Sunflower

When you think "sunflower", this is not necessarily the image that pops up in your mind, but it's the best I can do. This one grows almost directly underneath one of my bird feeders, so we know its origin. And, you know the story of the horse and the gift, right?

This plant has four more buds on it, so it is likely that it will adorn my garden for several more weeks. Thanks to the birds!

Oh, no -- not another Koi Pond!

I am sick of koi ponds! At least four of the six gardens on today's Gwinnett County Master Gardener garden tour had them (the other two may also -- I did not go there; too far!).

There was a boring sameness about all four gardens. Not just the ponds, but also the plantings - Hellebores, Hydrangeas, Ferns, Japanese Maples. The only one deserving to be on a garden tour, for which people pay money to visit, was Shannon Pable's (small wonder - she is a professional garden designer). The Jones garden, next door, was nice, but in essence a small copy of the Pable garden (and unfinished) and the two on Lake Lanier had the lake as their best feature. There was nothing original or outstanding about them. In one of them the obligatory koi pond had these monsters in them -- three times the size of any koi I had seen before today.

Bug Season

This is a . . . moth? Frankly, I'm still trying to learn about plants. Bugs will have to wait. In my garden, I have seen grasshoppers, beetles, spiders, ladybugs, ants (of course!), flies, mosquitoes (every morning, every evening) and other assorted flying insects. For the most part, I leave them alone, although I did spray a Coleus this morning, when I saw a sticky white residue (white fly eggs?) on it, and also a Lemon Verbena that all of a sudden has some of its leaves turning brown (I saw some things crawling on the plant; the browning was not the result of the heat, although we do have plenty of that!). My garden is visited by numerous birds and I am going to count on them to deal for the most part with the flying insects, such as this one. If you happen to know what it is, please tell me.

The Harvest Is In!

This is already my second "harvest" of blackberries (yesterday I picked four), but it is my first "crop" of tomatoes. These are Red Currant and the plant has lots of clusters of green tomatoes and blossoms - so, lots more tomatoes to come!

When you live in the country . . .

. . .wildlife is everywhere! The other week, I saw a fox crossing the road (had it been a second slower or I a second faster, there would have been a collision!), a neighbor recently had a large opossum as roadkill in front of her driveway, last year one of my photographs of a Black Widow spider won an award in a photography contest. And yesterday, there was this hare in my garden! Plant damage and droppings had indicated the presence of rabbits for a long time, but a hare? In broad daylight? It ate for a while from the seed birds had dropped on the ground from one of the feeders, then hopped around, disappeared, came back and left.

June Blooms

These are some of the blooms in my gardent this morning. From top to bottom -- the Monarda never disappoints and I have so many of them now that I have been able to share new plants with friends this year; the Rose Campion is new in my garden - a gift from a friend and neighbor; the Prunella 'Summer Daze' has settled in nicely, after a fairly poor start last year; the Hollyhock has been there 'forever' -- it's a biennial, but don't tell this plant that - this is its fourth year; the Butterfly Weed is another new plant for me - I have about two dezen of them, in 3 different locations and they all look good; last but not least, this Echinacea is from the 'Big Sky' series -- third year in my garden and it is finally coming into its own, with lots of blooms. I may have to move it again, though, as the Sweetshrub behind it has doubled in size since last year and the Japanese Aster next to it is growing rapidly as well. Oh, well - that's gardening, isn't it?