Summer Work and Play

Blogging has taken a backseat to summer activities during these past several weeks. The days fly by and are filled to overflowering with things to be done, but happily, also with some recreational activities in between. There are never enough hours for me in these treasured summer days.

I'm sad to be missing all the gardens and activities of my blog friends, and apologize for not visiting you all much lately, but I do hope to catch up with your posts sooner or later. I appreciate each and every one of you who stops by and leaves a comment (and also those who don't leave a comment ;) ). They are all such a pleasure to read.

Gladioli are blooming in Hubby's vegetable garden. I had just 3 beautiful spikes last Sunday for the church bouquet, so I filled in with a few other things that are still blooming in the garden: Phlox, white Feverfew and yellow Golden Glow.

I wanted a photo using natural light instead of the flash, so I took the bouquet outside.

This peach Glad is "Early Bird" (Netherland Bulb Co.). I noticed that it's a perfect match for the "Seapearl" rose, and enlisted my patient Hubby's aid to snap a photo.

He planted this patch of beautiful "Strawberry Blonde" Sunflowers (Burpee) on the edge of the veggie garden.

The blooms are not all the same, with a few yellows in the mix, but most are a combination of this gorgeous rose-pink shade and cream. The above flower is my favorite....almost solid rose-pink.

The front porch garden is chock-a-block full of volunteer Sunflowers that grew from fallen bird seed. My intention was to weed them out, but it was one of the many chores that I didn't get around to. When I finally did have time the flowerheads were blooming and I didn't have the heart to pull the plants out. Besides, why waste all that free bird food?

Now the Goldfinches and other birds are having a feast. I love to hear them chatter as they feed.

The Nuthatch has been a regular visitor lately too.

We were richly blessed with a houseful of family this past week. Our oldest daughter came up from NY City, and our niece and her family were here for the week as well. The last time we saw that little family was 5 years ago, and the two children have grown so much!

One of the highlights of the visit was a cookout up behind the barn. Hotdogs, sweet corn on the cob and s'mores never tasted so good!

We ate sweet corn for lunch and dinner almost every day. It's one of the only veggies that has done well in the garden this cool, damp summer. Our tomatoes have late blight, like everyone elses' in the northeast it seems. We have one cherry tomato plant which must be more resistant, because, although it's affected to some degree, has kept producing some good fruit. Also a few bigger unmarked fruits that I picked green have ripened, and mmmm, are they delicious!

During the week, our daughter and niece's husband (NH) painted the barn and outbuildings. They worked very hard and did a fantastic job, which included cutting away a jungle of brush, and braving a hive of honeybees that have taken up residence in the back wall of the barn. After NH was stung on the hand 3 times they sensibly decided to give the bees a wide girth, and left that section unpainted. We'll have to have a beekeeper in to remove the hive. In the meantime though, I'm sure the bees are doing a great job pollinating my garden, and that explains why I see so many of them.

What a joy it was for Hubby and I to have two dear little children around for 8 days! You can guess what the little boy liked the most :) He got to ride on all the tractors....red, green and blue. The cats were a close second, and they received lots of attention from both children, which was greatly appreciated, for the most part.

The little girl is a bookworm. She was overjoyed to find bookshelves filled with plenty of reading material. Here she's reading a book of stories about fairies, filled with beautiful black and white illustrations (plus a few wonderful color plate pages), many of which were colored by me as a little girl. It was my favorite book as a child. What fun it was to see it enjoyed again.

Little girls can look at the slender stalks of Gaura and see a cloud of upside-down pink butterflies, dancing like ballerinas above a clump of pink Snapdragons and white Alyssum.

Do you see them?

We also enjoyed a family picnic, spending a glorious day with siblings, their children and grandchildren who we don't get to see nearly often enough.
The weather was perfect...plenty of sunshine, and no rain for a change, so the kids had a lot of fun in and on the wonderful pond which is on the property belonging to one of my husband's sisters and her husband. It's the perfect spot for a picnic.

The highlight of the day for the boys was this huge frog, which they found when upending one of those blue boats, getting ready to put the boat in the water.

You've never seen such excitement and scrambling as the frog tried desperately to escape before finally being nabbed by little hands. They kindly let it go after they had examined it thoroughly.

On the way home we saw this beautiful rainbow, which seemed to me a symbol of the joyful day we'd just spent.

On the Sunday after, our niece's parents (Hubby's oldest sister and her husband) came for the afternoon, and our son, DIL and our grandsons stopped in for a brief visit on their way home from a weekend up north. So the little second cousins got to play together, and we had the pleasure of seeing our little boys for a short while.
The only sad note was that our youngest daughter and her boyfriend couldn't be here for the festivities.

Now the house is quiet again, and our days are slowly getting back into a routine. We miss having the company around, and were very sad to see them all leave, but there's plenty of work to be done. The chilly nights and mornings hint of fall, which is just around the corner, and time is running out for the many chores still on our lists.
The garden still has quite a bit of color....

Although this photo was taken on August 20th, this clump of Gloriosa Daisies (Rudbeckia hirta) are still going strong. I love the coloring of this one!

The past several days have warmed up to be perfect for gardening, and the cats have enjoyed them as well....sunbaking as only cats can :)

On August 17th, when this photo was taken, the Golden Glow was standing tall and beautiful, with Gloriosas at their feet, but then we had a day of heavy rain, and they were beaten up and knocked down. There's still a little color in the clumps, but they're looking pretty straggly and in need of tidying. If you click to enlarge you'll be able to see the cows grazing on the hill in the background.

That's Murphy in front of the Top Driveway Garden, where Rubeckia triloba is blooming, among other things, and the field corn is looking good in the background.

For the past several days I've been working in the Rock Garden, down by the road, and in the Lily Garden. Jasmine was there, keeping me company, along with several other cats, as usual. I'm never lonely!
Notice that the rust colored Gloriosa is still blooming, though fading now.

Barbara, I was excited to discover that I have your Verbena bonariensis blooming in the Rock Garden :) It's difficult to distinguish, but if you enlarge the first photo (above this one) you may be able to see the stalks to the left of center, above the white Feverfew. I'll try to take a better photo when the stems have more blooms.

Notice in the background of this photo (click to enlarge) that the Driveway Garden is still showing quite a bit of color, due mostly to the Phlox and Gloriosas, but there's also a Butterfly Bush blooming beautifully, and the climbing rose is producing its second burst of blooms. The two white Daylilies, White Temptation and Joan Senior are still offering a few blooms each day. I'm amazed at how long their bloom time has lasted.

Reuben is there on the fence, in his alloted spot of the Lily Garden, and Murphy is trying to bully Phoebe into giving up her perch.

In my opinion she gave up much too easily :)

Here's Jasmine in one of her favorite spots. The containers are doing well, still showing lots of color.

Hannah has an itchy ear. I must remember to put some earmite drops in it...

The time is fast approaching when the hummingbirds will begin their fall migration southward. We're always so sad to see them go.

If you see these two little wiseguys, will you please tell them we miss them?

I hope you've all enjoyed summer as much as we have.

Happy Spring to all our antipodean (an-tip-o-dee-an) blog friends on the other side of the equator!

Peonies and Rain

It's a given...or so it seems - when the peonies bloom we have thunderstorms and water pours from the sky. It rains buckets...cats and dogs...and sometimes just steady, light rain. The majority of our June days held showers or thunderstorms this year, making it hard to get decent photos of the peonies before they flopped.

Some days there have been glimpses of blue sky between the clouds.....

....but more often than not, the skies have been gray. If you click to enlarge the photos you'll see that there's a border of peonies across the front yard.

The largest, most spectacular Peony blooms are in the Lilac Garden. The yellow flowers are Evening Primrose (Oenothera) and the silver foliage is artemisia, which is a pretty filler, but needs to be thinned ruthlessly.

All my peonies are passalongs and, unfortunately, the names weren't passed along with the plants.

At the other end of the Lilac Garden the same light shade of pink blooms beside huge magenta flowers.

The background shrub is Weigela, and the red in front is self-sown Sweet William.

I actually photographed this first peony bloom on June 15th, but forgot to include it in my Bloom Day post.

Foxglove is still blooming, but the Columbine flowers are gone, leaving dozens of seed heads to be cut off before they pop open and spread themselves liberally.

I love this weigela!

Sweet William is a very easy care plant, and simple to move around by division or seed collection. This clump is in the Driveway Garden.

Campanulas are adding their lovely blue to the mix of colors at the moment, with Verbascum at their feet,

....and lemon lilies behind them here.

A few lovely white Campanulas are mixed in.

Down in the Fence Garden the Foxglove are still looking good,

...but the pretty white Lupine is finished.

I was pleased to see several beautiful blooms on the two white Peony bushes this year.

There's the tiniest touch of magenta on the edge of the center petals.

I still haven't managed to capture a decent photo of this border with most of the bushes looking good. The blooms are either drooping or dropping their lovely petals on the ground.

This lovely bloom has two glorious shades of pink.

This smaller flowered magenta Peony has the most delicious scent of all.

And it stands up well against the elements.

Oh look, there's a glimpse of blue sky!

Not so on this evening! I caught this golden light through the front porch as the sun was setting during a cloudburst. The air was warm, and mist swirled up toward the sky, creating a spectacular effect...breathtaking beauty indeed!

The pouring rain didn't deter this tiny hummingbird (click to enlarge if you'd like a closer look).

The first male arrived here on May 14th this spring....3 days later than last year.

His red throat is hard to capture with the light shining on it at just the right angle to make it show.

I saw the first sweet little lady on May 18th. It's very good to have our tiny friends back.

The abundant rain certainly makes everything grow fast, including the lawn and weeds! I'm having a very hard time keeping up with everything, especially with days like yesterday, when the rain poured down for most of the day.

We've also had a visit from our son and DIL and our two little grandsons, which was wonderful fun, and a nice respite from the garden chores. But today we're seeing snatches of sun, so it's back to work, and hopefully I'll get something accomplished between the rain drops.

Oh dear, I spoke too soon and the rain is pouring down again now.....

One good thing about the rain is that I've had plenty of chances to wear my Muck Boots and I've found I like them so much that I wanted to mention them again. This is totally voluntary. It's not often I find a product I like so much and want to share. It was such a pleasure to do business with them, and they didn't request this as part of the offer (just a link in a post), but I want to put a link to the Garden Shoes Online site on my sidebar just to say thank you to those good people for these wonderful shoes.

Thanks so much to all who have visited and left a comment on my recent infrequent posts. So sorry if I haven't managed to visit and comment in return. I'm working on it, and hope to catch up with you all eventually! Isn't it ironic that when the most is going on in our Northern hemisphere gardens we're often too busy to visit each other?

Wishing all my American friends a very

happy Fourth of July,

and may God bless our country!

P.S. The rain has stopped and the sun is shining again! I'm off to the garden right after lunch, but I'd better hurry! Hope to see you soon!