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.

 

Who is eating my plants??

Eaten to date: two parsley plants, two calendulas, a tithonia, and a whole planting of pole beans. Whoever does it seems to chew the leaves in to the stems. Here's a picture of the pathetic tithonia, standing tall but entirely leafless.

 

As for the beans, here they are young and fresh and full of hope:

 

and here they are today, almost completely gone.

 

Going online is no help because everyone has a different theory. I think it must be bugs. A rabbit would hardly have eaten the beans in the cedar barrel and left the ones in the ground alone. Time to check Barbara Damrosch and see what she says.

Book Report

Margaret Roach is one of my favorite garden bloggers, so I had to track down her ten-year-old book, from which her blog gets its name. The photos are beautiful, and the text is both informative and inspiring. One of my favorite pieces is her lament that she is already 35 (at the time) and worries that she doesn't have enough years left to create the garden she wants. I think every gardener feels that way.

A few ideas I picked up from her book: golden hostas under aucuba to echo the color; try some of the following groundcovers - aruncus aethusifolius, variegated ribbon grass Phalaris arundinacea 'Picta' that can take shade, petasites japonicus with its big leaves, comfrey symphytum officinale that takes shade, and bigroot geranium G. macrorrhizum that she mentions frequently in her blog; consider planting rhubarb in the corner garden because it can take some shade; divide asters every three years; consider aster divaricatus (white wood aster) and A. macrophyllus because they are natives and can take shade.

It's a beautiful book to leaf through. Her gardens, which at the time she was cultivating only part-time, have simply gotten more beautiful over the years. Too bad it's out of print...

Lost and Found

Sorry, Judy, but the beautiful Japanese shears you gave me, that I adored, that went missing, that I feared had ended up in the compost pile...did end up in the compost pile. R.I.P.

 

On a happier note, I've located both the Felco pruners (in the bottom of a pile of boxwood clippings headed for the shredder) and the plain old scissors (lying on the ground). But I really miss those shears...

A walk in the neighborhood

Caution: following is an experiment with Live Writer. Don't quite have the hang of it yet...

Here’s a frog found in the road and rescued with the help of two fellow walkers.

                                     Elderberries were in bloom by the lake.

Grasses along the lake.

                                 Elegant mulleins.

 

Mountain laurels in full bloom

Pretty little daisies along the fence line.

Favorite find: these elegant pine cones on this sprawling, butchered tree:

And three rabbits along the way.  This one thought that if he didn’t look at me, I wouldn’t see him.

A Neighborhood Walk

Walking around the neighborhood ten days ago, I saw nothing extraordinary but many small gems.  Here is a roadside weed that could take its place next to the tiarella in the garden.  Also seen:  mountain laurel, invasives both native and not, elegant pine cones, and a plethora of common creatures – rabbits, a frog, wrens, cardinals, et al.

Anxiety

Should I be pinching back my dahlias? I have one in bloom! But it's way too soon... Hope to be able to post pictures again one day, so you can see it.