Sunday Morning Over Easy (More pics Updated)

I spent the better part of yesterday at a Rock Party at Arrowhead Alpines. You know you’re getting old when your Rock Parties involve actual rocks, and you don’t smoke any of the exotic buds you bring home.

They have an enormous amount of plants and exotics. Worth visiting the link, if you love gardening.

It was marvelous. I am such a flower child in the most literal fashion… and yet, as my friend Kate said the other day when she moved this huge rock my husband brought home for me, (pics follow)

“Jesus, why can’t you bring her flowers like a normal husband?”

He knows I’d rather have the rocks. 🙂

Ahh, thanks Mr. Petty, now back to the pictures and story.

My son has quite hijacked my rock collection. I had a few, ones I brought home through the years in my travels. It took a while for him to dig that while every rock on a dirt road is indeed special in its own way, not all of them can come live in our house. 🙂

But I could not resist buying these three for him. The one on the left matches the one my husband brought home from a job-site, that just fell out of a load of dirt he was dumping. The middle one is a Thunder Egg, from the outside (unless you are a geology major) you would never know the treasure inside! The one on the right is as interesting for its amethyst crystals as the tiny elongated fingerling crystals of rosy quarts covering those purple gems. Worth a couple bucks a piece to see his face light up.

I have to wonder, though, if this gynormous boulder my husband brought home, which has all the same attributes, (other than a courser crystal grain) the traces of copper, the rusty iron seepage, the quartz marbling hides a huge chunk of amethyst within?

I left a quarter in both pictures for scale.

Fun to ponder, but I’d never break it to find out. Unless that is, someone tells me the Hope Diamond is in there. Even then, some things are best left as they are.

Anyway, those who actually read my gardening ramblings may remember I expanded the gazebo flower bed, and got rid of the perimeter ones by the fence. Its a dog thing. Its doing quite beautifully, there is less area to have to work on weeding, I don’t have to scold the pups for looking through the fence, and all my favorite pretties are up close where we sit.

I like specimen gardens more than boring orderly mass plantings in rows.

The morning light doesn’t do complete justice to this, but hell, I went out in my robe to get a Sunday morning post up, and braved the chance of mosquito bites where no mosquito bites should ever happen. I survived intact!

I bought a plant for myself as well, a variation of Common Stock that is uncommon. Matthiola Incana is a high Alpine plant that will overwinter if kept dry enough, or is easily propagated from seed.

I didn’t buy it for the flowers, though, it was the cool seed pods that got me, the exotic look of this particular cultivar’s growth habit. That and the silvery foliage, high up on a woody stem….

Weird. I like weird stuff.

Freakishly cool, behind the cool rock Mike got me, and in front of the trellis of passion vines that grow up onto the gazebo.

Its one of those “What the fuck is that?” plants tucked in to a corner with ordinary miniature roses and moss roses.

If I get the other flower bed cleaned up by next Sunday, I’ll highlight that.

Got any pictures of your gardens?

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More pics of flowers…. More rocks later…

A moonflower, these papery blooms are 4-5 inches across.

A few of my Dahlias (Not all are blooming yet)

Some Coreopsis

and Lemon Cosmos.. (I have tons of these out front too, in different colors: Picotee, pinks, whites and whatever the reverse of picotee is called.. brain fart: Oh, Daydream)

Hollyhock

Liatris, blue, the white isn’t open yet..

Centuria Montana

Balloon flowers catching a morning ray

A dark & a light Delphinium…

Touch of buff marigolds and moss rose I make from saved seed…

Cannas