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 