Late June, all in bloom

Lysimachi on the edge of creeping Thyme

It has been a busy couple of weeks, with no time to blog. Sorry to keep you waiting! School ended with exams, projects, Zara's sixth grade graduation, and I managed to squeeze in a lot of garden work. I have continued to add, swap and move things around in both the flower garden and in the vegetables. Iulia and Olivier have donated a few more plants (some Marsh Mallows, more ground cover plants which I believe are Lysimachia, some pretty red and yellow gaillardia). I have planted my dianthus sprouts hither and yon. They look completely different from the ones I bought at the grocery store and the ones which Iulia gave me, but when I checked on line, it seems that the flowers are similar but different varieties have completely different foliage.

Wintercreeper

Since I last blogged, the irises and peonies finished, and the colombines are slowing down. My lameum and one of the bleeding hearts are still blooming, and three different varieties of ground cover bloomed. I had no idea that they were flowering plants, they hadn't bloomed in previous years.The Lysimachi has yellow flowers and the Wintercreeper has white ones. I think those are the names, they came with the house and I have been looking at google images to identify what they are.    

Oriental lilies

Most of my lilies are in bloom. I moved all the oriental lilies away from the day lilies which were drowning them out, to the front of my lawn. I have developed that area in front of my morning glory tree. I have multiple patches of multicoloured cosmos (no flowers yet), oriental lilies, a yellow lily cluster which

Ageratum?

  just opened this morning (I just checked, I had no idea what it would look like) and another cluster which is not planning to bloom yet.  Josh bought me some fuzzy purple flowers which I think are ageratum, and some white celosias (those little feathery flowers that are turning up everywhere), and I put some salvias in the corner of the driveway where my hydrangea bush is still a tiny branch with a few little leaves on it. I also have the mini iris which Alex gave me, which appears to bloom perpetually with tiny clusters of purple and yellow flowers. The first sunflower started to bloom this week. I still have no idea which variety is which.

Stella D'oro lilies

This is under my window

Yellow lillies and sunflower on left

You can see it above to the left of  the yellow lilies.
All the sunflowers have budded, and they are all relatively short except for three of the four which were planted in a circle on my back lawn. Those are slightly taller but skinny. They are budding too. Josh remembers that they budded early last year but kept growing, however I think they were full height before the flowers opened. 

It's a weed, but it has pretty tiny purple flowers.

My evening primroses spread and started to crowd out my beebalm. So we moved the beebalm into the back yard along the side of the garden wall in two patches. I think they needed a lot more sun. I planted some of the evening primroses here and there in the shady areas close to the house. I pulled a seedpod off of my neighbour Albert's pink columbine and planted seeds here and there around the garden, who knows, maybe one will take!

My biggest piece of work has been the tomatoes. I got over my reluctance to treat them as weeds and pulled out dozens of the smallest sprouts. I transplanted the largest of the volunteer tomatoes and made four more rows. Gu will be in town this coming week, and I hope to send him home with some of the remaining ones which are still scattered randomly in my pepper patch. My garlic have all been de-scaped. I have collected the flower buds and top leaves from all of the basil. We have been eating salads made from the outer leaves of my Romaines, my mesclun salad plants, nasturtium leaves, orpine and lamb's quarters. My mom taught me the trick that if you keep removing (and eating) the outer leaves of a lettuce, you can keep it growing for a long time. My bok choy started to flower yesterday, so I plan to harvest today. I also moved my cucumbers around, I had too many on one side of the gazebo and too few on the other. So my varieties will be all mixed up.
Some of my beans have topped the fence, so we will be extending the chicken wire. The alpine strawberries have doubled in size this year, and we are also getting big strawberries from the plants Iulia gave me.  I think that one of the melon seeds has sprouted, it doesn't look quite like the cucumbers or the weeds, so we can hope. I have green tomatoes growing on some of the larger plants. It will be a very busy time when we start to harvest.