Cleomes in their full glory

I am so happy with my cleome patch.  I just love those flowers and I am so happy that I found a place they are doing well.   I love the smell of their foliage, too.  I go out there and touch them to get the smell on my hands.  But then, I like the smell of tomato plants.  I think both of those smells is an acquired taste.

 I especially love the pink ones and their petal color variations

Purslane and Portulaca

I've always loved portulaca with its delicate beautifully colored flowers.  It's a kind of purslane, I think or at least a relative.  Some kinds of purslane are annoying weeds.  But not this one;  this is Purslane Rio Scarlet, which is new to me.  It has really beautiful flowers and loves this heat.  It really is more beautiful than either of the photos shows.  Of course I got this beauty at Portland Nursery.

Source

It's hard for me to get a really good photo of it myself.  The flowers open only in the sun and my camera doesn't do so well with extreme light conditions but here it is on my step.

And this is the portulaca in front of ornamental oregano

Alley garden

This is the garden on the alley side of the house.

sundrops and astrantia

Cleomes

I am pretty excited to have a patch of cleomes in my garden again.  I haven't grown them since I moved to Portland.  Back then I had big stands of them.  This is more a small patch.

The big rose in the photo above is called Commitment.  Here it is up close.

I love the black undertones that make it glow.

Astrantia

Wintersweet

Wintersweet (Chimonanthus) flowers smell better than anything.  It blooms in winter and there are some of these shrubs in our nearby park.  The shrubs are big rangy things and the flowers are quite small but their scent is very powerful.

Workhorses in my garden

Hakenachloa... a work horse in my garden.  It looks good all season and it makes the plants around it look good, too.  It's no trouble at all to take care of.  Cats love to eat it.

Bee Balm Gardenview Scarlet.  It bloomed a full 2 months in my garden.  It's such a favorite with the hummingbirds; I think it is their very favorite flower in my garden.  I gave it lots of water and it wasn't a terribly hot summer.  I think both factors kept it blooming nice and long.

Penstemon 'Ruby'.  I just love the grace of the plant and the flowers.  The hummingbirds like it, too.  It blooms all summer but not continuously.  It had a bit of a rest and is blooming again now.

Ornamental Oregano  This is a great plant and does well in pots.

Rudbeckia Nitida Herbstonne

It is also know as "Autumn Sun", which is an English translation of Herbstonne.  I am pretty sure that is what this is.  We saw it on an errand walk in a few places.  It is 5-7 feet tall.  I thought maybe it was a cone flower because of the shape of the flower but I've decided it's a Rudbeckia.  It's a real beauty!  I want....

Cleomes in my long ago garden

In a different time and place, we had a lot more land and a lot more gardens.  One of the things I miss is having enough room to grow big stands of cleomes.  This is a photo of a long ago cleome stand.  That's me on the left.

The reds of summer