Model T days

I like this shot of my best Dutch iris that is on the little rockery in the front garden.

Yesterday we were up early and over to the meeting spot for the model T Fords rally.  There was a good turn out of 15 cars.  While having coffee and doughnuts and visiting; Dennis mentioned to me that we are going to need a closed trailer to take our car to Pincher Creek.  Pat got seriously considering this idea.  He did some asking and phoning around.  By 5:00 o'clock he had purchased one at Duncan.  Our bank account will survive the hit.;  It is a great relief to me that we now have a covered trailer.  As Dennis said, we have a fairly big investment in our 1912 Torpedo Roadster Model T Ford.  Pat has it running beautifully with help from James.  It is looking great.  The rally was fun this year.  We had 4 checkpoints, that took us downtown.
I will eventually be making an album for each car event we go to, and load them to my web page.  I have a few photos ready for this album, but it is not likely to get made this year.  I hope to get at least the June album made for the gardening page... and more of the gardening if I ever get time. 

June in the Garden

The oriental poppies are almost finished blooming. 

These lovely Welsh poppies are delicate looking.  They self seed around very nicely.  They are growing in the woodland and under the deck.  They are not as messy as the Oriental poppies.

This is the special red columbine growing in the woodland.  Most of the columbines are a dark blue.  Today I noticed one in the front garden that is purple with white around the edges of the petals.  I let these plants self seed all around the garden too.

This is the woodland path beside the garage.  I have put a lot of the clippings from the renovation of the Virginia creeper along this path.  I hope they will eventually break up and make the path higher and better drained.  The plants beside the path are looking lush, almost tropical.

Today was sunny but it seemed a bit cool.  I mowed the lawn, using the new ramp to access the back bit of grass.  I clipped the perennials, including the bishops weed, the perennial geraniums and the lemon balm at the front.  Yesterday I move Irises to the front, from the edge of the vegetable garden.  I clipped back the wisteria some, after the tree terrorists had been chopping at it.  This is the stump of the wisteria that continues to grow sprouts.  I was trying to train it to a standard but that is not likely to happen now.  It has run along the ground and has twined up the douglas fir tree where it has a wonderful show this year.  It is fragrant too.  I used my hedge trimmer to take off some of the cedar hedge along the path behind the garage.  I have the yellow and the dark blue tall bearded iris in the house, as they were flopping over and getting beat up along the path and the driveway.  We are suppose to get rain, so I have not set up my new sprinkler for tomorrow.  But I should get out and water by hand as the sprinklers do not really do a great job of getting into all the little corners or under shrubs and trees.
I bought a little solar light for the garden... just one to see if it worked.  It works!!  It has a rechargeable battery, and little solar panels.  The panel is only about 3" x 3".  Amazing.  Why don't we have these things sitting on our windows to charge up and use for indoor lighting.  I must get a photo of it.  and get some more, too. 
I cleaned up the humming bird feeder and I now have hummers coming to it.  I see a rufous humming bird and the bigger anna's humming birds feeding.  My deck plants are doing great.  I hope to see the hummers feeding at the plants.  There are far too many squawking sparrows around.  There are robins, towhees, house finches... I haven't seen the wrens lately, or the big heron. 
The daisies are in bloom and the foxgloves.  I am waiting to see if I have any peloric ones.  A special moss I bought a year ago has survived and is spreading a bit in the moss garden.  All is looking pretty good.

More Iris in the June garden

These two photos are of the gorgeous water iris at Berwick House in the water feature.   

The yellow water iris in the woodland tub garden.  Apparently these iris are invasive.  I must go see if my contribution to the Colquitz river have survived.  They grow fairly vigorously in the garden, but not invasive. 

Another shot of my tall bearded all yellow iris that lives on the woodland.  Today, I added one of the wine colored tall ones to this iris bed at the beginning of the woodland garden.  This area has the ebony, the yellow, the dark blue varieties of the tall beareded irises.  I also moved some of the wine colored ones out to the front rectangles.  They should do ok, there.

This is the only Dutch iris I have growing.  I must get some more of these elegant iriises.

The siberian iris in the front garden.  You see the bench beyond the time circle.  The Siberian iris stand in front of the black bamboo.  I had a white one of these in the mix.  There is a nasty grass growing among these iris.  The leaves are quite similiar, so that is probably why this grass has got away on me, in this area.
It was another perfect day today.  Pat made me a ramp for pushing the lawn mover and wheel barrow up to the back over 2 steps, without having to go all around the garage on the woodland walk.  Its a very good ramp.  I am so pleased with it.  I removed an old cedar planter that was by these steps on the patio area, so that the ramp sits straight up the steps.  The first run up the ramp took my wheel barrow loaded with the plants and dirt from the old cedar planter.   I transplanted the plants to the area by the kiwi tree, at the top, next to the path that goes by the apple tree.  This area needs more good dirt added to it.  I will probably add some of the dirt that I rescued from under the St. John's Worte... its good woodland type of soil, and should beef up this clay soil.   I did a bit of pruning here and there.  I moved a few lily of the valley from Mrs. Pee's side to under the deck.... clipped down the bishops weed on that side too.  These ignorant tree terrorists have been chopping away at one of my evergreens again and throwing the debris in the pond.  I had a look at their side of this evergreen.  I hope they are happy with the ugly twiggy mess they have to look at.  Weird concept of landscaping, idiots.