I am so glad it’s Friday.  I’m so tired! I haven’t been in the gardens too much this week, although I did get in a good weeding session to catch up, but I took pictures before that LOL.

Fair Bianca is loaded with blooms:

For a second year rose, this is doing fantastic.  This rose will actually stay on the smaller size, around 3 feet or so. I hope it gets a bit wider than this, but you never know.

The roses in back are doing good and the squirrels haven’t eaten the buds. Maybe that Repel’s All really works. I thought this rose was a goner, but then it started growing one cane on the side.

I hope I can coax it along to grow more.

More of the Enchanted Evening:

I just love the color of it. The buds open a pinky purple and then darken to lavender.

It’s been hot and dry here and the garden has needed to be watered more than I like to do.  I planted 3 hyrdangeas in the new front bed. They are under a canopy of trees and even when it rains, they don’t get a lot of moisture. One of them is doing fine (annabelle) and the other 2 wilt a lot.  This is David Ramsey:

I picked up a couple of these from a big box store and I hope I don’t regret it.  Note the weeds in this picture!  They are gone now.

The flowers on this hydrangea are blue. I’m not sure if they will stay that color because I don’t really work the soil to keep them blue.

Very pretty.

I still haven’t cut down the Star of Persia aliums. I know I should, but they look neat even dried up.

The tops look like fireworks. The rest of the plant looks like a dead squid, though.  I think once the liatris blooms next to it, I will cut them down.

You know how you get plants you weren’t planning on? Last fall I got some of those cheap mums and stuck them in the ground for a fall display. Imagine my surprise when they sprouted this spring!

They are the 2 on the right. The 3 smaller plants to the left are my balloon flowers, which are just starting to get buds.

The supreme canteloupe coneflower is starting to open up.

Cosmos:

These are tall cosmos. I should have pinched them back when I got the 6-packs. I also have some cosmos growing that self-seeded from last year. I’m letting those grow.

On the tag end of the foxgloves. I am letting them go to seed to hopefully grow more.

The cleome is starting to bloom as well.

These plants spread lots and lots of seeds and I must have hundreds of baby cleome sprouting. I keep pulling them up and more grow. I let a few stay to fill in some spots, but they aren’t anywhere near blooming. Or even that big! I also have a bunch of self-seeded snapdragons. All you have to do is buy snapdragons once, then deadhead them in the garden and you will have them forever!

Yay, more blooms this week!  The front bed is just doing its thing now. I planted a couple replacement Agastache since all mine seemed to have died over the winter. Boo. Other than that, I haven’t put anything else in new. Time to just let it grow.

John got some new solar lights for the front. We didn’t want to go with cheap lights in the front, so he spent a little more and got these beautiful copper lights:

Excuse my weeds. I’m a little behind on that front. I’ll have to have him put in the link on Amazon for them.  There are six in a set. The coolest thing is the light pattern at night. It’s almost like a daisy and very pretty!  Now hopefully no one will steal them…

This is year 2 for Fair Bianca. It’s filling out nicely and looking pretty healthy. It has so many buds on it.

You can actually smell the blooms from the driveway. It’s heavenly!

I have a pot of geraniums that is going gangbusters as well.

Isn’t that amazing? You can also see some ant hills forming next to it. Our soil is sandy and the ants really seem to love it. Ugh.

I’ve spent a good amount of time working the shade bed in back. Now it’s starting to look like something.

This is what it looked like when we first moved in:

Much different. Sometimes when you are amidst the weeds, so to speak, you don’t see the progress that has been made.

I did a fun project that I have been wanting to do for a while. One of those pots with spilled flowers. It’s behind the hosta in the picture above.

It needs to fill in, obviously, so hopefully it will look good in a couple weeks.

Here is the post on how I did it.

The shade bed has some blooms. This is Jacob’s Ladder:

The bloom is flopped over, so here it is:

I think it actually gave me a couple seedlings, which would be nice. I always like free plants!

The lupines are still blooming. It seems each plant puts out one big bloom and several smaller ones:

I do find that they are somewhat fragile and I think once the plants get filled in they will support each other more. That’s the border between our house and the neighbor behind the lupines. She has some nice plants there, so it kind of adds to the garden, although the mulch line is a little obvious.

All of the roses are blooming now.  My 100 pound rose:

I actually thought this was dead, but then it came to life. I did lose one rose, but it was the free one I got with an order last year, so it’s all good.

The Enchanted Evening:

Lots of blooms on this one:

Now to be patient and let this fill in.

Waiting is the hardest part – there’s your ear worm! 😀

I am slowly getting used to my phone. I think when Windows put out their phone, they made every action the opposite of the iPhone. It’s going to take a lot of getting used to. Not to mention remember all the passwords for my various apps 😀

The summer flush of blooms is beginning now. The star of Persia allium are starting to fade now, but the blooms kept getting bigger and bigger. They have to be at least 6 inches across!

The only thing about these is that the foliage is yellowing as they are blooming. You can hide that by planting them among perennials that have slow growth so their green will cover the allium foliage, but not block the blooms.  I need to do that.

I did cleome from seed and then I bought some because they are much further along than my seedlings and they are flowering:

That mushroom still makes me smile whenever I look at it. The rustoleum really held up over the winter, too. Bonus!

Pam’s choice foxgloves:

I was trying to be artsy with the composition.

The Fair Bianca rose is ready to burst. There are over 2 dozen buds on this plant!

It smells heavenly.

The calycanthus bush I planted last year is actually flowering this year:

These blooms smell kind of like apples.  It grew a ton in the past year. I did comparison shots on my garden blog.

Also – my peonies bloomed!  I purchased 2-year-old peonies last year and was rewarded with blooms this year.

Out in the back, it’s a little slower, but coming along. I was worried last year because slugs got to my astilbe and munched them to nothing. However, they survived and here they are:

I need to buy some Sluggo this year, now that I know they are rampant in this bed.

Heuchera Spellbound:

It’s blooming here, but it is really hard to get a picture of the bloom and the plant together.  All that stuff on the surrounding ground isn’t mulch, that’s leaves and bud debris from the ash tree that shades this bed. It’s a very messy tree.

Night ruler:

The irises in the back are still blooming, which is nice since not much else is LOL!

The other exciting thing is lupines!  I planted babies last year, but I had no idea if they would do okay here.  2 of them died, but 3 came back.

Maturing buds:

The full flower.

I had mixed colors of lupine, red, yellow and blue. Two of the survivors are the blue ones and the other one is really small and doesn’t look like it will bloom. So, blue seems to be hardier.

Doing a treat for myself on Saturday. Visiting Rosewood Gardens. It’s a nursery with an English garden display. I wanted to go my birthday weekend, but it was too early for the roses. Now they are in bloom and my Rebel will be getting a workout!

Lots of blooming going on around here now.  Foxgloves:

This is the one from Debby. The one to the right that is just starting is Pam’s Choice split.  I am really hoping these seed themselves so I have lots of foxgloves. Foxgloves are are classic for a cottage garden.

These are Star of Persia allium:

I love these! The blooms keep getting bigger and rounder, too. It’s hard to get a picture of them because the blooms are airy.  The size of the blooms is about 3-4 inches across? These were bulbs planted in the fall. I will be ordering more for sure!

The tippy pots are starting to grow now. They are planted with allysum and million bells. Hopefully they will trail more. This is the beginnings of a new bed:

The plant at the left is the climbing rose. It’s in its 2nd year, so probably not until next year for it to climb. This bed is where the new path was made.That little Azalea will grow big and strong, hopefully. Now it’s tiny and I have annuals planted in front of it 😀  Eventually it will be 4 feet tall.

Speaking of baby gardens, this is part of the shade garden in the back:

Right behind those hostas is where our fence used to be. Now we just see the weeds behind our neighbor’s house! It doesn’t look that great, so we might need something to block this area. This bed has the heuchera, bleeding heart and columbine in it (and daffodil remains). All baby plants. This will look fuller this summer and next year should be cooking along.

The columbines in this garden are blooming:

I love the spurs on the blooms

Hopefully these will reseed and spread. Or that’s the plan anyway.

Also in this bed, although not shown in the picture above, is the incarvilea, aka flowering fern.

Ferns don’t flower, so this is a misnomer, but the incarvilea look like ferns, don’t they? I got these tubers at the flower show earlier this spring and they actually came up!

This is Brindled Beauty Iris:

For a first year iris, it has a lot of blooms.

The last one to open was Night Ruler. Yes, you do have to say that in Movie Guy voice, too.

It’s such a deep purple and looks black from a distance.

So pretty!  I am happy with all of my new irises this year.  It’s so hard to be patient waiting for the gardens to mature and I am happy to be getting any blooms!

I am glad the weekend is here. I will be working on Monday, but at least I’ve got a weekend. 😀

It’s been sooo hot here. July/August hot.  Everything is now all greened up.  I’ve been working on the back yard beds now. The main bed is pretty much weed free, but I need to get control of the rest of the area around the trees and where the fence was.

I spent time delineating the bed edges. It looks better from afar than up close, though LOL.  Our neighbor has a line of plants that she had along the fence, so that’s kind of nice to see.

The Lily of the Valleys are in full bloom now and when the sun hits them, the scent wafts around.

I complain about the LOTV, but I do love them. Just not so many of them. There are plenty of these along with daylilies on the side of the house.

The property line with the neighbor on this side runs down the middle of all the green. It’s mostly shade over here because of trees and our house, so the lilies don’t bloom a lot.

Irises are also blooming! Those on Facebook saw these already. This is the Boysenbery Buttercup:

That one I had at our old house. This is one of the new ones I planted last fall. This is Batik:

isn’t that lovely?  I can’t wait until it multiplies.

My unknown iris types are blooming in the front as well:

Those were the ones I divided last year and sent pieces out to people. Anyone who got them, let me know if they came up for you!

In the back shade bed, the bleeding hearts are really coming along. I love the white ones.

And the red ones. Or pink, I guess:

I have some columbine planted as well. One isn’t blooming, but one is. It’s funny how when you buy a baby plant, they will sometimes put out baby blooms. This is called Winky Blue:

It’s so tiny and cute, about an inch across.

I’ll have more irises next week once they open up. It’s going to be a little hot to be working much in the garden and we are going for an early long ride tomorrow to beat the heat.

Have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Weekend!

The garden is really starting to pop out now. There will be lots of blooms coming up soon – most likely next week. Yay!  My peonies survived the winter and look good. They will bloom this year for me. I’m so excited because I’ve never had peonies before and they are so pretty.  There are a lot of flowers that I haven’t had before now that we are at Radiance Manor. I have so much room! Although, it’s seems to be running out fast 😀

You can see our sad lawn there. We should be able to lay seed in a week or so.

The centaurea are really going strong. These were 3 tiny plants last year and this is how they look already in May.

This will bloom periodically over the summer, too, which is nice.

Remember my yellow Antoinette tulips from last week? Look at them now!

I knew I wasn’t crazy thinking they were pink — whew.

My irises are almost ready!

You can see some annual cosmos peeking out there. I planted them in the tulips so they will fill in that space after the tulips die back.

We are pretty happy with how the front of the house is looking. The plants just need to grow now.

I have been getting annuals to plant. This is my ‘cauldron’ full of geraniums:

Another pot with a geranium and some dark sweet potato vine:

Pansies still going strong:

The back of the house seems to be lagging behind the front. I think is just is cooler back there in general because it gets the sun an hour or two after the front bed.

I have 3 different kinds of bleeding heart in my shade bed. Fringed:

Then the classic kind. This is the red one:

And the white one!

Those are the very early blooms and there should be more. coming.

My “I don’t care about you” hostas are doing well:

I just dug these up from another spot in chunks and stuffed them in the ground in the shade bed. I didn’t care if they came back. I swear, I can’t kill these things! I think they actually liked the move. Go figure.  😀

It’s feeling so much like spring around here. The trees are leafing out and more plants are waking up from winter slumber.

The bleeding heart is continuing to put out little stems.

I’ve got some white ones, too, which I am really excited about. They might be blooming next week!

A new tulip opened up. This is Antoinette, a bouquet tulip:

I planted it with the Monte Carlo, which wasn’t really the look I was going for:

The Montes are on their way out now.

I think my favorite of the tulips this year is the Carnival de Nice. I just love how it looks:

The black and white tulips are going strong:

One of my very favorite flowers is popping out blooms, too. This is Centaurea, Amethyst in Snow:

Long time readers will remember this one. I snagged some of the babies from the garden at our old house and they were too small to flower last year, but this year we are rewarded!  I just love the look of this plant.

And *finally* – the hummers are back!

I was so happy to see this little guy. If he is here now, he will love the garden in a couple months since I have a lot of hummingbird friendly flowers coming.

There has been a lot of rain this week, which is always good for the garden. Not so great for working in it, but we need it.

Lots of tulips going on around here!

The path is getting close to being done:

This angle looks like a big wrench or something 🙂  John has put down the filler and stones. Now he has to find the loose areas to pack in sand. The maple trees have been dropping all those tiny green things that are all over the bed now. It’s a mess. Next is putting the slate down under the bench.

New tulips this week. This is a double flowering one called Carnival de Nice:

The double tulips are sometimes called peony tulips because they look like them (Captain Obvious).

This one is Cilesta:

The Repel All spray seemed to work since the squirrels didn’t get the rest of these. Yippee!

Apricot impression tulips:

Queen of the Night and Catherine:

The Queen has this velvety look to the petals:

My neighbors  or any passing motorists probably think I’m pretty weird always out in the garden beds crouched down taking pictures.

Lawn violets

My fringed bleeding heart is blooming, even though it is really tiny!

“Regular” bleeding hearts will die out after blooming, but the fringed one will stay green all summer long and bloom, too. I have some of the others, but they aren’t even close to blooming yet. One of them is white, too! Can’t wait to see that one.

More weeding to do this weekend in the garden bed to get it ready for planting.

Now it’s feeling like spring! 60s weather and sunny for a couple days anyway.  I feel like it has been endless digging in that front bed to get it cleared of roots and ground cover, and I guess it has been endless. I’m a little worried that some of these might be tree roots as well as ivy, bushes and groundcover, so I am not going to go gung ho and rip all that out, mostly the surface stuff.  I would hate to cause problems with the trees, seeing as they are our neighbor’s and not ours.

We were at Lowe’s last night and I couldn’t resist looking at the discount rack for plants. Wouldn’t you know there were $5 clematis vines?  I have no idea why because they look fine. Just need a little water:

I think what they do is that when the “buy me” blooms fall off, they move the plant to discount. Even though people in the garden world know that clematis don’t bloom yet here, I guess if you don’t see blooms you don’t buy it? Whatever, I’ll take a $5 vine to help cover the chain link fence on the one side of our yard (which is ours).

I went back there to dig a hole for it and wouldn’t you know, more of those slate rocks are buried right along the fence. So I dug up another big pile — go muscles!

That bucket was for me to cart dirt that we dug out of the front bed for the path to replace the space the stones left. Functional fitness!  I think we can about build another Stonhenge with all the rocks I’ve dug up so far. I then planted the new clematis and moved over the sweet autumn clematis that was supposed to grow on our old fence.

I had a frustrating bit with squirrel damage. There were new tulips just about open and a squirrel came and ate all the buds.

Grrrr!  So, I got some animal repellant (at said Lowe’s visit last night).

This stuff I guess is kind of like the bitter apple to keep dogs from licking. It’s safe for humans and pets, it just doesn’t taste good. It stinks, though. It smells sort of like a cross between liquid smoke, garlic and maybe bacon? LOL. Yuck. Hopefully this will save the other tulips.

They only seem to bother stuff out in the back and never the front of the house. Not sure why. Anyway, bloom time!

Forget me nots, which are in the lawn.

All of the claudias are open now. They are so pretty!

The triumph tulips are open now:

This is called Escape and what a red color it is in the sun!

Even in the evening it has a nice glow to it.

Front shot:

Still more tulips to come, the black and white ones, plus a couple others.  The majority of the plants made it through the winter. Just a couple casualties, but I will wait a bit and see if they are just really slow to wake up.

Saturday will be good riding weather and we are planning on a 40-mile ride for the first time this year. That means cupcakes!! 😀

I have real live blooms from the ground today! Woo Hoo!  The warm temps and sun the last couple day and poof – blooms are starting to appear.

This is the Monte Carlo tulip:

It doesn’t look like a traditional tulip and when it is in full sun during the day, the petals spread out almost flat. It’s actually fragrant as well.

The next tulip that has started to open is the lily flowering tulip:

It’s called Claudia. I bought the majority of my tulips from Tulip World last fall. And if you are interested, they have a 50% off sale for fall bulbs going on right now. You order them now and they will ship this fall. Not saying I bought a bunch or anything… I’m just mentioning it for all of you 🙂

I also have some daffodils coming up. These were already in ground when we moved in, but only 1 bloom showed up. When I dug up the clump, there were tons of bulblets all stuck together. So, I separated them and just put them willy nilly wherever and wouldn’t you know it, I’ve got blooms this year!

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I don’t usually have luck with daffs, so this was nice to see. And free — other than buying the house, of course.

Hummingbirds have been sighted very close to our area, so I have my feeders out. I bought a new one as well.

Right now it’s just the early males zooming through to the breeding areas and then the resident ones will follow shortly.

The garden bed up front is seeing some progress. John’s been helping me dig out the ground cover and roots and what a job that is. It’s going to take another week or so to get that out. Unfortunately, there are 2 stumps that are just too deeply rooted to get out, so those will get cut down and left to decompose. Anyway, we thought a sitting area would be nice and had thought about a bistro set, but then brought up my bench (my $8 garage sale bench!!!) and put it in.

The slate is just laid down for planning right now. It needs the barrier and gravel. Not to mention the perfect bench placement. I was moving it around, backing up, viewing, moving it around, puttting it back in the same spot LOL.  John just patiently waited for me to figure out where I wanted it. Then we will lay some stones. I think we have enough that we could have the stones under the bench if we want. This picture doesn’t show it, but there is also enough room to walk behind the bench. I may plant some foxglove back there or something.

Lots of root digging this weekend and more blog fiddling because the pictures are driving me insane! I’m going to copy the exact setup of my garden blog and see if that works since I have no problem with that one.