Summer Fullness

China Doll

        Roses are continuing to bloom well, and the hydrangeas are developing blossoms. I keep buying new plants - I finally got a berberis, one of the lovely ones with the pink veining. I think I am going to put it in the shrub bed by the white pine. The new goats beard is blooming down there now, and the white potentilla (just starting to bloom) will be on the other side. It will be a nice foil for them.
It continues hot (for here) and dry, and so bloom is rushing by. The foxgloves are climbing up into the sky daily. The cornus Kousa is still looking the same, the blooms unfaded. What a good plant it is.

         I am finally dealing with the space along the foundation between the verandah and the little deck, formerly the home of a lot of broken glass and docks. I am putting down wet newspapers and then natural cedar mulch, quite thickly, and I plan to leave it un-planted - at least until after I get the East side of the house painted - a job for this summer.  There are shrubs in front - a weigela (possibly Wine and Roses) and a Persian lilac, Minuet - and I planted up a big, big grey planter with a globe cedar and some trailing plants, tradescanitas, ivy and a fuschia. The area is looking good for the first time ever.

Kalmia

        My Kalmia, which did not bloom last year, has some bloom this time. I am very pleased. I was worried that it wasn't getting enough light, but apparently it likes part shade. There are a lot of low branches which I would like to prune off, mainly to make more plants. It's a lovely specimen.

     The heat is such that I don't get a lot done outdoors any more; and there is still a lot to be done - edging beds, planting in the woodland garden, siding the shed! Not to mention the painting. Ah well. I do get to enjoy all the lovely blossoms.

Phew what a scorcher!

It's not really hot (like in BC, where there are 60+ forest fires) but it IS humid, with rain forecast for this afternoon and tonight. It's the kind of day where sweat runs down your face just while you're walking.
     The garden is doing very well. The Kousa is still blooming away (what good value) and just lighting up the area under the canopy of the white oak. Roses are coming out - the red one on the trellis,  Henry Kelsey. Dublin Bay is planted there too but doesn't do much. Though that bud in front, with the reddish leaves, might well be DB. Never say die in a garden.

Henry Kelsey on the trellis

        The white rosa multiflora has just started to bloom, I hacked it back quite severely this spring so it is not the mound of bloom it usually is; but it is putting on a lot of growth for next year. It's a lot like raspberries - blooms on last year's growth but the branches from the years before that have no bloom at all and eventually they die. Thus necessitating a clearing out.
     I have three clematis out - Nelly Moser by the deck, and Elsa Spath and Niobe in the beds by the lilacs, beside the path to the vegetable garden. The peony is full out as well - not a great colour combination, but I'll forgive a clematis anything.

Clematis Elsa Spath with peony

     I have lost the Nelly Moser by the door - last year it was huge, and this year it's gone. I have finally decided, too, that it does not matter AT ALL what kind of pruning it says on the package is required - in my garden they ALL die back to the roots every year, and begin again from the beginning AND everyone I know who has clematis says the same. The tiny dried out THREADS of branches that are left in the spring could not and do not sustain life. I am going to look for some more and different kinds- Joyce has a Markham's Pink that blooms really early and with quite a different bloom to these.
     I have had linum (flax plant) in the garden by the house on the West side for a couple of years, pretty but never blooming, but this year I was surprised to find one of them in full bloom! Quite pretty and delicate, as is the harebell, also on the west side. I feel I should be moving the similar things together as they may not have much impact on their own with rowdier and showier plants.

Linum usitatissimum.

Campanula rotundifolia

Aren't they sweet? The harebell had expanded greatly from the tiny pot I bought at The Brickworks three summers ago.

     The campanula crowd is expanding in my garden, though I seem to be specializing in blue ones only. Ah well. They are not orange. I planted a bunch of dwarf ones from seed, and I don't know anything about them, like how dwarf and if they are blue. But I have some dwarf blue ones from last year and they are TINY! I shall have to get going on the Alpine area at once, and move them all in. Decidedly more bloom than plant. How gorgeous.