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!