It's a good year for poppies and peonies....

New blooms in the rock garden. Of course I lost the label

And these

I only have two poppy plants though I am hoping they will spread but everyone else had beautiful blooms this year

This pot I kept inside for the winter though the carnations are perennials

These pinks have been living beside my deck for years. However a lot of the pinks I had in my rock garden failed to show. A bad year for pinks

My bags of impatiens are filling in and lighting up the dark fence

Black petunias..love them

geraniums are slow to bloom this year. Once the Asiatic lilies bloom along with the daylilies and calla lilies, this patio will look much more festive in a couple of weeks



Each year favors different flowers. Our long cold winter and very wet spring seemed lethal to dogwood and forsythia. The trees are still there but very little blooms. Lilacs were late but pretty; ornamental pears were especially pretty this year. Lots of my pinks and edelweiss failed to return. Even my clematises haven't bloomed yet. And my roses failed to show though I do absolutely nothing for them but cut away dead branches. Roses are too much work for me.

I love walking outside in the early morning with my cup of coffee and scissors (for deadheading) to see what grew in overnight. Small pleasures.

About 5 years ago, Michigan was hit hard by the emerald ash borer beetle. Such a pretty beetle but it caused such ugliness killing every ash. Fortunately my large ash (ha!) wasn't on my property but on the extension, so not my problem (unlike my actual ass). In our city, every front extension has at least one city owned tree, ours I believe is a Norway maple (though at least 2 foresters have told me it's really a sugar maple). At least 25 % of the city trees used to be ashes and they are gone, including our neighbor's. She got special permission to put in a tree of her choosing (there's a committee for that). I looked at it the other day. It is half as tall now as my maple, which had a 40 year head start. Hers is some Japanese tree starting with A that I immediately forgot the name of as soon as I heard it.

I have planted only one tree in my life: an apricot at my former house. It was dicey whether the growing season was long enough for the apricots to ripen in any given year. Then it was plagued with a new problem, newly arrived Arab immigrants who had a hankering for green apricots. This tree was clearly on my property yet about 4 women would come and pick them off in front of me (no English!! and oblivious to my angry gestures) They also went through others gardens picking freely. I guess this is a cultural difference. Finally a neighbor, tired of the gleaners in his garden spoke to their husbands who at least knew some English and told them this was not done here.

Josh recently asked for advice on what ornamental tree to plant in his yard. I love weeping cherries, the cascades of pretty blossoms (also good this year). When I saw the fringe tree pictured last week, I researched it. There was a site entitled The Best Ornamental Tree that no one has Heard of. It went on to say about how people select boring weeping cherries or worse, smelly Branford(?) pears, which he claims, smell bad. Now the tree closest to where I usually sit is one of those pears (I believe the hummingbirds nest in it) and I never noticed a bad odor. Then he extolled the many virtues of the fringe tree. I had posted a picture on FaceBook of it. Someone asked if I noticed its scent(no) and described it:
t's scent; somewhere between a Beauty of Moscow lilac and a Korean Spice virburnum.

Pretty damn specific.