June in my garden

 This veronica - speedwell - grows in the cutting garden.  Despite the shade from the trees surrounding this garden room, the Veronica is doing well.  I have added a pink one to the mix this year.  It grows 12 - 14 inches tall.  The spikes are good for bouquets and the butterflies like it. I have a taller white veronica that has been a good plant for many years, growing in the boulevard garden.

 Ventian depresso, although I cannot find a listing for that name.  I bought it at the VIRAGS show and sale this year.  I is blooming so I guess it is happy in its new spot in the little rockery in the back garden.

 The Lychnis Coronaria are looking great this year.  The seed has produce a lot of plants.  They grow in the front strip of the boulevard garden next to the plum tree.  There is a little veronica that grows there, that I must move, as this garden room has taller plants in its mix.  I must see if I can get some foxgloves and perhaps a lupine to grow in this area.  The front of this strip is bordered by pinks.

 This lysimachia punctata grows to about 3 - 4 feet.  It is very vigorous and should be divided every 2 years.  I have not divided mine yet, and it is several years old.  Its a good looking plant with dark green leaves.  It is backed by the cedar privacy hedge and the neighbours.

I found this pot of Lewisia cotyledon 'rainbow' at Cannor nursery a few weeks ago.  It has 2 Lewisia plants - yellow and pink.  Since this photo I have divided them and now have the three plants in one pot.  I may have to move the little cabbage looking plant.  I think it is an auricola primula.  I got it at the VIRAGS plant sale last year.  It is a slow growing plant.  It does not seem to like the bright, hot light. 

The honeysuckle in its tall white plot on the deck bloomed quite profusely this year, but the blossoms did not last very long.  It is suppose to be evergreen and fragrant.  It seems to me it is neither.

The white jasmine is in flower now and the fragrance is all over the back garden.  The heliotrope is finishing its blooms, so it will be dead headed.  The corsican mint in the stepping stones path is heavenly when stepped on.  The garden is full of weeds but I have not had the energy to get out  and clean it up even though we have had some perfect gardening days this week. 
I received my 20 seeds of Showy Milkweed today.  I need to plant them out in November.  I think I will put them into pots so I will be sure to recognize them when they germinate.

June in my garden

The malvas are short-lived perennials.  I allow them to self seed all around the garden.  This is a malva moschata, a cousin of hollyhocks.  Good in the cutting garde, butterflies and humming birds like them.  Can grow to 2 to 3 feet high.

 This Scabiosa, pin cushion flower, is in a pot.  These are very lovely plants and I need to get more of them in my garden.  Can grow 12 - 18 inches high.  Well liked by butterflies and bees.

 This Campanula Glomerata came from Sandy and Ralph's cottage at the lake.  It is a fine plant for my garden, now.  It can be invasive, but I need good strong plants to populate my garden that is becoming more and more low maintenance with pockets of special plants here and there.  It is a good cut flower, can grow to 28 inches with a 2 - 3 foot spread.  So, should be divided every 2 years or so.  I can see some of this plant growing with the Lychnis (magenta flowers) in the boulevard garden room. Hummingbirds, butterflies and bees like it.

 The Achillea, Moonshine Yarrow, grows in the strip in front of the peonies, on our driveway side of the boulevard garden, with verbenas (purple flowers) French lavender, lupines, decorative blue grass, and thyme as the carpet.  Needless to say the bees and butterflies love this garden room.  The yarrow is spreading around a bit.  There are other yarrows, some pink and others a buff color. 

 Lychnis chalcedonica, Maltese Cross, grows in the inner garden room at the front, with the above mentioned campanula.  It is an old garden favourite.  My mom grew it in her garden years ago.  It grows a 3 - 4 feet high and can be quite floppy, so usually needs support.  Tomatoe cages work well for this.  There is a silver/red sedeum as the carpet in this garden room, and the burgundy colored smoke bush, along with a few smaller blue perennials, a hebe, a Mrs. Bradshaw geum, some alliums. I have other Maltese Cross plants in the cutting garden and in the area around the fig tree at the back.

These are pine siskins relaxing on the deck railing, just above the bird bath.  They are nice to have around the garden.

I have found an excellent list of some of the more common garden plants here:  An excellent list of perennials with good descriptions

June in my garden

 Interesting light and shadows in the house.  I had to straighten this photo using the 'warp' effect in photoshop.  The wall on the right is a very pale rose color and the green of the carpet is much lighter too.  These are the colors as from the camera.

 The globe flower in a pot next to the water feature on the deck.  Its a beautiful flower.  I have another growing in a pot that sits with its bottom in the water of the pond.

 one of the frogs that are in the pond this year.  I think they may grow into bull frogs.  Now, they are about the size of a green frog.  I have not been able to catch any of these frogs in my pond, to move them.  Bull frogs are an introduced species and are very invasive.

 The white and purples water ires. 

 The beautiful big purple water iris. 

 An admiral butterfly.  These butterflies have been visiting my garden for the past 3 weeks.

The foxgloves are self seeding.  I am letting them grow all over the garden.  They look good in bouquets, too.

May - Irisis

 Iris - NOT.  The first swallowtail of the year.  It is on the wallflower by the front entry.  It spent quite a bit of time on this plant.  I will need more wallflowers.

 Dutch Iris that is in the boulevard garden in the rectangle bed by the plum tree.  I can add more of these blue irises and more pinks to the front of this bed.

 A royal blue tall bearded iris that grows along the driveway.  There is a bright yellow one in the same area.  I need to divide both of them and move them to the cutting garden or behind the garage, if I ever get the irises that are now there, cleaned up and divided so they might be able to produce blossoms.

 a yellow and white Dutch iris by the pond in the plum tree stump area.  There are lots of these yellow ones in this spot.  I need to get some other colors added.  There are pink and white foxgloves self seeding here.  They bloom at the same time, so some blue ones should look better with the pink and white foxgloves.

 Tall bearded iris.  This has been a very prolific iris.  It forms clumps very quickly.  I like the  color of it, but it would be nice to have some other colors.  This one grows at the back of the cutting garden, along the driveway, and in the boulevard garden.

While checking the ink levels on my printer, this photo printed up very well on just plain paper. 

May - Rhododendrons

 Might be Lee's Dark Purple.  This rhodo was first planted by the back steps along with two other ones and a red twig dogwood, and a few perennials.  As the plants grew they became very crowded.  At some time I removed the red twig dogwood.  In 2002 or thereabout, I dug this one out and dragged the whole big wet root ball to behind the old garage and planted it there.  It suffered neglect for many years.  This year after a bit more care and attention it is blooming.  There seems to be something eating its leaves.  I shall have to look into that.

Might be Catawbiense Boursault.  This and the other rhodos mentioned in this post were planted in 1989 or 1990.  As I started to build my yard into a garden they were planted in the clay soil with a lot of peat moss and other soil amendments.  This one is in the bed by the back steps.

 Might be Royal Purple.  This one is also by the back step.  This one and the others mentioned are blooming very nicely this year after an application of rhododendron food and attention to keeping them watered. 

 This is Hyperion.  It has very long branches and lovely big clumps of these flowers.  I is a taller rhodo.  Mine has become more floppy than tall.  I think it suits the attempt at a 'Japanese' look.  It grows in the moss by the deck support post.  There is a little white azalea that grows next to this rhodo in the moss garden.

There is a Cunningham's White and Cunningham's Pink growing on the Pees' side of the house, as well as a little fuschia azalea, a camellia, a rose, a purple jackamania clematis, Japanese Anemones, daylilies, lily of the valley, and some very aggressive violets and ground cover.  The area is about 5 feet wide.  The Pees have fits about any 'tree shit' falling on their 5.5 foot sidewalk which encroaches on my property.  They have trashed the privacy cedar hedge that is along that side of the deck.  I seriously need a survey and a chain link fence along that whole side of my property, as they are constantly coming into my garden and stealing anything that is not locked up, or throwing things into my garden pond, or chopping down my shrubs and plants, messing with my pond pump, and tipping over my garden ornaments.  I have reported this damage to the Police and they are keeping a running file on me. They have investigated some of my complaints and I noticed that old Mrs. Pee is no longer slopping chemical on her sidewalk, driveways and washing it down the storm drains that carry this crap into the Colquitz River that is a salmon habitat stream.  Also they are no longer dumping their garbage in the Park across the street.   My rant for the day!  So, all in all, for as long as I am going to be here before downsizing, I can let that side of my house go.  I never see it, except for the rose and the clematis that are at the front by the boxwood hedge. 

The pinks in the boulevard garden.  Today when I brought in a few flowers for a little bouquet, I cut a few blossoms of a very fragrant pink that grows by the  old sidewalk at the back.  I am going to have to propagate this pink around the edges of my flower beds or wherever I can find space for them. 

 We have a hawk living in the area.  He hunts the song birds, not very successfully.  I am not sure what kind of a hawk it is, but it is not very big.  This is a photo for my eventual "look up Victoria" album, on my web page.

This allium grows in the newly planted area behind the pond, along with self seeding foxgloves, and some Dutch irises.  There is an evergreen behind the bulbs and perennials.  I renovated that side of the pond  recently and it is looking very nice with these taller plants and the evergreen for a backdrop to the water plants.

The garden in May - fragrance

 The geum, Mrs.Bradshaw, that grows in the front middle garden bed, under the Smoke bush with silver/red sedum with yellow blossoms as a carpet.  Mrs. Bradshaw is beginning to spread out in its allotted space, at last.

The oriental poppies are always a show stopper while in bloom but are rather messy thereafter.  I will try to cut back the leaves and save the seed pots this year.  They grow in the flower bed along the side of the old garage and show up nicely against the white of the garage.

 The tree peony did not seem to do as well as usual this year.  Maybe the big snowfall we had tended to beat it back a bit.  I will feed it some good compost this year and hope to bring it back to its old spectacular self next year.  As usual, fragrance is lovely.

 the iceberg rose by the entry way, is currently full of blossoms.  It always needs to be cut back from the entry way, giving me some lovely roses for the table bouquet.  It has a light fragrance.

 The Gertrude Jekyll rose, of the David Austin family, is highly fragrant.  There is another deep red David Austin beside this rose that blooms sparsely but is also highly fragrant.  There is another rose at the front corner of the house, that is a light pink with a light fragrance.
These flowers competed with the Lilac tree that enhanced the back garden for weeks when it was in full bloom.  The hyacinths also added a strong fragrance to the Spring garden. 

 I was happy to see this wine colored Jackamani clematis climbing up the cedars in the front garden.  Its a superb color.  It is blooming profusely.  I must get a cutting from the deep purple Jackamani clematis moved into this front bed, next to the lovely little hebe in the garden bed by the front tree.  This combination of colors should be marvelous and will move the garden upwards as I am running out of space. 

 This, I think, is the Nelly Moser Clematis.  It grows wonderfully well up to the deck and surrounds the deck water feature with bloom.  It is in full bloom now and looks spectacular.

The globe flower, Trollius Chinensis, is a new plant in the garden.  I got it from the Cannor sale in March, where they sold off their old stock at $20.00 for all you could pile on your tray.  By the time I got to the sale there were slim pickins' left.  Never-the-less, I did very well by getting 31 plants.  Just one did not grow.  I took 6 of them to the VIRAGS show and sale.  The rest survived the transplant, and grow around the back garden.  There is another Trollius in the pond, in a gallon pot sitting on the bog bean pot, where I hope its soil stays moist and keeps cool as it does not like it hot.

We have had a very good month of May.  I have done a lot of renovations and added new plants in the garden.  The care and attention to watering,  adding fertilizer and improving the soil pays big dividends in the appearance of the plants.

The max amount of snow to February 13th

 The front tree loaded with snow on Feb. 12

 Peony Tree seed heads with their snow caps on.

 Closer to the heavy, wet snow piled on the tree branches on Feb. 13

 Overview of the max snow.  The hedges are beginning to be flattened out 

 Icicle in the sunset on February 13th.

By February 25th most of the snow has melted and these crocuses are looking good again.
As of the 15th of March the crocus field has lots of bulbs up, but some pig has been parking their car on part of the crocus field and the bulbs are flattened out.  

The snow piled higher and higher

 The lantern in the Japanese/Moss garden.  Shooting from the window under the deck.  I have recently found the name of the plant with the big leaves.  I believe it is the castor oil plant, although it does not have red leaves and I have never seen it bloom.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricinus  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricinus

 Railings on the 12th piled higher with snow.

 A closer look at the fluffy, wet snow piled on the deck railing. 
 The bird bath with at least a foot of snow piled up on it.  Beside it the basil plant had gone to seed and I left it in its pot.  I wonder if any of the seed will germinate. 

 More of the chairs, table and deck piled with snow.  I had cleaned the snow off the bin by the deck door and was putting out the humming bird feeder on it in the morning.  Wish I had taken a photo of it.

 The icicle out the dining room window at its maximum size.  It grew from the melt and repeated freeze.

            The bushes and the power line across the street.

 The david is heaped with snow.  The bamboo is weighted down to the ground  with all the snow on it.

More of the snow piled on the deck railing and the bay laurel behind it.

The bird bath on the deck heaped with at least a foot of  snow.  The basil next to it had gone to seed.  I wonder if any of the seed will germinate.