August in the garden

While working on the June album for my web page last nite.  This Delephinium photo is one I chose to use.  I really like this photo of this delphinium.  It is rather a pale blue but is near the lovely dark purple water iris and blooms at the same time.  I really like the combination.

This is one of this years snapdragons that are on the back garden next to the round stepping stones.  The snaps at the front did not come up this year.  Considering they are suppose to be annuals, I feel I did fairly well to get about 3 years bloom out of them.    I hope the mixed ones I have on the back garden do as well.  Although, they are in a spot that gets quite soggy in winter. 

This morning I spent about 2 hours cleaning up in the vegetable garden and preparing the soil to put in the 6 swiss chard that I bought yesterday and carried home from the mall.  They look like good plants.  I must keep them well watered.  And so, to that end, I have the sprinkler running now, on the back.  The vegetable garden is not too good.  It has a couple of tomatoes,  a cucumber and 3 potatoe plants that grew from last year's none production.  I added a bag of compost to them all after weeding and transplanting the swiss chard. 
In the afternoon I was out again for another couple of hours.  I am getting the back woodland cleaned up.  It is looking pretty good.  I weeded from the irises to the trilliums which are just across from the compost bin... about 12 feet of weeding.  This area has polyanthus in the front, the irises, and a weedy tall herb with cedars and the saskatoon berry trees at the back..  I think I will get rid of this herb and plant sedum, perhaps, or delphiniums and holly hocks.   For the moment I have nothing in the strip between the irises and the cedars at the back.  The irises end at the water tub, and have the saskatoon trees behind the tub to the red hot poker.  On the other side of the tub there is this big leafted shade plant with racemes of blue flowers.  Nice leaves and the bees like the flowers.  But it has spread all over this five foot square area in front of the red hot poker.  There was also some lemon balm in there.  I need to dig all of these roots out as I want to put the butterfly bush in there next to the tub garden.  Across the sidewalk from the irises is the lovely lace cap hydrangea that is putting on a great show this year.  The butterfly bush is also coming into bloom, so these two shrubs will be in the same area and almost across from each other and booming at the same time.  The compost bin is hidden by tall ferns and a lily of the valley shrub.  The woodland is going to be very nice.    I put down 4 bags of the mulch left over from when I cleaned up the Virginia creeper and St.John's worte.  I hope the Saskatoon trees produce a little better next year.  I must get them some fruit tree spikes next spring.   The woodland path is looking good.  The twiggy stuff from the Virginia creeper worked well for the path.  The two thirds of the woodland that I still have to do is very wild and over grown.  There is the tall Japanese cedar and a small grove of sumack, with a nice Japanese anomone, honesty, columbines, malva and other self seeding plants, as well as thistles, another big her with fern like leaves, and a couple of little shrubs, a bamboo that I should dig up and put into a container before it runs everywhere.  Across the path from the big Japanese cedar is a rhodo and a pin oak, monkshood and more self seeding plants.  It will take me a few more days to get this cleaned up.  I must be careful; not to dig up or mess up the fawn lilies, as they are spreading very nicely.  They are dormant now, so I should only dig in their area to remove roots of weeds.  I have avoided digging where the trilliums are dormant today.  The trilliums have been multiplying a bit too.  I will have to keep after the blue bells in the spring, as they are very aggressive and take over the area.  Once they die down, the honesty and other things come up though.  Hopefully I can get the area under control.  It looks so good when cleaned up.