The best part of the district garden club meetings held every three months is the horticulture they show. You can see the lovely things people grow and be inspired. Here is a blossom of Japanese Anemone, a late-summer perennial. You can see more pink things of all kinds at Pink Saturday.

This Des Moines, Washington nursery goes in for petunias in a big way. Bigger than anything I have ever seen in the way of petunias, or any flower grouping, really. They must have over 100 feet of the most amazing installation of petunias I have ever seen. And they are fragrant, too! It had just rained pretty hard earlier, so these were not even at their perkiest, but wow, is all I can say.

For more flowers, visit Flowers for Today. It’s great.

And be sure to stop by Color Carnival for more amazingly bright colors.

It’s Pink Saturday again, and here are some pink flowers that are different from my usual kinds. Cindy of the fabulous garden and deck flowers shown here a while back sewed this beautiful crazy quilt. And visit Color Carnival for more amazingly bright colors of all kinds.

Enjoy!

This is a newer variety of coneflower, or echinacea. It’s more pink than mauve and the petals don’t recurve too much, and it’s not too tall, either. More like a pink daisy, really. Here it is, blooming in my garden, with geraniums I overwintered downstairs and some peach-colored impatiens behind it.

Next year I think I’ll try doing impatiens from seed, as I hear they aren’t too hard and grow easily, plus I could use a lot of them. I read that with extremely fine seed, the thing to do is get a little clean sand and mix the fine seeds well into it; then you can handle a pinch of the sand fairly easily and not get a jillion seeds at a time.

Visit Pink Saturday for more pinkness of all kinds. Such nice people, such sweet pink photos!

And the Color Carnival folks like bright pink, too, ideally combined with red and peach! If you like color, you’ll LOVE Color Carnival.

Next week we are going camping again, and my favorite part is the campfires. Not for cooking, because that makes such a mess on the pots and pans, and washing dishes is so hard when camping, but just to gaze at and enjoy. The sight, the smell, and the soft sound of the flames in the quiet woods, is one of my top fave experiences. A photo is a small slice of that, but it reminds us.

So now I have this new rose garden, with 18 new rose bushes. It was so much work to create it, but the rewards are immense. I love to go out and clip the fading flowers so the petals don’t strew around in the wind. Sometimes I get a little over-enthusiastic in my deadheading and then I have fullblown roses looking at me soulfully in the clippings bucket. I rescued five of these and put them in a bowl of water.

For more ruby redness in photos, visit Ruby Tuesday.

Seattle has an International Festival in the International District which really seems to be Chinatown, mostly. We went last year, had a great time, and were glad to see it was bigger this year, but I could do without the amplified karaoke. There was wonderful dancing on the Dragon Stage by several Punjabi groups, and the vendors included a food carver, below. Red is the color of good fortune in China, you know, so there was lots everywhere.

For even more red, visit Ruby Tuesday. And for more seriously bright colors, visit Color Carnival.

The little plants I showed you a week or so ago are going gangbusters. Sweetpeas like to be picked, you know, so I must pick bouquets with fragrance like no other to enchant me and give away. What else can I do?

Here’s how to raise great sweetpeas: 1) You must nick the seed with nail scissors, then soak overnight in a dish of water before planting. The seeds are big and pretty easy to handle and it really doesn’t take long. You will see that the nicked ones swell and are ready to go and the ones that didn’t get the outside casing pierced sit there, small and hard.

2) Plant as directed, indoors in early spring if you want.

3) When planting outdoors, put them in a place where heat will not be a problem if possible. An eastern exposure like these have helps. But the big thing is, sweetpeas love manure. When planting, dig a double handful of bagged steer manure into the soil around each one. Then wait patiently for heaven in a flower to appear.

For more floriferous photos, visit Flowers For Today. Everyone likes flowers!

And hello to the Color Carnival crew. We all love bright colors; such a happy feeling.

It’s still June, so how can you resist roses? Here’s one for you to wish you could inhale off the computer screen. Some day, I am sure, it will happen.

For more rubiness of all kinds, visit Ruby Tuesday, here.

I am so happy to see the sweetpeas finally taking off. I planted them from seed myself, and that always adds to the gardening enjoyment, I find. And sweetpeas love to be picked! You can only enhance and prolong the blooming period by picking them as they come into flower. Of course, I always leave a few.

For more flowers around the world, visit Today’s Flower.