End of may and its looking better

Here are some shots of flowers from my garden around the 25th. I have Montana bachelor button, poppies, clematis, daisies, sweet william and every day it just gets better and better. Over the long weekend I also planted the rest of my veggie garden with the vine crops like water melon and squash, pumpkin and one little zuchini, and cucumbers. and I planted zinnias and cosmos like crazy. I can't wait to see how it all works out. My sage plants are blooming like crazy too. I miss the bees humming all around them..... I wonder where they all are? maybe its been too wet and rainy. I've seen butterflies and dragonflies and damselflies, and a visitor to my garden saw a hummingbird at my buddliea yesterday. oh, and the goldfinches, orioles, catbirds, cardinals..... you could say its a pretty busy place around here.

another windy day

Today was too windy to plant so I mulched and mulched. I mulched the area we pulled all the lemon balm from... I don't like lemon balm, it smells like lemon pledge ech! In that area yesterday we planted two phlox and moved a delphinium struggling in and amongst some daylilies. I also mulched the vegetable beds. wood chips are heavy mulch but they are free this year.

I haven't watered yet today because we got a little rain this morning and supposed to get more......

I did take advantage of that small rain to pull some weeds where I want to plants some seeds later on...maybe I'm getting smarter in my old age....

later I'll post some pictures I took this morning.

Rain Garden pictures

For some reason, I couldn't get the text to publish with the pix, so I just did it separately....

Ok, the rain garden is in. Start to finish on Sunday. 75 little native plants in there. and yes... because we're total geeks, a laser level was used start to finish because we built it on a little slope. we even planted dry natives on the berm. Dean will dig in the trench for the piping when he gets back from the boundary waters next week. we even filled to overflow and watched it go. we're lucky in this 30 yr old housing development that we have good infiltration. maybe even too fast... I hope the red lobelia and the all the sedges last. and we only had chip mulch (free) from all the storm damage, so I may have to rescue some plants if we get a good rain. and if we get some stormy rains as predicted tomorrow... well, I might be diverting that pipe, don't want to flood those little buggers out. What is a rain garden? It is an infiltration basin designed to catch the rain water.... ours is specifically diverted from a portion of our roof. it is about 12' x 7' x 8". We used native plants as they are successful in developing amazing root structures that will send the water to our groundwater aquifers. Keeping the stormwater off the roads! If you want to know more about rain gardens, check out http://www.raingardens.org. Just keep in mind that you need to plant natives, native to your area, not the plant species listed at these web sites.

My backyard smells like lilacs

and its heavenly....

and I have got herbs in the ground.. and plants are shooting up like crazy. and after two 90 degree days it has settled back down into the 70's. yeah! maybe we will get a little bit of spring around here. Thank goodness. I need the spring energy---although it seems as though I am full of full moon energy today!