Summertime tasks abound

persicaria affinis

Much progress has been made since last I wrote. The best thing has been the discovery of The Flower Patch - we've been back for more plants, including some yellow iris for Karen (she babysat the cats while we were in Halifax) and the rest were groundcovers - persicaria affinis "Superba",  saxifraga x arendsii "Purple Robe", a campanula "White Clips"and a couple more. They are in the bed around the south lawn for now - I'm developing the lasagne beds on the west side and they - or their progeny - will go in there later.

East-west bed, on the edge of the south lawn

In Halifax I bought a mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia "Heart of Fire") and a couple of perennials - groundcover again, a variegated bugleweed and another campanula, blue this time, I think. We bought them at the Lakeland Plant World in Dartmouth.What a place. Any plant you could want is there, I think.
Anne and I (mostly Anne) tidied up the beds around the south lawn and planted a lot of the groundcovers in there, after edging the beds and doing some mulching. Looks good. The snowballs and spirea have mostly gone over by now, but they were spectacular while they were on.
Roses are coming along, now that we have been having some sun on a regular basis. The 'wild' rose is starting, with one of the Pink Grootendorst underneath, and Samuel Holland is peeping out. The rugosas on the mound are doing well - Blanc de Coubert, Snow Pavement, Alba, Hansa, and Marie Bugnet. Celestial is looking healthier now - should be a good bloom season.

Travels to gardens

I'm well and truly on vacation now, with a bit of harvesting and preserving on the side (raspberries are waiting for nothing. They are ripe now!). We went to the south shore of Nova Scotia for the weekend, and saw how the gardeners there have embraced the hardy roses. There were rugosas lining the sea walls everywhere you looked (imagine what they must have looked like in July!) and this wonderful wall of ramblers in Lunenburg. Congratulations, whoever conceived this and then put it into practice. It was a lot of work but I am sure it has given many people a lot of pleasure over the years.
Mahone Bay was where we set up out home-from-home base, and what a lovely little town - the architecture is simply amazing, and so well kept. I'd love to see the town plan - they must have stringent rules about what you can and can't do - and the result is a place that is almost universally a pleasure to see. The Town Hall, interestingly, looks to have ignored the rules!
There's a lovely little yarn shop there too - Have a Yarn on Main Street - it seems small at first but it goes on and on for three rooms and is simply stuffed with treasure. I was so pleased to see Drops yarns there - I have enjoyed the patterns online but never got to feel the yarn. The alpaca is gorgeous! The lady behind the counter was lovely too, and offered me free patterns for the yarns I chose - I have one mohair scarf started and it's coming out well. I really like this kind of souvenir.