What’s blooming today? Rocks!!  Any of you keeping track might remember the little wall we removed from the garden bed by the house a couple weeks ago. The bed was very sloping and I was moving dirt when I unearthed a ton of rocks:

I emailed Debby with a picture of my find right away since she has a current obsession with stones LOL! We knew the ones closer to the house were there, but not these into the bed. There is a mix of the big rocks, bricks, slate pieces (from the roof) and interesting mineral specimens.  I then went into the garden bed in the back and started digging by the fence. There are rocks all along the perimeter of the fence, although I wasn’t sure how many were in the garden bed. Turns out a lot!  These were somewhat deep  – and need to go if I am going to plant here.  This is pile 1.

This is from about a 10 foot section along the fence. I can’t imagine how many rocks there are. Enough to have some sort of rock garden or even making a stone path on the side of the house.  I will keep digging around back there and see what comes up.

Pile 2:

Some of them are large and heavy as well. Here is my foot for comparison.  

Functional fitness doing all this, I tell you. No need to lift weights when this stuff is on the schedule!

Then I used a wheeled cart to bring them from the bed to the patio so I can make a giant pile and ponder what to do with them 😀  Maybe I should make a big inukshuk or something.

Anyway, I think I found some of what has been eating my plants.

I have been checking in the morning and evening and got a Japanese beetle, an inch worm and some other bug that I found actually munching the coneflower petals, so I think that was the culprit. I squished it before thinking that I might want to identify what it was.  Duh. Now the flowers seem to be left alone and new growth isn’t showing damage, but I will keep an eye out.

Fairy impatiens:

 

My hydrangea didn’t die and is going to bloom. I have never been able to keep a hydrangea that I planted alive, so this one is good. Although, it was already here when we moved in, so that probably helped 😀

It needs a serious prune as the top half is flopping over the fence, so this fall we will take that part off.

This is the butterfly bush draped over the sweet potato vine pot.

 

The hostas out back are now blooming:

I may keep these after all, but just move them somewhere else.

My agastache out front are really taking off:

I really, really love these flowers. The bees love them, too.  They also love the cleome. Lots of bees in this front garden.

The cantaloupe supreme coneflower sent out a platoon of blooms. This picture really shows the evolution of how the blooms form over time.

As you can see, I also got another fun chair done. I have bought 4 chairs recently to the tune of $16. Three of them were $2 and one was $10.  Two of them were meant for the garden, and you saw the one I did for the back.  This one I got a couple weeks ago from Second Chance Barn. I used one of my sample pots of paint for it (this was a possible bedroom color at the time) and some polyurethane.  Then I stopped at the garden center and got a container refill.  I like those because they are less expensive since you aren’t buying the container, just the plants in a plastic pot. You just pop it into your own container and there you go!

Originally this was going to go in the shade garden, but I needed to move my tippy pots since this spot is too sunny for them. I didn’t really want to have to water those twice a day, so I moved them and put this in the spot.

 

And – my David Austin rose is blooming again.  Yay!

It also got munched on as well.  Jeez Louise. This will have a nice mid summer flush of blooms. In fact, two of my other roses have new growth and buds as well.

Have a great weekend!