One thing I try to do with my garden is to always have something in bloom.  This is the easier part of the year to design that. It’s mid spring that is the hard part.  Lots of plants still blooming now, even though some are looking tired.

I have one of these Black-Eyed Susans in front and one in back. I am hoping they will give me baby plants. I had 2 last year and they didn’t give me any, but I got a different cultivar this time.

Mushroom peeking out!

I leave the liatris for some interest right now. I’ll cut it down when the foliage starts to look bad.

I was very surprised to see another bloom pop out on the balloon flowers:

I had cut the tops back after the blooms were gone. Not sure if there will be others, but that would be nice. The blue is such a beautiful color.

Snapdragons everywhere.

I’ve always loved the snapdragons. It’s surprising to me how many seedlings I get from these even though I mulch. I’m okay with that, though.

In the back the potted plants are looking a little tired. I think the Black Satin really could use a hair cut.

It’s getting quite leggy.  I just hate cutting off the blooms, even though I know it will come back and look better.

The hydrangea tree out back really flopped over with the last rain because the blooms are enormous.

I apologized to my neighbor the other night because some of the branches have flopped into her coneflowers, but she said she really likes how it looks and people think they are hers LOL.

See how big the blooms are?

This has to weigh almost a pound, especially when it’s wet.

Zinnias and Baby Joe Pye Weed:

I would probably do zinnias from seed again. Not starting them indoors, but just putting them in the soil.  They were pretty easy.

The bees love the Baby Joe.

There was another surprise in the back this week. One of my columbines bloomed again!

The others that I have kind of died back to the ground and this one just shot up some stalks. It’s such a unique flower.

It’s almost time to start moving plants around. The end of summer comes so fast.

It should be good riding weather this weekend and I have a hankering for a cupcake! It’s been a while.  Have a great one!

Some plants in the garden really love the heat and humidity.  My mums exploded even bigger.

These are going to look amazing when they bloom.  It’s about time to buy some more. They are now in stock at nurseries.  I’m thinking of putting them in my tippy pots.

My hyrdrangea back there needed some propping up.

I think I might cage it next spring to help it stay higher.

In the spring, none of my agastache came back. However, I did notice little volunteers and I decided to let those grow.  I have a big clump of them now:

That looks like one plant, but it’s a bunch.  I will separate them out when it’s cooler and plant them around the back and here in the front.  This is a cool bloom color, too.

The last of the lilies are open now. They were nice this year.  Very tall, too. Probably 4 feet!

They need stronger staking next year, mental note to myself.

The gourds are coming along nicely. Check out this vine, though!

I keep winding it around because I don’t want it to get tangled in my other plants or go onto the front stoop.

Isn’t it funny that the vine is strong enough to hold this up against the house?  I don’t know how big these will get. I imagine not much bigger than this because I know I only had small gourds last fall.

As fall approaches, the sedums start to bloom. This is firecracker:

I’m also surprised at how long my foxgloves are blooming. I kind of thought they would be done by now, although the stems are very droopy. The bees love them.

I know I posted the passion flower earlier in the week, but it deserves sharing again. I have the vine twining up by the garage.

Fastened with green floral ties!  Classy, I know.

I just love these. I think this is the bloom of the summer for sure. There is also a red one, which I might get next year.  I am thinking about bringing this pot in for the winter and seeing if I can baby it to live another year.

In the back, my baby Joe Pye Weed is opening up.

The ‘wild’ Joe Pye Weed is really tall, like 6 feet tall, so that doesn’t work in my garden. However, they have come out with a Baby Joe which is about 3 feet. I was happy to find that at my local nursery.   I also have empty space there that needs plants.  Gee, the hardship of shopping for plants! At least I got some mulch down so I don’t have to weed it!

Joe Pye is a butterfly magnet. We actually had a swallowtail today in the garden!

One last shot of the Black-Eyed Susans downtown.

En masse planting!

I’ve been so busy this week that I haven’t had as much time to spend in the garden. I ended up with phone pictures, but didn’t get my uber camera out there.

It’s time for the smaller second flush of blooms. I got a new rose with my birthday gift certificates a couple months ago. This is another David Austin called Othello.

The blooms start reddish pink like this and then darken to violet. So pretty. The blooms don’t last very long, though. Unfortunately, this rose got black spot, so a lot of the leaves fell off. It’s been so hot and humid, which can exacerbate that.

My fair Bianca is also blooming now. This one has a lot of buds on it.

I am hoping to get the Japanese beetles under control. I sprayed the nematodes on the lawn and garden bed to help, but it will be a little while to see if that works.

There was a surprise in my tippy pots. A petunia!

Last year I had petunias in the tippy pots and there must have been some seeds in the soil.

I have million bells in them, which are doing pretty well:

I was hoping they would drape a little more, but maybe that’s going to be it. See that crazy pumpkin vine in the back? It’s like the vine that ate Cleveland!  I hope we get something out of this with all the buds on it.

This is the third of the Cheyenne coneflower. This one is almost swallowed by that cosmos:

More lilies buds open:

I love these. I am going to get some more from John Scheepers.  These are the heirloom varieties.

More delphiniums:

Some flower buds finally appeared on the vines growing up the ash tree:

Now that it’s flowering, it’s easier to identify. It’s a wild cucumber, which is not edible. I really have no idea how it got there, but I guess I can put the finger on squirrels or chipmunks.

I think I’m going to get more of the fern leaf bleeding hearts. These are pretty and have been blooming a lot this summer :

I’m hoping to get some quality time in the garden this weekend. We have John’s birthday gathering going on Saturday night and Sunday looks like ideal biking weather. Have a great weekend!

It seems like I just posted a blooming post. How fast the last 7 days went by. I guess when you cram them full, they do that.

I know I always post the pretty pictures here, but I am not a perfect gardener and I have issues with things dying or not looking good.  Here are a couple examples: Brush pile.

Lovely isn’t it? It’s near the water feature, too LOL! We are slowly working our way through this burning it in our fire pit, except I keep adding to it!

Then my cleome are having trouble this year. Not all of them, but a bunch on one side look like this:

No leaves and no petals. They are the only ones that look like that so maybe it is just a bug that only eats cleome?  It certainly is a pickle. These are going to have to get pulled out.

So,  I still have tons to do and to learn about gardening, but it’s really trial and error anyway.

Now on to the fun stuff!  This morning when I went out for a ride, I looked at my lily plant and thought it was really close to blooming. I went out to take pictures this evening and lo and behold – it started!

These are so pretty.

I would love more, but I have limited full sun spots available and these really need sun.

The blue balloon flowers are just about finished, but the pink ones have a while to go:

This was after a rain storm and the flowers are a little dirty from splash back.

The cardinal flowers out front have 2 different colors to them on the same plant!

I wasn’t expecting that, but it’s fun.

Another unexpected surprise this year is a pumpkin vine. John tossed our fall pumpkins behind the big bushes that used to be here. Apparently we tilled some seeds into the soil.

This vine starts on the other side of the rhododendron (which seems to have survived the whack down I gave it) and it wraps around. It’s creeping to the front walk way!  It has blossoms on it and it would be neat to get pumpkins out of it.

These are daylilies blooming on the side of the house. These plants really have overrun the area. They have spread to both our side and the neighbor’s and we don’t really know who planted them first, but after many years – they spread!

Remember when I did that spilled pot? It has filled out really nicely.

This is one of those times when you hit a sweet spot with the right plant in the right spot. These impatiens really are happy. It started as 2 little 6-packs.

I also have what I think might be cucumbers?  Again, compost. I just let it grow and it’s overtaking my ash tree!

I have a couple tiny delphinium plants going:

I hope these live. I haven’t had much luck with them surviving.

One of my favorites is in bloom now. The globe thistle.

Some people think of the thistle as a weed, but I love having it in the garden, especially paired with cone flowers, which are not as tall as these right now. These guys are probably 3-1/2 to 4 feet tall.

Not to mention that the pollinators love this plant:

Go Mr. Bee – make that honey!

So many blooms now! Yay!  The other evening I was out taking pictures of the front gardens. I was crouched down in the bed for macro shots and I saw a woman walking a stroller coming up the street. I said Hi as she went by and she just looked away really fast and kept walking  – and maybe a bit faster LOL! Yes, I’m creeping at my own house 😀

Here is a shot of the newest garden bed and its tiny plantings:

I finally got some mulch down. That should help with the weeding.  There are 3 baby hyrdrangeas in this bed and then foxgloves and cardinal flower. This will look really different in a couple years, but all garden beds start somewhere.

Here is the foxglove up close:

I love these flowers so much!

The cardinal flower:

These are only just starting to bloom.  They attract hummingbirds and sphinx moths.

Also up front are the cosmos.   I must have picked up a different kind this year because these are really tall. Much taller than the ones I had last year. This one is next to my tippy pots:

These coneflowers are right next to the above cosmos.

Lots and lots of blooms from my seedling snapdragons.  A lot of them are white and yellow. I don’t think the parent plants were all yellow.

When they freely seed themselves, the baby plants can be really cool colors, like this one:

Very cool.

Around back, the sphinx moths are back on the bee balm. There was a pair of them and they will be around the rest of the summer on the nectar plants that will be coming up.

This shot you can see the moth’s long tongue starting to unfurl:

They are very cute, actually. And not afraid. I was 3 or 4 inches away taking pictures. It’s just super hard to focus since they move around so much!

More foxgloves out back.

I’m finally getting the hang of editing my pictures to look better. I still use the free version of pic monkey, but it does a decent job, I think.

I’m loving the Heuchera still. The plants are bigger this year and the foliage is starting to really look nice.

This is called Spellbound.  I think the purple leaf ones are my favorite, but maybe that’s because they are the biggest right now 😀

This is gooseneck loosestrife (Lysimachia).

These actually were in the back bed when we moved in (where our water feature is now), so I moved these to another spot. I think they can be aggressive, so I will need to keep an eye on them.

I had my telephoto lens on one day hoping for bird pictures, but I decided to take flower pictures anyway. These are in my neighbor’s yard:

The zoom lens can create some interesting backdrops.  Look at how this picture came out:

It almost looks like a watercolor background. It’s a mash of my garden and the neighbors. I don’t know what about the zoom made it do that. Wish I did because I would like to recreate that.

I think I mentioned last week that my garden is my happy place. I go out almost every day with a empty plant container and pull weeds, which actually are under very good control right now (thank you). It’s soothing to me and you get right up close to nature and see all the little things you might not notice like the ants scurrying around or a caterpillar inching it’s way around or even Mr. Toad.  I notice how the blooms change every day and it always provides me with something new and fresh to look at every time I go out there.  It’s also a good place and time to think about whatever is going on and frustrations roll away when I’m out there. Maybe the solution to world peace is gardening. It’s a common thread and creates harmony. It’s hard to hate when you are in a garden.

These are the flowers this week:

A random lily.  This is why you shouldn’t buy bulbs from a loose box in a big box store. Oh so tempting, but this is not what I thought I was getting.

I planted these in the fall of 2014 and they didn’t come up until this year. I actually had forgotten about them. It’s supposed to be a turk’s cap lily (orange with black spots), so I don’t even know what I got.  Live and learn!

Shasta daisy of some type:

I think this will get moved in the fall or next spring to a spot closer to the front of the bed.

More beebalm:

They look like Raggedy Ann or some sort of muppet, don’t they? See how nice and full my neighbor’s yard is in the back? Some day.

I love the black satin petunia.

It’s really striking in person as well. I hope I can find it again next year because I don’t want to try to save seeds and all that.

In the front, the hydrangea blooms are getting bigger.

They haven’t started turning pink yet. I think it’s supposed to start at the tips, so it will be a while.

My other balloon flowers are open. Remember how I said they were white? They’re not. They are pink.

Sure enough the tag says Astra Pink. I don’t know why I remembered them as white. CRS, I guess.

The blue balloon flowers are exploding!

I love these. Guess I should get more?

Lots of cleome now.  This picture makes it look like my garden is a huge meadow when it’s not.

Volunteer snapdragons.

Plant snapdragons once and you will have them for years.  I dead head them right into the garden so the volunteers pop up wherever. There are actually of lot of them, too. Only a few blooming now, though.

The supreme cantaloupe is in full flower right now.

I have a thing for the ruffed coneflowers.  Although saying that, the Cheyenne Spirit coneflowers are racing up my favorite list. They are gorgeous!

The multiple colors on each plant is so cool.

I may get more of these.  Tomorrow one of my favorite garden centers is having a tent sale. I was scoping out last week what I thought they might put on sale. Usually it’s flowers that are starting to get pot bound and a little gangly. I’m okay with that. A good shearing and they are good to go. I have a birthday gift certificate to spend there and I will be hunting for some Agastache and possibly balloon flowers. Yay!

In times when I need peace and quiet and soothing, I head into the garden.  I’m lucky that I have a happy place to go to.

Right now, there are a lot of things in bloom. I will be posting more on my garden blog this weekend since there are so many in bloom right now.

It’s about coneflower time.  The supreme cantaloupe has been blooming for a while and now the puff is starting to appear in the middle.

I have a thing for specialty coneflowers as I’m sure you might have noticed. This year I put in some new ones in the front bed we renovated. These are called Cheyenne Spirit and they are multicolored on the same plant!

I have 3 of these (2 pictured) and they are going to look amazing when they fill out. Hopefully they will live a while. Sometimes the specialty ones have a short lifespan.

Liatris:

The stem color is a little strange in the picture; it’s not that dark IRL.  These look like feather dusters to me:

More exploding balloon flowers:

The white ones should be blooming next week. I am thrilled with how these are growing!

Cleome:

I have them on both sides of my bird bath and the ones on the side that gets a bit more shade seem to do better, even though these are full sun annuals:

This is the 2nd year for this hydrangea. It’s called Vanilla Strawberry. I wasn’t expecting to see any blooms this year since it was so tiny last year.

It certainly likes this spot. It tripled in size. The flowers on this start white and then turn pink.

In the back garden the bee balm is blooming.  It smells like oregano, too! Very fragrant (it’s the leaves).

It’s a really tall plant. Here is me for reference:

I probably should have put it closer to the middle, but it can always be moved.

The foxgloves out back are blooming. These plants were $2.99 at my local nursery and they were small, so any blooms are exciting!

I’m in love with the floxgloves.

A month or so ago, I did that spilled pot of flowers and the impatiens have really filled in now:

It’s so pretty.  I was just looking to fill space while I decided what to plant here, and it turned out really nice – if I do say so myself.

Looks to be a rainy weekend, so I don’t know how much water feature work will get done, but maybe we’ll get lucky.

Happy  July everyone!

You know, I still haven’t figured out why my pictures don’t show up in feedly. Nobody seems to have an answer for me, either.  If there is ever a problem that is rare or strange, I always seem to be the one who has it. Sorry if you can’t see these pictures in your reader.

Flower time! Fair Bianca is on the tail end of blooms for the first flush of the year. It sent out this spectacular cane:

This is sticking way out from the top, so I will prune that cane back after these are done. I am loving this rose!

The Supreme Cantaloupe coneflower:

Sorry about that sun shot. Normally I don’t take flower pictures in full sun, but I happened to be out there with my phone.  This is a big boy. I am going to have to move it probably next year because the calycanthus bush is getting big behind it.

Such a pretty color.  I guess I say that about all the flowers 😀

The balloon flowers are just starting to peep out:

Bud one night:

Popped open the next day:

These are such a cool flower.  And I spy John’s legs in the background!

Check out this blue:

There aren’t a lot of truly blue flowers out there, but this is one of them.

In the back shade bed, I have one astilbe blooming:

No signs of blooms on the white ones yet. It is possible they may not bloom this year since they got eaten to the ground last year and might not have recovered enough to bloom. Maybe later.

Day lilies:

Those are my neighbors hostas there. This is right were the fence used to be, so we have 2 gardens back to back. Hers are much more mature than mine!

Potted million bells:

These bloom all summer and are self-cleaning, like impatiens.

I have a couple fauna pictures as well.  This toad hopped all the way across the patio like he was on a mission and stopped right in front of John’s foot. Not sure really what he was doing, but then I think he realized we were out there and got very still.

I love having a toad, although I wish he would either eat more mosquitoes or invite some friends over.

Then there is Mr. Chippie. This is the guy that put a hole in our newly paved driveway last year. He has several channels around the house and one is out back. I was sitting on the patio and he came running by and scooted into this little hole; then turned around and peeked out at me.

So cute, but so destructive, the little booger.

We *finally* are getting in a cupcake ride on Saturday! Yippee!  The weather is going to be perfect and both of us are home.