The Sun is Killing Me: Moonflower

Friday, September 17, 2010

Moonflower

This is the first year I have had a moonflower vine, and let me tell you it will not be the last! Love, love, love this flowering vine.

The moonflower has a thick, heady scent. Boy is it strong!

This one is planted in a pot along my back porch. The flowers are just beautiful against the dark night sky.

The flower is over 6 inches wide!

More moonflowers opening for the evening:

4 comments:

Tina Poe said...: This was my first year with moonflower also, but mine grabbed on to the neighbors tree and climbed higher than my two story house so I didn't get to enjoy the scents of the blooms opening that high up.; September 18, 2010 at 7:19 AM
LindaCTG said...: I love moonflower too! Never got around to planting it this year, but I'm making a note for next summer right now.; September 19, 2010 at 10:02 AM
Annie in Austin said...: I've grown Moonflower vine for years, Sun is Killing Me, and am not tired of it yet - also can't stop taking photos of the gleaming white discs ;-]

Annie at the Transplantable Rose; September 30, 2010 at 9:45 AM
Paul said...: They evidently hate me. I've never been able to keep one alive despite awesome records with every other ipomoea. Datura booms for me, too.; November 1, 2010 at 11:29 AM

Zone What?

Seattle to Olympia is Gardening Hardiness Zone 8.

Zone 8: -12 to -7 C (10 to 20 F)

Austin is Gardening Hardiness Zone 8-9

Zone 8: -12 to -7 C (10 to 20 F)
Zone 9: -7 to -1 C (20 to 30 F)

The USDA map was updated this year - 2012. Some zones have shifted from the previous version.

See the current map here:

http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html

Although both Austin and Seattle are in similiar zone hardiness, their climates could not be more different! Temps top out in the 80's in the summer in Seattle, where in Austin they can top 110 and stay in the 100's for months on end. The same plants that enjoy the Seattle maritime climate will fry in a second in the semi-desert that is Central Texas.

Learn about the heat zone map here:

http://www.ahs.org/publications/heat_zone_map.htm

Check out the AHS Heat Zone map here:

http://www.ahs.org/pdfs/05_heat_map.pdf

Past Garden Quotes of the Month

"The fair-weather gardener, who will do nothing except when the wind and weather and everything else are favorable, is never master of his craft."-- Henry Ellacombe
"The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession." -- Phyllis McGinley
"The way of cultivation is not easy. He who plants a garden plants happiness." --Chinese Proverb
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." --Greek proverb
'Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.' - Albert Einstein
"Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden." ~Orson Scott Card
"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden." ~Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666
"A weed is but an unloved flower." ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart." ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebookse
"Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination." ~Mrs. C.W. Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897 (Thanks, Jessica)
"When one of my plants dies, I die a little inside, too." ~Linda Solegato
"In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death." ~Sam Llewelyn
"Plant carrots in January and you'll never have to eat carrots." ~Author Unknown