It has been quite a month. We started with drought but finally got a few good rain storms and things are getting green again. The high temperatures are gone and the weather is good for gardening again. Nights are cool, leaves are starting to change and autumn is here.

The colors will change markedly over the next month. The gardening season is winding down. There is much to do to prepare for winter. But there is time to get it done. I have friends and family in Florida facing destruction of their gardens from Hurricane Ian. I have other friends facing life altering medical challenges. My gardens sustain me. As always, it is important to stop and savor the beauty around us as long as we can since it can be gone in a flash. Be well, dear gardeners

There isn’t much to write about this month because of the drought. It was hot, it was humid and it was dry. The thunderstorms mostly missed us. We hauled hoses and watered as much as we could. No lawn watering is allowed but we can hand water gardens. So that’s what we’re doing and hopefully we won’t lose any plants.

Here’s hoping September will bring us some rain

July is the season of daylilies in my garden. They provide lots of color, require minimal maintenance and do well in drought. Which we have. July has been very hot and very dry. I spend most of my time hauling hoses around.

Hopefully the drought pattern will change in August. Between the drought, heat and varmints (voles, chipmunks, rabbits, deer and a groundhog) gardening has been a challenge this year.

I have been collecting Japanese Iris (Ensata) for many years now. As you may recall, last year I dug up some of them that had outgrown their spaces and transplanted them into a wet area where an old willow had been taken down due to rot. I had hoped that they would all blend together in June. They came up this spring and buds formed. Finally, they began to bloom. I left some of them in the main garden in case my experiment didn’t work. But it did! So I will transplant some more into the space in the fall.

I am happy with my experiment so far. I hope next year the circle will be full of Ensatas all blooming at about the same time.

What a lovely month to garden. There was so much blooming it was hard to choose what I wanted to highlight. I decided to focus on some macro shots and a few critters.

More to come…..

The lupines in the meadow are blooming. The bluebirds and cardinals have fledged. The veggie garden and containers are planted. Now its weed, water, and enjoy.

Happy Memorial Day

I grow lots of iris – bearded, siberian, japanese, dwarf, cristata. Here’s a sampling.

The Japanese Ensatas won’t bloom til June

This is the second post for May. The garden became fuller, the lawn greener and the wildlife more plentiful.

Well this is embarrassing. No entries since early April and the garden has been lovely. I guess I have been too busy gardening to take the time to post photos. I will try to catch up with a few posts all at once.

Early May was cool and we had enough rain so the bulbs were nice for a long time. The epimediums were gorgeous and we had lots of wildlife

Spring has sprung. The garden is doing well. I lost some plants over the winter due to voles and deer. As always, I am moving some plants around because they have gotten too big or I want to fill a hole I created by moving other plants. The domino effect lives large in my garden. My big goal this season is to get the spreaders out and put them in the meadow where they can all fight it out for space. Mountain mint, Filapendula, Helianthus need to be dug and relocated.

The bluebirds are nesting in the houses we put up. Lilacs are budding. We have had plenty of April showers so May flowers should be beautiful.