A break from the heat

What do you do when you can't take the heat anymore?
My wife & I abandoned ship and headed to Iceland for the past week.
I just brought my little pocket-sized camera, so my pictures aren't great.
But the flowers there were so gorgeous, I can't help but post some of them.
For those who hated your Uncle Larry's travelogue slide shows when you were a kid,
you can just move on to the next topic.
For any who want to come along, here's what we found over there...

First impression is that everything grows bigger, colors are brighter,
and all the humidity-hating plants I lust after grow beautifully there.

First up is a row of aruncus. They are planted everywhere there. Practically like hedges.

The street planters were gorgeous.

Wildflowers strewn all over the hillsides.

Even the graveyards had beautiful flowers.

The landscape is dark and rather treeless from the volcanic origin,
but closer inspection shows the scree is covered with alpines.
I've always wanted to have a rock garden with alpines,
but there's nothing particularly 'alpine' about our summer climate in the midwest...

We went to a smaller town on Iceland's northern coast called Akureryi (sp?).
We went to their botanical garden, which I figured would be pretty underwhelming,
since it's a small town. But it was fantastic.
Here are some eryngiums.

The garden had all the plants I can't grow here.

There were lupine everywhere.
Almost as nice as Pirl's.

I particularly liked a coral-colored one.

Delphiniums as tall as me! (pretty tall)

Gold and blue meconopsis.

I have struggled to get a meconopsis to survive here.
They looked incredibly vigorous there.

I'm not sure if these are gazania? Anyway, there are striking.
There were fields of them.

Edelweis.
I planted one in my yard last year.
It didn't enjoy the heat and croaked after about a minute.
These look much happier.

Huge luscious lewisias in every imaginable color.
Really unbelievable.

And finally, of course they have iceland poppies everywhere!

I hope you enjoyed the tour.
This was my edited version.
I made my wife suffer through the full slide show.
She was almost comatose by the end.

We're now back in the steambath,
but weather is much, much nicer the past couple days.
Hopefully we're over the hump for this summer.
Now, I have to see what the weeds have been up to while I've been away...

Love the flowers, Scott, especially the delphiniums! The street planters and the aruncus were so beautiful.

Is Robin out of the coma now?

Don't look for the weeds - they will find you. Here the crabgrass has gone insane as it always does in August. Now we're getting better weather...for two days, then it's back to heat and humidity.

The last photo looks more like a painting - beautiful!

Thank you so much for sharing these pics! Funny, Iceland has never really popped up on my radar as a vacation point, but everything looks so beautiful I will keep it in mind for the future.

Our now late neighbor was born and raised in Iceland. She and her husband have gone over for visits and their photos are lovely as well. I agree, Eleven, I'd never have thought of it except for the neighbor and this thread.

Loved the pictures. Thanks for sharing. So neat to see "Iceland" poppies. I grew them for the first time this year. I bought a few on the clearance rack from Lowe's. Do you know if they return? Or are they annuals here?
I especially like the Lupines and Aruncus.

Isn't it true how we always want to grow something we can't? Iceland can't grow all the flowers we can. Does this sound a little bit like sour grapes? :)

We went to Jackson, Wy. and really enjoyed the wild flowers there as well. We're in the process of making a scrapbook of our vacation.

So, I guess this is the prime time to go to Iceland?? Is it very touristy? Jackson was full of tourist-especially people from other countries.