Here we are, another Sunday, another trip through the garden….

As ever, my garden is continually surprising me. You’ll recall that I have both pink (Candy Mountain) and peach (Peach Dalmation) Foxglove…

Well now I have white too. This little one is growing right beside the pink one.  It threw me for a loop until I read that foxgloves are kind of like Labradors… they carry all the colour genes in their seeds, so apparently you can get any colour from the seeds of the mother plant. I’m not going to complain.. the more the merrier, I say!

Another surprise were the pink Armeria blooming again. I moved them to a different spot this year (they get a little more sun) and I guess they are happy! They’ve never bloomed twice before.

After years of just yellow and white blooms on the sedums in the tree garden, suddenly we have pink! But I’m not complaining. They are lovely.

My Bachelor Buttons have started to bloom. This plant makes the little green sweat bees very happy! It makes me happy too because it’s such a good bloomer!

Another incredible bloomer is my Blanket Flower. I had three of these, but two didn’t make it through winter. I’m so glad this one did! It’s such a happy plant that blooms all summer long!

The daisies are actually a couple of weeks late this year. But despite their tardiness, I think this is the best they’ve ever looked! No bug problems, and they are standing nice and tall.

Speaking of daisies… this little Gerbera Daisy is one from a couple years ago. Gerberas are annuals here, so I put this one in a pot and brought it in for the winter. It really thins out inside but it doesn’t die off. Come spring, I put it back outside, it leafs out all over again and boom! Big, beautiful blooms!

Last year, my poor Red Hot Poker got crowded out by a Coneflower. I thinned and moved the Coneflower this year, and as you can see, the Poker is very happy. This variation is called “Traffic lights” and I think you can see why.

July is lily season and mine are not disappointing! These ones are out front. They aren’t at all what I ordered (there was a mix-up last year), but they are nice none-the-less.

The Day Lilies are also in bloom – the first to open is the small and compact Stella d’Oro. She’s a lily you often see in commercial landscaping… she is very easy to care for and blooms repeatedly.  I have several colours of Day Lilies and I really hope the purple ones make their debut this year.

Both my pink and purple Lavender plants have bloomed.

As have the hollyhocks, which are HUGE this year. They are looking great and showing no sign of the rusty mold that plagued them last year.

I don’t have much by way of food plants, but they are all doing great. I’ve been enjoying fresh strawberries almost every day. In another month or so I’ll be doing the same with raspberries and black berries.

Next week should see new blooms on the Susans, Delphinium, Liatris, Coneflowers and Tickseed, There’s always something exciting happening in my little gardens.