Friday, September 2, 2016

My Volunteer Flower Garden

Hi everyone, Winnie Griggs here.

Unlike many of the other ladies who post here I do NOT have a green thumb. Mine, I'm afraid, is much closer to brown. That's why am so enamored of what I call volunteer flowers, those that just pop up on their own without any effort on my part. In the spring there are those lovely yellow daffodils.  And this time of year I always look for the first signs of spider lilies.

And today was the day I stepped out in my back yard and saw them!  With their blazing red color and slender, tendril like petals they are a sassy close out for summer and harbinger of the Autumn to come.  Here are a couple of pictures of the ones in my back yard.



I did a little reading up on spider lilies and learned that they normally bloom a few days after the first good rain in September, so I guess mine are a little early.

I also learned that they have several other common names (none of which I'd ever heard before) British Soldiers, Guernsey Lilies and Surprise Lilies

So are you a bona fide gardener? And how do you feel about 'volunteer blooms'?


TEXAS CINDERELLA - A September 2016 Release

In Search of a Groom 
After a life of drudgery on her family's farm, Cassie Lynn Vickers relishes her new-found freedom working in town as a paid companion for feisty Mrs. Flanagan. When her father suddenly demands she come home, she has no choice. Unless she can find a husband. If only she could convince handsome town newcomer Riley Walker to marry her… 

Riley is on the run. He's desperate to keep his niece and nephew safe from his crooked half-brother. But a delay in Turnabout, Texas, shows him everything he didn't know he was missing: home, family—and Cassie Lynn. Can he find a way to both keep the children safe and become her Prince Charming?

4 comments:

Jackie Smith said...

DH and I get excited when we see "blooms" at edge of woods near us...'cause we can't do much yard work at our age!
Love the cover on your new book...and am anxious to read it!

Keli Gwyn said...

We have lots of volunteer poppies here in California. I love seeing their pretty orange blooms.

I'm not good with plants. Neither is my husband. In fact, when he took me out for our engagement dinner many years ago, he issued a disclaimer, telling me he's not a yard person. I married him anyway and have learned that while he doesn't enjoy working in the yard any more than I do, he sure has a way with crocuses. There are so many in our yard now that he has to give away hundreds of them every year or they will overrun the place. =)

Mary Alford said...

Winnie, I plant a garden every year, but so far, tomatoes are all that I've harvested. But I keep trying because there is something cathartic about gardening.

Sally Shupe said...

I love volunteer blooms! Nothing I plant comes up lol. Several times I've gone down the road and seen something blooming and said I wish I had that in my yard, and then go look in my back yard, and I had one all along lol. Like a purple dogwood. When I went to look, there was one behind an old building we have. A snowball bush-my husband's grandmother had one in our yard when they moved there 40+ years ago. I had it moved to where I could see it. Surprise lilies are my favorite. I think that is what they are called. They are a very light purple and one morning they pop up and there they are. Tim's grandmother had planted them. Sometimes they come up, some years they don't. Her hydrangea bush blooms every 5 years, until this past year when it got frostbitten. I was told to cut it down to the ground. I did. This year it didn't hardly grow. But it had three blooms on it, on an off year. I wanted a butterfly bush. Come to find out, they love this thing in our yard that looks like a blooming thistle. It stands taller than I am with lots of purple blooms on it and the butterflies love it.