Can you believe it... a tornado warning in Connecticut until late tonight? Hope all of you stay safe and that the warnings are just a precaution.

Thunderstorms and maybe close to an inch of rain forecast for here, which is very welcome, but tornadoes are not at all welcome! Be careful and don't pull a Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz caper, Molie!

Claire

Storm is over.... tornado threat faded. The wind never was strong here along the coast and the rain only lasted a short time. Our rain gauge shows only the we had only 0.13 inches. Not very helpful. Maybe there will be more this evening?

I was out in the yard today but didn't take any photos. The gardens are so stressed. One Agastache 'blue fortune' looks like it's a goner and the other two are not as prominent as usual. My Filipendula rubra is falling over and I worry that the blossoms will dry out before opening. The lawn in dried and yellow. All-in-all, it's a losing battle.

The one positive is that it's quite easy to pull weeds. They're tired, too, and hardly give struggle when I pull them.

That's really discouraging, Molie, and I hope it gets better for you soon.

We did have one good session of rain here and maybe some more coming Tuesday, although the weather forecasters are waffling on that.

I cringe when I look at the oaks that have been mostly defoliated by the gypsy moth caterpillars. There does seem to be some releafing going on now that the caterpillars have pretty much stopped feeding. There are a lot of oaks in my view and I'm not used to seeing through them in July.

I've been watering regularly and plants are growing fairly normally. Roses are still dominant although some daylilies are starting up. The Blue Billow hydrangea is close to blooming.

The Cape Cod rambler rose 'Excelsa' only blooms once a year, around the Fourth of July, and it floats over the Phlox Protection Zone in my alley (I know it's too close to the house but it's on stilts and can be pulled away). The garden phlox aren't blooming yet but they are protected from the woodchucks.

This spring I severely pruned the overgrown Knockout roses and they're coming back nicely although about 1/3 the size. It's a relief because I was really concerned about cutting them so hard.

Blushing Knockout with soapwort in the background:

Blushing Knockout

The mullein that seeded itself in my path and survived the winter is growing taller and beginning to bloom. It's about 5'-6" now and I expect it to keep growing taller.

Claire

Claire, your gardens are lovely, especially the rose alongside the house.

I really like the mullein in flower. Years ago, and I mean years ago, I visited Carprilands Herb Farm gardens when Adelmas Simmons was still giving her talks about the gardens and herbs. There was one white garden with white mullein growing, standing tall like the star of the show. Sometimes in the right light, the fuzzy leaves of mullein sparkle white.

The big show has begun in my neck of the woods...

pink lilies

Finally I have a few things blooming after an abysmal spring!

Bee balm beginning to bloom.

Pretty blooms, suzabanana - I'm still waiting for the lilies here.

I always enjoy your garden accessories, spedigrees (as well as the flowers). I understand what you say about the new forest. When I moved back here I stopped mowing the grass in certain areas and the trees took over, which is fine with me. I find trees much more interesting than lawn (although harder to walk on).

I have a few daylilies beginning to bloom:

H. 'American Revolution'

H. 'Rosy Returns'

Hosta 'Big Daddy' is blooming.

and Hosta 'Blue Angel'.

That's the hydrangea 'Blue Billow' beside the hosta, and the ubiquitous soapwort..

One of the Knockout roses I pruned harshly this spring is blooming surrounded by soapwort.

And the mullein is now about 6'-6" tall.

Claire

Claire, I could look at your photos of 'Blue Billow' all day. Just lovely! (Also, as majestic as it is, you pmay not want to let the mullein go to seed or you will have them everywhere. It's like many biennials in trying to take over the world by the quantity of seed it produces.)

Suzabanana, I'll be interested in seeing if the CA poppies become established for you. They didn't in my garden, though I do have several serendipitously self-seeding annuals. The J. maple looks great! It may be small enough that early and often applications of Bt will save it from the worms next year. It doesn't seem to be a pest that has made it this far north yet. I like your range of flower colors.

Nice stand of milkweed, Sped. Is it volunteer or did you plant it?

My milkweed army is strictly volunteer! I help them only in a supportive capacity, making sure they have unmowed sunny areas in which to grow.

Babs - I am really hoping the California poppies stick around. I have a neighbor who has them every year, so I'm cautiously optimistic!

More daylilies blooming.

The double Hemerocallis fulva, maybe florepleno, AKA double ditch lily.

H. 'Pardon Me'

H. 'Corky'

And the garden phlox are starting in the Phlox Protection Zone - they smell great!

Phlox. 'Grenadine Dream'

Phlox 'Purple Kiss'

Claire

I love your photos, Sped, suzabanana and Claire. Looking at them again this morning inspired me to go out with the camera.

But I found so little to share that wasn't crispy or deformed, like this first photo of one of my oldest daylilies, 'Malaysian Monarch.' Usually its blossoms are 5 inches across with large overlapping petals. But the sepals are deformed this year and the color faded.

The only daylilies doing well are 'Canadian Border Patrol' in the shaded front mound.

Another plant that looks fine this season is a Heliopsis 'Prairie Sunset.' We moved close to the house to keep it away from woodchucks. Those varmints destroyed another 'Prairie Sunset' that was also down by the river. Too tempting a spot.

I love looking at garden pictures, especially in New England. I get so many ideas!

I'm in central MA. I can't figure out how to get it to show by my username.

My garden areas are all in experimental phases. This is our 3rd summer in this house and the first two were spent updating and fixing things so no time for gardening.

I am trying to turn our large hill into a meadow. It looks horrible from far away but when walking through there are a lot of things to see (and weed)

Here is a far away shot of the hill (with a bunny eaten mini gladiolus) and a close up shot of the "meadow" in progress...

My first dinnerplate dahlia came out this week. My mini gladiolus and two tall floppy glads have been popping out for a couple weeks now. I'm waiting for all my tuberose to come out but I don't have a lot of faith in them this year. I put them out a little early and it got cold again.

This is my front area a couple weeks ago before I planted the new shrubs. I just finished last night at 10pm to get them all in before the heat today. I need to get a good picture of them. I only spent about 40 hours studying which ones to choose. I hope I chose wisely!

I'm not sure why the portrait oriented pictures I uploaded look distorted on the page until you click on them. Sorry, I'm new to this forum.

pinkmauisunset: Those gladioli are just lovely!

The pictures are all normal (undistorted) now. Sometimes it's just when you first submit the post that the distortion occurs.

You can add your central MA location two different ways by going to the Your Houzz button on the upper right of the screen.

The easiest way is to just add your location as your last name. This is what I did - it was the first thing we figured out when Garden Web joined Houzz.

The more sophisticated way is to go to Advanced Settings and scroll way down to a box where you can add your climate zone.

Either way works and people appreciate it when they know where you are located - it makes answering questions much easier.

Welcome to the forum!

Claire

Cranesbill

Phlox

Rose of Sharon

It appears that my husband has a small box of used batteries next to a box of new batteries. My camera works a lot better if I put new batteries in it! Hope I don't bore any of you who visit the perennial forum because I posted these photos there already.

I pot of petunias and alyssum to add some color to a perennial bed. I like the dark leafed coral bells. Focal point in this bed is a small weeping crab and a few other small shrubs.

My ancient whiskey barrel planter is barely holding up. I need to remember to save the iron hoops when it falls apart. It's right by the driveway so it gets moved for the winter so it's not in the way of snow removal.

The granite step outside the barn door. I love the faded red paint. I am supposed to keep my gardening supplies neatly arranged in that corner of the barn.

Defrost, didn't you post another photo recently of that barn? I seem to recall loving the look of that faded red paint and the plantings nearby. In my opinion, one of the best looks in a garden occur when the particular environment of buildings, walls, art work, or even landforms seem to fit in with the plantings. Certainly your photo here demonstrates that. I also recall a shot of Steve's hosta plantings and stone-filled hills as being so "right." Wish I could find that posting!

Thanks, moliep. I just took the photo yesterday and posted it in the perennials forum. I'm not sure if I've ever posted the barn before. Probably faded red doors are pretty common in New England. LOL.

I love the photos of your containers of flowers, defrost. My favorite is the washtub on the granite step beside the faded red barn door. Very picturesque.

Your daylilies are lovely, Suzabanana. Here are a couple of mine, cherry cheeks, and an orange variety whose name I have forgotten. Both have spread this year.

I'm loving the diversity of colors that have sprung from my 10th generation saved nasturtium seeds that once were only orange and yellow.

This is one of my wine barrel planters, in a state of disintegration from the inside out, like yours, defrost. It looks good from the outside, but its days are numbered. Geraniums that I grew from seed last year and over-wintered in with self seeded nasturtiums, and accompanied by Queen Anne's lace.

My pathetic veggie patch with mizuna gone to flower and a couple summer squash plants, the one on the left thriving and the one on the right stunted for no reason that I can fathom. Everything else, my spinach, romaine, and bush beans were eaten by rabbits. The pinwheels that have kept birds away in past years have no effect on rabbits, but at least they fill in the empty spaces where my crops disappeared.

And a shot of my bottle tree with the sun shining through the blue bottles. A pair of house swallows successfully raised a flock of little ones earlier this summer in the birdhouse atop the bottle tree.

Thanks, spedigrees. How to you save nasturtium seed? Just pick up what's on the ground in the fall? I did have some show up in the high tunnel that self seeded on their own but I also bought some plants since I did a terrible job of trying to start some from seed.

Nice variety of gardens shown here!

Daylilies and true lilies are prominent now in my garden.

Lilium 'Arabesque'

Iilium 'La Claridad'

Hemerocallis 'Autumn Minaret'. I moved it last year so it's not as tall as it has been in the past, but it's got more light.

Hemerocallis 'Frans Hals'

Hemerocallis 'American Revolution' is still blooming.

Claire

Hi Defrost. You can pick up the nasturtium seeds that have dropped in the fall, but mostly I pick them off the plants after they have formed and are ready to drop off. This requires letting the blossoms go to seed, as opposed to picking off dead blooms to keep them neat. I bring the seeds indoors and dry them on paper towels. Usually I let them dry for several months, which is probably overkill, and then I store them in paper envelopes until spring. Nasturtiums are one of the few annuals that I do not start in pots indoors, but just plant directly in the ground on the last day of May. I'm in zone 4 (although I think sometimes our climate is closer to zone 3) so if they grow for me here, I'm sure they would germinate planted directly in the ground for you, probably planted earlier. If memory serves, you are in MA or CT? Much warmer than here. My mom grew them one summer (Boston area) when I was a kid, and my job was to water them! They captured my imagination then, and I still like them now, many years later!

This photo shows a clump of seeds about half formed in the center of the picture. They grow in clumps of 3. I hope this is helpful.

Also I neglected to mention, pinkmauisunset, how much I love your gladioli! How do you manage to keep yours upright? I finally have mine corralled between a wall and a fence to keep them from falling over, and I shall see how well that works.. It is a pain to have to bring the corms indoors for the winter, but the show they put on in summer is worth it!

Also Molie, I am so taken with your Canadian border patrol daylilies. The name and how well it fits is the biggest draw! I tried to find some to buy but with no luck. Apparently new daylily strains are fleeting and become obsolete in a few years. Therefore I shall just enjoy photos of yours!

Thanks, spedigrees, I'm in NH near Concord so this should work for me! I love them in the garden except the year I planted them too thickly along a row of cucumbers and they smothered the cucumber plants.

Thanks so much for the link, Molie! That's it; I'm ordering a couple plants!

Last day of July and I went out to the compost pile/bins to make a deposit in a bin and I was delighted to see a good crop of mushrooms on the compost pile. I usually add to the bins and when they're full I empty the bin onto the pile so the pile doesn't get turned often (except when the critters rummage through it).

It's a cold pile and I compost a lot of shredded paper and cardboard so fungi are happy. The Virginia creepers like it too.

While I was out with the camera I checked on a few other things. The garden phlox in the Phlox Protection Zone are blooming away:

And the pokeberry overlooking the PPZ is blooming and turning to fruit:

Claire

love the color of that phlox against the gray stain!

spedigrees, thank you! All except two of the Glads are mini versions (which aren't supposed to need staking). I bought a bunch of circular garden stakes and staked the two tall ones and a lot of the mini ones. I don't think I planted the mini ones deep enough and will try again next year. I've never them planted before and will try bringing them in for the winter and see how much of a pain it is.

Lover seeing all the July plants and setups everyone has :)