suzy,

What a wonderful way to start my day with a walk through your garden.

Thanks!!

Suzy, You're about six weeks behind me judging by the wild honeysuckle. I know it's an invasive menace like the wild privet, but when it's blooming the fragrance just knocks me out.

I'm still getting up every morning & running outside to check on my daylilies & recording which cultivars have opened for the first time. The last two weeks were peak blooming times and now things are starting to thin out, so to speak.

We're getting into summer for real now so gardening duties need to be done between 6:30 & about 10:30 AM before things get too awfully hot.

The hummingbirds are back with a vengeance and in the morning they're swooping down & fighting for the feeders. It's time to buy the 25-lb. bag of sugar as I'm making nectar aa couple of times a week.

My oriental poppies are just thinking about blooming here in northern MN. There is one very red fringed one blooming right now. I have a yellow lady slipper in bloom in my shade garden as well as primrose, violets, johnny jump-ups, red japanese fern is coming up as well as the lady ferns and other ferns and hosta. Soloman's seal is blooming. In the sun garden, the veronica is blooming and so are some mini and bearded iris and dame's rocket. The bluebird's are back and busy nesting. The apples are finished blooming and the lilacs are nearly done.

Some of my gardens are starting to fill in although most have a long way to go yet as things are very much behind this year. Here are a few pictures of those which have some flowers.

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Put on the coffee pot, y'all, I'm a'heading north!

Your gardens all sound so lusciously wonderful!

Here, it's summer, & an early one at that-
Temp today is supposed to reach 98.

The springtime flowers have finished of course, but I'm watching a couple of seed pods on some bearded iris, & I already collected seeds from the shaggy-headed, coral or shrimp-colored poppies.

The golden rain trees are blooming,
cannas are a riot of color,
& the yarrow, white, yellow, & red varieties, are in flower.

The roses already went through their hyper-active, overachieving, springtime bloom flush, & some of them are at it again, in a more subdued manner:

Duchesse de Brabant
Mrs B R Cant
Demitasse
Pat Austin
Tradescant

& a bronze/burgundy seasonally-confused chrysanthemum is in bloom, too!

I love Pat Austin,Sylvia. I tried but j ust didn't have any luck with her. She's a beauty,

Calliope & Marda, I LOVE your photos! Thank you for sharing! I'm mesmerized!

We are very very soggy. I can't complain though. 45 minutes North of us, Lake Delton has vanished. It jumped it's banks, drained into the Wisconsin River, and ripped out houses and roads that stood in its way. This is the lake at the heart of the Wisconsin Dells, and now it's gone. For those of you who don't know, this is a major regional tourist attraction (trap?) and this lake was at the heart of it... Here's some video.

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This is a view out my back window earlier this week. You're looking at the very corner of my yard in the lower left corner, and seeing my mulch being swept into my neighbor's yard by a very deep stream that isn't ordinarily there. The swingset & everything past it belongs to my neighbor. See that big lake several houses down (above the deck)? That house has a storm sewer drain in the middle of their backyard, and when there's exceptional flooding, their backyard becomes a temporary lake. At least our basements stay dry. Only bummer is, the house that had the new lake was also having a real estate open house during the worst of it.

In that photo, you'll also notice the damage wrought by my husband. I'd asked him not to spray poison on the lawn, but he thought I might not notice if he sprayed the clover with some weedkiller... too bad he accidentally grabbed the Round Up instead! Naturally, I've been very adult about the whole thing... Who am I kidding? I've teased him unabashedly about it.

Our lilacs and bearded iris are finished for the year. My spring-blooming bleeding hearts are holding on to their last flowers, but I expect them to be knocked off in the next couple hours (severe t-storms, tornado warnings, all that jazz). My perennials are all up, but so far only the Jupiter's Beard, daisies, coral bells, knautia, dianthus, astilbe, ever-blooming bleeding hearts, tradescantia, false indigo, lamnium (less a perennial than a #@%* weed, if you ask me!), hardy geraniums, clematis, and a few others whose names I don't know, are actually blooming. Oh, and a buttload (actual unit of measurement) of annuals, but they don't tell the story of the season. Here's Jaz smiling from between a couple hydrangea.
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Oh, and my peonies out back are still going strong, but they're about to be pelted to death, so I cut them. Apparently, they reached out and grabbed Kotex's head and ate it. I know my kitty wouldn't be naughty enough to jump on the table, so I'm pretty sure that's how it went down. Good thing I was there to rescue her!
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I got the ultimate compliment today! I went across the street to introduce myself to the new neighbors and deliver a homemade frozen meal to help ease them in to the neighborhood and the Mrs. told me she was hoping to get the number of whoever did my plantings and garden design. While I can't take credit on the hard scape or the trees, 90% of the plant materials and everything to which she was referring was stuff I'd done. I like her already. ;o)

Anyone want some mushrooms? I doubt they're edible, but I seem to have quite the bumper crop...

Now picture all that green "golden" and the earth baked brown, when the goats play or Gussie runs down the hill, clouds of dust emerge.
There is enough water at this time to keep the flowers, veggies and such watered, but I am starting to be careful. It takes a long time for hot water to reach my kitchen-faucet, so there is a bucket underneath it when the water runs, and it takes care of the shrubs by the decks.
There is some mulch, but not very thick, because the moles have discovered the moisture around the plants is the only source of earthworms and I have to be sure to see the mounds before they get too big and too deep.
Mole Patrol is a daily task, along with hand watering the plants that need it.
The tomatoes and the squash and the cukes are in containers, this way I control the water and don't send it down the mole holes.
It is really interesting; the former nursery owner has a ranch in the hills and he advised that he puts blood meal into the mole tunnels and chases it down with a strong blast of water, said this discourages them. Well, maybe so, what I discovered were plants far away from that spot suddenly shooting up as though on steroids - all that nitrogen had found a place.
My daylilies are going to bloom soon, the milkweed looks good, there is dill all over the place including in the ornamental garden.
I really like coreopsis, but they are such thugs! I was going to remove quite a few, but because of the water situation I have not purchased a lot of plant material to fill in those spots, so the garden has bright yellow patches. Better than bare ground, I say.
The cistus in the planter is a riot, it's such an easy plant and needs no water to speak of.
There shall be table-grapes and some little self-seeding annuals are popping up - hope that's what they are, perhaps I am nurturing weeds?

Thanks for the fantastic voyage into your your garden worlds. I'd post pictures, 'cept I haven't taken any. I overhauled the beds and am trying to keep the new stuff blooming. Ironically, the recently planted perennials which are only inches high are trying to bloom! Right now, nothing is really blooming. They're either starting to (recently planted petunias, begonias, and zinnias) or about to burst forth (daylilies, buddleia, rose of sharon, yarrow, anthemis, echinacea tennesseensis). Sleepy mode. Next week will probably be really different. Something is killing stuff in the far left hand side of the front bed. Killed three annual sunflowers, the perennial one is dying right in front of my eyes and a 1/3 of a fuchsia I put in the ground. Its a dog isn't it? I haven't seen one yet, but one second the plants are fine, the next, brown and wilted. Almost instantly??? Phooey on that dog. If I catch them, they are in big trouble.

My veggie garden finally got planted on Memorial day weekend. Everything was up, including the tiny Swiss chard. Guess what: DH decided to week, and he didn't see the chard in between the weeds. Got to replant, if I can find any seeds.

It has been so HOT here that we have had to actually water the garden a few times. Usually we just plant it and say "Do it or don't" and it comes out fine.

Tomorrow is mulch day in the veg garden. Wheat straw, which does a good job and decomposes quickly, improving the soil. The glads are getting pine straw, and the flower bed out front (complete with rhubarb plants) is up for discussion.

All of this will be done before 11 am, when it just gets too hot to be outside!

DH is trying to get everything done so he can take off for NE to see his mom and sisters. Of course I am doing my part, but right now he is manic! I have to reign him in. It just gets TOO HOT for a man with recent bypass surgery to o hot for a man with fairly recent bypass surgery to be doing all that!