Blooming Today

Yesterday was a very hot and humid day. 

I managed to do  some weeding for a  couple of hours early (not early enough).

At last a sign that the butterflies do like this plant, butterfly weed, asclepias tuberosa.

  

This is the east end of the bed, there is another orange daylily further west that I should move to this grouping.



More daylilies have opened:

This is one of my favorite colors, Prairie Blue Eyes.  It was just a happy accident that the lychnis self seeded nearby.



and this one is Blueberry something and is next to some perilla which compliments it nicely.




This is a clump of unknown daylilies that I moved from the shop wall bed to the front of the house in the dining room foundation bed:

 

It is amid a bed of self- seeding annuals.  This is the seed pod of nigella damascena or 'Love in a Mist'.  I have the white variety.  I think the pods are as interesting as the blooms but they will self-seed even in the lawn.



I believe this one is Bama Music in front of the new porch near Jackmanii clematis.  (I won't lie; that is crab grass surrounding it).  I am  working my way to that bed........slowly.



I think this one is Fairy Tale Pink.  It is in the New Bed (now several years old).



For some strange reason I keep forgetting to take pictures of the yellows.....maybe today I will do that.

Others Blooming:

This is a darker version of salvia farinacea which has self-seeded for several years in this spot.  It may be due to the soil or hybridizing with others  of various shades, including white.


These are the ones at the end of the other bed that are much pales.  See the white one in the back  to the right.


This patch of rudbeckia (Prairie Sun) is next to the salvias.  It has also been self-seeding from a few years now.  I think I have lost the darker band of gold around the green eye  but it is still very pretty.



This is a pale yellow Buck rose right behind the salvia and rudbeckia.  They are too tall but maybe it will begin to grow again.

I see the volunteer squash is creeping up  on all of them. 



This is a phlox in the bed outside the kitchen.  I noticed that the bloom is somewhat variegated.......

I am throwing this one in to prove I did do some weeding (here with the string trimmer).  That is perilla wilting in the sun.



Garden

I take no credit for this squash since it came from the volunteer from last year's yellow squash:



But I did plant the carrots in the whiskey barrel:  This is just a sample but it is very nice and sweet.



BTW, I saw a half barrel at the local hardware and it  was priced $69.95!  Egads!  I sure never paid that for this one.

The rest of the garden is pathetic  this year.

Another Day of Gardening

Well, the cold front arrived; it was 38° this morning.  I brought the tray of tomatoes back inside late yesterday evening.  The storms missed us again.  I was so sorry to hear others weren't so lucky.

No wind this morning.  I hope to get more work done outside when the grass dries and it warms up a little.  May even drag out the electric chain saw.

When Nell wrote about making her unique landing outside the door to the new tractor shed ( we call all buildings in the compound either by their name for use or just the generic 'shed') it made me think of what I loosely call  our 'patio' which is just a small area outside the back porch door.
It is where the previous owners filled in a cistern and built a brick planter on top of it.

When we first looked at the farm,  I remarked that I liked the patio.  The man laughed and said that mess wasn't his.  His wife had done the entire thing; he was embarrassed by it.  I still like it!



Now here are some closeups:

This is the cistern planter.  I was told the bricks were made by slaves from clay found on the farm.


There are various things used,  more bricks, river gravel embedded in concrete and regular purchased paving stones.



Looking to the kitchen at the small planter where Jack Frost brunnera and variegated Solomon's seal grow.  The Solomon's seal is taking over!  The single hellebore seems to have  disappeared.



this is taken to the right of the door (see the  boxwood that edges the back porch),



This area is an L-shaped  area about 10x10 that I call the back porch bed.  I worked on pruning and cleaning it this morning.  I also dug up a clump of Joylene Nicole daylily that I have needed to move since the boxwood has grown so large.  It is sitting the the cart waiting for  me to decide where it should go.

and another angle taken from the doorway,



I had a productive morning.  Cleaned the bed above, took care of the chickens (3 eggs), cleaned about 10 feet of the New Bed edge on the west side next to the smoke house.  I hope to just keep  the narrow border of  this large bed and open access to the mower and mow the center.   I was going to eliminate the bed but then I saw all  those plants that I would have  to move because I didn't have the heart to just mow them down....peonies, daylilies, iris, a rose, a massive clump of iris (I forget the type), and I hope lots of self seeded petunias, salvia farinacea and poppies.  I was chopping weeds this morning and realized I was cutting tiny poppies! I quit and hope more survive than I killed.  I do this every year.  You would think I would learn.

I planted the whiskey barrel with  carrot seeds.  Carrots don't do well in my regular garden soil so this will be an interesting  experiment.  I planted some seeds of cilantro  in the cistern bed next to the pink rose.