June is well underway now, and the heat has finally arrived. Yay. I think that there are some days of thunderstorms ahead, but right now my plants are rocking in the heat after days of rain. Happy, happy plants. This is what is happening on my deck and back gardens.
The roses are finally started blooming!
This rose, and several of the others, are just covered in buds after our wet spring. I’m looking forward to days of blooms ahead if the thunderstorms don’t create too much havoc. My lavender plants are also putting out some color and I’m happy with the purple color on the deck shining along the pink blooms of the rose.
There are 4 types of lavender here. The large plant with Mateo for scale is a mystery lavender brought home from the grocery store. The little group of three lavender plants shows Provence Lavender (the tall plant), English Blue Spear Lavender, and French Lavender ‘Otto Quast’. The Otto Quast is having issues with its nationality, evidently, because the tag says English, but the internet is sticking with Spanish. I await some blooms from this plant…
I just want to add that the next big show will be my roses. I counted them yesterday and I have 35 plants at this point. Yay for roses!
I’ve been slowly weeding along in the back gardens, and one by one the flowering plants are emerging from the jungle of runaway grasses to shine. The roses are all pruned, mulched and fed, and the buds are everywhere. I don’t have a lot to admire right now, but the snapdragons and some others are doing their best to represent.
All of the snapdragons are reblooms or reseeds from last year, and the purple is a salvia plant that has taken off this year. How easy can this get? I collected seeds from snapdragons last year, and as I weed out more garden I plan to work in some seeds into the bare places. I have seeds from pygmy plants and some from plants that are rockets, so I can put some height into part of the garden while getting color towards the front edges. This is a good plan because I think that I need to stay out of the garden center for a while. Did I mention that I went yarn shopping this week? I kind of bought all the yarn, wiping out any progress in reducing the stash this year. I don’t care. I love the colors of the yarn that I bought, and I plan to show it all off in another post this weekend because some of it is still winging its way to my house. They echo the colors of my flowers, and they make me happy.
On the deck I have some little experiments chugging along: my milkweed seeds have successfully sprouted and I’m starting to consider places in the yard to plant them. I overwintered a bougainvillea plant in my front room this year, and it moved onto the deck a couple of weeks ago. What a sorry looking mess it was for a few weeks even though I misted it twice a day and limited its sun exposure, many of the leaves burnt and dropped off. Today the plant is covered with the beginnings of new growth. Yay!
Did you notice that the milkweed is growing in a milk jug?
Just a little more about the garden. I have sources of water out for bunnies and birds, and the yard is filled with birdsong and regularly visited by bunnies. My new neighbor loves the bunnies, and evidently they have babies next-door, and the adults use my yard as part of the Bunny Highway towards the front yard shaded pastures. Out in the front, my new neighbor has bird feeders, another birdbath, and little bunny statues.
The left is a bunny on the highway past my deck, and the little statue under the tree with the frolicking bunnies is in my new neighbor’s yard.
Life is good!
Welcome, June.
Yarn, Books & Roses 
Your garden is spectacular! Good job! Love the roses.
Some more roses started blooming this week. They are looking really good this year. Last year there was this invasion of grasshoppers…
Wow, that’s a lot of plants to maintain. Looks amazing.
A lot of the plants are in pots on the deck, so they are easy to maintain. Did I mention that half of the gardens in the back are weedy wildernesses right now?
Ruth Ann said it before I could: Spectacular! A yard like that and a knitter, too. You are amazing. Maybe the milkweed will bring in some Monarch butterflies. I hope, I hope.
Adore the bunnies. Always have. Something about them is just so cute, so lovable, so irresistible.
(Your garden reminds me of a former homeowner up the street. He or she or they had dozens of rose bushes — along the fence, across the front of the house, lining the front walk. Then several years ago they all disappeared and in their place — pink plastic flamingos!!! In Colorado! )
Some critter chomped half of the milkweed (on the deck!!) last night and suddenly I’m concerned about putting the little guys out in the yard. I’m thinking that they need to stay in pots for now inside the chicken wired catio until I put together some type of protection for them in the wide open. I would love a Monarch butterfly or two!
Roses replaced with pink plastic flamingo?!!! That should be illegal!
Indeed!
I’m trying to imagine the homeowner’s giant plastic vase holding a dozen pink plastic flamingos with sprigs of baby’s breath, artfully arranged on the dining table. Ewww!
That sounds like something from the Three Pines books…
🌹 🐰 ❤️ gorgeous and cuteness, happy Colorado June.
Oh, my gosh! What a riot of garden colors to soothe the spirit and calm the senses. What a lot of work you’ve done to maintain your plants. I love everything about your garden, except the milkweed, to which I have a diabolical allergy when breathing it in bloom and when eating honey made from nectar harvested from milkweed flowers (I’ve read that more than 280 bee species love it).
Oh, no. Life is too hard to have an allergy like that! It has been an adventure getting the new plants into pots, and now I’m focused on weeding and tending all the plants that are in the flowerbeds. I’m just doing a couple of hours at a time, but by working pretty steadily at it I’m making good progress. The roses are really responding well to getting mulched, fed and freed from the weeds.
Wow! Weeding and tending your plants for a couple of hours at a time is a lot. Your persistence is commendable, and the results spectacular. You’re an inspiration.
As for my milkweed allergy, I’m fortunate. It’s nothing compared to some who have to carry EpiPens with them. I consider myself lucky because mostly I can practice avoidance, unlike those who have peanut or other critical allergies, where a chance encounter of a whiff containing the offending proteins can cause an anaphylactic reaction and possible death.
I once worked with a lady who had a peanut allergy. It was just horrible!
Lovely blooms, including the crisp rose. One thing is fo sure – Otto Quast is definitely European. I’m pleased you now have bunny-friendly neighbours
So are the bunnies!!
Hooray for bunny-friendly new neighbors!
I have a fondness for rabbits – not IN the garden, mind you, but in general. (I used to have angora bunnies.) I absolutely LOVE seeing your gardens. It’s so dry here things I grew up with back east just don’t have a lot of hope, although salvias do pretty well. Roses and snapdragons, not so much, but yours look AMAZING!
Today I looked out the back window just in time to see a rabbit jump into the garden where it started snacking on weeds. It is a little know fact that cottontail rabbits will clear the dandelions out of your yard if you just give them a little time. I’m hoping that this bunny is just eating dandelions… So for they seem to leave most of my flowers alone, but evidently they do like milkweed.
It is really dry where I live too (the Denver area) and my plants are not happy in the heat of summer. I do mist the potted plants on the deck every day, and when I water I do top water the roses even though I’ve been told that is bad. I figure that they need the humidity up around their leaves: it was only 14% humidity last week. Mostly I try to only get plants that are okayed for this climate zone, which is more expensive since that means going to the garden center.
Your flowers are just gorgeous! And lovely to see your handsome fur babies as well 🙂 Glad the bunnies are thriving – I love watching ours!
It has been a nice couple of weeks. I forgot to mention that the new neighbors also feed the birds, and now I have blue jays everywhere along with the robins.
Oh nice! There are a few of us in our neighborhood feeding and watering them – it makes for a nice bunch of birds in the area!