It's not the heat, it's the humidity

       July has been hot! As a result the garden is burgeoning, especially the vegetable one. If I don't have tomatoes within a week I shall be very surprised.

    Unfortunately I have been *working* far too much - full-time this week! - and am so exhausted that I have no energy to work in the garden when I finally do get home. Anne and I went to the Honey Tree nursery and I bought a gingko tree and a Chinese wisteria, and then at the sell-off sale at the Sobeys garden centre (75% off!) I got another Chinese wisteria. Now I need a pergola. I also got some more thyme - I am determined to replace more of the grass with thyme. We saw some gorgeous thyme lawns in a recent visit to North Cape. I am spotting wooly thyme everywhere I go, hoping to dig up and transplant from the roadsides, etc. Now to gather some energy and plant them - except the wisteria and the gingko - I want to baby them on a bit (and plan for a pergola).
     I picked the first raspberries last night, just at dusk, so I may have missed some ripe ones.  There's enough to enliven the breakfast fodder, at least.
     Above is my clematis 'Niobe' - I also bought an 'Elsa Spath' but it didn't bloom yet. I got these at WalMart in the early spring and babied them along in the greenhouse for quite a while. In other clematis news, the mystery one in the flower bed by the lilacs turns out to be another 'Nelly Moser', like the ones I have in the bed by the door. I suppose this means that they are extremely hardy. The two new ones are in the lilac bed, one on either side of the opening between the lawn and the veg. There should be a pergola there too, but I don't think clematis can compete with wisteria.
      And speaking of lilacs, I have cut down the older part of the lilac hedge to half its size. It was getting too big to cut off the spent blooms, and shading the flower bed quite a lot. It looks terrible at the moment, but I am sure it will fill out again, and quite quickly.

I'm making jam, strawberry jam...

       As it says in the song. Just 4 or 5 batches today -

it started to rain while I was in the berry field so I quit, like a wuss. Plan to make strawberry cake as well, for dessert. Gotta get going on that!
         My western garden is doing splendidly this year, it has come along a lot since its initiation, last spring! The F.J. Grootendoorst rose has come along a treat since last June, and the mountain laurel from my birthday before that has grown quite a lot and is looking good too. The variegated wiegelia bloomed as soon as it was planted, not in season, but it has put on a lot of growth since and is looking quite well. There are hydrangeas there, too - and some of them will bloom this summer for the first time.
        The little white rose is Morden "Snowmound" - moved from the rose mound this spring  - and not far away is one of the two "Daydream" roses - I managed to split the one rose plant up, planted one here (just to the left of the "Snowmound") and potted up the other for a bit of babying in the greenhouse for a while before planting it in the bed in front of the door. They are both blooming.

 
      China Doll has been doing well since her move last year, and this year is blooming very prolifically in the bed by the driveway. She does this lovely thing of coming out a really clear pink, and then developing pink freckles as the blooms age. They stay on the plant for a really long time as well.
    And best news of all, the "Ring-around-the-Rosey" bed is doing just what I hoped it would do, when I put it in. Well, perhaps I hadn't expected that the Rosa multiflora would do quite so well, but she's a great big mound of blooms with the other rugosas and hardy roses peeking out around her skirts.

She's a once-bloomer, so when she's done I'll prune her back a bit to give the others some grow room.
    I love rose season! And my very favourite rose, Celestial, is out right now, too.  Must go have a look - and take some photos.