Really nice pictures Fran. I especially like the blue forget me nots. Beautiful blue.
Alberta

Fran,

Really nice!! I think those Violas are quite something. So sweet!

Looking good, Fran! I love them all.

Those chipmunks are really bad this year - pretty annoying! I have tons of them - I am watching my tomatoes carefully; I may have to turn into a banshee if they go after those. But datura? You'd think they'd have some brains...

:)

Pretty flowers! I love violas. Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow is on my wish list. My first year WS violas are about 2 inches tall with a single viola the size of a dime on it. So cute!

Fran, I love the apricot Livingston daisy...did you wintersow that? It's lovely. I have verbascum and love the plant. Your violette verbascum is a favorite color of mine...I'll have to search that one out. Your pictures and plants are really nice and I enjoyed looking at them. I love violas too and yours is especially pretty.
Bonny

How are you doing Fran? Hope all is well :)

I sure wish my Datura looked half as nice as yours. My usual spot just isn't working for them this year...pretty puny suckers.
I have 2 replacements, but just need to find a spot ASAP ((sigh)).

I have Viola that come up looking as yours do every year but I know they are not a named variety, just a lot of crossing between the re-seeders, but but by far these are my faves!
There are never more than a few of them that come back like this; most are tri-colored with various combinations
{{gwi:411193}}

Looking good, Fran! Love those violas - have seed for them somewhere, will have to give them a try.

Hope you are feeling better and stronger after your surgery ...

PV

Thank you everyone. All things considered I feel pretty good for a week post op and I'm behaving quite well. doing only what I'm supposed to do.

Drippy, those chipmunks are not funny and they sure aren't "chip and dale" either. Never mind the garden bed destruction that they create, the holes that they dig can be dangerous if you get your shoe or foot caught in one of them and go down. A year ago I did just that and tore ligaments in my ankle. The little boy that used to live next door got his foot in one when he was 4 and broke his leg.
Now if that isn't enough insult here's more to add insult to injury. An article in the newspaper a few weeks ago said that chipmunks are a major carrier of deer tick now, more so than even deer and that could be the cause of a massive increase in the number of Lyme Disease cases being reported.

Not that i needed an incentive to do everything I can to get rid of them, but that sure added a whole new layer to doing it.
Then a friend called me last week the day before I went to the hospital to warn me that she was working in the gardens a month ago and she unknowingly disturbed a chipmunk that jumped on her arm and ran off. She didn't notice that she had a tick on her arm till the next day because it had attached right on top of a birthmark. 2 weeks later, bingo she has the classic bulls eye rash on her arm and has lyme disease.

Chipmunks are not very smart. They can't swim, but will be more than happy to dive into water to get sunflower seeds and drown in the process and that's fine with me, right along with eating my datura as well.
e-mail me if you want some info on chipmunks that like to dive for sunflower seeds.

Bonny, the livingston daisy was WS by a friend of mine. There are 3 of us that share the WS for 3 gardens. We cane up with the idea to share it all after a couple of years of all of us sowing the same seeds then coming to my spring plant swap and all having the same extra seedlings. Didn't make sense so we split it up now. We end up with the same number of containers, more of each kind sowed, but the total variety is split between the homes and we end up with an even bigger variety of plants for the beds.

Vera the color of that viola is beautiful. If you have any seeds for trade in the fall, I'd love some and will send you some of mine.

PV, sow those seeds for next year. No matter how many of them you have, sow all of them cause they are a funny seed to germinate. My experience with them has been strange to say the least.

My first seeds where from valueseeds.com. got 3 packets, 30 seeds in each packet and sowed them in early March. just sprinkled on the top of the soil cause they are small and tannish in color.
Out of those 70 seeds we got 6 seedlings. Not a very happy camper that there, but I collected every single one of the seeds I could get my hands on from the plants and it was a ton of seeds, more than 1/4 tsp.

Next year we sowed every one of those seeds, and I kept thinking OMG, what will I do if thousands of these seeds germinate. Well, no such luck, we got 20 seedlings last year.
Figured ok, better than the year before and we will always have to sow every single seed we get.

So this past year I had more than 1/2 teaspoon of seeds. We sowed 4 mushroom containers of seeds, the 10 ounce size container, put each one in a ziplock baggie and put them out in mid April this year. just an experiment to see if a later sowing would make any difference in the germination rate.

They began to germinate on 4/29 the exact same day as the prior to years, and they where slow. But this year we saw how the seeds germinate. they swell to at least twice their original size and all but germinate 1 seed at a time. honest.
But there was a huge difference in this years germination. We had mushroom containers totally covered in seedlings. so many that we couldn't separate seedlings and planted hunks of them every where. My neighbor across the street still hasn't planted hers out yet and the entire container is covered in flowers and seedlings covering the container.

We have to have thousands of seedlings this year. On top of that, we have seedlings of the viola popping up all over the place in the lawn and my neighbor has several popping up in her yard as well.

Doesn't make any sense to me why on the third year with the seeds, second year of collecting seeds we have mass germination and the prior 2 years including the first year from commercial purchase the germination was very poor.

Fran

Hi Fran, glad to hear you are feeling well after your surgery, and I just love those Viola too! So pretty the way they change color. Isn't it weird how they germinated so differently in different years.

I had no idea chipmunks carried deer ticks. There are a lot of them this year, but they haven't caused any problem in the gardens that I've noticed. I have a 4-footed furry creature that takes care of the chipmunks! She's caught at least 6-8 of them this year so far.

Thanks Terrene, I'm feeling about as well as can be expected with half of one vertebrae removed. Slowly recovering, but it will take several months of time.

Germination on those viola seeds is very strange, very weird, especially to have such good germination this year and also have such a strange and cold spring as well.

Hopefully, with 4 containers of the seedlings out there in 4 different homes, full of tons of seedlings we will have tons of seeds as well. Hopefully enough for a few trades in the fall and the germination will be equally as good next year and there will be some extras to pot up for my Swap too.

Be careful with your "4-footed creature" and the chipmunks. She can get the deer ticks on her and in turn pass them on to you and bring them into the house.

I haven't had a lot of damage this year which has to be do to the beautiful family of red tail hawks living in the back of the house, right at the edge of the woods. They are getting well fed in my yards and teaching their young how to swoop down and get their pray.
They are such beautiful birds as well.

We started last year with one red tailed hawk flying between my house and he one across the street. Never stayed for long, but it was back and forth every day all spring and summer.

This year I spotted 2 on a branch at the edge of my woods and anything that went near that tree got a quick warning with a swoop of one of the hawks to stay far away.
I assumed there was a nest around there, because when hubby tried to go near there to mow the back lawn, lets say he ran for his life and retrieved the lawn mower well after dark.

A few weeks later I was out in the back checking on WS containers and up in the tree branch where 4 Hawks, 2 large and 2 very small. Now there are 6.

Now if only they could do something about keeping the groundhogs away as well.

Fran

Such lovely photos!

I enjoyed the photos of such an assortment - thanks!

Carrie