My Morning Glory adventures February 2010

We came from here.. welcome to February.. I was greeted with a nice bloom from a seed I planted in the middle of December... I love heart shaped leaves.. please post your heart shaped leaves and share the Valentine spirit..

pretty pink Coral Vine has a heart-shaped leaf

Dear John, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.. I love those vines. I have a dear freind that needs a good picture of the blooms, plz dmail me and let me know if you could send it to her, she would announce it as your photo on her site. She actually is in our MarketPlace Watch dog list here.
Hearts in the coleus

Girl...i was looking at your Dec thread....i didnt know you had such a green heart....(a thumb is too small of a body part) . you have so many plants! youve proved to me where there's a will, there's a way.

do you bring any of those plants outside in the spring/summer?


somebody said show butterflys....here's one that landed on a coneflower

Really nice butterfly pic, nanniepb! I only get bumblebees on my Echinacea flowers.

i followed bees around on my coreopsis. and sunflowers.

I love following butterflys and bumblebees, honey bees too, even dragon flys.. thats a great shot , Nannie.. is your name phyllis? Been going thru the drawers in the buffet where I keep the whole years worth of anything money is spent on.. whew! One drawer cleaned out and piles sorted, only three more to go thru. Gave my dh a folding file cabinet with a handle, now he can put the paper in there instead of the drawers. We do a long form since I spend money on my job, and I have to save everything!
Anyway, I missed a little blue hederacera opened this am, found the spent bloom when watering tonight. Yes, I move those downstairs plants outside, transplant what is ready from seeds I have going. the I. operculina is vining, i. merrima tuberosa is vining, turbina corymbosa is up, rivera cory ( number 4) is up, still waiting on the pandies and the two native bindweeds, I bet they needed to be stratified, we will see. I did plant some outside in a large pot in the fall so those may be coming up in march or april. all the cuttings of lantanas, salvias, hibiscus, chichi, and tropical milkweed are rooted and growing. I am ready for spring. the coleus are everywhere. I found a small "bee" type critter flying around there, so I bet some eggs hatched, I am glad, maybe I will get seeds now.
This is a project with the end of my old picnic table in the alley I started last fall.. I had a pack of emmas Mix all over it, they bloomed and I just let them go to seed. I dropped marigolds, zinnias, celosia, black eyed susans, and salvias seeds back there this fall. Can't wait to see what pops up here.

Another shibori from bluespiral bloomed last night. It had the same purple white as the one I posted already. There is a clump of buds on the i. nil in the pink bedroom window. The passions and the rivera corymbosa in that window are fighting each other right now.
this is my patio morning glory curtain from 2008.

This area looks really different in the end of summer.. the ole pear tree/birdbath area.

I grow alot of zinnias everywhere, kinda scatter them around the patio, so I can sit and use my point and shoot zoom for good shots.

I use morning glorys all around the yard, since there is no privacy fence, and I like that.In the end of Fall, after the first freeze, I just cut them and wind them up and hang them in the dog run corners until I am ready bag a few seeds up. This was 2008. The north fence looking west..

This was the northwest corner of my patio "room" the morning glory curtain was on the northeast corner. I really liked this plan alot. I made the mistake of planting Iochroma, nite blooming jessimines in the barrell inside the mg curtain. not to mention the tall red ruby slippers lobelia, so there was a little conflict of who was going wherre as they grew up. the barrell you can't see to the right had a mg pole of blue flowers in the middle of it. I really liked using those cane poles.

Here you can see the HUGE heart shaped leaves on that south fence climbing thru the bridal wreath and the sweet autumns.

These purple spires grow with the 4 o'clocks, and the basils I plant up against the house. All these things come back for me here in zone 6a.

Really outstanding photo of the Monarch butterfly, Debra!

Debra, yes, i'm phyllis, but my friends call me phyl, or fifi.

i love the colors. spring, hurry up

Well thanks, I guess I was tired I didn't post the purple spire plants.. but here is a great heart for the season.. and also for the American Heart Associations GoRed Day in womens awareness for a healthy heart..I handed out red wrist bands and red dress stickers all day to our customers.. all of us wore red today..
more snow forecast here.. and yes this leaf was turned sideways, don't get a crook in your neck.

Your photos are always a delight, Debra! I, too, like the butterfly shot. I can't get over all the snow in the one photo! WOW!

Anyone have any more butterfly shots or heart pics?
This is my white swan coneflower last year. Butterfly wouldn't pose for me.

Beautiful white coneflower Debra.

This message was edited Feb 6, 2010 1:35 AM

I should have some photos to show of hearts and butterflies once I get home.

taken of that same butterfly on his bush ;)

Beautiful photo Nannie

Have a heart...

Butterflies are free...

Virginia's state insect...

Happy Valentine's Day

Oh thank you! so very pretty! You guys have made my day! ;D

Love all the photos with leaves, blooms, and butterflies! :-)

♥♥♥ Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! ♥♥♥

i was looking at all the bees I took pics of on my sunflowers in 08 today.

I'm planting all my seeds this year! all together.

Sunflower seeds or MG seeds???? lol

those two plants do well together, Phyllis.. just letting you know..

Oh Duh ... I get it now ... grow sunflowers and MGs together so the vines have a stalk to grow up! LOL! That went right over my head until I saw Debra's post! LOL!

There were alot of great ideas at growing morning glorys last year I thought. I loved Beclys cement donut rings, such a great way to keep the moisture in and the plANTS sorted out.
Darren had a neat trellis. Danuel with his hedge like Garden and those beautiful flowers the cleomes for mg supports.
someone had teepees, some used tomatoe cages, some used wooden lattis panels. I liked the "flower stalk" support because in the wild, these rogues do entwine around anything they can get to.

Somewhere I have a pic of my green beans going towards my sunflowers in the big garden.

lol Becky, WE have both. I didnt plant all my sunflower seeds either.

anyone want some mixed sunflower seeds? LOL

I, too, think everyone had some wonderful ideas! :-)

My biggest problem with letting them intertwine with other stuff is when it comes time to collect seeds ... I need to be able to ID what seeds I am collecting. Even when I grew them along the fence, the vines managed to intertwine among each other and it was a bear to try to ID the seed pods. So, I find having them separated the best way. Maybe a few feet from each other. Of course, when you grow them in a garden setting, the object isn't necessarily the end result of collecting the seeds, but how they flow in your garden bed. And so many of you had such gorgeous gardens last year with the MGs popping up in different areas. So pretty!

That is such a hard choice for me personally to make. I would love to have them growing up trees, in bushes, up my arbor or meandering through my garden beds, but it's not often practical for IDing and collecting seeds.

How do some of you handle that issue?

The MGs climbing the Sunflowers looks beautiful. I tried it, and here in midstate Illinois, the vines were quite long before the Sunflower stems were tall or stout enough for the MGs to climb. I left the stalks over winter and the next year the MGs climbed the dead stalks. It worked great .

Becky, I just make sure that the ones that are uncontrollable as it were are in a far corner, or segregated somehow. Like this year I am again gonna use my thorn tree as a living trellis, it's like 7 x 8 feet and covered in vines~flowers, and quarter inch needle like thorns, deceptive to any trespassers...lol. Also using the Cradle sideboard... ((thanks for mentioning that Debra! & Now that they are unsafe MORE peeps should be doing this !!! )) ...with some I Nils thinking of YOU Becky! lol...I am pulling up 10 wild seed MG seedlings a day that fell from the top of the Honeysuckle in my front bed. it is OUTTAHAND. Just today I seeded it with Cosmos and Zinnias, and the Freesia bulbs are up and green, and had my first Daffodil today~ LOVE the hybrids with scent mmmmmmmmmmmm yah!!!!!!....sadly no flower MG shots to share YET ....nyuk nyuk....
Cheers!!
:D

Darren - I have been checking the local thrift stores, Darren for bed headboards and footboards and chairs, etc. to use as props or trellises for my garden beds! You'll have to share some photos of yours! I grew daffodils one year but they don't do well here in FL. Yours are beautiful! I love Freesia. I have some in pots that come up and bloom every year! ;-) Yeah ... those wild MGs will grow everywhere! Ugh ...

lol...i have to add ten minutes to leaving for work in the morning to accomodate the needs of the front of house !~ I think it probably doesnt get cold enough there bulvs need that. a ytaer agao when we had a serious foot of snow I had the BEST of any season....Well we can always trust our seed to perform. I am starting to saok the Mauve Splash this day first, in a pot eventually with Black Kniola. Thats the ''Currrent'' plan,anyway!
:D