June is bustin' out all over!

A spectacular weekend on the weather front.  Barely a cloud in the sky, temperatures in the high 20's, with tolerable humidity and a light breeze off the lake.  Evenings cooling down pleasantly to make for good sleeping weather.  My only concern is that it has been quite some time since the torrential rains of April and even May, and my garden is parched.  Have laid out a series of strategically located drip hoses to try to keep things in good health, with intermittent and deep soakings.  It's been a busy weekend, but I did manage to get quite a few garden chores taken care of.  Here's what in bloom this weekend, and my Order of Work for this week.

These peonies always remind me of the fresh cream meringues I loved as a child!

June is the peak month for Alchemilla molis.

I find these mallows get quite weedy after their first bloom, and mean to pull them all out every year. ....but they always re-seed and when they look like this, it's hard not to give them a reprieve each year.

The meadow rue I planted in the spring is blooming now, and complements the peonies beautifully .

I was weeding beside this dianthus for some time this morning.... the scent is just delicious!

Finally got round to putting up new, stronger brackets to hold the window boxes I planted a few weeks ago.  I went "cheap and cheerful" with the planting scheme this year.

Clematis Arabella has been blooming beautifully for a few weeks now.

My yellow rose garden, planted this spring, is starting to come into bloom, and I'm quite pleased with the varieties I ended up selecting.  It was tough to decide - so many to choose from!

I'd always thought Sweet William was strictly a biannual, but I've had this one in place for the last 4 or 5 years, and it merrily comes back from the same plants each year.  They don't die back, but just seem to go dormant under the snow, in winter.

I had the Achillea "Moonshine" in the back yard for a couple of years, but it never got enough sun.  I moved it this spring and it's repaid handsomely for it's new dry, sunny spot.  I love the carriage of the flowers and that intense sulphur-like yellow.

The new salvias are a hit, and I love the dark leave geranium (whose name I can't recall right now).

The lavender "hedge" I planted last year is starting to come into bloom.  It's still a little sparse , but hopefully next year it will be considerably fuller.

In an "over forty" moment, I cannot remember what this demure bulb is called, but it's quite pretty nonetheless!

Order of Work - June 18 & 19, 2011 

• much weeding
• more spraying with insecticidal soap - both roses (aphids) and now gardenias (spider mites) needed attention
• laying out of soaker hoses to provide relief from the drought we seem to be heading into
• planted out a tray of Victoria salvias, and a few sunshine impatiens, to fill in some gaps
• divided off a couple of pieces of Moonshine achillea, which is suddenly become one of my favourite things in the garden
• finally hung up window boxes - better late than never.

Listening to:

Dame Janet Baker singing "Where corals lie" from the Sea Pictures by Edward Elgar.  I love Janet Baker, partially because she was the public, or television, face of opera in the UK when I was a child in the early 70s, but I heard a recording on the radio of Canadian contralto, Maureen Forester singing this song, and it can only be described as "breathtaking".

A bit of a lull

After my little sojourn in Winnipeg, I came back home, to find the garden looking a little "blah".  Although there are one or two things in bloom, in the front yard, things seem to be in a bit of a lull, with the spring flowers well and truly gone over, and nothing very showy ready to take over quite yet.  There are some encouraging signs though.  The new roses I planted this year are looking very healthy, have grown considerably and all of them have lots of buds developing.  The peonies look to be only days away from bursting out and the geraniums won't be far behind.  However, the forget-me-nots which have seeded wildly all over, and which were swathing the garden in a billowing cloud of blue and white were definitely in the phase of needing to be forgotten.  SO, I quickly got to work, cutting back, hauling out and generally tidying up.  On the plus side, I don't see any more signs of the dreaded japanese lily beetle for now, and the centranthus rubre, which I thought hadn't made it through the winter, has sprouted up nicely in the last few days, probably encouraged by the sudden blast of heat last week.  On the negative side, someone has put a size ten boot in the middle of one of my lavender plants and broken half the stems, and aphids have attacked the climbing roses in the back yard (and it was too windy to try spraying with insecticidal soap).  Such are the agonies and ecstasies of being a gardener.

This little dianthus was hidden in a corner, so I moved it early in the spring, to a nice sunny, well drained spot, close to the street....it seems to have adjusted well

Lots of texture, and shades of green, but not much by way of blooms!  And those forget-me-nots have well and truly past their prime.

This self-seeded eryngium is starting to form it's flower.  When in bloom, the whole thing will turn a ghostly silvery-grey.

Lots of white bachelor's buttons (Centaurea montana).  I also now have a rogue patch of bright blue ones.  They must have sprung up from seeds, are intensely blue and delightfully dwarfed.

Looking forward to the opening of the peonies. 

My tree peony was so woe-begone, and outgrowing it's place.

Love my white clematis...I hope I can find the tag at some point to recall what the variety was.

Tree peony "after"....I gave it quite a haircut, and I think it looks the better for it.

This climbing hydrangea is a free gift from my neighbours, and is lush and beautiful, with it's lacey white flowers.

That looks better....tidied up and waiting for the next wave of flowers

Note the patches of bare earth.....see below for the solution!

After I'd finished with the clean up, I was disturbed to see quite a number of open spots, so off I went to Plantworld to find "just a couple of things" to file the gaps.  A trip to plant world almost never ends with "just a couple of things" and yesterday I returned with:

• a couple of dwarf delphiniums (Dasant Blue) to keep the one I already had company
• veronica "Sonja" and "First Love"
• threadleaf coreopsis (Coreopsis verticillata 'Zagreb')
• Salvia nemorosa 'Caradonna'
• daylily 'Joan Senior'
• Iris sibirica 'Silver Edge'
• a few annuals to fill in any last remaining spaces (Victoria salvias, and white sunshine impatiens)

Hopefully, these will create quite a contrast to the current dullness!

Iris sibirica 'Silver Edge'

Delphinium 'Dasante Blue'

Coreopsis verticillata 'Zagreb'

Hemerocallis 'Joan Senior'

Salvia nemorosa "Caradonna', along with a lovely nepeta

Veronica 'Sonja'

Veronica 'First Love'