Six on Saturday – 20/06/2020 – 1st day of summer

I confess – summer is not my favourite season. Weird, you might think, since I’m Canadian and winters are cold, and logically I should welcome the heat of summer. Not so much though, since in my area of the country, summer heat usually comes with humidity, mosquitoes and long dry spells. So far (I know, day one, but still…) this summer is true to climactic form, and, long indolent evenings notwithstanding, autumn is beckoning….

In the meantime, here are six things in my garden today (photos taken early yesterday morning, when everything was perky and the light quite lovely). A few are leftovers from spring but most are true summer performers. To see other groups of six from around the world, including those from gardens where today is the first day of winter, head on over to The Propagator’s site.

What says ‘summer’ more than a meadow filled with wild flowers? These buttercups and Ox Eye daisies aren’t in my meadow – they’re a small part of a garden bed close to the house. It’s all in the camera angle!

The first Coreopsis bloom of the year! This is a stalwart of the early summer garden – after its initial flush it will send up individual flowers for a few months.

This might be a Max Frei Geranium – I’m not sure since I didn’t plant it, it just popped up. But it looks like Max Frei. I like the flowers, of course, but I’m most impressed with its drought tolerance. Never watered, it’s thriving and grows a bit more every year in a very dry spot that gets half sun.

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Summer means vegetables – and in this pandemic year, the talk All Over gardening circles, and amongst folks who have NEVER gardened a day in their lives, is about growing food. ‘Homesteading’ is the new buzzword. Deep breath. Vegetable gardening requires water, and as I mentioned above, we don’t get that much rain most summers – and we’re on a well. So I collect what rain water I can and do the best I can. Here are my San Marzano tomatoes and ‘Magnolia Blossom’ snap peas doing their thing.

This is a Preston lilac – not really evocative of summer but it’s the last of the lilacs to bloom over here. Prestons were originally bred at the Experimental Farm in Ottawa (a government run farm that, as the name suggests, conducted trials to develop plants to withstand the Canadian climate) and have a lovely, delicate scent. I’m quite proud of this one – it was planted originally in the far back of the property, where it did well until recent years, when many shrubs and trees have perished or have suffered from changing weather and drainage patterns. I transplanted it to a new spot two years ago and this year, like a small miracle, it has bloomed again.

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Finally, peonies don’t seem to care that it’s summer, they’re still going strong. Or they would be, if we had a bit of rain and cooler temperatures to perk them up. On the right is ‘Duchesse de Nemours’ – the last variety to bloom here; it’s such a sturdy flower with multiple side blooms that will, with luck, keep opening for another few weeks. On the left is an unknown variety – I love how the magenta petals appear to be edged in powdered sugar.