Second Spring

Early-to-mid Spring (mid-April to mid-May) is always the prettiest time in my garden, with all the bulbs and irises and azaleas blooming, but now, in late-Spring-early-summer (mid June), the garden is in its second flush and there's lots blooming today.

My Vitex agnus-castus (Chaste tree) is blooming beautifully, and my Hydrangeas ('Nikko Blue') continue to bloom in all their sky-blue glory. Daylilies are opening all over the place, and my Monarda (Bee Balm) is looking great. Additionally, there are Echinacea (Purple Cone Flower) and Rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susans) looking great in my "sun bed".

I also planted a new Canna ('Red Fortuity') in my sun bed to add some nice color in the middle with the dark red foliage as well as the red blooms. What I didn't notice until after I planted it and read the tag was that it only grows to a maximum height of 30 inches, and I really needed a taller (~ 4 feet) Canna in the middle of that bed. So, I will most likely move this small guy to the edge, and get another, taller one in there, if I can find one locally (or perhaps buy one off the internet). In any case, it's blooming today, and I must admit that I didn't used to be a fan of red anything in my garden, but this Canna has a really pretty colored bloom -- a blue-ish, rather than orange-ish, red. I've also added a purple sand cherry (Prunus cistena) in the middle, and planted three purple fountain grasses (Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum') in various spots of that same bed, again to add more punches of color, so that when nothing is blooming during the heat of summer, the bed won't look like such a weedy unkempt mess.

Lots to do tomorrow, and alas, none of it is gardening related. I have several errands to run, in addition to visiting mom & dad for Father's Day. I also need to do laundry and pack, as I am now back on the road again for what looks like most of the summer. At least this time I'm going North (to New England) for the project, but that didn't help me this past week -- it ended up taking 14 hours to get home on Thursday, what with all the travel delays due to thunderstorms in the Northeast. Spent two hours sitting on the runway in Hartford, and then six hours waiting at the gate for our plane to arrive in Philly. Ahhh... the life of a consultant. Thank God I had my DVD's with me -- they saved my sanity. Right now I'm in the midst of PBS' "Forsyte Saga" and am really enjoying it. I'm dying to watch the last two episodes, but don't have any more DVD's to take with me for next week's travel, so am trying to make do with !#$%^&* that's on tv this weekend. I may just have to up my Netflix membership after all, so that I won't run out of movies on the weekends!

Okay, enough blathering. If all goes well and I find a pocket of time tomorrow, I'll upload my latest gardening pictures that I took today. (I'd do it tonight, but the camera is charging).