Mid Summer Flowers in Bloom

Midsummer is great for flowers. Everything is going crazy, including the weeds.

I love the variegated blue and white of these morning glories I planted to grow up the sad fig tree skeletons. They just started blooming yesterday morning.

The Black-Eyed Susans have been going crazy for a few weeks. The blood red dahlias planted along side them are just beginning to bloom but the pictures weren't very nice.

These Diablo Cosmos are just hitting their stride.

The Purple Cone Flowers are glorious this year and I found Foxgloves blooming amidst them. I am so glad the foxglove came back since they are one of my favorites.

The regular Cosmos, volunteers from last year, are also blooming like mad.

But the phlox are simply riotous!

Rose of Sharon

Before we sold the old house I moved some of my favorite plants. The Rose of Sharon shrubs at the old house always bloomed by my birthday. The ones I moved have not bloomed until this year, on my birthday!

The original shrub I got came from my in-laws old property. It had many babies at our old house, some of them with the original purple flowers, some with more of a magenta flower, and these lovely white ones. I moved the white ones because they are my favorite and I figured some of their babies would have purple flowers. It's so nice to see an old friend on my birthday.

What's Blooming Now

The flowers are going crazy right now. So many blossoms! The plants around the front porch are a riot of color.

The bleeding hearts of going crazy! And I dug out quite a few last year.

The salvia is covered in flowers.

The rhododendron is also covered in flowers.

The comfrey and austrian winter peas are also getting in on the act.

If even half of the raspberry flowers turn into fruit it will be a very good year for the raspberry harvest.

Updates

Lots of little things going on here.
Alan has been working on the bridge. All that is left is the decking and a board along the top/railing.

The goats have been working on clearing brush.

They get quite acrobatic to get the tasty bits.

Mama Sadie is working on shedding, and looking quite shaggy.

The lilacs are working on perfuming the air with their amazing scent.

This long stand of lilacs is on the bank behind the house. With the patio doors open the smell of lilacs comes right into the house. It's heavenly.

And Stumpy is working on getting to used to her crate. She has been eating in it for a few days and has even gone all the way in. 

The hard part is figuring out the best time to catch her and her kittens. She moved them a few days ago and I know the general vicinity but I think I'll let her raise them up a little more. But we can't wait to see them!

The Kindness of Gardeners

I met a fellow gardener who lives about two miles from me. She had too much Siberian Iris and needed it thinned out. So I went and dug out a lot of iris!

I planted a few clumps in the front yard gardens but most of it went along the stream.

She also had an amazing rhubarb patch and had just dug out some plants and offered them to me.

I added four plants to the five I had before. Hopefully, this will be enough rhubarb!

Crocuses!

The crocuses I planted in the front yard are blooming!

But I thought the mix of bulbs I bought had yellow, white and blue. Hmmmm.

Finally, Signs of Spring

Despite the 50+degree days we have been having we still have large swaths of 3-4 inches of slushy snow.

But there are some signs of impending spring, if you look hard enough. It took a bit of digging, but I found some rhubarb.

The tree peony has buds.

But best of all are the crocuses coming up in the front lawn!

Last fall I planted 100 crocus bulbs in the front yard. The catalog said they would bloom in late March/early April and it looks like they are right on track. I can't wait to see them blooming!

The Front Bed

The previous owners had a short wire fence in front of the flower bed bordering the road. Every fall they would put burlap over it to keep the cinders from the road out of the flower bed.  They told me they put up the burlap on Thanksgiving weekend, but we are supposed to get snow the day before Thanksgiving. The township boys probably won't need to put down cinders and plow, but just in case, I put up the burlap today.
Of course that wasn't exactly what had to happen. This spring I took out all the old wire fencing and posts. They had seen better days and needed to come out when we took out the huge mat of Lily of the Valley. I didn't really want to put the old fencing back so now everything is new. I think it looks nice and tidy.

This project just about finishes up the front yard in the winter preparations.  Now on to stacking firewood!

Fall Flowers

We still have some flowers blooming this late into October. The Purple Coneflower is always one of the last to stop blooming.

The cosmos are still going strong.

And Sunday should have been the last day for the dahlias. The forecast was calling for a low of 32 degrees and that should have finished off the dahlias. But we seemed to have missed and frost in our little valley.

This hydrangea will be beautiful for a while.

Fall Garden Chores

The weather forecast is calling for a low of 32 degrees tonight; probably our first frost and freeze together. Therefore, it was a fall chore day in the garden.
There was an annoying little garden that paralleled the vegetable garden and was overrun with lily of the valley and had many small peonies that haven't bloomed for me yet. I have been wanting to move them to a better location and today was the day. Hopefully, they will like their new location and bloom. I think the lily of the valley was a bit too much for them.
They don't look like much now, and I don't even know what color flower they have, but they should like the front flower bed better.

I received my bulb order and spent some of this afternoon planting 25 asiatic lillies and 100 crocus bulbs. The crocus bulbs were for naturalizing in the front yard. It doesn't look like much now but come late March, early April there should be 100 yellow, blue and white crocuses.

The vegetable garden got some attention today as well. This bare area is now planted in cereal rye as cover crop.

The greenhouse needed a little attention too. This tape is made for repairing the greenhouse plastic. This plastic has seen 2 growing seasons and just needs a bit of mending.

Achy muscles tonight!

Outhouse Flowers

My Outhouse flowers are blooming! It took a while to find the flowers and then we ended up getting them from a neighbor of a friend. They look great for their first year in their new location (of course, next to the outhouse.)

The Flower Garden-mid Summer

I am very happy with my front flower bed. All the flowers are blooming and attracting lots of bees, moths and butterflies.

My favorites, the hollyhocks, are blooming well now.

And the Dahlias are very happy!

Ewww, Japanese Beetles

The hollyhocks, fall gold raspberry bushes and ostrich ferns are getting eaten by Japanese Beetles. They aren't doing any real damage, yet. Today I went out and picked what I could and drowned them in warm soapy water. I got quite a catch.

I am not sure why they are always hanging out together, but they are usually in pairs or trios. Rarely do I see a single beetle.

Foxgloves

I have always loved foxgloves but they never did well at my old house.  I bought some plants a few weeks ago and they are doing very well.

I particularly like this white one; the purple markings on the white are so pretty.

Mulching and a Fruit Update

While driving around the outskirts of town looking at all the Mennonite farms I kept driving by a farm with a sign for mushroom soil.  Yesterday Alan hitched up the trailer and we went to get some. I wanted to mulch the front flower beds and the blueberry bushes with mushroom soil instead of shredded bark mulch to avoid "artillery fungus." There are spots already on the siding from previous encounters with "artillery fungus" and I didn't want to add to the marks.

The farm was lovely. As we drove along the lane a woman was working in her huge vegetable garden with two of her children. On the other side of the lane was a large hoop house full of tomato plants covered with 2-3 inch green tomatoes. We got to the piles of manure and then I went to look for someone to help us.  As I walked to another barn where I could hear men working I watched as a brother and sister, about 6 and 8 years old, argued over who's turn it was to ride a bicycle. Of course the sister was riding the bike and had no intention of stopping. All this in pennsylvania german.

The farmer came and gave us a scoop and a half of mushroom soil for $15. He needed to get change so we waited while he went off.  A few minutes later along came the sister on the bike with our $5. I love Mennonite families!

At home I got to work weeding the front beds and spreading mulch. I am very happy with the way the new front border is coming along.

The blueberries are doing really well this year and look even better with their mulch bed.

And they are covered in berries!

 The grapes are having an incredibly good year as well.

I even had enough mulch left over to do the red raspberries too. All the fruit is doing great this year. We should have a bumper crop.

Trimming Bushes and Playing in the Stream

We've been working on a few little projects lately while waiting for the big work of painting the barn once it is done.
Planted against the back wall of the house is an overgrown Rhododendron and a shaggy Arborvitae.

The Rhododendron must have been at least 7 feet tall and the arborvitae used to be a nice specimen but was ravaged by the last two winters. Both shrubs are growing smack up against the siding and need to be moved eventually. The Arborvitae will never come back to its glory so it was just cut up. And I did some serious pruning to the Rhododendron.

I can almost feel the siding take a big sigh of relief. There's even a basement window well buried under there.
We had a lovely week with lots of rain and everything is growing like crazy, including our ducklings, who are quite camera shy.

Alan had fun playing in the stream making a little pool for the ducks. We are hoping they will hang out mostly by the stream once they are older. There is also lots of cover along the stream bed for them to hide in.

We'll also move their little house down next to the stream once the chicks and turkey poults move out.