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.