June Blooms, part 2

Finally showing off what was blooming in my yard on June Bloom Day, the 15th of the month.

In the upper garden: stokesia, butterfly weed, baptisia seed pods, rudbeckia

Upper Garden

Rudbeckia in the upper garden

There are different Rudbeckia along the front walk. Last year I wintersowed a whole bunch of different types and planted them in various spots on the garden. I have no idea what's where anymore.

Rudbeckia along the front walk

Also in the front are some very tipsy glads:

Gladiolus

Over in the side garden, a yellow flower I wintersowed last year. I think its a heliopsis, though it might be a helianthus. I really have no idea.

Heliopsis?

Around back, I have last fall's mums in a pot. They are blooming already.

Mums!?!?!?

In the garage garden, the "Easter" lilies are brightening up the corner, while farther down 'Franz Schubert' is the first of the garden phlox to bloom. This was a plant I 'rescued' off the clearance table a few years ago, and it has limped along ever since. I am happy to see it bloom.

"Easter" lilies in the garage garden

Phlox 'Franz Schubert'

Completing the circuit, some coreopsis on the terraces:

Zagreb coreopsis on the terraces

Whew! Finally done.

Interlude

I still haven't put up my Bloom Day pictures! What am I waiting for? I have no idea, but this post isn't it. This week I was in Monterey, California, and it was a good time to stop and smell the roses at my hotel:

June Blooms, part 1 (cont) - Larkspur

I missed a very important bloom in yesterday's post of early June blooms: larkspur.

I've never had larkspur before - I was pretty sure it would be unhappy in the hot, humid summers. But I was given some seeds last year, which I wintersowed. I planted out a few seedlings along the front walk. They didn't do anything last year, so I forgot about them/assumed they didn't make it. Then this year: flowers! They are/were so pretty, I hope they reseed well.

June Blooms, part 1

It's been so long between flower-photo postings, I'm going to have to divide up this post. First off: what WAS blooming in my garden, back in late May/early June.

Lilies:
I have a few white asiatic lilies interplanted with the daffodils. But I think the increasingly crowded daffodils have outcompeted the lilies. There are only a few left.

In the Upper Garden, Stella is always the leader of the dayliliy parade. Ditch lilies are not far behind.

Behind the daylilies, in the mostly natives bed, I've been trying to grow Thermopsis caroliniana (Carolina bushpea). I started with two plants; one didn't survive the first year. I keep replanting the second one, and it keeps dying. But the remaining original plant keeps on going:

Also, Erigeron:

The patio garden (aka the native overflow) was filled with penstemon and Virginia sweetspire:

That all started as 'Huskers Red' penstemon, with white flowers, but I see a purple-flowered stalk in there now.

Up next: What's actually blooming now (the Bloom Day post)

The Veggie Garden in June

So I fell off the map for a while. I wish I could say I was too busy in the garden to sit in front of a computer, but that was hardly the case. My garden is feeling very neglected. Between traveling, extreme hot weather, more traveling, and more extreme hot weather, I've spent very little time with my plants.

Speaking of hot weather, we just came off a hot streak of multiple consecutive 100+ days. While I'm not positive it was the longest 100+ streak I've endured, I am sure it was the longest I've ever seen in JUNE.

Despite all that, the veggies are growing. As expected, those peas didn't survive the hot spells. I pulled them out and sowed beans in there: romano and french filet.

Surprisingly, I still have greens. The lettuce never did much,

but at least it hasn't bolted. It did make a tasty salad the other night, and I think there's enough left for one or two more.

And there's still kale:

(I don't know why that uploaded sideways. Tilt your head, or the screen, if you don't mind)

I made more kale chips tonight. A crowded cookie-sheet worth, and I ate them all in one sitting. No, that's not right - I don't think I ever made it to sitting.

Last year I planted some garlic but never got around to harvesting it. So this year the bulb's cloves sprouted, grew, and formed new bulbs. Kinda looks like and exploded garlic bulb:

These were not the scape-producing garlic. Instead, some have made bulbils partly up the stem:

The other (this year's) garlic isn't quite ready yet.

Last year I also tried red onions from seed. I wasn't very successful, partly because I planted them in some very hard clay soil. I dug up and ate the best bulbs (by best I mean 1-1/2 inches in diameter!) last year, and left some in the ground. I have no idea whether second-year onions are any good, but I figured it would be kind of like planting onion sets, right?

This year the tops grew very large, and flowered:

I didn't know if onions were like garlic where the flower stalks should be cut off, so I cut some and left others. Today I dug up one whose flower bud I had previously cut:

It looked nice from the top, but once I dug it up I saw that it was flat on the bottom. I guess that clay didn't get any softer over the past year.

The summer veggies are on their way. I planted 10 tomatoes and 7 peppers:

(photo from three weeks ago)

There are flowers on some of the peppers and the tomatoes:

Across the garden, the cucumbers and squash are flowering, too:

(another sideways picture! sorry.)

Nothing much to report on the fruit front. There was a blackberry ready yesterday. I decided it was going to be my treat after planting the beans, but then I forgot it. It was missing today. Oh, well, there are many more to come. I never built cages for the strawberries, so they are feeding the wildlife. I'm ok with that - they were mostly for groundcover. I'm not even going to mention the plums and blueberries.

Tomorrow Next Up: flowers!

Eating Green

My harvest this evening:

Garlic scapes, more peas, and kale.

Last year I grew curly kale. This year I grew "Early Curled Siberian Kale," a Christmas gift from sis and BIL, from the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants. I'm a TJ fan, so I had to grow some of his plants. But I don't know why this kale has "curled" in the name: the leaves are pretty darn flat.

They are also much thinner than last year's variety, which means they cook up into kale chips much quicker (and that's a good thing!). This batch of kale chips is spiced (inspiration from here). I left out the sugar, and tossed the kale with oil and vinegar before sprinkling on the spice mixture (because I can't imagine kale without vinegar, even for one second). Result, yum!

I turned the garlic scapes into pesto, just like last year. This year I had twice as many scapes (14), so I got twice as much pesto (~1/3 to 1/2 cup):

I didn't do anything to the peas, except eat them:

Almost Summer

I picked a mess of peas today:

It is so hot, the vines are nearly done. My experimental row of direct-sown seeds isn't going to amount to much, I'm afraid.

I brought the peas to a picnic this afternoon. They didn't last long.

Garlic scapes are ready now, too:

I'd wanted to bring garlic scape pesto to the picnic, but the day got away from me. On the agenda for tomorrow.

The girls and I had a nice picnic in the sculpture garden, though it was very crowded for the first jazz night of the season. A thunderstorm eventually chased us away, but I got home to find total dryness. Boo!

As I took a late-evening walk around the yard, some of the plants seemed to be glowing. The neon-yellow of the Oenothera missouriensis is much more palatable post-dusk:

Nearby, the kousa dogwood lights up the back corner of the house:

And in the front, the shrub rose does the same for the other corner:

I see the daffodil foliage is finally succumbing to the heat.

It's about time: I have things I need to plant there.

In the side garden ,the first daylily opened today:

I also saw my first fireflies (they're not very photogenic). Summer's here!