June is when things really start going in the garden. Almost every day there is something new opening up. Dork that I am, when I see a plant that is blooming for the first time I say hello to it or “look at you!” Yep. Garden nerd.

Foxgloves really going strong now:

Gosh they are pretty! Tall, too. Some of them are almost 4 feet! In front of those are my verbascum – or mullein:

These got very tall as well this year. It’s the second year for them. I read somewhere they are biennial, but I’m wondering if the hybrids are just straight up perennials. I really hope that is the case considering the issues I had with getting the foxgloves to grow.

Star of Persia Allium:

Not quite fully opened yet, but getting there. Like all allium, the foliage dies at the bottom before the plant blooms. I did trim that away, but not before I took the picture. Oopsie.

I have two peonies in the front by the sidewalk that get really full sun. This year, they only had 3 blooms on each plant.

I don’t know if being by the sidewalk with road salt is hard on them, but I’m going to try weekly feeding of these in hopes that they will do better next year. Plus, I’ve started spraying it with neem oil to keep the powdery mildew away.

It’s still irispalooza around here. I was thrilled to see Black Night come up:

Last year I did a lot of moving and dividing of my irises. Then a woodchuck or squirrel or somebody ate a bunch and dug up a lot, so I didn’t know which rhizomes were which. I thought this one was a goner.

Irises in the back:

I don’t know the name of this one because it was a mistake plant that was sent to me. Pretty, though.

Brindled beauty:

Another new iris called Wild Irish Rose:

How gorgeous is that?!

I had this rhizome covered with wire mesh to prevent it from being eaten or dug up and was rewarded with this!

Two new peony bushes that I got on clearance last fall.

Then I forgot to get a picture of the other one. Not sure how that happened, but I’ll show it to you next week. It’s pink.

Roses are starting to make their appearances as well. Fair Bianca – my David Austen rose:

And Zepherine, which is a climber:

I had two of these on the front of the house. They are supposed to do well without full sun, but apparently it just wasn’t sunny enough for them. So I moved them to the back where the stump of our magnolia tree is and they seem to like that a lot better. They are next to the new peonies, too.

Have a great weekend!

We finally got a little vacation. I realized that I have not had a night away from home that wasn’t for business in a year. Last year was kind of a weird year and we both worked a little too hard. Anyway, as a birthday trip, we went to Ausable Chasm, which is in the Adirondacks – and called the Grand Canyon of the Adirondacks. It’s about an hour and a half from where we live, so a nice trip. We drove up on Saturday with no agenda and just stopped wherever we felt like and had a relaxing day. Then on Sunday, we visited the chasm.

This was truly a beautiful place. The Adirondacks are just gorgeous anyway, but this chasm is something special.

You start at the visitors center and view out over the chasm at Elephant’s Head.

You end up across the chasm on top of this head at one point as well. You then cross over Rainbow falls:

.Then you get to the chasm itself and choose your path:

To get to the end of the chasm, you can choose several ways to go:

We went on two of the routes. We took the inner sanctum route on the way to our raft trip because it goes right along the water. Then we did the Rim Walk on the way back, which took you above everything back to the top.

I’m uploading some videos here, so I hope they show up. This was walking along the chasm:

We were enjoying the walk!

Even though you are close to the edge, it felt very safe.

However, this bridge was a big old nope. You don’t go on this unless you are on some special tour, but no way for me:

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We got down to the rafting area and got ready for our ride:

Drifting down the chasm:

More of the ride:

Then you end up in the basin at the end:

There was a class 1 section of rapids, which were really fun. Just enough of a thrill, but not too much. This is the area that happened, which I took a picture of while on the trail since I didn’t want to lose my phone during the raft trip 😀

On the walk back up, we passed over other people going through the raft ride. Hello down there!

If you get a chance to visit the Adirondacks, put this on your list!

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The garden is really starting to roar to life now. The season here is short and plants just get a move on when the weather warms up.

This year, my foxgloves are blooming. I have been working on these with no luck for 3 years now and finally I am seeing results. I actually wasn’t thinking I was going to get any ever, but then this year -surprise!

I’m hoping these will no proliferate and really fill in this area. These are called Pam’s Choice Split:

Lots of irises now. I have a lot LOL! There are 3 that haven’t even bloomed yet. The batik:

The unknown variety:

And my new Tour de France:

Finally I got the right plant. Last year the one I had bloomed, only it was the wrong color (they sent me the wrong plant). I tried again and it bloomed the first year!

<3 <3 <3

My new baby garden bed:

I have some zinnia seeds in here, which you can’t see. I have been putting some of my free seeding perennials in here like liatris, mum, and coneflowers, but I did buy some new plants as well, like this lupine:

The birds are loving the new feeder setup as well, which gives us a lot of enjoyment. This garden bed is pretty close to the patio.

Shade bed continues to fill out:

That hosta is enormous. It has to be 3 feet across!

Here is a look out to the back yard from this angle:

My big garden bed in the back is way out there, and you can see the new garden bed just peeking in at the right side. It’s really feeling like my garden now almost 5 years later.

Another year rolling around. Now not just turning 50, but really in the 50s. I got a new haircut and my new teeth. My hair was getting so long:

Not a great picture, and I think there is a filter on it because no wrinkles, but oh well. I was always pinning my hair up and it was just getting in the way a lot. Plus, I don’t know as it really did much for my face. So, I had a shorter layered cut done:

No filter on this pic. 🙂 My hair dries so much faster and doesn’t get in my face now. Now I look funny – straight teeth and short hair LOL!

We had people over for cake on Sunday since that worked out better to get everyone together. John again made a wonderful brown butter caramel cake:

A little later, this caramel had dripped over the sides of the stand LOL. So good.

I took most of the day off on my birthday (Wednesday). Last year I biked 50 miles for 50 years, but that was probably the end of actual miles for years. This year I did bike in the morning, but right now biking isn’t really comfortable for me. I have fibroids and will soon be having surgery for them in July as it’s really affecting my quality of life. I’ll talk about that another time, though.

I received some gift certificates to garden centers, along with a bee house, gardening gloves, hose wands and such. Think people know I love gardening? I went out plant shopping as a treat on my birthday.

My happy place. I brought home this, plus an orchid.

Then I got them in the ground before the rain came. John and I went out to dinner in Saratoga at an Indian restaurant. I love Indian food, but there isn’t an Indian restaurant in our town, so we have to drive for it.

Pappadum – like the equivalent of a bread basket:

An appetizer of nut and raisin naan bread:

I could eat naan all day, especially the stuffed naan. Yum!

Our meals:

John had a tofu masala. Unusual to find tofu at an Indian restaurant, but this was a special vegan section of their menu, so could be why. I had a paneer korma, which is cubed cheese in a cashew sauce. So good! It’s probably a good thing that we don’t have this in our town as I would want to go there a lot 😀

John’s gift was a stained glass piece. We do have a lot of stained glass in the house by virtue of his finished pieces, but they sell and go away. Now this is for me!

We have had a running joke for years with me wanting a pink flamingo for the yard and John saying we would get a divorce if I got one. We are staying together, though, despite the flamingo!

Spring has been good to the garden. Everything is really getting nice and green now. It’s time for irises now. My longstanding clumps are blooming now and I have some new ones that are budding, but not open yet.

My Boysenberry Buttercup:

This clump is really big and I will be dividing it later this summer.

Batik:

A smaller clump, but I need to make it smaller as it is crowding into my rose bush.

My “garden variety” iris of unknown species:

The petunias have gotten off to an early and busy start. I like these white ones.

The funny thing is that I generally don’t like solid color petunias, but then I got 3 different types of them this year LOL.

Some are in this container, kind of a buttery yellow:

I have some black ones, too, but they aren’t as far along for pictures yet.

The rhododendron is open as well. It’s small, but new growth is continuing to appear:

Out back my reblooming lilac is doing fairly well. I was a little concerned about how this was going to survive the winter, but it did okay.

The shade garden is coming along nicely as well:

Baby Joe Pye Weed looks like it is expanding this year:

Those hostas are my neighbor’s plants, btw. I am going to shear Baby Joe down in a few weeks to see if I can keep the size a little smaller than last year. I just don’t want to hinder the flowering, which is why I got this plant.

Spring garden is looking good!

Have a great weekend!

It has been so rainy here lately. Good for the garden, but goodness it would be nice to have a few more sunny days thrown in there.

The tulips are done now and the alliums have started, which were planted as fall bulbs last year.

I sprinkled these all over the front and back gardens. They are fun and they don’t get eaten by rabbits, moles, squirrels.

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My shade bed in back seems like it is starting to get somewhere. It’s an area that I have struggled with the last few years.

Clumps are getting bigger – and this is just springtime, too! The Solomon Seal that started as two stalks:

It’s flowering now

These are so fun, aren’t they?

Some of the heuchera are flowering now:

These plants are really grown for the colorful foliage, but the flowers are light and airy and bring in bits of color.

Everything is really wet right now, but growing well. I only lost a couple of plants over the winter, so that is a bonus!

Next week might be irises. I’m going to have a bumper crop of boysenberry buttercup and batik flowers this year, plus a couple new ones!

Have a safe and happy Memorial weekend! Thank you to all service men and women.

We have almost all of the floor grouted. We just need to move the stove, but all the rest of the kitchen is done and we are using it as normal.

We used a darker grout, believe it or not. But, these tiles are so dark that the grout looks a lot lighter. I think the color for the grout was mocha or something like that. We are happy that it all worked out in the end, but what a project that turned out to be.

I have finally finished my Smile Direct program! Here is my pretty new smile after 5-1/2 months:

I have a retainer that I will wear all the time for 2 more weeks. Then I only will wear it at night.

Fun facts:

• My teeth have worn unevenly over the years being crooked, so I don’t have a flat-toothed smile, but that doesn’t bother me.
• There are some stains on my teeth from where they overlapped for my whole adult tooth life. They did lighten some with a whitening treatment, but it will take a visit to my dentist to get all of those stains, which will be done in June.
• Since my front two teeth were overlapped, now that they are not – they look huge to me LOL!
• I can’t really bite my nails like I used to because my teeth fit in different places. This is a good thing, but knowing me, I’ll figure it out if I get stressed enough.
• Would I recommend this? Yes! I’m so pleased with the results. It was fairly painless. The first couple of days after changing each set of aligners my teeth were achy, but then they were fine. And a couple of times the edge of the aligner was rough on my tongue, which some dental wax took care of.

Again, my teeth at the start:

Bottom:

And now I am done showing pictures of my mouth on the blog 😀 If anyone is interested in trying Smile Direct, I have a link that you can use for $100 off. If you do purchase, I get an Amazon gift certificate (full disclosure).

If you have any questions about it, please go ahead and ask and I’ll respond in the comments.

Spring really has made an appearance here, finally. It’s been wet and chilly, but good weather has been creeping in. The tulips are winding down now, but still pretty.

We have tons of lily of the valley all around the house. The ones closest to the house are blooming now since it is warmer and sheltered next to the brick.

One of my favorite flowers and a fragrance powerhouse.

I’ve been getting things in the planters slowly, but surely.

This was one of those predesigned planters that you just plop into a pot. This area is still growing the shrubs, which are pretty small, so the planter is kind of filling in.

The flowering almond is really popping now.

I need to stake it this year. It’s kind of leaning a bit.

The cherry tree has lots of blossoms on it now.

I got a new bird feeding station set up. I used to just have 3 poles and they were a pain to mow around, which meant using the string trimmer and all that. I bought a new pole that has multiple hooks for hanging feeders, and took down two of the other poles. Then I made a garden bed around the poles so we can mow around it much easier.

I’m really happy with how this turned out and now it’s planting time! There are a lot of volunteer liatris, coneflowers and a few other plants that I will put in this bed. Plus I planted a bunch of zinnia seeds. The rest will get filled in as the season goes on.

The birds love the new feeders. Cat bird:

Lots of goldfinches:

I saw my first hummingbird today, too!

We should get in some nice riding this weekend hopefully – along with more gardening. yay!

We haven’t really done a lot of big projects on the house in a while, but we had to do an unplanned one. It’s been almost 5 years since we moved into our house – I cannot believe it has been that long!

When we did the kitchen, we installed cork flooring that was a floating floor. It had a sealant on it and we were a little concerned about it holding up, but went ahead anyway. I loved how it looked and it was warm to walk on in the mornings and not really soft, but not hard like porcelain. This winter we started noticing some creaky noises on the floor. It turns out that water got under the floor from underneath our recycling cabinet and it was swelling the flooring. Plus, the finish was starting to come up on it leaving lighter colored areas. Sigh.

I was thinking of doing a premium vinyl tile that looked like wood. John didn’t want vinyl, but a tiled floor. So the compromise was a porcelain tile that looked like wood. These are 2 foot long tiles in strips to mimic wood.

We stripped out the old floor and spent the weekend putting in the new. We used a premixed tile mastic – not a brand we had used before (mistake). It was a little tricky laying this tile. Okay – it’s a lot tricky because with the staggering, you don’t have four corners to make sure you are staying aligned all the way down the line.

We were really happy with how it looked. Ungrouted, thank goodness.

We needed to wait to grout for the mastic to dry, plus just having time to do the grouting. It’s a good thing because the next couple of days, we noticed loose tiles. Lifted those up and the mastic wasn’t dry. I don’t know what the problem was, but they just weren’t drying. We tried again to put them back down, but they didn’t stay. Saying we were frustrated would really be an understatement here. I sat and thought about all the options, but the renovator in me knew that the only recourse was to pull them all up, scrape the floor and try again.

This time, I got the dry mastic mix made specifically for long porcelain tiles. Then we spent another weekend relaying all those tiles and trying to get them in exactly the same spots since we had all the tiles cut to fit around corners and radiators, etc.

Halfway done and Pixie says “Why are you not finished yet? My food bowl has been in the wrong spot for 2 weeks now”.

It ended up pretty close with a bit of fudging. We gingerly walked on the tiles for a couple of days worried the same thing would happen again, but this stuff did it’s job. Now we are back to a floor looking like this again:

LOL. It’s almost funny, but not really. We grouted where the fridge sits so that we could get that back in place. We’ll pull out the stove and do that at a later date – along with the rest of the floor. That was extremely frustrating. I’ve tiled so many projects (floors, walls, countertops, fireplace) over the years and have never had a problem like this. I think that brand of premixed stuff was just no good. Lesson learned. Boy was the lesson learned. The tile looks really nice, though. This should stay put for 20 years. I’m certainly not doing it again! I’ll post a picture once we get it grouted – probably next year at this rate…

Tulips are in full swing now. I don’t have a ton since I got a lot of allium last fall instead, but I did plant some and a few kinds came back. I don’t plant the naturalizing tulips, so they aren’t long lived, although some have come back for 3 years now.

The yellow tulip from last week turned stripy!

It’s fun in the spring when you have forgotten what you planted last fall 😀

Some fun double tulips:

I love the apricot color.

Pink tulips in the back:

These tulips have come back for a second year. Last year a bunny bit off all the buds, so this year I put down a bunch of Molemax and Repels All, which seems to have worked!

I’m going to keep putting that down regularly. It’s a natural repellent and doesn’t kill anything, but it is supposed to be unpleasant to taste so critters will avoid.

Kingsblood tulips. These look fantastic in the sun!

This year, a mutation has started in one of them:

This is usually the result of a virus that changes the color. I’m curious to see what happens if these keep coming back each year.

We had our first rainbow of the season today as well!

We are finishing up our kitchen floor with tiling, which is a long story in itself which I have to share. Renovations never go as planned.

Have a great weekend!