Happy Independence Day!
The storms yesterday hit the garden pretty hard. Lots of plants knocked over and broken. You can see the butterfly weed laying on the ground by my cone flower. This coneflower is the hot papaya and look at how small it is? The ones next to it are normal size and this one is all stunted. I am not sure why.
Close up of said butterfly weed (Asclepias)
Just to show how my garden isn’t perfect, I have had a huge problem with red lily beetles this year.
Since I am trying to attract butterflies and bees, I don’t spray insecticide. Organic or not – they don’t discriminate on which bugs die. So, I don’t spray. I pick them off and squish them when I see them, but they do damage. Those lilies are ready to pop open, too. Yay!
My oldest coneflower friend – the razzmatazz. Again, this is one of the plants I brought with me from Illinois 8 years ago. It’s an oldie and will be coming to our new house.
I also have delphiniums starting to bloom! I struggle with finding plants that like this strip of garden, and decided to try some delphiniums.
( I also desperately need to weed under my bird feeder LOL ). I wasn’t sure the delphinium would bloom this year, so maybe they like this spot.
Lots of tall daylilies in bloom now:
I actually think the shade garden looks better than the front garden this year!
The astilbes are blooming. The white ones have faded, but the Bressingham and Glow are still going. I mistakenly called Glow by the name Flame last week. CRS disease.
Glow:
A little slow in the garden now. It’s resting before all the coneflowers open up. 😀
Settee update – All the padding is in place and now it’s time for the fabric!
I moved the piece inside to work on now that it’s all clean and any cooties it might have had are off of it. I will be putting on the final fabric while watching the Tour de France this weekend!
That seems just right, working on your settee while watching the tour de france. It has a Parisian flair, don’t you think? What did you use to replace the padding? It looks very nice.
Well, bugs and storms… at least you don’t have a big dog knocking over plants. Noah got excited today, and broke a new plant off right at ground level.
Your delphinium looks great. I got that delphinium and foxglove at the same time. Planted them both in the same place. Foxglove looks great and the delphinium looks like its on its last legs. We’ll see what happens next year.
Your coneflower is so pretty. Maybe I’ll give them another shot. Have some great rides this weekend!
The padding was a layer of 1/2 inch foam, then a layer of batting, then muslin over the top. It’s actually pretty cushy with the springs underneath!
Oh – bummer about the storm damage to your garden.
Your bench is looking awesome!!
I wish I had a green thumb Lori – everything that comes to my house dies! Glad they weren’t damaged too much by the storms. Enjoy your Sunday – can’t wait to see the final piece!
I saw orange daylilies this week and thought of you.
Look forward to how the settee turns out. I haven’t seen much of the Tour yet because we are still in the middle of world championship soccer (made it to the last 4) and there’s more soccer on TV than tour at the moment.
Happy 4th! I cannot wait to see the finished settee. It’s looking amazing so far!
Have you figured out which flowers are coming and which are staying yet?