June is almost gone already!  I’m going back to my garden today as I still haven’t finished editing Longwood Gardens photos.

We finally got some much needed rain. Our lawn was pretty crispy and I was watering the gardens a lot. After a couple good days of soaking rain, everything feels lush and green.  Now, of course, it’s going to get boiling hot, but you can’t have it all.

My Calycanthus bush is doing so well. Even though it got hit with a snow/ice slide off of our roof this winter, which broke some of it off, it recovered great.

I planted this is 2015 this size:

The garden sure has changed in 3 years!  Patience for this is so, so hard.

Here is a closeup of the blooms:

June is rose season. All of mine have been sending out flowers. This is Othello, a David Austin rose:

I have to say that I’m not terribly impressed with this rose. It only puts out a couple flowers and they last 1 day or two at most. It’s a beautiful flower, though.  I may move this to the back garden this fall.

Fair Bianca, on the other hand, is my fabulous rose bush:

This has probably 20 open flowers on it now – and the plant is not that big. They are in clumps like this all over the plant. It smells amazing, too.

My astilbes are fully open now. Or at least the white ones are.

I have a few different kinds of astilbes. My shade bed really has a mole problem, which is pissing me off. I’ve gone to mixing up a castor oil solution with dish soap and cayenne pepper  and pouring it over their tunnels to try to chase them out. Results uncertain as of yet.

Shasta daisies:

I got a lot of these last year from my BIL as leftovers from the tree nursery and they all came back.

Pretty petunias:

And the mini petunias – calibrachoa :

The yellow ones are a lot of fun!

We were hoping for a cupcake ride this weekend, but it’s just going to be too hot for that kind of riding in the afternoon. Mid 90s and humid – ick. That means morning rides only. Can you believe we have not had a cupcake ride this summer yet? Our schedules have not meshed with the weather to make that happen.

Stay cool everyone!