It's everywhere

Well, school is on the horizon and I had to spend a lot of my time setting up my classroom this past week. This meant that I could not take my morning walks and I could not do much in the garden. Except water everything. The weather has been great, except that there has been little rain. And it looks like there will be little rain next week, too. I see buckets of money (aka the water bill) going out the hose this week. A couple of noteworthy items: There are Japanese Beetles nesting in the rose bush. I go out there to admire the roses and find that there are little beetles tucked away in the flowery folds. This is mildly unnerving and rather irritating. Here I go to great lengths to nurture a rose bush and these guys despoil it. The beetles themselves are all shiny and not bad looking on their own, but I see bad things down the road if they should take a liking to my yellow rose bush out there. The rose is the only thing I can see that they have taken a fancy to in the garden, although I have found one or two on the ferns.

The bee balm has lasted the longest I can ever remember. I've usually cut it all down by now, but there's still some bloomage going on. I wonder what the difference is this year. Everything else is doing well, with the notable exception of the tiger eye sumac which bit the dust a while back. With any luck, that will be the only casualty. I did transplant the blue hydrangea from the center of the front garden to the sunnier side in hopes that it will follow the rose bush lead and start to grow. I put a variegated hydrangea in its place. It cost $7 at Lowes so I won't feel bad about it whatever happens to it. If it follows past experience, it will grow and prosper. Why do the expensive plants belly-up while the inexpensive ones take (more or less)? There's a lesson in life right there.

Little Things

Lots of little things are happening in the garden. Today a hummingbird visited the petunias on the deck for the first time this summer. The bees have returned to the bee balm and whatever herb that is I have planted next to it. How nice to see them hovering here and there as they inspect the flowers. For a while there I thought they were goners. There have been several different types of butterflies flitting around. Today there was a huge golden swallow tail gliding throughout the garden. I haven't seen the monarchs lately, although there have been two recent caterpillars chowing down on the milkweed along the Henry Path.


I went to a local craft store to see if they still had any shepherd hooks left that were on sale. Fortunately, they had a few left, and as I picked one out, I saw way on top of a neighboring shelf, a large pot with greek letters carved into it which was on sale for 70% off. It was originally $50, marked down to $14 (!). I grabbed it immediately, since it is one of the niftiest pots I've ever seen, and who can beat that price? I found a few flowers to go into it temporarily so I could put it by the white and blue garden by the patio. Most excellent.

Home Depot is selling out their perennials so I picked up some black-eyed daisies to go out back by the Canada Lilies, where the sun shines more than most places in the yard. The daisies add a nice touch of color out there, color I can see from the house.

I moved the blue fescue out of its container and into the ground by the new pot. The fescue was looking like it needed a change of scenery as it was browning at the tips. I think it needs more drainage. We'll see. Grass in general seems pretty hardy.

Phil and Henry put together a new water fountain for the yard. We put it right in the bee balm by the deck so you can hear it as you sit out there. It's very cute and very simple. It's nice to finally have a "water feature" in the yard.