Oh my goodness, my garden is sucking the life energy out of me. Ok, it's not that bad, but boy there is still a lot of work to do after getting all these plants in. I've been weeding, raking and smoothing out mounds of dirt, and tomorrow 10 yards of mulch are getting dumped on my driveway. Yeah, we'll be busy.
Anyway, here's what's blooming now:
Every year when we go strawberry picking, Calvin also picks out some plants to put in the yard. Last year he chose these balloon flowers, and 2 of them came back great (the third 1 looks awful).
I got this from a friend thinning out her garden, and she called this a butterfly weed. It's not very big, maybe 8" tall at most.
This milkweed plant is blooming, but we have no caterpillars on any of the plants this year. :(
More stella d'oro lilies. I like how they look against the diablo ninebark in the background.
I think I'm going to be scarce over the summer. State Fair entries are due on Wednesday (I'm not going to get everything done), judging is on Friday, and Calvin was asked to join a boys' gymnastics team. They put him in level 5, so now we have 9 hours of gymnastics a week (plus 1.5 hours of travel time each time!). He loves it, and I'll get lots of knitting done.
Echinacea. I planted this in front of the firewood pile, so it kinda hides it in the summer, but since they die down to the ground in winter, the wood is quite accessible then.
The scarlett meidiland roses started blooming. So tiny and pretty! Each bloom is about 1" big.
This is Calvin's Irish moss. He is quite the gardener.
More bee balm.
The hibiscus is in full bloom! My mom's neighbors threw this out last summer, and she salvaged it. I over-wintered it, and thought I killed it when it dropped almost all its leaves. It survived!
Here's the plumbago. I over-wintered this one too. Next year I will prune it in late winter. I didn't do anything to it this year, and it's kinda all misshapen.
