Friday blooms!  Plus the new driveway.  Heehee!  It showcases my shade garden very well.

All those tall lilies are pretty much gone.

Sometimes I feel very “adult” when I love home things like the new driveway or our new windows.  Yeah, I know I am 44 and technically an adult, but it’s all in how you feel, you know?

We have had rain the last couple of days.  The ground just soaked it up like a sponge! The crabgrass has greened up. Now maybe the rest of the lawn will as well  😳

That’s the home for our car for a couple days more until we can drive down the rest of the driveway.  View from the garage.

It’s going to make snow removal so much better this winter.  Not that snow removal ever is really all that great, but it will be easier than a driveway with pits, holes and grooves in it.

Anyway, I digress from the garden.

Loving my coneflowers.

The milkshake coneflower is now completely white.  Pretty cool!  They need to create one called peanut butter or something like that.

Another shot of the globe thistle.  These blooms don’t last long.

I had lots of garden visitors this week.  The monarchs have been all over my garden this week.  This guy flutters around all day.

He visits a lot of the flowers, but the butterfly bush is the favorite.

Then there was the return of the sphinx moth!  This is the moth that looks and acts like a hummingbird with antennae.

This is a cool shot. You can see the nectar ‘string’ as he backed out of this flower.

The butterfly bush certainly is the star of the garden right now as far as the insects go.  Living up to its name!  This is a black swallowtail.

He was hard to get a shot of because he kept fluttering his wings.  Thank you sports setting!

Lily The cat with no name is enjoying the path.

She actually wants no part of me.  See how she is poised to run if I get any closer?  If I crouch down and move slow, I can get closer to her, but no petting.

Lovely smelling Scentimental rose.  Ali – this is for you!

It mixes well with the smell of fresh asphalt.

Had to sneak in another shot of my favorite combo.

I am already planning which plants I am going to move around in the fall.  Obsessed much?  I am also sort of thinking of expanding the front of this bed outwards.

I think I might bring a curve out from the center.  There is a rose bush I really want to get, but I just cannot find space for it, even if I move plants around.  So, guess I will take up more lawn!

Hoping to ride this weekend. Think Saturday is shot with rain, but Sunday looks good.

**My thoughts go out to family and friends of the Colorado shooting victims.**

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This has been a long week.  Lots of things done, work completed and people visited with.  It almost felt like the weekend already and work was slow for both John and I, so we actually decided to take a ride for lunch.   Please watch your retinas – this was my color combo:

Yes – they really are that neon.

We biked to Celia’s Table.  This restaurant opened up in the space Wholey Crepe used to be in (which I miss).

We sat outside al fresco because it was about mid 70s and so nice to be outside.  Bikes parked right back there 😀

I had half an egg salad sandwich and a bowl of chicken pot pie soup.

I think that basically just the filling for their chicken pot pies 😀

This was a good lunch and reasonably priced.

My garden actually seemed to enjoy the heat.  Or most of the garden did.  Now that cooler weather and a bit of rain came it – it really perked up.

The globe thistle is fully blooming now.

The bees love this flower.  It goes really nicely with cone flowers, too.

Sweet potato vines on the front porch.

I didn’t know that the sweet potato vines actually had flowers.  They are only open early in the morning before the sun hits them.

This is annual salvia.  I wasn’t too impressed with this, but now it seems to be doing better.  These are in pots on the back porch.

We have been getting tons of monarchs lately, too.  I did plant with butterflies and hummingbirds in mind, so nice to see that actually works.  Here is a butterfly sitting on the railing post.

Lovely ball on that post, eh?

Here is the little paver path that the mail carrier uses through the garden.

We put that in because the mail carrier was cutting across that area before the garden was put there when we first moved in.  It seemed like a nice natural path through it, which helps with weeding and such as well to get in there without trampling plants.

View from the porch:

You actually have to sit right by the railing to see this.  If you are back on the porch, you can only see the tops of the tall plants.  I pull my chair right up close.  That empty hook used to hold the hummingbird feeder, but we had some strong winds and it fell off and broke.

Still have some sundrops going.  These are lasting quite a while!

And the little teddybear sunflowers.

The heliopsis clematis has left behind its truffula trees.

And more blooms on the scentimental rose.  Funny how they are all on the edges and bottom of the bush this time around.

That’s a solar light.  We have a couple and need more to light the little walkway.

Tomorrow is going to be in the low 80s and sunny.  Absolutely perfect for biking and we are both jonesing for a cupcake!  Long ride, here we come!

What’s blooming on Friday the 13th?  It’s a good luck day in the garden!  Long-blooming perennial time now and the garden is full.

The knockout rose is starting to bloom again.

I also have buds forming on the scentimental bush as well.  The second flush is always smaller than the first, but looks like there will be a good number of blooms.

I know I knocked on petunias when I talked about doing this planter, but these have really grown on me.

Such an unusual color.  Of course, I love the planter, too, which helps.

The armeria keeps sprouting up new plants.  I am going to deadhead these and see if they come back next year.  Excuse the watering can – that’s what I was doing 😀

Close up.

A few more close up blooms.  Gaillarda

My lilies, which are still going, although not as prolific.

And the milkshake coneflower.

My globe thistle is almost in bloom here.

It’s in the hard prickly stage now, but it will get little bloom bursts on it.

We have a little visitor that has been sleeping in the garden at night for the last few nights.

I hope she belongs to someone, but I am not sure. Pretty skittish.   Must not try to make friends… must resist…

My butterfly bush is finally blooming.  It’s about a foot shorter than normal, but at least I still have it.

 

Full view – avoiding the crispy part of the lawn.  It’s always green in a ring around the garden because of watering the garden. We don’t bother with the lawn because it just goes dormant.

Driveway angle.  That’s my new flag in the corner there as well.

You can see the butterfly bush really well in that picture.

Have a great weekend everyone!  Stay cool 😀

Boy, was that a short week or what?  I think I could get used to working Mon and Tues, having Wed off, and then working Thurs and Friday.  That would be a nice work week.

I knew some heat was going to be coming in today, so I was out before 7 am to take a bike ride!  Glad I went early, too.  It was fairly quiet.  I took the paths mostly.  Lots of birdies singing and a few people, but not many.

Refreshing!

I really find it just sets up my whole day to exercise in the morning.  I tend to get crabby if I haven’t done my morning workout.  I never used to be a morning person, but somehow became one.

15 miles done and I was home. I made up a quick breakfast (I had a workout shake before leaving the house for the ride).

1-minute muffin topped with peanut flour and jam.  Kind of looks like dessert, doesn’t it?  It’s not very sweet, though.  I am always amazed at how long I stay full with this muffin.

Worked and watched the Tour until lunch.  I didn’t want anything heavy, so I made a scrambled egg sandwich!

With hot sauce  – kinda messy, but Yum!  Haven’t had one of those in a while.

Garden tour time!

This makes me so happy.  I stand out there with a big smile.  I love flowers.  It makes John laugh when he sees me get all excited in the garden.

Lilies are still going.

I put one of my attic-find planters with the lilies for now.

It gets more sun here at this time of year.

The Hot Papaya echinacea have more blooms.  I love how these open orange and then turn red.

My 3 ‘expensive’ coneflowers all together.

See how the milkshake one turns into a white fluffy ball?  So cool.

My other coneflower friend.

I have Japanese beetles now, which are eating some plants.  You can see the holes in the petals on this plant.

Snapdragons.  These are just plants that popped up where ever from when I deadheaded the flowers last year.  I like seeing where they end up.

Liatris.

One of the pots on my back porch with flowering tobacco and alysum.

My heliopsis clematis is finally blooming.

It’s about half the size it normally is at this time of year.

Ready for a snack?

My obsession.  Time to buy pineapple futures everyone.  Just a tip.

Leftovers for dinner tonight.  Chicken on a baker.

Plus something for my sweet tooth.

I have to work more tonight, but will be taking a break to walk up the street for a kiddie cone.  I budgeted it into my calories for the day.  It’s a good day for ice cream!

This spring and coming into summer has been about the perfect weather for a garden.  Lots of sun and afternoon rain.  Now a heat wave and the plants are soaking it up!

The daylilies have sprung to life.  I need to cull some of these because they spread like wildfire!

They actually do really well in the shade.  At least this old-fashioned one does.

My newest plant is the Hot Papaya echinacea.  How cool is this color?

I love it!  There is just the 1 bloom on this, but it is a young plant.  I am obsessed with the ruffed coneflowers.

My oldest friend is back.  I always say how I love certain plants in the garden, but more what I mean is the type of plant it is.  However, I do have a couple of plants which I am very fond of as ‘individuals’.  One is the yellow rose, obviously, as it has meaning outside of the garden.  The other one is this echinacea.

The razzmatazz.  It’s because I have had it for 8 years now.  I actually moved with this plant.  Dug it right out of the ground and carted it from Illinois to NY.

It’s like an old friend and has a personality.  Perennials can last a long time, but not really forever, and every year I check to see if this one will be back for another round.

Cheery galliardas.

One white swan coneflower has opened up.  The rest are getting ready.

You can’t see my garden sign anymore!

All these coneflowers are tall this year.  Almost everything is taller this year than in other years, with the exception of the butterfly bush and my heliopsis clematis – which normally are the huge plants in my garden. Go figure.

The sweet potato vines are doing well.

The actually had a couple of small light purple blooms on them, which was cool.  I didn’t know they flowered.  I hope more pop up so I can get a picture of them.

Those stubby plants are some nictotiana silvestris.  I tried growing these from seed last year and failed.  This year I managed to get about 6 to live (at least so far). They needed a lot of babying, which I am not so good about with indoor seedlings.  Hopefully they will grow big and tall like they are supposed to.  Better hurry up!

Green and flower filled post today.  No drought here.  I was wondering if we were going to have a dry time since we had hardly any snow this winter, but the spring rains certainly made up for it.

A few evening shots of the garden.

This is right up against the porch:

The butterfly weed is opening up.  I think it is a little early, too.

Bright orange and it gets a lot of interest from bees and butterflies (and aphids)

I have several colors of coneflowers that are getting ready to bloom.  One has opened – the Green Envy

Sundrops in full flower:

These are cute and delicate.

The astilbes I talked about last week are fully in bloom now.

They look like white starbursts, don’t they?

I am tempted to rip up some of the day lillies and have more of these in different colors.

Speaking of the day lilies  – they are really, really tall.

That’s pretty much eye level – so you know they are 5 feet tall.

Here is a nice sunny shot of the garden while I was eating lunch on the porch today.

Now the sundrops really live up to their name.

Sunny day and sunny weekend coming up.  Thinking our longest ride of the season coming up, too!

The week comes to a close already.  Our schedules have been all out of sorts this week.  Not in a bad way, but just different.  We ended up biking for a bagel this morning since we didn’t get one on Wednesday.  A nice morning for a ride.  This week the weather has been perfect for the garden.  Sunny mornings and afternoon rain showers and the green has exploded everywhere (including the lawn).

My butterfly bush is pretty short this year.  I wonder if it will get as big as it usually does.

I have a couple new plants.  This is Campanula.

I thought these would be taller, but I love the bell-shaped flowers.

Also just coming into bloom are the oenothera, aka Sundrops.

I will take more pictures when these are all in bloom.  These actually got crisped really badly with some frost because they came up too early, so happy to see they made it. I wanted something with early summer flowers and this and the campanula fit the bill.

One of my potted plants.  This is celosia, which will fill out a lot more.

John liked these when we were flower shopping, so I got them instead of my usual geraniums.

The liatris is getting bigger and bigger.  I love all stages of this plant.

This is the shade garden from the side of the house.  Lots o’ green here and the lilies have thrown up long stalks.

The astilbes are just about in bloom, so you will see close ups of those next week.

Roses are still going crazy.

Found the coolest spider on my scentimental rose bush.

After doing some research, I found out it is a crab spider.  This particular kind can change from yellow to green to the white/pink depending on the plant it is on.  It eats bees. Even the eyes are pink!

Pretty neat!

Made it to Friday!  I did get some good sleep last night, thank goodness.  I went up to read and next thing I know John was taking the book from me that I dropped and turning off the light.  I got almost 8 hours of sleep and felt mucho better today.

My insomnia really has been so much better since I started taking magnesium, so I am not sure where that came from.

Let’s see, goals first or garden first?  Guess I will go with goals.

1.  Continue the Fit Female program. I will finish up Stage 3 next week and move on to the final stage.  I will be dropping down to 2 days a week of lifting because of the increased bike mileage.  That means T/Th lifting schedule and lift only on rainy weekends.

2.  Make and post another guitar video.  Lucky you!  To keep myself working on the guitar (which I have been), I will post another song or two for your listening pleasure 😀

3.  Enjoy my birthday!  It’s next week and I am even taking a day off of work!  44 here I come.

4. Finish paying off credit card debt.  I will be credit card debt free by the end of the month.  I wish student loans would be gone as well, but you take what you can get, right?

5.  Make at least 3 recipes from the bazillion that I have pinned on Pinterest.  I am the queen of pinning and not doing.

Now on to the fun stuff!  The garden is really starting to pop now.

These are dianthus.  I planted these last year as annuals and with the mild winter, they came back!  I love having money saved 😀

This is armeria. I grew these from seed last year, and they sent up volunteers this year, which I was surprised to see and just left them in place.  They are a bit “weedy” looking for me, but I do like the pink.

This is in the part of the garden that I keep messing with and changing around.  It always looks bare and part of that is because it gets late afternoon sun and that’s it.

Hard to find plants that are tall that like that kind of light.  (Other than the yellow clematis).  I think I am going to do some tippy pots here for height.

The bushes on the side of the house (our neighbor’s bushes, really, but they don’t take care of them) are blooming little tiny white flowers that are very fragrant.  Butterflies love them.

Swallowtail – one of my favorites!

Knockout roses.  This thing is amazing.  No scent, but it blooms like crazy and you can’t kill it.

 

The scentimental rose bush.

I cannot tell you how much I adore this rose bush.  I just love it!  It’s beautiful and very fragrant and pretty easy to care for.  I don’t spray my roses, so it is nice to have ones that are pretty disease resistant, which this is.

The sunsprite bush is also blooming now.

The galliarda are just starting to open up.  These will bloom all summer long into fall.

These are actually in the bare area by the porch, but they aren’t very tall.

It’s the rose time of year – and about time to put down mulch!

It’s Friday and the start of the holiday weekend!  I don’t know if I will be working Monday or not.  Probably not as my clinics are closed, but there might be backup work.

I thought a morning bike ride might be nice before breakfast today, but it was a little drizzly.  I decided to eat breakfast in the hopes it would clear out.

The weather did clear, although it was pretty cloudy.  I figured if I wanted a ride, I would have to just take it.  So after working for a while, I suited up and headed out for a quick ride.  I just biked straight up the main road out of town for 5 miles and then turned around.  Not much out here.

This is a bike lane, but the traffic goes by at 55 mph.  Me no likey.

I actually went out for 2 rides today and got in 22 miles.  I wasn’t expecting that many miles, so I was quite pleased about that.  Thought it was going to rain in the afternoon, but it didn’t, so John and I rode together for some coffee.

Anyway, back to the garden!  Lots and lots of green now.  You can see the remains of some tulips. I let the foliage turn yellow and then cut them down.

The clematis in the back is the one that we call The Clematis that Ate Cleveland because it will climb all the way up the porch and the posts. That’s the yellow one.  Obviously it has a long way to go.

My Snow Queen has bloomed as well.

The blooms are at the bottom, which is interesting.  This winter did some funny stuff to the garden.

The top has buds which haven’t opened yet.  The other multiblue clematis that was open last week dropped it’s petals and just left puffs behind.

The wonderful Boysenberry Buttercup Iris!  Showing it again.

I just got the one stalk of blooms, but it is this plant’s first year, so it will multiply.  This iris has fragrance, too. I got them at Iris Mart.

The other iris has not bloomed and isn’t throwing a stem up, so I don’t know if I need to move it to a sunnier spot or what.  I just need to wait a while since this is my first time with irises.

The roses are just starting to bloom now.  We got a freeze and some of the buds got crisped, like this one:

This is the scentimental. It has a ton more buds on it that will open in the next couple weeks.

The knockout rose popped open today.  Yesterday one little bloom and today a bunch.

Nice to see the little splashes of color.

Potted plants are doing well.

It’s only been a week and the sweet potato vine is already filling in!

You can see the iris just to the right of the rose bush.  Just for perspective.

Have a wonderful Memorial Weekend!  We are having a quiet one with biking and relaxing.