The first day of summer has come and gone (as has the majority of June!!!), so we are truly in the realm of the summer garden.

The pink clematis has faded away, leaving only leaves and these pretty little seed heads.

I love plants like this that leave behind something cool as they ready for the next stage. And while pink is already contemplating the future, white is continuing to dazzle

I suspect they will start to fade soon, but the cause has already been taken up by purple!

The flowers are about half the size of pink and white, but there are A LOT more of them. It’s wonderful watching the clematis doing so well here after so many years of murdering it at the townhouse.

Both the pale pink and dark purple delphinium are doing beautiful (with the exception of the pink ones Lemmy broke in the catio)

And the blue ones have finally bloomed.

Blue Delphiniums are my favourite, though these are a little different than the amazing ones I had at the townhouse. These ones are a touch less brilliant, though they are much taller.

Summer is the time of the Tickseed (Coreopsis), and I have several different types. I hope to add more in the future.

The trip to Home Depot saw me add this Balloon Flower to my collection. Mom has a beautiful blurple one she’s kept going for years. This one is a pretty pale pink, which I’ve never seen before!

The new shade garden is doing quite nicely with both annuals and perennials enjoying the cooler conditions.

I bought a new Blanket Flower (Left) thinking it was different to the one I already had. And it is, just not in the way I expected. It has a tiny bit more red than the one I already had (I thought it was a lot more red), but it’s also a smaller, more compact version. I think it’s the same as they type that I had at the townhouse. The one on the right gets crazy big – I had to take it out of the catio because it almost took over last summer.

I have another one that should be a lot more different. It’s called Apricot and it’s either dark yellow or light orange – it’s hard to tell on the label and it hasn’t bloomed yet.

The snapdragons that re-seed/re-grew are covered in flowers.

I ended up with three clumps of these, which was a nice surprise.

The swamp milkweed is getting ready to bloom.

My orange milkweed didn’t come back this year, but I have five or six common milkweed plants coming up again. The common milkweed seeded itself last year, and now it’s multiplying, which is wonderful.

And speaking of native plants – the Harebell (campanula) is just a mess of purple and white flowers. In othe native news, the Lobelia, Cardinal Flower, Mexican Hat, Smooth Aster and New England Aster have all come back and are doing well, though I don’t expect blooms on them for a while yet.

And though the roses got their own show last week, I’ll leave you with Chicago Peace

She’s such a show off. I had her at the townhouse, but she unexpectedly died the year before we moved. I’m thrilled to have her in the garden again!