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A New Flower Bloomed – It’s an Orange Trumpet Vine

JonC — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:31:51 +0000

A New flower bloomed in my yard about Mid-June. After some research I discovered that it is an Orange Trumpet Vine as you can see from the photos here.

Earlier this week I spotted the new flower peeking out through the forsythia along the main highway. They’re very colorful and have a really neat way of growing and sprouting. The Orange Trumpet vine flower buds poke out as hard looking pods which split open and another pod, the flower (similar to a balloon flower) pokes out and then extends and opens up. They’re really nice, I just wish I had about 2000 more of them! I’m going to try cloning or creating copies of these as I think they’d look really nice in front of the house.

Here are a few photos of these. Actually quite a few, they’re so neat in a lot of different ways. The resolution has been reduce to 1024×768 to make them viewable on the page, but if you’d like a higher resolution copy (8 megapixel) of these photos please use the contact links located at various places on the page (top and sides).

The flowers are orange/red, form out of a pod, and grow at the end of long green vines. They pop open and their little antennae thingies poke out waiting for the bees and what not to do their job. At any rate, please enjoy the photos and let me know if you have any ideas for creating copies of these and helping them multiply.

Some New Flowers Popped Up – They are Platycodon Grandiflorus

JonC — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:54:31 +0000

Some new flowers have popped up in the yard, they’re pretty neat looking and purplish in color with dark bluish veins through the petals. The flower has 5 points and the petals are all one piece, not individual petals. The middle of the flower is white with a blue bulb at the tip. I managed to catch these flowers while mid-bloom, so some of them are still closed, and their shape is also pretty interesting when closed. They look like a puffed up 5 sided star. Apparently they usually bloom with 5 ‘petals’ but for some reason oen of them has 7 points.

After doing some searching I’ve found that these flowers are a ‘Balloon Flower’ or ‘ Chinese/Japanese Bellflower’ or more specifically Platycodon grandiflorus, they come in a varietty of colors. There are a lot more buds on these plants and I’m hoping that they will all bloom, it will look really nice.

Budding Plant with Ants Identified

JonC — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:09:20 +0000

I did a bit more searching to find out what the plant in the below picture is as I have a couple of them in the front planter. According to the info I could find they are called Peonies and the ants just like the sugar and stuff that comes off the buds. I’m not sure how long it will be before these bloom, but the flowers are supposed to look pretty great.

These plants only have a few blooms each, but I guess as they get older and if they’re fed properly they will get more blooms. The front planter is quite crowded with many types of plants so we may try to transplant them over into mom’s planter once the season is through. The leaves drop and the stems need trimming each year. They’re also very hungry plants, and I think with the crowding they’ll just choke the current planter out. Plant density is HIGH with about 6 or 7 different things growing in there. Though I must say when the snow finally melted this year, there was nothing left on top of the planter and all this growth just came through. I’ll probably leave a major portion of the stem and try to get as much of the root ball as possible.

I also want to renovate the planter and make it ‘right’ after we put in the new concrete sidewalk in front of the house and do some work on the front porch.

Please click here to see more of my Ant Related Posts

Long Exposure / Light Art Fun and Yellow-Orange Iris’

JonC — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:06:42 +0000

A few orange Iris’ spawned on the road edge by the highway, they’re pretty nice looking as well. Additionally some more blue and white ones have shown up, and look exactly like the ones shown earlier this month.

We had some timed exposure fun tonight out in the yard. I’m surprised one of us wasn’t mauled by a possum or rogue coyote but we got some good pics. A couple of the pictures were taken with sparklers, the rest of them with flashlights, an LED Pen and a laser pointer.

I drew on the side of the house with the laser pointer in one experiment. It turned out ok though I wish the streetlight hadn’t flooded the area so much. Live in the middle of nowhere and the only streetlight within half a mile is right in front of my house.

See the descriptions on the pictures for info about what was used. When you click on a picture, use the left and right icons at the bottom of the pictures to move through the list.

If interested, please check out my other Light Art Posts

Memorial Day Weekend and Another Weekend Update

JonC — Sun, 24 May 2009 18:06:21 +0000

I hope everyone in the US is having or had a good Memorial Day weekend. So far I’ve been doing yard work and flying, and tomorrow will probably be grilling as well.

I’ve been a bit slow this week in uploading photos and updates on the new patch I put on the lawn on Monday, 7 days ago. The PatchMaster hasn’t sprouted up grass yet, but it should go in the next few days if all goes well and things should start to turn green. I bought the 15 pound bag for around $25 to patch this area and some others.

There’s some thunderstorms moving in as I type so the lawns have been getting plenty of water. There’s also a pick of the backyard lawn which we leveled and then planted seed with the use of a wood fiber germinating mat. The areas that grew in seem to be doing well, but unfortunately there seem to be good size patches which just never sprouted, and I’m not sure why. I mowed over that mat once, most of it stayed in place. I suspect we’ll have to put more seed down once the summer is over.

The big lawn project however, on the peninsula is doing well as you can see in that photo (with the 4 sprinklers, next to the barn). I trimmed back our Eastern Red Cedar on the peninsula (which is actually a juniper – Juniperus virginiana) so now it is not hanging on the ground. You can see the before picture, with the moss ‘lawn area’ in the forground, and the after picture with the now grassy lawn in the foreground. It looks a lot better being opened up like that and will make mowing a bit easier. I also want to cut back some branches from the acorn tree which are hanging over the front of the barn.

I also added a couple photo’s of a plant that I’m not familiar with. (Update: They appear to be Peonies) It has these big red buds at the top of the stem which have not opened up yet, I guess it’s still doing something in there before it bursts forth. There are a lot of tiny ants all over these buds that seem to be paying a lot of attention to them though. Either they’re waiting for what’s inside, or there’s some sort of plant juices they like there.

Side yard photos, a bird, and some flowers

JonC — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:24:14 +0000

Not much here for today, just posting some pics of the left side of the house, and some Iris’ flowers which have popped up here and there and a robin that has been helping with the ant population. I also did a panoramic photo ‘from the hip’ which is why they don’t merge so well. I’ll try to do some better ones with my tripod and see if I can get them to look like the R/C Field development photo’s I took and turned into a panorama over here.

My mom identified the flowers for me, they’re Iris flowers and maybe Crocus or Snap Dragon. Up until 30 minutes ago I just called them ‘flowers’ ! I’ll have more photos in the next few days as more bloom which should help ID things better. I looked at pictures of Iris’ and both flowers look similar so I’m thinking they’re just Iris. Time will tell *suspense music*. Feel free to post suggestions.

Here’s an interesting website I found for the Iris Species Database provided by The Species Iris Group of North America