Six on Saturday – Volunteers & Vistas

All week we’ve been bombarded with heat wave warnings for this Canada Day long weekend – we’re lucky to live close enough to the lake to enjoy relatively cool breezes but I finished mot of my heavy chores Thursday evening. A sweet smell wafted over me while mowing and I realized the Milkweed was opening. I couldn’t find any bees or butterflies near them but the ants seemed to be enjoying the nectar..

1 – Milkweed – Asclepias

Beside these Milkweed stalks is a stand of the native perennial wildflower Potentilla simplex. Although the flowers are similar, it shouldn’t be confused with the ornamental Potentilla fruticosa shrub (which has recently been renamed Dasiphora fruticosa). This perennial self seeds readily but is easily pulled where not wanted. In early summer it provides a lovely soft green and yellow contrast to bronze or red foliage.

2 – Potentilla simplex

A third volunteer opening in my garden in the past few days are the Larkspur – Delphinium. Not exactly a wildflower, but plant appeared unexpectedly last year and I collected and scattered its seeds. This year there are multiple flower stalks with both dark and light blue blooms.

3 – Delphinium

I planted these two native Ninebark shrubs 10 or 12 years ago at the very back of the property. This is when we were spending summers in a trailer back there, before we built the house. It’s still one of my favourite late spring/early summer views, especially after I pollarded them so that the branches grew and cascaded into these graceful arches.

4 – Ninebark – Physocarpus

I like looking at my raised garlic beds when I’m standing on the back porch, sipping coffee, while Shileau has her morning walk about. The beds are a ways away from the house and, unless I’ve planted beans or greens amongst the garlic, I generally ignore them until mid August when it’s time to harvest. I mowed around them Thursday night though and lo and behold, whilst I wasn’t looking, scapes had emerged and weeds had sprung up! You can bet I was back there Friday morning pulling the unwanted volunteers and snipping off scapes for stir-fry!

5 – Garlic, scapes, weeds and all!

I’ve got a separate page with photos of what I call The Island — the oval shaped micro garden in the middle of the driveway roundabout. I love it because it’s like an evolving entity – a piece of performance art – changing month to month and also, of course, year to year as perennials and shrubs grow. This year, this week, there’s an abundance of orange and white perennials with daisy like flowers. Ox Eye Daisy, Shasta Daisy, Blanket Flower, Coreopsis. I think it’s quite lovely, and it’s #6 on this week’s list.

That’s it for this week. I switched to a new layout this week and I’m still experimenting with it so my apologies if it’s not quite right yet! To see more amazing and interesting groups of six photos today, head over to The Propogator‘s site; he started this whole thing!