Garden Highlights

Things in our garden are moving right ahead and blooming left right and centre.  I think I'd better catch you up on that too; some of these blooms are pretty spectacular.  The Clematis are at their peak, Hostas have started flowering and the first Day Lily has bloomed!

The Agapanthus is a beautiful new plant for us, given to us by friends.  Apparently it likes to be rootbound, so it sits in a pot by the front door, in front of some Petunias.  And that means I can get really close to it.  

Our many Hosta plants are starting to bloom now, so I'll have more pictures in the coming weeks.  I remember at the old house where they were mostly planted along an old fencerow some distance from the house, the deer would come along and just eat the blooms.

This is a tiny little flower group, the whole thing only about an inch across.  It's from our new Purpleberry shrub, and the only way I could see it was for the head gardener to pick a bloom and bring it over to the patio for me to see.  We're hoping for rafts of the nice purple berries in the fall.

As I said, our  Clematis are just at their peak.  This one grows on the side of the house beside the hydro meter.  It's in a location that I can never see safely, so I appreciate the picture.

And this is the Valerian, a very fragrant plant that spread all over our former garden, and was often almost crawling with little butterflies and other insects.  One of the most fragrant flowers in the garden and one of my favourites for that reason.

And here is our first Day Lily of the year, one of 15 gifted to us by friends.  This is a long distance photo taken through the window, so it's less than ideal, but expect to see numerous Day Lily pictures here as they all bloom over the next 3 weeks.  We must have about 20 varieties.  You can see yesterday's bloom fading away; Mrs. F.G. hadn't got out to remove it before I took the picture.  That's why they are called Day Lilies, they only bloom for a day.