Royal Purple Smokebush and Miss Kim Lilac are Performing so Nicely This Year

 Love this smokebush! It's about 10 ft. tall and in full bloom right now.

Miss Kim Lilac is also in full bloom and looking very lovely this year.

I have a bright pink peony planted in front of the Smokebush and it's about to open:

Now if we could just get some rain to get out of the severe drought we are currently experiencing.

Garden Junk Arrangements

I really enjoy turning junk into flower arrangements on my deck.

 I have had the rusty milk can for years, but this is the first year for the rusty old tool box.


In another area of the deck I have planted and old indoor light with 'Vampire' Calibrachoa, Creeping Jenny and white biden. Do you remember these floor lights that almost everyone had in at least one corner of their living room? I think they make wonderful planters.

The bottom of the container is planted with dahlia (yellow I think). From this side you can't see the real star of this arrangement.

 Let me walk to the back side to show you....

Wow! Loving this vibrant red 'Vampire' Calibrachoa!  I must remember it for future years. It should soon spill over the top and down all sides. I am looking forward to seeing this planting  mature.

This delphinium should open soon.

 This is a very bright peony!

I am now going to douse myself with bug spray and battle the mosquitoes as I attempt to weed these perennial gardens. Wish me luck!

Please Sit a Spell and Enjoy My New Peony

I bought this one in a gallon container full of buds two years ago. After planting all the buds dried up. There was no bloom last  year either. So when I saw 4 big luscious buds this year, I was thrilled.  The label said it was a red peony, but I think this is more like hot pink.

It is nothing special, but I like it because it is the first one I have that is not white. I just wish I knew the true color before I planted it next to red/orange lilies. 

This area also has red dwarf lilies. My plan was to have an all red and orange area.
I don't like the hot pink here, but it's staying. After waiting two years for a flower, I am not about to move that peony!

I always find the fuzzy buds of my Tango lilies interesting.  When I first planted them, I thought maybe they had a disease. I was totallly surprised to find that this fuzz is normal and does not hurt the flower at all. Now I like the fuzz just because it's different than all the other lily buds.

Of all the Asiatic lilies I have grown, I find the Tango series to be the most interesting.  You will see their gorgeous flowers soon.

Remember the woodland garden that I was removing all the daylilies from on Saturday?  Well, I am happy to report that I accomplished my goal and did get all the daylilies removed on Sat/Sun, except for one little clump of yellow ones that I want to transplant elsewhere.  I also left some Sedum Autumn Joy that I want to move.

I am very happy with the work we accomplished on Father's Day weekend despite all the rain on Sunday.

You may remember that my one goal for the weekend was to clean the paths of pine needles. 

Early Saturday morning I was moving the Smoke Bushes and I looked up and saw DH raking the paths.  I wondered what he was up to and then I smiled when I realized that he had read my blog post and came out to clean all the paths for me.  What a sweetheart!

The pink lilies are the Manhattans that I moved last summer while they were in full bloom.  I bought them two summers ago thinking they were dwarf.  When they were not, I had to find a new spot for tall lilies. They survived the move just fine.

Right behind them you can see the Smoke Bush I moved on Saturday.  It has had no problems since the move. The leaves did not even wilt! I am taking that as a good sign of its success potential.

Let the Blooming Begin!

Finally, I have lots of new bloomers!  I don't even know where to begin. I will just pick a few to showcase for Blooming Tuesday as I know most of you don't want to see a dozen or more pictures today!

First I will show the lupine that I featured awhile back.  It turned out to be pink and quite lovely.

I have to say that this is one of my biggest and best lupine blooms.  I am doing the happy dance over this one!

I also had one white poppy bloom. I LOVE this poppy called 'Royal Wedding', BUT....

I am very disappointed as I expected many white poppy blooms as this is the third year for these Breck's poppies.  Most of you know I order from Breck's and I have not been happy the past few years.  You all know the saying..........the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they LEAP!  Hmmmmmmmmmm, one bloom is no leap in my book.  I planted six poppies  (2 of 3 varieties) and this year I  have a total of 4 buds..........4 buds total for six plants--not good!

I have long forgotten where I planted which color, so I am pretty excited to see what these two luscious buds will morph in to--I am hoping they will be the gorgeous salmon-colored 'Queen Alexander'.

Update 5:00 pm:  I got home from work and the two buds opened.  I was a little let down to see they were white.

I still have two buds to open on another plant. I think that one has to be either purple or salmon.

I also have two different colored spiderworts blooming--the typical blue and the less seen magenta:

I seem to have alot of magenta this year. I probably dug up a lot of blue and threw it out last year.  It tends to take over and sometimes my patience wears thin and I just toss it out in the wooded area where it usually continues to bloom even though there is very little sun back there.  You really can't kill this plant.

Right next to the magenta spiderwort, I have an allium 'Christopherii' blooming. 

This guy started out HUGE - like 12 inches across - now I can fit it in in my palm.  I really hate how my allium get smaller and smaller each year - that is those that return - most them just die out. I love allium, but I have to treat it like an annual to get the best blooms.  That can be pretty expensive, so I don't do it.  Do any of you have this problem with allium?

My MIL gave me this white-flowering plant. She called it Sweet Annie..........it has the most wonderful sweet smell..........do any of you grow this herb? 

I have a few clumps of Dutch Iris blooming. I like them next to these chives:

Last, but not least, I show you the promise of  flowers to come:

I think I enjoy the peony buds almost as much as the flowers.

Be sure to go and visit the other participants at Jean's Blooming Tuesday.

Blooming Tuesday

It has been raining quite a bit for the past two days, so I have not been able to show you my blue paint project.  We stained the deck flooring two days ago, but with all the rain, we have not been able to get my project back where it  belongs.  For those of you dying to know ( :) ) , at the end of my Blooming Tuesday post, you will get a clue as to what I painted.  I will show you more later.

I am having ambivalent feeling about these linky parties.  I really don't understand how they work. I have been to a lot of  blogs where the authors have a separate page for the dozens of linky parties they participate in.  There was no link to the current party as there should be; just a link to the main blog of the host.    Is this acceptable?  I can  sure see that it would be a lot of time to link to 12 different parties in one post -- so much easier if you just make one page  to list the linkies, but that is not the way I understood it should be. I thought each post had to link to the current week's party so if I wander on to the post three months from now I can just click and find the whole list of participants.  However, I have not seen any linky author delete anybody who uses a separate page.  With multiple parties, it would  be quite a pain to wait for all the hosts to post their linky so you can link up.   Jean, please let me know how this works! You are about the only linky party I do here right now. 
I have some creeping phlox that just began to bloom.  I removed most of it from the Arbor Gardens last year, but I did leave a couple of small areas, like this one:

I also bought a flat of orange impatiens and planted it along the walkway.  I wonder how it is going to look when the short pink lilies begin to bloom!  I was planning to buy white impatiens, but decided that was way too boring.

Back in the rockwall garden I have some tulips blooming. I have decided to use this area as a cutting garden for flower bouquets.  I have not even started to clean up this garden. It is full of fallen branches, etc.

I noticed a nice group of purple peony tulips and some very small Princess Irene orange tulips in bloom. I cut them all down and decided to make a centerpiece bouquet from them.

I added a few other bloomers, like this ajuga...

I ended up with this purple/orange bouquet:

I just love it!

You can see what I used that bouquet for if you click here.

Happy Blooming Tuesday! Click here to visit the other participants.

Mid May and STILL too early to plant

I had a few double early peony  Monsella tulips  (yellow with a red stripe) that bloomed yesterday. 

I cut them all and put them on my dining room table (with a few other tulips/daffodils) where I could enjoy them all this week.

They are much smaller than they were when I planted them about four years ago, but they still make a nice dining room table centerpiece.

DH had to go to ACE Hardware tonight to get some fertilizer.  While he went looking for that, I headed straight for the little flower section they have...the first time I have looked for annuals this year!  I found a few things I just had to buy:

Flowering Kale in purple and green/white.  I have only planted this once, but it is so wonderful in the fall (if you can get it through the worm eating stage).  I decided to give it a try in some of my containers this year.

 I also picked up four six-packs of Salvia Victoria Blue.  It will get a foot and a half with blue spikes that look good in so many container combinations.

I put the flat in the garage as it is still too cold to plant outside.  Today it is 52 degrees.  I have found that if I don't  buy them when I see them, I probably won't ever see them again this season.

I also picked up a cinnamon basil plant:

I have no idea what foods would be good with cinnamon basil? Suggestions are welcome!  Even if I never eat it, I will get $2.00 worth of pleasure just walking by it all summer and rubbing a leaf between my fingers, then smelling that wonderful aroma!  I will pinch off the flowers that are already on this plant.

We had to go to a builder's supply store to look at composite decking after work today.  We are having a small deck built this year on the front of our home to replace our crumbling concrete steps.  We hired the same contractor who did our living room last fall.  He won't be able to build it until early July, but we had to pick out the color so it could be ordered.  We decided on a TREX Transcend product. The color is called Spiced Rum. Here is the tiny little sample piece with my salvia tag on top:

The railings will be white.  We are both happy with our selection. It should be totally maintenance free...unlike our large back treated wood deck which we will be staining this week.  As we age, we are realizing that we cannot keep up with all the maintenance the stained wood/solid-stained white railings requires. TREX is a fake wood that never has to be stained.  It is at least three times as expensive as treated wood, but since the front steps deck will be pretty small (9ft. x 8ft), we decided to splurge to eliminate the maintenance.

I guess as you get older, you have to pay more to work less. 

It's a sad fact of life.

The Peonies were Trashed Before I Even Saw Them

I went out early Sunday morning to trim the yew hedge and was surprised to see this mess:

We had a lot of hard rain last week which the peonies did not like. So I cut down all the fallen blooms and put them in the birdhouse vase in the shaded woodland garden.

I spent a lot of time outside Sunday and I took frequent breaks sitting at this table with a magazine and some white grape juice.


I even floated a flower in the bird bath.

I bought this Veronica spicata 'Sunny Border Blue' in 2004. I separated it last year and moved some in this spot where I want it to bloom with the red carpet lilies. It seems to like it here and should look really pretty when all the red pops out around it.

I am thrilled to no end to see buds on this ligularia (tall plant in the back with ragged-edged heart-shaped leaves.
I have been nurturing it along in a pot for a few years. I had two and one died in the ground the first year. This one almost died, too. I had just a tiny piece left. For the past two years, it has not flowered. It's called 'the rocket' because it shoots tall yellow spikes up from this nice foliage.


I am hoping the flower spikes get a couple of feet tall.

I am Pretty Sick of Digging Grass from my Creeping Phlox

I spent some time doing just that this weekend.

I have decided that I am sick of that task and I am thinking of removing a good portion of my creeping phlox so I don't have to deal with it.

So in the afternoon I took a break from digging grass and went out and bought this:

Yup, I went out and bought some grass!
I think I will leave it in it's pot and put it in one of big deck containers. I cannot imagine having to dig unwanted grass out of my pretty blue fescue. I wonder if it will be perennial in my cold climate. It says it's good for 30 below zero, so it should be.

I also bought some fuzzy wuzzy Lamb's Ear. I have never grown Lamb's ear.

Hmmmm, I did not buy them to plant together, but after looking at this pic, I like the combination of the blue fescue with the lamb's ear in front. Anybody growing that combo?

In the back you see a red peony. It has two buds, so I can't wait to see the flower. If you have been reading this blog for long, you may remember that my white peonies took 15 years before they bloomed! I have no desire to wait that long for the red ones, so I thought the $15 price tag was worth it.

I also picked up a pot of Sunny Border Blue Speedwell (Veronica Spicata). I've tried it once before, but it died out. I love the blue color, so decided to give it one more chance.

I also went looking for the new Croc's, but I did not find them. The store I thought carried them, decided not to this year. Just my luck....

I stopped a second store to see if there was anything else that appealed to me. I found these:
I love them and they were marked way down -- about 1/4 the price of the crocs. To top that off, if you bought one pair of shoes, you got a second pair 1/2 off. I was in a big hurry and just grabbed these cute flip flops. They were marked $3 - closeout from $$19.99. I got them for $1.50!!


I guess it was my lucky day after all!

Moving plants again

I spent about four hours Saturday morning working on last year's new path area. This is the front of the path, which is filling in nicely. Last year I planted the yellow Allium Molly bulbs in a number of spots along the front of the path.

That bright spot of fuchsia in the front is spiderwort.

I decided that I needed to work on the back area of this path, right after you make the turn to the right behind the wheel. I dug up some Allium Molly from the rockwall garden and moved three clumps here. I also removed a lot of daylilies and put some hosta here because it's in a wooded area with little sunlight.

I went to the rockwall garden again and dug out clumps of yellow sedum which I scattered all along this path. By the time I got to this path, it was high noon and not the best picture taking time (please try to overlook the glare).

I know these paths are confusing. This is the one we just made last weekend. As you go around to the left of that driftwood, you are back in the wooded area again where few things will grow.
I spent a lot of time playing around with milk cans and small boulders in this spot. I am trying to make little garden vignettes that you can barely see until you stumble upon them as you walk the path. If you look behind the driftwood above, you can hardly even see the milk cans. As soon as you turn the corner, they are in full view.
I threw some grapevine around one can and dug up a few hens/chicks to toss among the vines. I like that...very simple, easy and it will take no care.

Another spiderwort (this time with blue flowers) appears to spill out of this can.
I am not totally happy with this area, but I think I am on the right track. I need a large plant behind the spiderwort can to hide some of the metal.

I also made a peony bouquet using my recent garage sale vase purchase.

So I am very happy with the amount of work I completed this weekend considering that shortly after noon on Saturday we left for another overnight trip. I got a new special order book on Friday from the Michigan Electronic library. The return date is June 30 -- Tuesday. What's with that? Less than a week and the book has over 400 pages! I asked if they thought I was a speed reader.

The six hours of being in a car provided a lot of good reading time. When I got home Sunday afternoon, I spent the remainder of the afternoon and early evening reading and I finished it...Whew!
I have not spent that much time reading in quite some time.

All in all it was a great weekend.