My family and I are in southeastern Minnesota, visiting friends, for the weekend. The weather here is very wet right now. There is flooding all around and about in low areas. My husband, Pat, and I drove to Wabasha, on the banks of the Mississippi River and saw some road closures and even a restaurant on the riverfront was closed due to high water. Our friends told us that when barges go by on the river a large wake is created and it is enough to wash over the bank and flood the restaurant. Bummer.

The plants are very green and lush, creating an almost rain forest feel to the area. It has reminded me of how much I love a more desert-like climate with dry summers! I revel in the low humidity day and hot dry winds we've had in central OK this year.

Anyway, we will drive back to OK tomorrow, watching for tornadoes all along the way, as severe weather is forecast. I hope we don't have any tornadoes at home tomorrow night. That would be a rough homecoming. I have only been away a few days, but miss my garden and animals terribly!

The Late June Garden

The daylilies are just coming into their prime here. While the little yellow "Happy Returns" has finished its first heavy flush of blooms, others are in about their third day of blooming. Below right is a giant yellow daylily named 'Majestic Move', which measures 7 inches across!

The rudbeckia coneflowers, tall phlox, butterfly bushes and cleome spider flowers are also blooming heavily. Crape myrtles are just starting to flower too. The fairly regular rain we have been receiving has really helped out the garden this year.




There have also been enough mild temperatures and low-humidity days to let me enjoy being out in the garden building paths and top-dressing with the partially composted pine shavings and horse manure I use. My plants seem to love the stuff. It's broken down just enough to kill any seeds in the manure, but it still is a fluffy wood mulch to hold moisture and reduce weeds. It stays loose enough to weed easily, and I don't mind working it into my soil when I plant new plants. The shredded wood mulch I buy for the paths is not anything I'd want to incorporate into the soil and it would need to be raked away before digging. That's a lot of extra work!

The garden paths

Garden path construction

Anticipating a very hot day, my garden work started at 5:30 am. I turned on the big flood light on the back of the house and got busy setting landscape timbers to line the garden paths in the back flower bed. I am setting each timber level and stair-stepping them to accomodate the gentle slope of the garden. This means some annoying digging and testing with a level, but the results are quite nice I think. The path will be lined with landscape fabric and topped with shredded cedar mulch. I knocked off work about 10 am and cooled off in the swimming pool...one benefit of Oklahoma living!