Natural distractions

It's hard to sit at my desk these days. Here are a few reasons:

These have gone by already but were great while they lasted. I also had tulips in many colors, snowdrops and grape hyacinth. I missed the flowering of the weeping cherry, but was consoled for this by the dogwoods. 

I brought the purple irises from my house in Lawrence. The white were from freecycle last year, so I didn't know what to expect. Lovely!

Dianthus in a little strip next to the walk where I had the only bit of lawn on my property. I dug that up and added these, hardy chrysanthemums, sedum and snapdragons from the distressed plant shelf at the hardware store last fall. I added daffodil bulbs and the above irises. None of this is distressed now! 

Notice the clematis climbing the fence--last year I thought that was chokeweed and tried to pull it out. Thank goodness for its survival instinct.

This flower alerted me to the existence of the vine.

The clematis in front of the house is amazing this year. The roses are hiding behind this  vine. 

Here's the clematis close up. Fancy variety!

I'm not taking pictures of the lettuce and peas, as there are way too many weeds in the vegetable bed. I may take some of this afternoon off to deal with them.

Back to storytelling soon!

Geranium garden

I know, I know, these are more properly called pelargoniums, but I can't help myself. It's like calling the refrigerator the ice box. It's what I do.

At any rate, last year I took all my geraniums and put them in a little garden. I stopped by the garden center and got a few more varieties. In the winter, I potted them up and brought them inside. They're back in the planters on the back terrace this year.


Yesterday I happened across peppermint-scented geraniums in the "quick sale" area of the grocery store, so I added one to the citrus scented varieties I already have. Everything is jumbled together, but if you look carefully, you'll see different shapes of leaves and colors of flowers.


I've got geraniums with giant leaves, ivy-leaf geraniums, regular garden-variety geraniums, and various colors of flower from deep purply-black to magenta to red to pink to white.


Oh, and this red and yellow leafed beauty (oops, forgot to weed that one!).


Because I'm so busy in the summer, I don't have time to take care of an extensive garden. This set of planters, the houseplants, the beds in front of the house, and the two pots of tomatoes are all I can manage. Most of the time, they get a slosh of water when I remember. I'm lucky they seem not to mind being ignored. What used to be the vegetable garden still has asparagus, lavender, chives, lamb's ear and Egyptian onions (walking onions), but the black-eyed Susans (rudbeckia) and weeds are taking over.