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.

I haven’t posted in awhile as you may have noticed. We are spending some time away from winter. I eagerly await the gardening season in New England but its not quite there yet. I’ve been doing a bit of gardening though. I like to grow my own cilantro and have two containers of it which are doing quite well and have already been harvested a couple times.

I also have started some Brugmansia cuttings. You may remember the big beautiful yellow cultivar “Jean Pasco” which I have been growing for at least 10 years now and the photos I post in the summer. Every winter, I cut it back so I can get it into the basement for overwintering. I had over a dozen cuttings this year and gave some away, but I brought some to Florida with me to give to my daughter-in-law and some Florida friends. The cuttings are doing great.

I also received permission from our landlord to plant a couple of cuttings here. It will be fun to see what they look like next winter.

More later

The last few weeks have been pretty dull in the garden – except for the birds! We put out mealworms and the birds have been a delight to watch. We have had a flock of bluebirds 8-10 at a time, carolina wrens, woodpeckers, starlings (not my favorite), chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, juncos, cardinals, finches, sparrows and doves. What a treat. The feeders are just a few feet from the house so we can watch the birds up close. We had a bit of an ice storm as well and the world was all sparkly magic!

May the bluebirds of happiness visit your gardens as well in 2022.

Happy New Year