Water Iris in July

 This is the gorgeous water Iris.  I spent a few hours playing in photoshop to learn how to make black backgrounds.  Using the layer mask method produced the best one.  It took time to get the edges nicely finished. 

 Here is the same iris before I messed with it in photoshop. 

 This is the white water iris.  It photographed it with the dark background.  I only darkened the background a bit and tried to make the white pop more by using a selection and inverse selection with adjustments ... all on layers.
These water irises do not have a very long bloom period, but they are lovely.  After blooming the leaves add a nice vertical aspect to the pond.

This photo is taken while sitting on my newly positioned bench and shooting towards the top of the garden over the cleaned up thyme circle.  oops.. left a few bamboo leaves on the thyme.  Its kinda strange that I am not seeing many bees on the thyme right now.  There were quite a few earlier.  That golden oregano is more yellow than the picture shows.  I should have adjusted that spot in photoshop.

I have the front garden weeded and watered.  The lupines are mostly planted out in the front garden, this year.  I must be diligent in keeping the daisies, grass and violets out of everything.  I love my black bamboo but its getting to be a bully with its shoots popping up everywhere.  I cut them off, now, as digging them up creates havoc in the garden beds.  Dead heading is an ongoing process, too, of course.  The lupines are all doing nicely and have grown considerably after getting out of their training pots.  The blue grass that I moved is surviving nicely too.  I used up a bag of the compost on these transplants, around the front.  I put a lupine in the clay pot Tara left behind.  This pot has a white achillea growing in it.  I added compost and top soil to the pot and put this out in the front garden by the boxwood hedge.  I also moved the little blue hosta back by the bench.  I managed to get a transplant for each side of the bench.  This transplant seems to be doing well, too.  I did a bit of rock work to make a couple of stepping stones to get to the bench from the sundial circle rock surround.  The thyme really does not like to be walked upon very much, so this will be another way to get to the bench.
I have chopped down the big plants in the woodland area and cleaned it up, watered it.  There were thistles, bindweed, and that huge herb (angelica - maybe--it has lovely ferny leaves and smells rather like licorice).  I transplanted Andy's Dougie tree out of its pot back there in the woodland.  I took out a sumac tree that was hanging over the fence.  I may not keep that Douglas Fir tree... although I could cut off the lower branches as it grows and just let it grow.   So, I have a start on cleaning up the woodland.  I refilled the pot that Dougie was in and transplanted an annual, Leptospernum.  The plant is quite big and was a bargain at the Mr. Grocer store a few days ago.  I moved this pot beside the door of the suite, so will have to be careful of watering it in this out of the way spot.  The other big plastic pot has a borage in bloom and I have added a lupine to it.  It lives on the back patio by the garage door.  My big green compost bin is heaping full.  They will come to empty it next week.

We had thunder and lightning storms the last couple of nights, but very little rain.