May Makes Way For June

Wahoo!

Another lily emerges this morning, at the feet of a clump of nibbled crocus foliage.


So reports of their death, as they say, were premature.

On a similar note, they say the cicadas are still going to grace us with their presence this spring, though no sign of them has yet appeared around this end of the Cape. They say a lot, as it turns out.

Meanwhile, the dianthus are starting to bloom. Most of these were new nursery plants last spring, so they are big healthy spreading clumps now. A few are a couple of years old. I just love a little plant that is inexpensive, spreads itself around and blooms more or less all season long.

It had been predicted it would rain all day for us today, so it was a surprise to wake up and find a, well, not exactly sunny morning, but certainly not a rainy one.

This gave me the chance to get some tall marigold seedlings (the varieties are tall, the seedlings are about three inches high just now...) planted along the fence.

There's two kinds: the ones on the roadside are all yellow, and from the tiny picture on their nursery tag, they appear to be single-flowered...or at least only partly double.

The other kind is a mix of orange and yellow and will feature the fully double, pom-pom marigold flowers. Those are on the house side of the fence.

I love these tall varieties; they really help to fill out the garden as the summer wears on and various other plants' bloom times come and go. I tried to be sure and stagger them, so they weren't planted directly opposite one another across the fence.

I've also now identified the best spots for the tomato plants. They are doing well in the bedroom window and getting rather tall and strong. This is fine with me, as I'll carefully pinch off the lower branches and plant them deep, so they develop a good strong root system along the buried part of the stem. This should give them a strong footing against the wind that seems to prevail on our street...and of course, they'll be well-staked, too.

Of course, it will be a day or two still before those get into the ground, but I'm not worried about them.


The rest of the day was spent at work, but I did find a few moments late in the afternoon (just before it did finally begin to rain) to nip off to the garden for a look at what was blooming there.

The siberian irises are going full strength now. Most are the white variety, which make a great background for those purple bearded irises. The blue ones are a little taller than the white, so they'll really create a nice drift of color as they grown around one another.

Divisions of each of these and also a purple variety from the meadow live in our border at home, but they also seem to have suffered from nibbling.

Nestled amongst some evergreens, this rose's first bud is a pearl about to unfurl.