6 on Saturday – 22JUN2024

I remember last week with fondness….it was chilly at night, sunny and warm during the day. Perfect late spring conditions for doing just about anything outdoors. Then the heat dome creeped in and summer arrived like a switch being turned on…ugh! We have survived, of course, and so has the garden. In fact, the high temperatures and a few timely thunderstorms have made things quite happy. Here to prove it are six things in my garden (photos taken yesterday since one of those thunderstorms is currently directly above us), joining Jim’s entourage at Garden Ruminations.

Gaillardia – Blanketflower – with Ox Eye Daisies still going strong

Who needs a boxwood hedge when you can have a colourful and orange marigold – Tagetes – hedge instead? Seeds collected from last year’s store-bought annuals, and started at the end of March.

Now adding some zing to salads, self sown Nasturtiums in a raised bed are blooming a few weeks ahead of the seeds I planted this spring.

Third year for these lovely Lauren’s Grape annual poppies in my garden – not only are they flowering where I want them (ie where I scattered seeds last fall) but they’ve also appeared in a few unexpected places. They started to open last Friday – you can see the flower pods popping open here – and a week later there are pops of purple all over.

There’s a huge lavender farm a few kilometres away and their festival is starting this weekend. I have my own mini festival going on around the side patio. English lavender – Lavandula angustifolia – is quite hardy and does well even with our snow and ice.

Finally – the roses. I have four Kordes multiflora/grandifloras, purchased bare root from a nursery in the Niagara region a number of years ago. I’ve learned that they don’t mind my heavy clay soil, even in a dry summer, but they absolutely don’t like to be crowded. I’ve moved two of them a number of times over the years, trying for that sweet spot, and last year I started to mercilessly pull out or cut back the Echinacea and Rudbeckia that was creeping in on the other two. The reward this year are shrubs with strong canes and a multitude of flower buds – now starting to open. Here is the pink ‘Cinderella’ the red ‘Crimson Bouquet’ the white ‘Iceberg’ and the yellow, my favourite because of the fragrance, ‘Friesia.’ Have a great weekend everyone!