Where the plants are glistening in the sun!
We’ll start off with a tried and true standard, the cornflower. I have them in many colours this year. There’s pink – very tiny blossoms.
A faded-blue-jean blue.
And, what was described as red.
They aren’t what I would describe as red. Oh well. I’ve planted one box in the red and blue cornflowers, with white cosmos. Red white blue, repeat. Nothing at all had bloomed in time for the 4th of July, so I can just hope I can get a decent photo for next year. None of the cosmos are blooming yet, except for one wonky looking flower I stuck in between my hostas. It has just four petals. I can’t embarrass the wee thing by taking a photo; it’s too sad.
How about some edible stuff? My first ripe raspberry. We ate it Friday morning. I shared. The second one that came ripe I ate all by myself. Shhhh.
Broad beans! I don’t have very many that are ready to eat. When I googled ‘when to harvest broad beans’ I found that you can eat the whole pod when they are young, or let them mature and then they become, through movie magic, fava beans. Shame I don’t like a nice chianti. Or a not-nice chianti. Or any kind of wine. But we did eat six pods on Thursday, which delayed our dinner quite a bit as I decided to cook them in the juice left over from the pork roast (with some extra garlic). I really liked the whole pod, when it was a younger and smaller one. Hubby had the oldest longest one, and I told him to open it up and just eat the beans, to see what that was like. He said it was a whole different taste. I ate his discarded pod. Nom! A bit fuzzy but there’s nothing like fresh veggies, especially when you’re not a huge veggie fan to begin with.
First garlic pulled. Now, this isn’t bought seed garlic, it’s whatever we got at Aldi or Tesco and it went off/started to grow, so I stuck it in the ground. Woot! Looks great.
Roses! These were taken last week, I think the bushes look even better now.
I trimmed off all the leaves that had black spot since these pics were taken.
Hope that helps. I paid for Rose Clear and have been using it, but they still haven’t looked that healthy.
The blooms look great! There are two bushes out front, but they look like four as the colours change between bud and bloom. Salmon becomes soft pink, red becomes a light fuchsia.
The damn white rose out back has bloomed at about 6.5 feet high. I can’t enjoy them way the hell up there! I think I’ll have to cut it back. It’s a climber, and seems dedicated to being a tree more than a bush.
My lavender rose bloomed finally. It’s gone now, so photos are all I have.
The plant is barely a foot tall, but looking good this year due to the feeding and Rose Clear. Fingers crossed I don’t have to worry that it is dead next spring!
Remember these? Euconmis. The packet was spot-on. Little weird pineapple space flowers. I watched this grow, and it amazed me daily. I’ve regretted that I didn’t take a photo a day of it.
But, very late in the game, there is another coming up! So I still have a chance to document.
I’ve saved the best for last. My first black Lilly has bloomed! It did so overnight. The first photo was at about 10 am.
This is around 4, not much change. But just look at it! Wow! iDJ really did an amazing job finding these beauties for me. Wow!
heretherebespiders 
By the end of this summer, I will be an expert in flowers, thanks to you! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Not trying to be picky, just trying to learn. “We’ll start of with…”. Shouldn’t it be “start off”?
I thought raspberry were annual plants, meaning they survive winter and continue growing over the seasons. Or do they really die off and grows again the next season? I’m confused because everything you describe all seem to have been grown this season only.
Whoops! Slight typo there.
My raspberries are new to us this year, so first time for us. The new growth this year will fruit next year, and the canes that fruited this year will need to be cut back as they will be useless. I have one we dug up from the side of the road, too! No sign of fruit on that bad boy, but a few tiny flowers. I can see why they are expensive – take a lot of room, hardly any fruit per plant, and there is only about 3 days between when they suddenly are red and when they should be picked.
Makes sense now. I didn’t know that!
I remember when I was young, there were these raspberries near the wood that we found. They weren’t these tiny small raspberries, but full size grocery-store like raspberries, so I suppose they had accidentally spread there from someone’s garden years before. My mother would send us to pick these and return there, and I remember how ridiculous it was since there were so few. Obviously, we returned empty handed, since we ate them all on our way back.
Beautiful garden pics…I do miss the spring summer…oh well winter it is then hahaaha
Have a great day Fozziemum x
Gorgeous! Love the rose and the black lily. Thanks for the inspiration!
Thank you! They are rather perfect in form, a natural mandala?
Those purple roses are so pretty!