Whats your Name??

I seem to have gardeners amnesia, as I cannot find the tag for this iris and I just have NO idea what it is.. Uhm I could swear it was pale pale pink though.

Whats growing

Bowl of Beauty

Garden Visitors & Residents

There are a great number of garden visitors lately (they must see something I do not) yellow lady bugs? I have never seen them and they appear rather shy, but the garden is full of lots of ladybugs and I am unsure if my garden itself is infested with what they enjoy feasting on, or if it is because my garden is was slightly more mature than many others in the neighbourhood to take up residence. The birds come on Fridays (garbage day) and feast usually on some poor residents garbage bag contents. But since I sprayed the nematodes they have been coming in rgeat numbers to eat the wormy things you see in the chops of this hungry wingman.

Lambs Ears

Lavender

I love Lavender, in case you did not know from before. I wish it overwintered better than it does, but that does not stop me from planting several varieties in the garden. I have some enligh lavender, munstead and grusso, as well as a pink variety called coconut ice. One of my favourite lavenders is butterfly lavender. It is beginning to bloom in the hanging basket by the door.

The roses are beginning to bud as well, and I cannot WAIT to see them in their glory, I am a classics kind of girl, irises, lavender, peonies, and roses, this is what I enjoy in my garden. My roses appear to be really happy where they are I keep hoping that I luck out on this catch.

Natures surprises

One thing I really enjoy about gardening is the surprises that mother nature can give you in the garden, this morning I was greeted with another bloom from the "I've got Rythm" Iris that I had just written about getting the last bloom on, it was hidden until this morning.

The other thing I always find fascinating in the garden is the way that mother nature surprises us with variations in the colouring in one plant such as the pansies.. The combos seem endless in the baskets and I love exploring what she has come up with in the baskets each day.

If you don't like it, wait 10 minutes..

When C lived in Calgary we used to hear the weatherman say that we were expecting a little bit of snow today, a bit of sun, its going to be hot and cold and expect some hail/thunder showers, the saying there was "If you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes". I thought that was isolated to Calgary, but when we moved here to Barrie I have found that this is the case here as well. Yesterday was such a muggy scorcher, absoloutely hard to bear outside and today is beautiful temperature wise. What awoke me however was a familiar rumbling noise, (had I still been living with my parents their 115lb gaurding shepherd would be in my lap with his head buried beneath the pillows, my puppies never even bat an eye) - so my warning system is in failure for this. The thunder has come and I had one thought.. The Peonies... I furled out of bed to see if I could salvage them, and that familiar normally sweet musty smell of fresh rain was in the air, but this morning it was cause for concern. I was releived to find that the rain had not come yet and the decision was made to cut the blooms to enjoy indoors as fat raindrops began to hit my back. C came home from work and said that it was raining something feirce in Alliston and was most likely headed our way.

Now that the peonies are safe inside and in a vase on the entry bookcase, the rain never really materialised, the thunder rumble has subsided and the clouds have separated. C and a friend of his are shovelling more of that gravel ( I stole some this morning for my walkway..I was caught shovel handed when C came home from work.. but the deed was already completed)

In a separate note, I am not sure if my pink peony is a "Sara Bernhardt" as identified on the label, it would appear to be way too dark a shade to be this, hmmm what the heck is it then?

Peony

The hot weather prompted 2 of the peonies to bloom, the Sarah Bernhardt and the Duchess de Nemours have decided to show off their wares for all the nectar loving insects which are just buzzing and fluttering about them.

I have learned that my butterfly visitor from yesterday was an Eastern Black Swallowtail.. possibly a male since there was significant yellow and little blue in his pattern. If your interested in identifying some of the butterflies in your Ontario backyard http://www.web-nat.com/Butterfly/ has a great resource website devoted to butterfly watching in Ontario. I was not handy enough to grab the camera to catch a picture of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail fluttering about the garden this morning, as it seems they are much more humble for humans than the black swallowtail I saw yesterday.

Some Like it Hot..

Well ask and ye shall receive. Was I not just complaing about Frost over the May 24 weekend? And Now here I sit in a tank top and shorts crying for a little breeze. The thermometer is reading 25 º (and a suffocating 44º with the humidex), so why not build a deck in this weather? So this is what we are going to do before heading off to work. Haul gravel.. .....Lots of gravel.

Butterfly