Ingrid- is that a giant boulder in the background of your yard?

My poor husband is out in the back trying to put together an Arbor that I bought on sale apparently it's kind of a piece of junk because every time he tries to move it falls apart. I tried to save some money on that 1 and doesn't look like that was a very good idea. Poor guy I figured I better come inside and get away from well you know the language

And back she goes. What a piece of junk.

I just called hay needle and they're giving me a full refund including shipping they said keep it don't send it back that's good customer service isn't it

Had the window open last night and it dropped into the 50's I nearly froze...lol

Hows everyone doing??? I hope well!

Nice and cool here too

Better temps here, too! Unfortunately, I kind of “missed” the whole day to sleep. I worked outside yesterday, and was so tired that I ended up sleeping almost all day! I hope I can sleep tonight.

Diane, I searched through my photos for one of ‘Lovely Fairy’. This one is the only one I’ve come across so far. It’s an old photo, and appears to be just a bunch of blooms I cut before arranging them. All the little bright pink ones are ‘Lovely Fairy’. I just deadheaded it recently, and since I slept all day, I decided it’s not worth getting dressed at 6pm. LF is out in the front yard, and I don’t want any looky-loos:) I’m sure I have more somewhere amongst my thousands of rose photos. Maybe I’ll stumble across them soon. BTW, I STILL see Orlaya sprouting up in semi-shade areas where the drip hits fallen seeds, so they might still be worth a try. Maybe try just a couple now? Lisa

Kind of OT, but I’ve noticed so many places around the country reach their daily high temps around 5 pm. Even my sister and Sarah, who live in the Central Valley (Bakersfield-Visalia area) are at their hottest around 5pm. Here in San Marcos, CA, the daily high temps are around 2pm each day. Around 4pm things are (usually) cooling down. I wonder if it’s the coastal influence we get here? I’m only about 10 miles inland. Unless we are having a Santa Ana event, it always cools down significantly at night. We typically go down to 60-65F every night, even when the daytime highs are in the 80’s and 90’s. It makes sleeping at night quite pleasant, although it is definitely a big contributor to the powdery mildew I’m often experiencing.

I’m not going out front today, but I do need to move around to get the stiffness out of my body. I can tell that I laid in bed for much longer than usual, by the way everything in my body is protesting movement. I can also see why I was so exhausted today. Now that I’m looking at the backyard in daylight, I did make many piles of pulled weeds and spent annuals. I guess they will have to stay there until tomorrow. I’m officially writing the day off as a day of rest.

Ingrid, I can definitely see why you cancelled your order for Bolero. As lovely as Bolero is, it would never reach “bunny safe size.” My 6? 7? year old Bolero has remained a compact 3F tall. That’s a bonus in my situation, but not so much in yours. I was just noticing how many buds one of my new Bolero has. The two new Boleros were purchased as a tiny, ownroot, band about a year ago. I even planted them in May or June, which is very late in our climate. It didn’t phase them a bit. Here’s one of them this evening. Both new Boleros are doing well, and they bloom a lot for such young roses.

Augusta Louise this evening. I’m still waiting for those paler blooms like Diane’s has.

Here’s a random shot of some Mel’s Heritage blooms I cut a few days ago. I so love him. Lisa

Nice pics Lisa and I hope you feel better!

Well I'm just going to try and jump back in to this thread after missing over a week! Enjoyed the many photos of roses and landscapes. Glad to hear about what everyone has been busy doing. Weather seems to be wonky everywhere this year. We have had some extreme temperature differences over the last few weeks. I absolutely agree with the heat making it difficult to do much outside. I always lose my enthusiasm at this point of the season. Between the heat, lack of rain, the japanese beetles invasion and black spot starting to show up; everything loses it's magical beauty here! Things are starting to become a bit overgrown and the plants are losing their spring perfectedness. But I have still been enjoying the yard immensely this year. Although I do need to pull some weeds and clean up stuff. But by the time I do a Japanese beetle sweep and water some stuff, I run out of time or energy to tackle more than that a day. We have not had enough rain here this month, so daily watering needs to be done. I will try and stay up to date now that things are settling into more of a routine again.

A few randoms from the past weeks. Golden Celebration, daylilies, blazing star, raspberries, tomatoes coming along & Maurice Utrillo

Beautiful, HalloBlondie! What a garden! Lisa

I have found tranquillity to be one of the most beautiful :) this is from the wayside sale

Darcey..

Houzz does not like my pictures, I think..
Tranquillity and darcey

I don't think I've ever realized how beautiful Tranquillity is! Lovely shots of it and Darcey.

Lisa, it is your marine influence that cools things down so early in the day; here the hottest temperature is around 4 p.m. Yes, I do think I'm better off enjoying Bolero in your and others' gardens; it's just not meant to be for me to have it.

L Clark, yes that is a boulder, or actually the top part of this rock formation that runs parallel to my house about ten feet away. That's why I have that lovely decomposed granite as garden soil.

All wonderful pics! :-)

87 degrees was our high for today...

I hope everyone is doing good today!

Today was the first day in months and months I didn't step foot outside to at least do a walk through the garden to check on things. It feels so weird. Potty training my toddler started today and for whatever reason he did not want to go outside at all. Who knows when I will see my roses again LOL!

Well I hope my tranquility smartens up and looks like your bloom soon! I planted this one in spring, so far the blooms have been numerous, but between weather & japanese beetles they have been ugly. I also have Darcy, it's a good rose.

Potty training is never a fun time. Luckily our experience was very quick to be figured out. Hope it goes smoothly for you. I can't believe that I'm about to celebrate my son's 7th birthday this Friday. Time goes way too fast. Today we are off to visit my aunt & cousin at her "cottage" in Muskoka. By cottage I mean her super nice lakehouse. She is a lucky lady to live where she does! Maybe I'll try and take some nice landscape photos today. Muskoka is a really lovely area. Have a good day!

That's a very neat feature to have in your yard!

Cloudy dark day with rain so pics alittle dark...lol

ES today

MOTH today

Queen Nefertiti today. Our temperatures have dropped to the low 80s so the blooms are staying more peach instead of fading to yellow.

That is gorgeous . I think that is a rose that I should have

Queen Nefertiti again

I've been lucky with getting stung by bees most of my life...I can remember a total of about 6 times up until this year... BUT now add 3 more cause I got stung 3 times already this year...lol...Accidently stepped on a honeybee while not wearing shoes yesterday....And I've been stung twice by yellow jacket wasps that were patrolling our roses for insects...I was deadheading at the times of the stingings.....lol...Is that even a word? stingings..lol...YES the yellow jacket wasps hurt the worst and caused my hand to swell up..BUT they are helping me out with killing bad insects so no pain no gain...lol

Very nice joeywyomingz4b!

Yay, I was allowed out of the house today...the potty training is going great and he's much less stressed today so we were able to be outside to play. I didn't have my camera but Molineux had a new gorgeous little bloom and Gruss an Aachen has several blooms, Julia Child has 2 new blooms, and Marie Pavie has a lot more, and of course Quietness and Distant Drums always have new blooms, and there seem to be a bunch of random new blooms around. Our temps have dropped to low 90s so it's been cooler which I think is helping.

Pippa, good luck with the potty training. I will be there next summer.

I get about an hour and a half a day to work in the yard while my sweetie watches Azalea. It helps

The weeds are abundant and healthy and ticking me off

But, I cant stress the weeds

Just keeping everything deadheaded and watered is enough

Day 7 on the bush

Wow Kristine is that PJPII? Really beautiful!!! I agree...today my priority was watering first, deadheading a few things as I could, and planting some starts of fall flowers and veggies overgrowing their little plug trays in my basement under their light. I know I have weeds to pull but I put on blinders LOL.

I had to pop in ( I always read this but don’t have much to share now! ) to say pippa .. you got this potty training thing and it’ll be finished before you know it ! Oh my word I thought that was the hardest thing ever . Our problem was that Lucia wanted to but wouldn’t so it was constant “ sitting on potty at the worst times and places “ ( gas station restroom ?!! Gag “ for he to do nothing. I thought I would lose my mind when we would leave the house . She’s 100 percent trained now and I’m so grateful it’s over . Whew !!! I’ll revisit this again in 2.5 years lol . She was highly motivated by m and ms and those yummy robins eggs Easter candy . Lol

Kristine , I was wondering is azalea pronunciation like the spring shrub or “aza - le-a ? Hope she is being a good girl for you !!

Jim I’m sorry to hear about the stings . The last time I was stung was twice in one week , both by wasps , one deadheading like you on some yarrow and then in my house on my neck ! They are so painful!!!!

Im not doing much but swimming ( it’s 100 here just about every day ) cleaning and planting last few plants . I’ve about run out of space :(. Sure didn’t take long and I still have a “wish list “ a mile long. We are discussing removing the fruit trees ( such a mess and the avocados are falling off the tree a quarter the size they should be ) so that would help me tremendously but not til next year .

If it's 100 degrees out all I would be doing is swimming too. It's hard to get much done in that kind of heat! We are having some cooler temperatures today and tomorrow, so I want to get a bit of weeding and deadheading done. I have way more motivation to be outside in moderate temperatures. Last night I picked off over 100 japanese beetles in one sweep. They are bad this year. They also are ruining some newer foliage on a few roses, so I need to cut that back a bit too. They love the foliage and blooms of Savannah, Canada Blooms & Abbaye de Cluny a lot. We have also had no rain and the ground is very dry now. I have some established plants starting to wilt. So need to run some sprinklers too. I think I need to look into automatic sprinklers/irrigation over the winter. Because hand watering and moving sprinklers around is very inconvenient and time consuming to do regularly.

Some blooms from yesterday. Dahlia, Darcy Bussel, Coleus, Teasing Georgia, Bolero and my first hardy hibiscus bloom of the season

Charles Austin plant and blooms, coneflower, Roald Dahl, some peas & a view of lake Muskoka from the dock.

I really enjoyed your photos HalloBlondie!

MOTH today

Yesterday was ghastly - got rain in the morning but the sun came out and the temps soared into the 90s with the dewpoint 73!! Then we got high wind and pounding rain about 9:00pm last evening. Flattened and broke many things.

I grabbed a bucket to stick under hibiscus 'Plum Crazy' to get it off the ground.

Malva 'Zebrina'. I wish I could grow hollyhocks or delphiniums here but it's too hot for delphiniums and the hollyhocks get blight, rust and powdery mildew and seldom live long enough to set flowers. When I first planted Zebrina the JBs ate it to the ground. I was very surprised that it reseeded that next year but it never does it where I would like it and it's never as tall as the original mother plant. But the JBs don't seem to like it as well now so I guess that's okay..

If the JBs would have left Topaz Jewel alone I would have had a wonderful display. It finally got up over 4' tall and was just loaded with buds but munch, munch, munch all night long.....

The dewpoint is 70 right now and I am staying in this afternoon. It's supposed to have thunderstorms again tomorrow and then the temps really go up into the mid 90s the rest of the week. My side yard I am working on is now affectionately called 'the moat' and I'm getting worried that I can get it finished before the real hurricane season starts!

I do not talk much about the Pointilla shrubs I planted a couple years ago cause I'm still unsure about them...lol...They bloom well but the blooms start pinkish then all turn white...lol...I think instead of all yellow companion flowers next year in this area I'll try a few different colors of flowers and see what that looks like...lol

Thank you Lilyfinch for the vote of confidence LOL :) So far it was putting stickers in circles I drew on a paper and hung on his wall that got him motivated when we started a couple of days ago, and not he just seems to like using the potty chair so we just do the stickers before bed or whenever he decides he wants them. Since he exclusively was wearing cloth diapers this will be a big reduction in my laundry although we are still using the diapers at night.

Good news my plum perfect that was struggling is finally thriving I took out the cane that maybe for some reason water wasn't going up into it so once I took that out the rest of the rose began to really take off

So yeah I can put it in the lavender garden after all because it looks like it's going to be good.

Yeah, for Plum Perfect, Kristine! I’ve read about people having their troubles with PP, but it must be good in the right place.

HalloBlondie, everything looks picture perfect! You grow so many nice plants. Ikaye, it’s too bad about the Japanese beetles! I’m so glad we don’t have those to contend with, yet. The park has again put up a JB trap across the fence from my yard to monitor any activity. Thank goodness, it’s filled with nothing but spiderwebs every time I look. Do Hollyhocks grow without rust anywhere in this country, or anywhere on earth? Someone was admiring mine a few weeks ago, and I was embarrassed by all the orange rust pustules. When I mentioned that I don’t spray anything to stop it, he said he had no idea it was an issue. He said they reminded him of his childhood, and he thought that was just part of how the plant normally grew! I wish I was so innocent:). They look good for about 3 weeks and then I can’t stand them anymore. Somehow they still manage to reseed every year, in spite of my cutting them down. Grrr... I’ve heard a copper spray can help, but who has time for all those different sprays for different plants and their problems? Not me.

Potty training will soon be a distant memory, Pippa. Like my mom told me,”Don’t worry about it. How many kids do you see going off to kindergarten in diapers or pull-ups?” So true, but not much help, at the time. I did find that my boys were a little slower to catch on, than my daughter. Both boys still managed to get it right long before kindergarten, though:)

I did a good flurry of work for a few days when it cooled off. Then, I took an ENORMOUS tumble down the slope, from the very top to to the very bottom. It was the Sunday night that I had slept all day, and called an official day off. I should have held myself to that, but you know how it goes. This happened right after I wrote my post Sunday evening. It was near dark, and I was sitting outside with the kitties. I decided to give St. Elisabeth of Hungary some fertilizer and let the hose drip there for a bit. Of course I found a giant weed hiding behind St. Elisabeth of Hungary, and it had to go. (She’s at the very top of the slope, btw.). I lost my balance and down I went. I made it all the way to the bottom. The only thing that stopped me was the wall at the bottom of the hill. I now have a nice goose egg on the top of my head. For as long and hard as I went down, the damage was pretty minimal. I thought I had taken out Pomponella Fairy Tale, but she looks alright, minus a few canes. She can afford to lose them. Some superficial scratches and lots of soreness is all I got from my tumble.

I’m healing up nicely, and hope the few scratches on my face will be less obvious by Saturday. I’m attending a brunch with my parents on Saturday.

Good news is that I deadheaded nearly everything that needed it, and I cut 2 box’s full of pretty blooms to bring to my mom. We arranged them so she could give them to her friends and new neighbors at the retirement village they recently moved into. I did arrange one vase for my mom, before bringing them all over there. Princess Charlene de Monaco and Evelyn look great together!

Oh, Lisa! I'm so sorry about your tumble and relieved you didn't break anything, and I don't mean roses! Rose bushes are pretty awful to fall into, but aren't you glad you don't grow cactus!

These bouquets are so soft and dreamy. Those colors! You are the most generous person I know of with your flowers. Yours all look good even in the heat. Mine are still waiting for cooler weather. I don't like to feed them this late, but I did as soon as the super hot weather broke. It'll either do them in if we get an early frost or maybe I'll get another flush.

There have been so many beautiful roses and other plants posted the last couple days. It appears everyone's gardens are blooming and doing great in spite of the heat. Mine is disappointing this year. I hope it shapes up before the season is over. The wife and child of one of the guys working on the barn came by this morning and she gave the garden a good once over and I was really embarrassed that it looks so bad. I wasn't out there, but wanted to yell from the house, 'It usually looks better. Come back next year.'

There's a 2'-3' strip along the driveway on the other side of the picket fence that I was planning to plant with rudbeckia, phlox, monarda and hollyhocks, but now I'm thinking gravel might be wiser if it's going to be this hot every year. Those plants like heat, but not this gardener.

Geeze Lisa. what a tumble. I can totally see how that could happen. Lately I've been wondering when I got so clumsy. At least you got lots accomplished

Deadheading is like laundry, you are never really caught up.

I got the front yard deadheaded and now the backyard that I just did needs another go round

Feel better Lisa! Nice pics!

Yes for PP Kristine! :-)

Yikes Lisa it sounds like you really got lucky not being severely inured. I know what it's like though to be outside and think you won't do any work or maybe just one q uick thing and then there is a weed or something that needs pulling. I agree about the potty training. We haven't been in a hurry at all and I think that was the best strategy because he caught on so quickly since we waited until he's in his 3s so a little older and more ready. It hasn't been difficult at all except that we just have to make sure we always have the potty chair nearby and are always ready to drop what we are doing if he's ready so it means I have to be constantly on alert right now about it but it won't be long before he's totally independent about it. It's really weird already not having as much laundry to do though without all those diapers to wash. They took up so much time in the wash because there are several cycles I ran them through with multiple extra rinses etc so it's reduced our laundry by half really. That should leave more time for walking around smelling roses in the garden instead :)!!!!! I saw my baby Bolero had its first every bloom last night!!! I need to go oohh and ahh over it today.

Lisa, the Russian Hollyhock I got from Annie's is perennial and has perfect foliage without rust. It also self seeds. It is a single yellow. It is not as scrumptious as Diane's very double ones.

Jim, all your plants look so rounded and thick, neat and tidy. How do you do it? This time of the season everything of mine is scraggly and overgrown. We had just two days of cooler temps and a whole .09 inch of rain (as I've said, we measure our rainfall in hundredths of an inch around here. Yesterday, the heat came back and it will be very hot for the rest of the week. I love your zinnias and the melampodium daisies. I want to grow them, but I'm sure mine will not be nice and rounded like yours. Your sky shot is interesting--you are so much closer to nightfall than we are.

Lisa, I am so sorry about your nasty fall. But glad it wasn't worse. Be careful. I have the same problem with a steep slope from our back yard, down to the gully below. I've had some close calls on that slope. Your bouquet is just luscious. How can you give it up? I wish my Evelyns were blooming like yours. They are exquisite. Thank you for posting the Lovely Fairy photo. I checked it out on HMF, too, and was surprised it varies from quite dark to light pink.

Blondie, I am amazed and impressed with the variety of plants you grow and so well, too. Everything looks so healthy and robust. I love the dahlia you posted up the thread, and your Raold Dahl rose photos are my favorites. I can't believe those peas so late in the season--here they would be pods of little rocks. I also love that coneflower(?). I've never seen one like it. What is this hybrid called? I want one.

Kristine, your white rose in the pot is lovely--what is it?

Kaye, you have had the seven plagues with your weather (hurricane season?!!) and those !@#$ JBs. I think I would just throw in the towel. I admire your persistence. I hope everything perks up in the coming weeks so you have a nice gardening season to remember.

Sheila, that's an interesting hollyhock--didn't know there were perennial hollyhocks, though mine reseed so much, they might as well be perennials. I'm slowly letting mine die out (it takes a while) because, though at their best they are gorgeous, when they start lengthening and that tall stalk of seed cases dries out, they look bad, I think. At that point, the leaves dry out and look mangy, too. We have no rust or other fungal problems on them. So yes, there are areas that don't have to worry about rust. Just remember how godawful dry it is here. I get sick of it.

More later....Diane

This is Whirlaway. Those blooms are 9 or 10 days on the bush

Too bad no fragrance

I had a most stellar hollyhock from Annies . Last year it was very healthy but when it returned this year it was covered in disgusting red bumps

I had never seen anything like that

I guess I haven't grown hollyhocks before.

I pulled it out but there is a section that came back

I hope it is healthy because it sure is pretty

Maybe its just our climate Nanadoll... And I

I deadhead the zinnias and COREOPSIS BUT do nothing to our other flowers...So??? Got me why they are so rounded...lol

Kristine , Whirlaway has nice blooms...

Jim, Whirlaway has blown my mind

I have never had a rose whole blooms last so long and still look good

I understand that it will get large.

It gets to live in the lavender garden

Awesome Kristine! Great looking rose!

Forgot our Smoke Bush pic...New this year...

I STARTED A NEW Summer thread everyone! See you all there!

New Summer Thread here:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5768735/summer-is-here-seasonal-thread-part-7