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.

August in the garden

The delphinium on the deck is a wonderful color.  I am waiting for a sunset to shoot with this one in front of it.  The lace cap hydrangea is covered with blooms this year.  It is a lovely color too.  This hydrangea has wonderful fuzzy leaves.   There are a few other plants in bloom, but these two are the best.  The day lilies are nice, and the campanulas are looking good.  The tomatoe plant on the deck has tiny tomatoes that are ripening.  We will be able to be eating them in a day or two.  I have been using parsley, fennel, oregano, chives from the garden.  I watered by hand back and front today.  Yesterday, I was out weeding and pruning back the fig tree and other stuff along the old sidewalk and the stepping stones at the back.  The humming birds have been around and a few butterflies.  The ravens visit the deck railing looking for more party snacks. 

While viewing some of my old photos I found this one and thought to play with it a bit in photoshop to give it a bit more pizzazz.  It is the parliament buildings in Budapest, Hungary.  I will probably load it to Megashot some day. 
I have managed to get our recent trip added to my web page with yet another under construction page.  I must get to work at creating albums and get the gardening page finished.  I have the June album to do next.  It is going to be a large album.  I think May is the best month, followed closely by June, in my garden.
http://www.mmmee.com/11Sask

Deck planters in July

This pink poppy, somniferum papvar, has volunteered to grow in one of the deck planters.  It is an annual and I shall save the seed and see if I can get it to grow next year, in what is going to be my cutting garden. 

This is the only butterfly I have seen at the butterfly/hummingbird planters.  This is a very close crop of a RAW photo.  I am really liking this RAW stuff.  So much more data in the files, and easy to convert to tiff or jpeg to save.

The delphinium is looking really good, with the cosmos at its feet.  This is a combination I will want in the 'cutting garden'.  As well as hollyhocks, monarda, scaboisia,

I had left some nuts that were well past their best before date, out on the deck railing.  As I put a few out they would disappear without me seeing where they had gone.  Finally, I saw a pair of ravens helping themselves to the party snacks.  I did not get a good shot of them, but I am very happy with how the black feathers turned out in this RAW photo.  Great color and detail.

I have been reading Phillipa Gregory, Cornwell, and have picked up a couple of novels about Troy.  This, and the house cleaning have kept me busy recently.  I have been spending a bit of time on Megashot, and doing a bit of gardening with cooking, of course, thrown in.  It is all a fine mix.  Life is good on the West Coast.

I seem to have trashed my sound from the speakers somehow.  I have to get Trevor to come see if the speakers are broken, or if it is something else I have done.  The speakers should still be under warranty and so should his time to replace them, if that is the problem.