Usually, by the fourth of July, I’ve got all of my hot summer colors going strong in the garden. Despite the heat (which has been horrible), the summer colors are just now coming into their own. I used to be able to count on a burst of my ditch lilies reliably blooming right on the fourth, but it looks like they’ll be a couple of days late this year. It must be because of the cold, wet spring, or something.
Have I gushed enough yet over Madame Hardy, though? Those bushes are still covered with blooms, both plants, and looking fabulous. We have got to thin the jungle around the one in the front circular driveway, though. She’s being covered up by milkweed, which I try to let go so that the monarch butterflies can nest there, but I’m not quite willing to let them smother Madame Hardy.
Even just doing a walk through in the garden after work tonight, the bindweed is everywhere, everywhere. It is so damn healthy and vigorous, and I start to panic a bit when I see it creeping in from the edges. I’m hoping that as we tame the area where the veggie patch is going we will keep it from encroaching too hard on the flower garden, but we’ve got to do something drastic to the area right around the telephone pole. It completely smothered a hollyhock this week, and that’s saying something.
These cute little orange lilies are the first of my true lilies to bloom this year, as ever. But they are almost invisible in the mass of iris that they are in front of, and I think we need to move them out the the border of one of the beds.
Out in the bed by the big rocks (I’ve got to figure out a better naming scheme for my beds) I have the weirdest yellow flower ever. That bed is filled with yellow coneflowers and crazy daisies, and I swear it looks like they’ve interbred. Cute!
Not that the daisies have bloomed yet, but any day now. The plants are full of buds. These are the ones I started under lights last year, and I hardly got any blooms at all last year. I’ve waited very patiently. Now bloom please. The Golden Globe is blooming nicely, however! It’s very tall, and lovely.
Technically, both of my Chrysler Imperial rose bushes from Arena Roses survived the winter. The one in the circular driveway bed, while being smothered like Madame Hardy, seems to be a much healthier plant than the one on the slope with all of the iris. That one is about six inches tall, one branch, but it’s blooming! I wonder if that will be enough greenery to get enough energy to the roots to survive another winter. I want to remember to compost him especially well, and maybe hill up the soil around him better and give him some extra mulch.