Any one who has a gardened for any amount of time has learned, one way or another, that the gardener actually has very little control. Nature does what nature wants. We can make suggestions, but she doesn’t have to listen to us.

Let me give you an example.

Here is a picture from the catio garden in early July of 2023.

Here’s a picture of the catio garden from just this week.

Aside from the fact that everything is more or less more mature (to be expected), do you notice something else?

How about all those pink coneflowers that are in the middle? Yeah. They weren’t there in 2023. Nor were they there in 2024. (I don’t have a picture so you’ll just have to believe me.) I only had pink cone flowers in the far right corner and the near right corner.

You can see they are still there, but as you can also see, they’ve taken over a good chunk of the centre garden. And I didn’t transplant any there. They must have reseeded – quite the trick because I tend to keep the coneflowers in the catio deadheaded so they don’t attract the finches. But obviously, some seedheads escaped my notice.

And with them, came some white ones, which were also on the right side of the catio (but aren’t there anymore). I don’t mind, because they are glorious, as you can see. But they have shaded out the poor orange ones, which are of a shorter variety… I’m going to have to move them.

One other plant on the move that’s harder to notice in the pics, is the Swamp Milkweed.

I originally had a small patch on the left side. And it’s fed several of the monarch’s we had the honor to watch come into the world. But this year, it didn’t come up again. And I was quite sad about that, until I noticed several stalks coming up randomly throughout the centre garden. This is not as much of a surprise, as I let that seed fly freely – and milkweed spreads by rhizomes as well.

But it’s not just in the catio this has happened – though not with the milkweed (not yet anyway)..

In the sidewalk garden, I had a patch of little red ones, but that’s it. But as you can see… now we’ve pink and white there too!

I had pink ones on the right side of the arbour… but not the left. But I do now! And over on the left, where I used to have several clumps, including the pink, a lovely pale yelllow, and those crazy double decker coneflowers… I only have pink. Gone are the yellow and double decker ones. And I’m not sure why.

Thankfully, I still have the “green twister” which has lovely multi-coloured petals. I’m going to take some seeds from this one, just to make sure I don’t lose it next year to the pink ambition!

And just for fun… here’s some more pink in the garden!

For this Friday Felines, we have a little twist…

It’s all about thrifted kitties! We found this pair of wire kitties about a month ago at the ReStore. They each had a small bracket on them. We think they might have been part of some decorative shelf or something but it was hard to tell. They were only $2 so I brought them home. Dave took the brackets off and the plan is to put them up on the shed doors – Dave just hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

This one was actually a thrift from way back in the winter. It came from our favourite used store in Strathroy. It’s cast iron and my assumption was that it was meant to hold a pair of food dishes. But naturally, I thought, I can put plants in that.

It took me a little while to get pots for it, which is why you’re only seeing it now. I got some clearance petunias for it, and they are still a little droopy.

But, I’m sure they will pick up. I put it at the corner of the garage walkway, and it looks so cute there. And Dave hasn’t said anything about my plants encroaching on “his space” so I call that a win!

And the last one is another Holy Grail item. You may recall that I have a few Blue Mountain pottery pieces. I don’t consider myself a collector – I have two pieces with sentimental value from my childhood (my elephant and my angelfish), and a couple of neat shaped vases, I bought a thrift store, just because they looked cool the the colours work with my decor.

But there’s one other piece, I have no sentimental attachment too, but once I knew it existed, I knew I wanted it.

Yup. A long-haired cat. I learned about it when I started looking into the history of the ceramic cats (and searching for some black ones.) We’ve seen them around at antique stores, but they were always priced upwards of $50. And I just couldn’t justify spending the money.

In fact, when we went on our recent thrifting adventure and found the black cat with yarn, we saw no less than four of them! (We were in the big three-level antique market in Woodstock). The cheapest one was $40, and I’ll be honest… I almost bought it because I’ve never seen one cheaper. But then we came across the black cat and that blew my budget for silly things I really don’t need that day. (Because I’d also found that darn lasagna pan!)

But the universe must have been telling me something, because a week later, we went to Value Village…

…And there it was, sitting on the very first shelf just waiting for me. And the price…$17.99!!! And even better, when we got to the counter, we had $7 in Savers point saved up! I got it for a tenner! Can you believe it? I still can’t! I’m so glad I passed up all those other ones over the years.

And, since I can’t have a Friday Feline post with out at least one REAL feline…

Enjoy Lemmy in his little Adirondack chair.

Progress is slow on the cable socks, but that is to be expected…

I’m about an inch from starting the heel on the first sock. Things will speed up then because I will only be cabling on the front of the sock. But even now I’m loving it. I’ve been doing mostly plain socks for more than a year now, it’s a nice switch to do something that takes more thought.

When I posted my last garden post, Betsy, of The Simple Life of a Queen, asked for overall pictures of the garden. It’s never polite to deny the request of a Queen… and I aim to please!

Now, it is a little difficult, mostly because the gardens are fairly extensive, and faraway pictures don’t do them justice. So I’ve tried to “chunk” things up a bit, and do a couple of panoramic pictures (which become a little distorted but give a decent idea)

But first, I thought it might help to have a little map.

(Click to enlarge) The light grey areas are the house (the largest) the double garage (top left) and shed (bottom left). The darker grey bar is the road and therefore the front of the house.

The front yard is realatively small compared to the back, but it is packed with flowers.

Above is an overall view from the south side of the house (the front of the house faces East). Not overly visble in this picture are the driveway and side walk gardens which flank the walkway up to the house.

Above is a slightly distorted panoramic view. And here are a few closer looks

The front garden

The island garden.

And the side garden at the south property line.

The only other garden out front is the walkway garden at the side of the front porch

This chunk of the garden is technically new this year. It was all Snow on the Mountain but I pulled it all this spring and planted it up with a variety of plants from other parts of the yard. It’s taken off far better than expected.

Now it’s time to head out back.

On the south side of the house, the front and back yards are divided by a fence (which you can see in the first photo. The backyard side of that fence sits under the only tree in the yard – a Norway Maple… so that’s my woodland garden.

It’s the only shady spot on the yard, but in truth, most of it get sun from about 2 pm on, so it’s not all that shady except closer to the fence. The above panoramic picture does not do it justice at all.

I much prefer this view, looking through my arbour down a long green lawn to the veg beds.

Here’s another panorama that shows the entrance to the Woodland Garden, then the long fence border on the south side which runs right back to the shed.

The North side houses the catio

This, of course, is an approximate 12′ x 25′ floral playground for the boys. It has planting both inside, and all around the outside.

The view from the inside is my favourite and I often sit on the step during work breaks and just soak up the yard.

From here, you can see that Fence Border runs into the Veg Beds. (AKA Edible Alley, Potager Parlour and Cucurbit Corridor)

Like the catio, they are mostly surrounded by floral borders too.

The veg beds are all raised bed or large containers making it a very eclectic, but functional space.

And last, at the very back of the yard (western most point), we have the newest garden

The aptly named Back Fence Border. Here is where my Forsythia and Blackberries were already planted, but this year, I’ve added a Butterfly Bush (white one, as my original didn’t make it) and well as a few perennials. This is also from where we feed Loki dog cookies through the fence.

And that’s the grand tour! I cant remember the exact size of our lot, but it’s somewhere around 60′ wide by 100′ feet deep. And you can see I’ve packed plenty in that space! Especially out front.

Disgusting heat and humidity kept me in the house all weekend, but it required a little extra enforcement to get me in the chair and stitching.

Thanks to Burton’s help, I was able to finish Block 17 at last.

Only three more blocks to go!

Something fun is happening in the garden.

As you know… I am great friends with these guys…

I don’t mind that they eat from my feeders. And as a result, I often get volunteer sunflowers in random places.

As you know, I’ve been feeding them for many, many years. But one thing I’ve never had happen…

Is peanut sprouts! I pulled up the first couple I found, mostly because I didn’t realize what they were. And now I’m finding them EVERYWHERE!

There is at least one in almost every raised bed, and every flower bed except in the catio. So I’ve decided I’m going to leave them! And we are going to see if we can harvest some peanuts!

The July garden is hot, steamy and full of colour.

The day lilies always shine this time of year. Regular readers will know I have many, many varieties, with much more to come.

Like daylilies, there are many coneflowers in the garden. These are just a few.

The butterfly milkweed looks stunning this year. No caterpillars yet but it probably won’t be long.

The mini-hollyhocks look amazing this year. At least they did when I took this picture… they are now getting ravaged by the Japanese beetles.

The colours of autumn are starting to show, though the temps are through the roof and we are far from the cool breezes of fall. Above are False Sunflower, Black-Eyed Susan, Blanket Flower and Marguerites.

The roses have slowed with the heat, but a few are blooming. My two climbers (Quick Silver and Eden – first two pics) had to be cut right back this year, so the blooms are low, but they are growing well. And Chrysler Imperial (Red) is normally ravaged by Black Spot and Sawfly larvae, but it’s doing really well this year.

High summer is such a beautiful time in the garden!

It happens every time… I say “I really need to stop spending money and stick to a budget” and the Universe goes… HA! Here’s some cool stuff you just HAVE to HAVE!

Case in point

Cast iron spider stepping stone! Definite must have.

Decorative spider garden stakes… you need seven of them. (Yes. Seven. Yes, I bought them all)

Vintage tricycle planter? Oh yeah – definitely need that. It was a little rusty, so Dave gave it a fresh paint job. I’ll be potting up some plants and putting it out in the garden today.

Another ceramic long-haired black cat? Of course you need that…

The first one I bought obviously needed a friend.

Spice of Life Lasagna Pan (Roaster) that you’ve been searching forever for? Totally going to find it when you’re sticking to the budget!

I guess I’ll stick to the budget starting tomorrow…

It was a short week for us….

But we are pretty jealous of our friends south of the border… we could use another long weekend!

With the Sanderson socks off the needles, I needed something new on the needles. And I was really feeling the need for cables. I haven’t knit cables in AGES. I searched, and searched and searched but could not find exactly what I was looking for.

So… I got out some graph paper and designed it.

And designing a knitting pattern is something else I haven’t done in ages! But I’m liking the result so far.

I’m not sure if I’ll release it when it’s done. I don’t have the pattern software I used to, so I’ll have to see if I can figure out something else to draw up the charts from my messy, handwritten notes.

But for now I’m just going to enjoy the knit