Final Bounty

A short post for you this Friday morning.

Moving day is drawing near and we are experiencing our final summer here at Elizabeth.  And that means that it’s the final year of my first ever solo garden experiment.  If you’ve been following along, you’ll know it hasn’t exactly gone as planned, but I have reaped some benefits.  My delphiniums, the only plant I have ever successfully grown from seed, have survived the construction crew burying them in tree branches and should be in full bloom by the Pie’s birthday (they are his birth flower after all).  The irises my mother sent me that have been churning out bulbs for almost thirty years are finally blooming, as is the accidental wild rose bush I found out back one year and cut entirely down by mistake (the fact that it only started to bloom after I cut it to the ground tells me I did something right).

And the peonies that I rescued and have been coddling for years are having a bountiful year.  Instead of the usual one or two blooms I now have over a dozen (before you pooh-pooh that, remember this is Newfoundland and my backyard is 100% shade).  So I figured I’d cut some down (before they fell) and haul them inside to enjoy, together with a few of the roses trampled by construction workers, and a sprig or two of the noxious weeds that strangle the rest of my flower beds (may or may not be, or related to, Queen Anne’s Lace — jury is still out and I don’t really care).  I may have packed all my vases, but a travel mug does in a pinch.  Happy summer!

Greenthumbing Update

An update on the garden:

THINGS ARE GROWING LIKE CRAZY.  It’s days like this I itch for a macro lens.  But everything is big and bountiful and thriving.

Including my lawn, which we haven’t mowed in forever, so please ignore that part.  I’ve added bits and pieces here and there, and made two trips to Lester’s Farm to pick up more perennials, like these snapdragons.  Most of the things I have purchased I have quickly forgotten what they’re called.

The phlox is flowering.  I thought I got one blue and one pink but they’re both pink so I guess I was wrong.

My lupins are growing well, but I long for the large clumps I see in the parks here.  The Pie and I have a secret plan to go lupin stealing in the middle of the night shortly.  Don’t tell anyone.

The things that I don’t know what they’re called are about to flower, which might aid my identification process.

I have been fighting the slugs.  The whole city is out of Slug-B-Gone so I got these slug traps but they don’t seem to be working.  You can see the slime trail on my bleeding heart.

I fear for my pretty little hostas.

My purple thing and peonies get more enormous every year.

As does my columbine.  It helps that columbine is a weed here. 

And this?  Well, this is a mushroom.  It has been raining quite a bit.