What happened to June?

Well, it turned out to be the hottest June on record. At the very end of the month, a cold front came through, but it was a false and evil front: thunderstorms in Silver Spring, not a drop here. Even the perilla is wilting. Yesterday and today I've been watering, which I hate to do, but I don't want to lose the shrubs - okay, not anything else, either.

What else happened:
Hiking in North Carolina - the last of the rhododendrons in bloom
 

  
 

Lots of white in the garden
  


 

Discovery that the tithonia was not the Mexican sunflower I remembered, tall and branching, but a lovely but short zinnia-like plant. Had I but known, I would have planted them in a group rather than spacing them throughout the garden, where they look silly.

 

Also, that these dark dahlias are perfect with the deep red-orange day lilies - just need to move them so they are amongst said lilies next year.