Coffee Bean, Rose, and more Volunteers!

Look at what I saw while walking around the garden (in between weeding, of course).

Remember the Coffee Blooms ? Here's the first bean I've found. I guess I'll be able to make a baby doll teacup sized coffee.



Here is a pretty pink rose in bloom, with several more buds. This poor rose was once the queen of this bed, but now the Coneflower has taken over and the rose often gets lost and overlooked - not today though!



And look at this brave sunflower. It grew in a pot with a young maple that is waiting to be planted. And it did grow out horizontally like this.



And here is a Cleome a.k.a. Spider flower. We had one last year and it self-seeded, yeah! I found two in the bed where it was last year and one growing in another bed. Here it is early in the day, and then in the evening.



And my last volunteer for today is this Oregano plant. When we first moved into this house, six years ago, I brought an oregano plant in a container from my apartment. Prior to living in a container on the apartment balcony, it lived in the ground at my old house, where I grew it from seed. The second or third year we lived here, I planted the oregano in the back of the vegetable garden where it grows quite nicely. Before it found that home, however, it dropped it's seed, here in the crack of a stairwell and it comes back year after year. How it ever grew to begin with, and how it comes back year after year, amazes me. You see, there is no dirt. Right now there are some dead leaves/grasses covering the base and I have to make sure it's watered almost every day, but somehow it survives and thrives here, just growing out of a crack in the stair.

Queen Rose

Roses are blooming. I have to admit that my rose garden is not what it should be. Part of the problem is it is not in the right place. Where it is doesn't get enough sun and tends to be too wet. So the tea roses I have there don't tend to thrive. But I do get some nice blooms, I just know it could be better. And I would like to expand my rose collection but that isn't going to happen until we find a new place for the roses.

Here are two of the tea roses that are now blooming. We just had a nice morning rain and you can still see the raindrops on the blooms.

Here is a beautiful red rose that I can't take credit for planting (it was here when we bought the place), but my husband does keep it pruned so that it blooms so nice each year. In fact, he does the pruning on all the roses, so their beauty is largely due to his work on them. Back to the red rose - it's not with the tea roses but underneath a large honeysuckle plant that is just starting to bloom - it smells really nice over there.

And here is my unexpected rose. I was looking out from our family room and noticed a flower in the treed area between our house and our neighbors. It's not really an area that we cultivate, so when I saw something blooming bright there I had to investigate. It looks like a wild rose, I don't know how it got there and I don't remember it from previous years but I'll enjoy it just the same.