Welcome to Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for July 2024.
Here in my USDA Hardiness Zone 6a garden in central Indiana, we are having what I consider a typical summer.
Hot days, cooler days, occasionally even rainy days.
And the garden is looking pretty good, except for the weeds. But we all have weeds so “nothing to see there” as they say.
Instead, I encourage you to look past the weeds and the flaws of my garden and your own garden, and I’ll bet you’ll find some pretty flowers and maybe some good vegetables to eat when you do. And just maybe you’ll also find a quiet place to sit and relax and enjoy it all.
We all need a quiet place at times, don’t we? But it’s hard sometimes to be quiet in a garden in full bloom and full weediness. So much to do. Deadhead, weed, harvest. Even plan what bulbs we are going to buy to plant this fall.
Oh, but we should not get too far ahead of ourselves by thinking too much about fall bulbs to plant for spring flowers.
We should enjoy the garden as it is right now.
There are a lot of flowers blooming here in mid-July, but the one that I think sort of says “July” more than others is the coneflowers, Echinacea purpurea, pictured above. But please don’t tell the tall phlox I said that.
.Tall phlox, Phlox paniculata, thinks it’s the flower that should represent July in all its pink-ness, no matter what the tiger lily says.
There are actually many flowers that would like to be on the July page of the calendar. So many that instead of a stream of pictures, I made a video for you to view. You can watch it via this link or on YouTube. (Sorry I could not get it to embed here!)
Then you can gaze upon these resurrection lilies, Lycoris squamigera, that are blooming a bit earlier than normal.
Hmmm, but this is the only one. The rest are just coming up or haven’t come up yet so there’s hope of most of them blooming at the “normal” time, whenever that is!
And that’s it for my Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post. What’s blooming in your garden in the middle of July? It’s easy to participate in this meme and share your blooms with everyone. Just post on your blog or Instagram or wherever about the blooms in your garden, and then come back here and leave a link in the Mr. Linky widget and a comment to tell us what you have for us to see!
(Have you subscribed to my new weekly newsletter? It comes out every Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern time with little tidbits about what’s happening in my garden each week. It’s a bit of journalling, pondering, and sharing of gardening knowledge.)
“We can have flowers nearly every month of the year.” ~ Elizabeth Lawrence
I am just ignoring the weeds this summer – too hot. I do go out in the mornings to enjoy. I enjoyed your lilies and tall phlox; my tall phlox has buds on it. Thank you for hosting GBBD so regularly over so many years; that’s garden work we participants appreciate very much. (I also saw one of your articles recently in a Birds and Blooms magazine).
Which issue of Birds and Bloom? And what was the article about?
And ignoring weeds is an excellent method of dealing with weeds. Thanks for faithfully joining in for bloom day!
Beautiful blooms, Carol! Happy July!
Happy July to you as well!
Your words are lovely and remind us of why we garden and celebrate our passion on Bloom Day over all these years, thanks to you. Your Coneflowers and Lilies (and Phlox too!) are beautiful and speaking July. It has been a banner year for Coneflower and Hydrangea too and my lilies are also blooming two weeks ahead of schedule. Happy Bloom Day Carol! I am now off to view your video!
I published my GBBD post 3 days early this month to work around chaos in my household as we embarked on a project to replace all the leaky water pipes in our 73 year old house. Remarkably for July and with a heat dome sitting over much of California, we’ve been relatively cool along the coast and I still have lots of flowers, although I need to exercise your discipline when it comes to what I include in my GBBD posts. As always, thanks for hosting, Carol.
Beautiful! My Lycoris is just opening.
Yes, July is the month of coneflower for me too. And they’re so reliable.
Your phlox reminds me that I really need to get some of that!
Thanks for hosting as always.
It’s nice to see Echinacea again. I haven’t been able to grow those in my zone 7 garden in western Oregon. Although they are perfectly hardy, they don’t do well sitting in wet clay over the winter. It might be time to try them again now that I have a few raised beds.
“We all need a quiet place at times, don’t we? But it’s hard sometimes to be quiet in a garden in full bloom and full weediness. So much to do.”
So well said, Carol! Why is it always such a struggle to maintain equalibrium? I had Covid this past week that knocked me out, so that made me just sit quietly in the garden. I took these photos while shuffling around in the evenings in fact, so it was the only thing I could do for a few days. Good to just look—thanks for the reminder here with GBBD!
Well, I couldn’t believe we have two years in a row with drought-like conditions. I ran away to Cape Cod for two weeks so I think my weeds will surely exceed yours…
Common thread is our trustworthy Echinacea in the challenging spring!