Now is the time in the garden when things really start to happen. It seems like every day I come out, there’s something new.

June is the month for roses and Chrysler Imperial has taken the honour of being the first to bloom. This surprises me for two reasons… of all the roses, this one gets the least amount of light. By about 2 pm, it’s in the shade of the house. The others are all in full sun pretty much all day.

The second reason is that it’s been hit by Sawfly larvae pretty hard – you can see some of the foliage is pretty damaged, as are some of the blooms. I’m really struggling with it and may have to admit defeat and get some pesticide.

The other roses (Chicago Peace, Good as Gold, New Dawn, Quicksilver, Eden and Caroline de Monaco) are all budding up and we should have a good show soon.

I did lose two roses over winter – Queen Elizabeth and Double Delight. They weren’t great specimens when I bought them, so I wasn’t terribly surprise they didn’t make it through.

The delphinium are starting to show off. I have this pretty mauvey pink, and dark purple. And I have a third not quite blooming, which if I’m remembering correctly is blue… but I might not be, so we have to wait and see.

The foxglove ate just blooming up a storm. There’s something just so magical about those flower spires! So pretty!

And it turns out I have three shades of spiderwort, not two, like I thought! That was a nice surprise!

These are some Sweet William I started from see last year. They didn’t bloom then (they are biennial), but they are making up for it this year. If they look somewhat familiar, they are in the same family as my Dianthans, but instead of flowing a single flower on dozens of stems, they have multiple flowers on each stem. They have other magical properties too.

All those different flowers are on ONE plant! How wild is that??!?!?

A new bloom this year is Geum. I planted it last year, but it took until this year to bloom. I have two plants, and unfortunately, they are both the same colour (Geums come in a whole range). I’d love to get some different colours next year.

This pink show stopper is Alpine Aster. The smaller one is in the catio, and I planted it late last year. The bigger one is in the driveway garden, and it’s a great contrast to the yellow of the sedums and creeping Jenny. It only blooms for a couple of weeks but it’s lovely while it does. It also comes in white, so I have to try to get some of that for my collection!

The last iris to bloom is my Shakers Prayer Siberian iris. I brought it from the townhouse and it’s really multiplied here. I might break it up when it’s done blooming.

I also bought a collection of bare root Siberian iris, though I don’t expect to see much from them until next year. They aren’t even sprouting yet – probably thanks to that darn heat wave at the end of May.

The Sage is starting to bloom. I love sage because it takes the heat so well, flowers all year long, and the bees love it. These two have also both reseeded so I got free extra plants for other spots in the garden!

And to wrap it up… a handful of others… Native Bellflower, Dragons’ blood Sedum, and Pink Pincushion.

And the lilies have buds, and so do the daisies… there’s so much more to come!