The future of my vegetable garden

I thought this one belonged on Grow It Eat It, so you can go read it there.

Bloom Day June

Time for another Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, hosted by May Dreams Gardens!  Here's some of what's blooming in my garden this month.

Lots of very orange butterfly weed, with a bee.  I get seedlings every year now, so will be spreading this around.

Anise hyssop, with a bee.

And to complete the series, purple buddleia, with a bee.  I grew this from seed, believe it or not (the buddleia, not the bee).  I also grew the above two from seed, but that actually makes sense.

Stokes' aster, liking its new location better than being under a shrub.  Grew this from seed too.

The first Unwin's Dwarf dahlia flower from a tuber I missed in digging them up, which of course survived just fine.  Someone else grew these from seed.

This is some sort of campanula, I assume.  I got it at a plant swap where it was labeled "Blue-flowered ground cover." Not.

Elderberry, the bane of my existence, but it can't escape from where I have it now, ha.

Platycodon or balloon flower.  I am very fond of these, even though they all face my neighbor's yard along with everything else in that bed.  Grew these from seed originally too, but they have spread.

Common orange daylily, with blueberries.  Massive amounts of blueberries this year.  And of course massive amounts of daylilies.

One of many other daylilies.  I don't know what most of them are because (together now) I grew them from seed.

I didn't grow the lilies from seed, but I still can't identify them because they were part of a mix.

The magnolia is having one of its periodic reblooms.  St. John's Wort in the background.

My still-very-small lime tree is blooming!  Ants seem to like the flowers.

And finally, the wild and wacky petunias I planted in the window box on the deck railing.  What can I say, I saw them and yes I said yes I will Yes.

:)

Happy Bloom Day.

The garden of Dorian Gray

My life has been full of stuff I'm not quite getting done.  This is not exclusive to the garden, but that's what you're here for, so that's what I'm managing to post about this evening.

Often when I'm working in the Master Gardener Demo Garden, or showing people around it, someone will ask about my garden at home, and I produce a hollow laugh and some "oh dear" noises, and change the subject.  The demo garden is as near pristine as something that only gets worked on by a bunch of people once a week can be.  My garden... is not.  Gardeners in my situation usually say something about the cobbler's children having no shoes (Kathy Jentz wrote an editor's column about the phenomenon in the latest Washington Gardener magazine, which also contains a photograph of my torso and a pumpkin that my son won a prize for, not to swerve off topic at all) but I am of a more Gothic frame of mind, at least when thoroughly depressed by weeds, and so I prefer to consider my home landscape the Garden of Dorian Gray: the true ugly manifestation of my neglect.  (Although it is not hidden away in a cupboard, but unfortunately out in the light of day.)

The above photo shows one of the tidier bits, almost perfect if you discount the large pokeweed and the knee-high grass.  I am not showing you the vegetable garden.  However, the weather has taken a turn for the better (blessed coolth) and I may get ahead of the weeds in a few places before it gets bloody hot again.

In other news, we caught and relocated Groundhog #8 today (I think we had reached #4 in the last post).  (At least I hope it's #8.  Someone scared my neighbor with tales of a tagged groundhog finding its way home after being dropped three miles away.  But ours are going farther than that and on the other side of a 6-lane road.)  It defecated in the car; I hope it's happy.

We have been eating lots and lots of blueberries and black raspberries, and freezing more (pies in the winter!).  I can't say the garden/landscape has been very productive otherwise (aside from peas) but I will have lots of flowers to show off for GBBD (must take pictures tomorrow).

Also tomorrow must look at the worms and perhaps add another floor to their habitat.

I promise to write more often.