July Blooms

Well, here it is July already! Before we know it, the kids will be back to school (too bad:-) Swimming lessons came to a close this week. Tristan will be back from church camp later today. And we are all fire-cracker-ed up for tomorrow. I finally got out to my garden to catch some of the blooms we are enjoying. Looks like a couple of my new shasta's are not going to make it--not sure if it was not enough water or bad location--but the ones that are blooming are fantastic! The two varieties here are Sante and Old court variety. The old court was my favorite in the catalog, and I am still loving it the best!

Aren't those wild petals cool??

We picked our first pepper this week. HA! I ususally don't get a single pepper until September, so I am thrilled! I started some sweet peppers in the basement. They were in a mix of colors, and the one we picked happened to be purple. G came to me earlier this week and said--Hey mom, are green peppers supposed to be purple?? I nearly flew to the garden to check it out. I have some jalepenos that will be ready soon, and am pleased to see that the hot lemon variety has got blooms and some very tiny fruits started. The flavor of that is supposed to be a mild smoky hot flavor. Sounded good for salsa!

The cucumbers are setting fruit and the tomato plants are loaded! We tried a bush watermelon seed which is a smaller vine with 6 pound fruits, it is just getting ready to flower. I had one regular watermelon seed come up among the second planting of cukes and I left it there--since the big boys mulched in the watermelon plants I had in the back of the garden. Come on, they were shown where they were, AND I put a tomato cage around it to remind them. They moved the cage and mulched it all. ARG!

The orange cosmo is a variety I tried last year. They reseeded themselves this year thickly, and are just starting to bloom now. You can easily see why I love that!! They look so delicate, but have no wind protection and stand up to that very well--and they were about 4 feet tall last year, a little shorter so far this year, but I haven't really watered them either.

I bought this grass a couple years ago. It is called Karly Rose. This clump has really done well, one clump died, and the other two are coming along. They add a nice effect to the border of the rocked area between our south and west porches.

Remember what that Russian garden looked like in April?

Here it now, the end of June. Big difference. I have been really impressed with it! The colors are going to be real eye candy!

The Russian sage (hence the name of the garden) seems to have tripled in size just over the last 2 weeks. It will reach about 4-5 feet tall at maturity. (that's the purple stuff)

The achillea (yarrow) in the background are called Coronation Gold. I wasn't so sure about the gold yarrow, but it is so vivid--I love it! The gaillardia is a variety called Arizona Sun. WOW! It has gotten huge and I don't think you will see any gapping between plants by the end of the summer. They will make good cut flowers. G has a great close up of a bloom that we will blow up for the fair. I will be sure to post their photos later.

This picture is of the Agastache or Hummingbird mint. The foreground mint is a bright pink called Rosita. My pictures aren't very good, will try to get some closer views in the future. The back two plants are called licorice mint. You can just barely see the buds on them as a light pink. They are more of a two toned salmon color. Very interesting flowers, like none that I had ever seen before. The little yellow flowers to the left are the sundancer daisies. They are OK, wouldn't have them by themselves, but I think they will lend nicely to the overall view.

The caryopteris (blue mist spirea) just started blooming yesterday. My daylilies are starting to bloom as well. They were new last year, so only had a bloom or two--don't even remember what colors they are-there are lots of buds though. The hollyhocks are gorgeous. They had really seeded themselves this year--and I was sure I was going to need to pull a bunch of them out. But I find myself really enjoying the effect, so I guess I will be leaving them! I have started watering the grass this week. Welcome summer! Hope everyone has a safe and happy Independence Day!