Pssst. Hey. C’mere. I gots sommat you might like to see! Shhh, not so loud! You wanna bring the heat down on us? These are young ones, spread for your pleasure! Not even a year old!

*_*

Ewww, I just made myself a bit sick with that, sorry. A joke too far, clearly! I think it was the use of ‘spread’ that was too much. But open, or ripe, or fertile would have been just as bad…

In any case, I have more plant pictures. And yes, they are mostly of their sexual organs: usually called flowers by sane people. Plants just have much, much more attractive ‘bits’ than mammals do. I own a mirror, and know how to use Google. Trust me, the plants are way better at ‘pretty.’

And it’s a good thing, as evidenced by the plethora of bees I’ve had this weekend. I was so glad to have them back – I’ve not seen any since spring. They aren’t impressed with the rudbeckia, it being a northern American plant, but they love the lobelia and the devil’s-bit scabious I dug out of the ground by the railway tracks two years ago.

I didn’t take any pics of the bees. That would really be pushing the boundaries of plant porn: inter-class sex. I’d get this post banned, even if I do rate my own blog XXX so the kiddies won’t be offended when I say ‘cuss words.’ (I’ll never be Freshly Pressed because of this, ho-hum.)

So! Who wants to see plant bits? I do, I do!

Rudbeckia! As I’ve said, I’ve never grown this before. As predicted, hubby loves it! I also didn’t realise it is the ‘black-eyed-Susan’ I’ve heard of all my life. I also didn’t know there’s like a bazillion varieties. Most of mine look like the above, but some look like this:

I’m happy with them! The blooms last weeks, yay! And they are sure to last after the rest of my babies die off from chill and wind.

My white and purple calla lilies – they only seem get started just when the afore-mentioned wind and rain sets in.

I’m not too upset about the lack of flowers, the spotted foliage is amazing. Like the skin of a salamander or an alien being.

Speaking of aliens, this is a macro shot of the finished cosmos flowers I snipped off, to encourage more blooms. I was going to compost this, until the shiny, waxy surface caught my eye and made me look closer. Doesn’t look real, does it? Too perfect, too veiny, and too strange. The seed heads are only about the size of a thumbnail. Neat!

This is why I have trouble trimming plants. Deadheading feels like beheading when I find such unexpected glories.

This is the one surviving raspberry plant, grown from seed this year. It’s teeny-tiny, but it was so tiny up until now I couldn’t even take a pic. The other five plants didn’t make it. I learned that berry seeds need high heat for a while before they will germinate. About the same amount of heat they’d get passing through an animal’s digestive tract. Duh! That’s a trial-and error education, by the way.
Please ignore the moss growing on my soil.

Lastly, my hot mess of flowers. This pic is the only reason I started this post – last weekend! You might recall this planter from a previous post, when I’d nearly forgotten what was in it. My how they’ve grown, despite taking a header off the kitchen windowsill two days after that post! I had to move them to the ugly location here (maybe next year we’ll paint that wall. I wanted to do a mural – maybe a beach scene). There’s a coleus from seed in that shot too – two years old, I overwintered it indoors and it was fine.

Right, this has been the most labour-intensive post ever. I couldn’t get the photos right. Too big or too small, in the wrong place, or adding in a hyperlink I never asked for. I give up! Yes, of course I have more pics…