Gardening in Summer

The thyme circle in bloom on July 21, 2010

The little rockery in the front garden on July 21, 2010.  You see the white perennial snapdragon beside the iberis in the front.  The snapdragon is an excellent little rockery plant.  The blue poppy just behind them has died.  No idea why. This area has had some attention this year and should be looking good next year.   There is an orange lily that was given to me and there is another lily that is just now coming up.  It is an oriental lily and should be taller and fragrant.  I have a daphne that is going to become a small shrub over time, and fragrant too.  It is new this year from the Rock and Alpine show and sale.  I am happy to say it is doing fine, now too.  The smaller daphne on the back garden rockery is in bloom now.  It is going to be another good rock garden plant.

This is a close up of the holes that some little wasps are building in between the stones of the stone path.  There do not seem to be as many of them now.  I have been seeing little wall lizards around the back and the front garden.  There has been garden snakes across the street in the wild park.  Hopefully they will migrate into my garden.

The last two photos are also from July 21st.  They are the decorative seed heads from the pasque flower and from the unknown plant that seeds itself every where.  I think I will call it the lovely nuisance.  I think it arrived in the bird seed, as I have seen finches feeding on the seeds.

This morning I watered around the front a bit.  I moved some of the Lady's mantle to a few new spots.  Its a very hardy plant.  It was growing over the path to the water meter.  I now have the path cleared, and some cement blocks and  flat stones put in place for the water meter reader, who seems to be quite helpless and blind.  This spot is ugly, but I am becoming accustomed to it.  I think my best heather did not survive  the move.  It looks like its dying.  I watered at the back a bit and did a bit of deadheading and topped up the pond.  The apple tree is loaded with fruit and is leaning way over.  There are no gold plums, as the late frost killed the blooms.    On Monday, I walked from the mall and brought home an erodium and another little rockery plant for the front garden.  I think our heat wave is over now, so I should be able to put them out in the ground now.  We have had some very hot days but today is cooler and cloudy.  Hoping for rain.

We went for lunch to the Gorge Vale golf course and we were to Matticks Farm at that golf course this week.  I had a spinach salad both places, both very good.
On Tuesday I found I had won $1000.00 on the extra of a lottery ticket.  We now have to go out to the casino to collect any winnings over $200.00.  If you win over $9,999.99 you must go to Richmond to collect.  We got out to the casino and found that I needed picture ID, which I did not have, to cash this winning ticket.  The whole process was extremely annoying.  I missed seeing this winning ticket on the lottery website.  This website is also a very annoying set up.
Last nite I set up a new 'Abstracts" community on Megashot.  It seems to be well attended for a new community.  My Adsense Ads  are not going to make me rich!  I have earned about $27.00 so far.