Happy New Year, Bitches!

Merry Christmas, Bitches!

The Mistress could use a leg up, getting ready for the holidays...

My Christmas wish is that you'll forgive my many absences. I'll catch up with you in the New Year.

In the meantime, it's time to don your Mistletoe Belt Buckles...

Merry Christmas, Bitches!

Norma's Garden Photos

Our final entry in the NINTH ANNUAL INFOMANIAC GARDEN PHOTOS EVENT comes to us from Miss Normadesmond of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Take it away, Norma...

Norma’s got many things that are green, but her thumb ain’t one of them.

My neighborhood has a community garden. 

The gals love to take cuttings from one another...

 Luba seems to have found a bulb that needs planting...

Our grapes have tender vines...

There’s no lack of fertilization...

Morey lives across the street. He’s always looking for a hedge to clip...

Our American Gothic!...

Of course, he lives in another neighborhood...

I’d just mowed. Thankfully, my clippings are bagged...

AyeM8y's Garden Photos

Our next entry in the NINTH ANNUAL INFOMANIAC GARDEN PHOTOS EVENT is AyeM8y in Florida.
As usual, please click to enlarge.

Not sure what these red flowers are, they volunteered.

Red Chili Pepper

The Very Dr. Seuss-looking Castor Bean plant

A variegated Black Elephant Ear

My medieval-looking chandelier with Mason jar shades and a fleur-de-lis, hanging in my Scuppernong arbor.

Just some weed.

My Bleeding Heart.

Not sure what these are but the hummingbirds and butterflies love it. Pictured in the background is a tiny jar hummingbird feeder. I suddenly have many, many hummingbirds.

Note from the Mistress: I couldn't resist adding this photo of AyeM8y, mowing the lawn...

Dinah's Garden Photos

The next entry in the NINTH ANNUAL INFOMANIAC GARDEN PHOTOS EVENT is from Dinahmow of Mackay, Queensland, Australia.

Click to embiggen the smaller images...

Alpinia zerumbet, commonly known as shell ginger

Syzygium wilsonii,from now on, known as the Drag Queen, thanks to Jon.

Unopened bud of Syzygium wilsonii. They look like raspberries on steroids!

Tecomanthe hillii (Fraser Island creeper)

Brugmansia (Angel's trumpets)

Costus comosus (Red Tower Ginger)

Unnamed cactus

Petrea volubilis, commonly known as purple wreath, queen's wreath, sandpaper vine, and nilmani

Coming Soon - More Garden Photos

More of your garden photos coming soon, probably on the weekend. The Mistress has a few other things to take care of at the moment...

Miss Scarlet's Garden Photo

The next entrant in the Ninth Annual Infomaniac Garden Photos Event is Miss Scarlet from Devon, England.

Click pic to enlarge

Apologies - all I have is this very green picture of a corner of my garden. Obviously it shows an electrical warning sign and some very overgrown bushes interspersed with ferns, brambles, hawthorn, and some rather attractive fencing.

I started trying to get my garden under control but it has started raining again, so I missed the rather large window of opportunity back in July... and this is the result.

Mr. DeVice's Garden Photos

Our next entry in the NINTH ANNUAL INFOMANIC GARDEN EVENT comes to us from Mr. DeVice in Norfolk, England.

Seen here without his hoe

The Mistress insists that you click to enlarge these garden photos. 

p.s. Mr. Device's descriptions are underneath the photos.

These are the south-facing gardens of the new DeVice Mansion nearly five months after moving in.  It was just a swamp for the first month, then we had the paysho (because “pat-ee-oh” is vulgar) extended and the lawn laid a month later in March.  The next two or three weeks were spent digging bags and bags of manure into the now dry, stone-filled concrete-like clay “soil”.  The red greenhouse turned up in May which was also when various plants were put in, seeds were sown, and the three fruit trees in the lawn were planted.

 The paysho as seen from the DeVice Mansion’s south-east wing in mid-July.  And before a “Banned by Infomaniac” sticker is slapped to my forehead, the offending items are not mine – The Mother left them there and I didn’t notice when I took the photo! Note from The Mistress: Oh right, blame your mother.

The shady spot behind the garage brightened up with some ferns, hostas, and beautiful foxgloves (again, from mid-July).

The view from the arbour in mid-August.  That’s a small vegetable patch at the back next to the greenhouse.

My lovely Eucomis comosa “Sparkling Burgandy” (aka Pineapple lilies which, I think, have featured a few times in my Garden Photos Event photos?) on the paysho. Note from The Mistress: Go back to previous events and check it yourself, you lazy baggage.

When I’m sick to death of everything and everyone else and need to get away, I visit my little “garden” on the beach.  Beyond those pretty little flowers, amidst the marram grass, is my beach hideaway.

This is it. I constructed the little inukshuks which are usually still standing (mostly) whenever I return, which just goes to show that no one else ventures into my patch when I’m not there (and the sea rarely reaches this far in the summer).  Well, apart from birds and deer (their footprints are left in the sand).

This is the view – almost always free of human beings, fortunately.

Jeffery's Garden Photos

The next entry in the NINTH ANNUAL INFOMANIAC GARDEN PHOTOS EVENT is Jeffery from Philadelphia, USA. 

Click on photos for maximum viewing pleasure.

Gloriosa lilies

Orange clivia

Peony tulips

Marilyn tulips

Planter in front

Species crocus

Species red tulips

Yellow clivia

NOTE: Jeffery can't respond to your comments because of some cock-up with Google/Blogger. Nonetheless, please feel free to leave a comment here for Jeffery.

Jon's Garden Photos

Our first entry in the Ninth Annual Infomaniac Garden Photo Event comes to us from Jon in London, England.
(Remember to click photos to enlarge!)
Take it away, Jon!

From this...

To this...

It's been an odd year for us gardeners, weather-wise. After the semi-tropical long, hot summer in 2018, we were lulled into a false sense of optimism by the early warm weather we had in February this year - we even had fuchsias and snapdragons in flower in what should have been the winter months, alongside the bulbs (daffs, tulips, anemones, cyclamen, crocus and aconites among them, together with a new acquisition Ipheion), pansies, primulas and wallflowers!

Spring: Clockwise from top left - Cyclamen coum, Eranthis hyemalis (Winter Aconite), Ipheion uniflorum (Spring Starflower), Tulipa 'Gavota'.

It wasn't to last, however. March saw gale-force winds and storms (that blew away our plastic greenhouse), April was wet and miserable right up until Easter when the sun shone, then May and June went (mostly) unseasonably cold again. Needless to say, that buggered up the chances of the carefully-nurtured seedlings we'd planted out in the hope of putting on some growth during the lead-up to what's laughingly known in the UK as "mid-summer"; they got a helluva shock, and several (especially the species ipomoeas and the cobaea) never fully recovered. We're used to the Gulf Stream effect, and instead at times it felt more like the Baltic. Regardless, our tough "old reliables" - the blue rose, scilla, mimulus, petunias, foxgloves, osteospermum, thalictrum, geraniums, aquilegia, hesperis, coreopsis and campanula (plus our new lilies and eucomis) - provided that summer colour we needed.

Early summer: Clockwise from top left - Thalictrum aquilegiifolium, Aquilegia chrysantha 'Yellow Queen', Digitalis purpurea (Foxglove) “Dalmatian Purple”, Rosa "Veilchenblau".

Mid-summer: Clockwise from top left - Campanula medium (Canterbury Bells) 'Deep Blue', Hemerocallis 'Crimson Pirate', Eucomis zambesiaca 'White Dwarf', Dahlia 'Bishop's Children mix' (unnamed) with Begonia × tuberhybrida 'Sangria'.

Late summer: Clockwise from top left - Fuchsia 'Lady Isobel Barnett', Salvia patens 'Patio Deep Blue', Fuchsia 'Blue Waves',
Salvia 'Amistad'.

Thankfully we did finally get a "proper summer" in July and August, and the extensive gardens were (and still are, to a degree) awash with colour - with the phlox, fuchsias, salvias, monarda, agastache, hollyhocks, begonias, thunbergia, verbena and dahlias commanding centre stage. And, of course, there's still a couple of months yet to go before any of them get frost-bitten, with any luck...

Roll on 2020!