July & August in our Garden

Summer is flying by.  I am not sure where July went but we entered August with a bang!!  Bruce came home from the hospital on July 31, 2013.  While he was in the hospital our neighbours were the recipients of a basket of tomatoes that happened to ripen while he was there.

These are what were harvested when Bruce was in the hospital
Neighbours loved them.

We also had figs ripen on our Hardy Fig.  I have never had fresh figs.  Wow!! these are delicious.  Now to see how this fig tree performs over the winter.  Bruce is going to heel the Hardy Fig tree into the vegetable garden for the winter.  If it dies down to the ground it should sprout again & give us figs on new wood next year.  I am really looking forward to this.

Ripe Figs from Hardy Fig

Hardy Fig in container - front
Sunflowers in background

Other plants in our garden that were either blooming or doing well were the Gyphon Begonias.  This plant has no flowers, it is for foliage only.  This is my favourite container in the whole garden.  We started off with very small plants but it has really grown and taken over the container.

Gyphon Begonia

Gyphon Begonia

Gyphon Begonia taken over the container.
There is supposed to be other plants in this container.

 My favourite flower has always been the Freesia but since it does not do well in the Northern Hemisphere, my second favourite flower has taken its place--the sunflower!  I love all the different kinds of sunflowers.  We get our sunflower seeds from Renee's Garden.  This year we did get a packet from Stokes Seeds as the squirrels dug up all the sunflowers & ate them.  I was not pleased!

Valentine Sunflower

Believe this sunflower is 'Van Gogh'

Junior Sunflowers -- Great for containers

Stokes Seeds
Don't remember the name & lost the tag.

Stokes Seeds - Sunflowers not blooming yet

Mexican Shell Flower

Containers lined up.
Looking west towards the neighbours

DD1's Succulent collection.