More flowers from June

This is a close up of a musk mallow. Its a tall plant and seeds all around the garden. It is in bloom every where now and really fills in the garden nicely. It is easy to control and very obliging in a long period of bloom. It is quite tall and has many of these lovely pink flowers almost all summer.
This is the iceberg rose bush by the front door. I have let fireweed grow with the rose as I like the color combination. I rather like how this one is framed.
I searched my plant lists for the name of this plant and could not find it. I have a pink one, blue one, and white one in this planting next to the Carl Teschner hebe. They are rather messy plants. I like the leaves, though and the flowers are very delicate and lovely, but not showy.
This is my best peony. I moved 5 peonies, to the two front triangle beds, about 12 years ago. At the time the soil was still quite heavy clay. I have improved the soil a bit, but I think I should dig up my peonies and amend the soil more, then replant them. I understand that they do not want to be planted too deep. I may have planted the others too deep, as this, and one other are the only ones that bloom. Perhaps this Fall, I will have time to lift them and amend the soil.
This is a decorative orgeano. It has these very delicately colored blossoms. It is slowly spreading along the stone path, as edging, in front of the montebretias and roses. I have pinks further along this side of the path, as edging.
I don't recall the name of this plant. It is evergreen and covered with these lovely daisy like flowers over a long bloom period. This is in the sundial circle and expanding slowly. It is easily trained to go where I want it to be, within the little circle.
This is the hebe, Carl Teschner, in full bloom. This is the plant that is by the smoke bush, with its dark maroon leaves. You can see the reddish sedum that is next to the hebe and adjoins the little sundial circle's stone path.
This is a little well behaved perennial geranium in full bloom about 3 weeks ago. It is now finished blooming and after I cut off the dead blossoms it will bloom again. Its a excellent little plant and evergreen. It is by the steps up to the back garden. I have another one in the front that is not quite so floriforus. I believe it is 'ballerina'.

I mowed the grass paths and 'grass frame' to the front garden, as well as the little patch in the back under the apple tree. I have added a few stones to the stone path at the back and it is almost finished now. The irish moss and corsican mint is filling in between the stones. I weeded out the little clover and any other weeds I could find. The path and the stepping stones are going to be surrounded by the little green ground covers. I must keep all other weeds out, though. I continued the weeding of the stone path into the Japanese area up to the pond and to the veggie patch, pulling out blue eyed grass and any other unwanted plants. I weeded the moss garden and pruned one of the rhodos back a bit so that it is less gangly looking. The moss garden and little dry stream are beginning to look pretty good. The use of some uncluttered area makes the Japanese garden look so much bigger. I think this area is a better balance, now with the pond area.

More plants from the June garden

A close up of the scaboisia (pin cushion flower). These are excellent perennials in the gardens, back and front. With a little attention to dead heading, they have a contiuous bloom all summer and into the Fall. I must reward them with a mulch of compost.
This siberian iris was the most prolific bloomer this year. Hopefully, after the attention they got to cleaning them up this year, they will produce a better show next year. They look nice now as a taller stand of thin leaves.
A white siberian Iris. I have a few of these Iris growing behind the cement David in the front garden. The leaves are very thin, almost grass like. So, of course, this patch of iris became infested with a noxious grass. I spent quite a lot of time removing that grass while trying not to mistake irises for the grass. I will have to keep an eye on it, so that grass does not get away on me again. I like how these irises look next to the david, with the black bamboo behind them, and the hedge behind the bamboo. It makes a nice taspestry of greens with fine leaves that move in the wind.
The few strawberries have long since been eaten. Next year, I should see more fruit, as these particular plants are only in their second year.
This tall golden achillea (yarrow) is newly planted to the garden at the back, last year. It is a bit floppy but has long lasting blossoms. It has lower yellow blooming plants around it. Hopefully, they will fill in their allotted spaces and this will be a bright, cherry spot in this back garden bed with the stepping stones running through it.

Some Garden photos from June 8th

A close up shot of the welsh poppy. Its a very delicate flower on long stems, with fern like foliage. Very pretty and self seeds around just a bit.
This is the welsh poppy on the woodland path by the garage. This very lovely little poppy likes some shade. It also grows under the deck.
This is how the grapes looked last month. They are getting a bit bigger.
The seahorse sits at the bottom of the deck by the steps. I keep the ferns clipped back to let it peek out of the greenery.
The clematis has grown around the water tub on the deck. It adds a nice decorative aspect to the tub.
This little wasp hive is under the top railing of the deck. The wasps are constantly gathering wood from the deck to build their nests.

We had another cool, cloudy day with bits of rain. I was out for about an hour dead heading roses and weeding a bit. I cut back the liquid amber tree a bit, as it was hanging over the paths. I cut out the yellow leaves where the spot on the boxwood hedge was destroyed. I hope the plant comes back again. As I cut down to remove the yellow leaves, the wood appeared to be alive closer to the ground. I cut back the plum tree off the deck a bit, too. Now I can see down to the pond and the Japanese garden area.

Roses in June

Peace rose, the bud.
Peace rose, fully open, in more even light.
Peace rose in shadow and light.
This is iceberg, floribunda, I think. A very good white rose. It is right by the entrance. I have to contstantly prune it back off the doorbell and so have lots of indoor rose boquets. Its a good photogenic rose. I have better photos than this one, but this is how it looked the day I had time to shoot it, in June.
A David Austin rose -- Gertrude Jekyll. Pink, very fragrant. A very good rose.
A very floriferous David Austin rose in a deep purple red. Very fragrant. I cannot find its name in my google searches. The blooms look a little ragged, maybe that is why this one is not memorable in the nurseries. I really like the color and the hugh lovely fragrance. I will have to go way back to my old garden journals to try find it's name.
This is 'simplicity'. Its a very delicate pink tea rose. I have let it grow quite tall and now stands about 10 - 12 feet high.

These are all the roses I have room for in my garden. I have two minatures at the back, one of which is growing quite tall. Neither of them are too impressive. But they do carry blooms for a long time. These roses will go on blooming almost until Christmas time, depending on hard of a frost we get in the Fall. Something has been attacking my roses this year. I have seen buds, petals and leaves with holes. I don't seem to have afids though. Blackspot on the tea roses, the David Austins are more immune to it.

I was to the Royal Jubilee for a phlobotamy today. Its been a year since my last one! So this treatment must be ok to keep my high blood counts in cheque. I just naturally have high octane blood, I guess. I am a unique and bizare case to my doctor. My test results are not what is expected from what my blood counts show, apparently. Since I am not sick with this, I feel a bit put upon to have to go for the blood letting. But, I guess blood clots are not to be taken lightly, so ... I should just feel fortunate that I have a doctor who is taking the best of care of me.

I managed to get a page of comments done on my Flickr group. Not very exciting, but something I can do to spend useful time when I don't want to think too hard.

We had a cool, cloudy day with a bit of rain. The garden needs it. When I checked the pond the water level was way down. I topped it up and rearranged the waterfall rocks and hope its good for a while again.

Garden Plants in June - Peloric Foxgloves, Ground Covers, Campanula

This is a peach leaved bell flowers. I have white ones and blue ones. They are about 2 feet tall and are quite floppy, but reliable flowering plants. I have low growing creeping campanulas by the pond and as edging in the front. I also have a campanula that holds it flowers in a cluster. I have the tall ones with smaller flowers in the beds along the garage. They are a good workhorse kind of flower in the garden. Most of them are evergreen. I have a very special one with waxy green leaves and huge flowers while the plant is smaller. This one is in the rock garden and by the primulas bed. This plant develops a huge root system to support the small plants.



This scleranthus bilforun is new to the garden this year. It makes a tight little green mat. The tag says it may be a lawn substitute. I have one in the back garden and one in the front. I hope they are not as invasive as grass. The tag says it is good in pathways and edging.


This cotula hispida is new to my garden this year. the tag says it is suitable for rockeries, walls, paving, gravel gardens and containers, in sun, on well drained soil. I have it planted just at the edge of the round stepping stones. Hopefully I have it high enough, so that it won't get water logged in the winter. The blooms are long lasting.


This is the Irish moss. It is very similar in color, has tiny white blooms but lacks the fragrance of the mint.


This is the Corisican Mint that is filling in around the stepping stones in the back garden. The stone path next to the grass is almost totally filled in with this lovely, fragrance plant and with Irish moos. I have to be diligent about weeding out any unwanted plants like little clover. The clover are tiny and cute but they just take over.



This is a close up side view of the peloric foxglove this year. I had much better photos last year and better flowers too

I have had a very lazy day today. I watered back and front gardens last nite, Today we had a cloudy over cast cool day. We were to get rain, but it didn't happen.

Playing with Programs

This photo of the west coast planter is changed to black and white using the Corel PSP ultimate. Ken told me where to find the conversion filters in this program. I think they are superb! While I was poking around at things in the program, trying to add text, I totally froze my computer. So, until I learn how to use the text in that program, I think I will stick with text in adobe or my jasc photo editor. Their are some nice frames in the new Corel program. The one I used here is the cross processing frame.
I found this in last year's photos while looking for a few things to delete. Its a drop on leaf of a plant gifted to me by Pam. It was a very tender perennial. I had a lot of fun with that plant and may have to get one again some day.

Some internet friends have been having trouble changing the font size in their Skype programs. I did a search and came up with this: Go to Tools(Y) menu and select Option(Z...). Then you can see the "IM" and "SMS" tab on left side. Click and select IM Apearance, then you can change the font size.


It worked I am told, and you can apparently change the kind of font, also. I still have an older version so I did not have this problem on my Skype. The new version is suppose to be faster and have less bugs. I have not been having any trouble with my older one, but then I don't use it all that much either.

In the garden, I have managed to get the back and front watered, except for the driveway strip and the woodland. We might get rain tomorrow! We hardly get enough moisture to call it rain in our summer showers. Every bit helps though.

Garden Plants in June

I don't know what this plant is, but its seed heads are very photogenic. I think it arrived in my garden from the bird feeder. I have seen finches feeding on it. It pops up everywhere in my garden and if I am not careful it becomes a big problem. The plants have a tap root that can be hard to get out in my clay soil. It is a tall plant with thin blue/green leaves and very nice blue flowers that only last a day or two. I can't seem to get it to seed itself over in the deer pasture across the road from me where both the finches and I can enjoy it with less labor on my part. I think its an annual.
This is the Chameleon Plant - houttuynia cordata "vaiegata". I have it marked as invasive in my plant list and it really is quite invasive. It was said to be a 'bog' plant, so I thought I could control its wandering ways by planting it in a non-bog area. Well, it only needs regular watering to start its march over and under everything. It has a fragrance almost like oranges when its broken, so its a bit of a treat when keeping this one in bounds.
This is a tiny plant that has been seeding itself around my rock paths and anywhere I let it grow. It is not difficult to remove and is kinda pretty. When it finishes blooming it dies down and turns an inoffensive brown color. As you can see on this photo, some of the pea gravel stones are bigger than the delicate little flowers.
A gorgeous water iris that is blooming prolifically now, in the pond and in the deck tub. It is easy to propogate by dividing. This photo was edited in my new Paintshop Pro program. I spent quite a bit of enjoyable time playing with this last nite. Tonite I looked up the opticverve site to see if I could add the black and white filters that Stezzer on Flickr told me about. I have them on my Jasc copy of PSP, but I could not easily find the download of this plug in for my Corel PSP. Cyrus gave me a link to a site for zillions of plug ins for Photoshop. It was overwhelming. I am not sure I want to mess with my Adobe, either. Not right now, anyway. I have always found the Paintshop programs to be far more user friendly and know I can fix them if I mess something up with a plug in.
This is a look at the smoke bush leaves against the silver sedum.

A few of our antique cars were invited to the Uplands Golf Course to be on display for their special tournament on the 87th anniversary of the club. We were greeted and treated very pleasantly and served a barbeque lunch. Was a lovely day and a beautiful setting for lunch and a couple of hours of visiting. Thank you, Wayne, for the invitation.

Orchid in bloom

This little orchid has been in bloom for about 2 weeks now. The tag says it is SL Psyche "China" L, cinnabarina x S. coccinea.

I processed this photo in my newly loaded photo editor, Paint Shop Pro Ultimate, Photo x2. It was advertised at half price and few other goodies as in my earlier post. The savings vanished when I could not load the set up cd to my computer. I needed a new cd reader/burner, and my Techie installed this and loaded the program for me. I spent a bit of time trying to find my way around... I have a lot to learn about it!

Garden Rocks, Art, Circles

This is the thyme circle trimmed back to its 7 foot diameter within the encircling rocks. It is in full bloom, without weeds. The newspapers under this planting has worked as a good weed barrier for about 11 years! Perhaps, this year I should clip the thyme, although it seems to do well enough without a shearing. Across the thyme you see the yellow oregano and the little bush beside it is a spirea in pink bloom. The spirea has leaves to match the colors of the oregano. I must prune it back after bloom, this year. The black bamboo is next to the spirea on one side and the hedge along the other side. Along the bottom of the photo you see the low daisies in the sundial circle and the red sedum that is to fill its space next to the sundial circle.

The little sun dial circle with the low growing daisies in bloom, and the rhodendron like plant that is slowly forming around the sundial. I have planted a couple of new little low growing plants in this circle to try to fill in. One is a 'heron's bill' that looks like a tiny geranium. I also have a white/green leaved low growing alpine from last year's planting. This little area is very difficult, except for the two established plants. More water is probably the key to getting better results. You can see where this little circle borders the thyme circle on one side with the irises onthe other side, and campanulas along by the hedge. The little pink hebe sits by its rock. This little plant is my favourite this year, as it has responded so very well to the care it got last year. The red along the other side of this little circle is a sedum with a reddish hew. It grows next to the silver sedum and is the same plant, just a different variety. They are going to look super together when they fill in their alloted spaces.
The view over the inner garden to the bench at the bottom of the thyme circle. I have cleaned up this inner garden this year and shall try to keep it more formal. I was letting the alliums and columbines go quite wild in this spot. It looks so much better with the messy hebe taken out, too. At the back you can see a well behaved hebe.. Carl Treshcer, maybe? Closer shot of it soon. The tricyrtis (?) are a bit messy. They like a bit of shade and might be moved some day. They are not a great plant, but they are 'different'. You can see the dark smoke bush with the silver sedum under part of it. I am encouraging the sedum to spread into the area where I took out the hebe. I have just added some pussy toes to this area. I don't know if they will grow or not as I ripped them out of the cleaning up I was doing under the front plum tree. They are low growing with silver leaves and pink bloosums.
This rock has special meaning for me. When we visited Bryan in Yellowknife, he gave me this rock that he had been keeping in his garage. It has weathered quite a bit over the last 12 or so years. I wish I had known that you could paint rocks with something that keeps them from weathering. Perhaps I could have this one cleaned and then protect it. At the moment it sits at the feet of the cement David in its bed of pea gravel and other bigger round rocks collected from beaches.
These are the rocks that were hiding under the yellow oregano at the edge of the time circle. They have not weathered too badly and retain their rich colors. I have moved them to the inner garden where I removed a messy hebe. The silver sedum should expand to the edge of these rocks, and be the under planting of the smoke bush with its dark wine red leaves. Next to the rocks you see the armeria (thrift) forming its round mound. This particular plant is quite old. I am encouraging it to regrow the center portion. These thrifts are good plants in my garden. Very easy care once established. Also next to these rocks you see the newly moved lavendar which will expand in time, to displace the rocks, yet again.
This is the small sundial that sits in the sunniest part of the front garden. It has dolphins on it. I have it set to the shadow falling over 12 noon around June 21st.
The west coast planter is situated across this little stone path from the water tub. This area is looking really good since I renovated the rock paths. I have some of my most choice little rock plants growing here. They are growing in clay and gravel, there is a canopy of leaves over them in the summer and they thrive. Everything that a rock/alpine plant should not like, at all! You can see the Gertrude Jekyll rose under the same canopy of leaves from the liquid amber tree. I let the leaves fall here and just clean them off the tops of the plants. So, I seem to be building up a good leaf mulch barrier to weeds and providing the plants with nutrients; as well as minimizing my leaf raking chores. Is that green gardening!?
The mermaid is now sitting on an upturned black plant pot and gazing into the half barrel tub. The tub is the home of Elvis the fish and a white water iris.
This is the view from the driveway across my front garden. You can see the neighbors car in their driveway. I have some small cedars to screen their driveway. They are on the corner of the street and the view goes right across the street. It is far too open to the traffic.
I wish these bronze herons were just a bit bigger, but they do match the color of the stone they seem to be examining. They sit in front of the tub garden and are surrounded by a little campanula, an iberis and the white perennial snapdragon. I must feature this little plan sometime. It has silver blue fuzzy leaves and white snapdragon flowers over a long bloom period. An excellent low growing plant that has suffered many moves with some horrible soil.

Yesterday, I transplanted the 6 little perennials, but did not do anything else. Today, I took the day off, except for watering the house plants. I spent a lot of time on the new site that is being built by a good internet friend. This site is going to be just super for photography information, networking, and all kinds of fun. The features seem almost endless. I can't wait until its on line.