (50 mm in a couple of hours) I don't have to water my plants this weekend so for this Friday I'm getting a reprieve from getting out the liquid fertilizer and feeding and watering my plants. I'll be sure to do it when they dry out. Right now the pots are still draining.

Peruvian Daffodils for 2sDay

It's 2sDay - the day when I post photos of things I have discovered that come in twos.

For this week's 2sDay I'm sharing a photo of two Peruvian Daffodils that bloomed this past weekend.

The Peruvian daffodil, or Hymenocallis, is also called the spider lily. It grows well in full sun.
This is a native plant to South America, and depending where you live it can be either a perennial or a tender perennial. A tender perennial has to be dug each year at first frost, stored in a dry, cool place and replanted in the spring.



Labels: Peruvian daffodial, 2sDay

Fairytale Sweater

The Crafty Side of me has been busy and finished off this sweater.

I recently started a crochet baby sweater for a new granddaughter. It is from the Fairytale Set on the back cover of the pattern booklet titled Soft & Sweet, #0136, by Coats & Clark. I purchased the booklet at Michaels a couple of years ago, but if you search it on Google you will find a site to buy it from if you are interested.

This project worked up very quickly and all it needs are 3 small pearl buttons to finish it off. You start by making the two sleeves and putting them to one side. The sweater is worked all in one piece, and when the bottom part is the correct length you join in the sleeves and then continue to finish the yolk. The only finishing you need to do is sew up the seam on the underarm of the sleeves, and of course add the buttons.

It will be packed away with the baby blanket I also just completed. I'm also working on a little bonnet to go with this sweater. Next I'll focus on finishing the other sweater that I started at the same time.


Labels: crochet, sweaters,

Monday Mysteries

It's Monday Mystery day.

This is a plant that I know the name of but it has moved way to the back of my mind and it just won't come forward and tell me what it is.
Do you know the name?

I know as soon as you tell me the answer I'll say, of course that is what it is!

Edit: the plant has been identified as rumex sanguineus - bloody dock, or red veined dock, or bloody sorrel. Thanks Joy and Grace.

And now let's revisit another Monday mystery posted earlier that turned out to be anemone bulbs.


I planted the bulbs towards the end of May and have been watching them grow.


I never expected to get blooms this year but I am thrilled to say that so far I have four.


I will really be checking these bulbs out in the spring to see how well they survived the winter.


Labels: Monday Mystery, anemone

Port-a-my-yard-a!

Come and take a Sunday Stroll with me and see an updated virtual tour of "Port-a-my-yard-a!" through my lens.
The last virtual tour was taken in July 2007, so it is time for an update to compare how things have changed, grown, vanished or been moved to various locations in the yard.

The tour starts as you pull up to the front of the house and get ready to pull onto the driveway. One of the major changes has been the removal of the huge globe cedars. The side of the cedars visible from the house was beginning to die off, so it was time to remove them.

Walking up the driveway and turning left you approach the shady area of the gardens. There are lots of hostas, astillbes and impatience that thrive here.

When you get to the front door you can turn and look back to see the front garden in the center of the lawn.

Instead of heading for the front door you turn right and can enter the back gardens by the side path. Before you enter the path be sure to check out all the shade loving plants.

Follow the shady path down into the garden.

The first thing you see as you turn the corner is the potting bench. The umbrella in front of it is usually up giving me some shade as I work at different projects. The wooden highchair is one of my latest acquisitions and has a couple of potted plants on it.

And looking to the right gives you a glimpse of part of the main garden.

Follow the path past the potting bench and walk along the stone path through the garden. At the end of the path turn around and look back to see the pot garden and the decks.

Turn around again and see the composting garden to the right. The fence hides 3 of the composters.

Look to the left from the end of the stone path and see the honeysuckle bush. This garden has some retired items that have been turned into planters ... the bbq, the wheelbarrow, and a seed spreader. Here you can see the two comfy chairs that we love to sit in and observe nature.

A bridge leads over a marshy area and up to the grapevines.

This area of the garden has really grown in the two years since I took the previous photos.

At the back of the garden is the hammock for relaxing.

Just beyond the hammock is another bridge made from recycled wood from an old deck. This year the step ladder planter is located here. There are large clumps of lilies either side of the bridge.

The bridge leads over a small run off stream and into the back of the property where we have a large brush pile to shelter birds and other animals.

Turn back and head towards the house and you can see the trellis garden. I've got lots of old garden tools here, but in the two years the vines have grown so much that they are covering them up.

Look back from the trellis garden and have another view of the main garden.

Walk behind the trellis garden and up the other side of the house where you can see the long front garden and a view of the first garden you saw. This side garden has really grown in the past couple of years. I let it reseed itself and then the plants are all mixed in with each other .. my version of my English cottage garden.

From the corner of the house you can look left and see the new gardens that we have been working on this year. This is where the globe cedars used to be. The tipsy pots have been relocated, a piece of 'garden architecture' has been added plus lots of shade loving plants.

I hope you enjoyed your tour of our gardens.
I would love to see a tour of "Port-a-your-yard-a!".

The Quiet Country House invites you to take a Sunday stroll around your garden too.

A Young Grosbeak

My digital camera is my constant companion while I'm working in the garden, walking by the water, or just out and about on my travels. You never know when that "Kodak Moment" will happen.

One day in the week we packed up some lemonade, a couple of good books to read and of course my cameras and went down south to Porta-my-yard-a! I say south because our house faces north and the garden is south of the house. Our destination was the two comfy garden chairs in the shade of the big trees.

Porta-my-yard-a is our most favourite destination. It isn't one of those noisy resorts, it doesn't take long to get there and back, and best of all it doesn't cost anything.

If you haven't taken a virtual walk around our gardens, you can begin here. I really must get some updated photos as those ones were taken two years ago.

What a delight to sit and listen to nature.


One of the birds we heard was a young grosbeak calling out to the parent.

Thank goodness for the zoom on my camera. I was able to get up close and see the young grosbeak eating some of the berries on the honeysuckle bush.

Perhaps the young was calling out to dad and saying look at the tasty morsel I've found all by myself!

The male grosbeak wasn't far away is the black oil feeder (along with a couple of purple finches).

Check out other bloggers that carry cameras all the time and snap photos of Camera Critters.

Labels: Through my Lens, Camera Critters,