That is a complete lie. Ms. N and I both have this bug in our gardens and have no idea what it is. Friend? Foe? She found the insects on her hydrangea. I found them buzzing around the bottom leaves of the hollyhocks (which are being overtaken by weevils and rust, blast it!).  Note to self: find a good insect identifier on the Internets.

The weather was hot and intermittently rainy this past weekend. What a great time to visit nurseries! Oy, a big mistake. I was doing so well until the last stop and then purchased several new plants. All perennials were 25% off though! I have this same problem during cold months here, but it involves yarn instead of plants. This was the haul:

• Autumn Bride Coral Bell (Heuchera villosa) which I grabbed accidentally when reaching for the Key Lime
• Little Lantern Ligularia
• Joystick Red Thrift, Sea Pink (Armeria pseudarmeria)
• Alexander Loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata)
• Golden Male Fern (Dryopteris affinis)
• Limerock Ruby Coreopsis
• Thriller Lady’s  Mantle (Alchemilla mollis)

I did purchase a Jack Frost (Brunnera macrophylla) for Mom G’s garden. She had her eye on them during our 2010 Nursery Crawl, but the price tag kept her from purchasing one. Also, I found a fantastic nursery when I begin to tackle integrating flowering shrubs into the Lot.

The beans and cucumbers in our veggie beds are doing well. The beans have unfurled their arms and are beginning to climb up the twine strung between the top of the support and the soil level of the bed. The  cucumber are also ready to climb. I began work on a type of cradle I found a sketch of in Patricia Lanza’s Lasagna Gardening. I am reusing lengths of twine that were binding together bales of hay. To secure the ropes together, I looked up some knots and decided on the Sheetbend knot I found here. Hopefully I can finish the cradle this week and post a photo.

As a last note, the June 2010 issue of Wired has a fantastic article about gardening. Don’t Call It Gardening – The Wired Guide to Domestic Terraforming by Dominique Browning almost caused me to shoot cereal out of my nose this morning. It is definitely worth a read, especially for those gardeners that have a hefty does of Geek in their blood.

Yay! Here are a few pics I snapped for the very first Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day being celebrated at this address. We were out of town for the weekend, but that didn’t stop the Lot. We were treated to some new arrivals upon our return.

Also blooming this month and not pictured are the Lamb’s Ear, multiple roses, Camelot Lavender Foxglove, Chocolate Chip Bugleweed, Husker Red Beardtongue, Edelweiss, a shorter golden daylily, spiderwort, Arctic Glow Globe Thistle and Mystica Beardtongue. I just learned from the Bloom Day post at May Dreams Gardens that the common lily blooming along the west side of our house right now is a “ditch lilly” or Hemerocallis fulva.

For my own notes, the Moonbeam and Tequila Sunrise Coreopsis have a blossom or two. So does the White/Dark Bee Delphinium and the Purple Knockout Salvia. Just getting ready to open are both the Bridal Veil and Key West Astilbe. I just deadheaded the Jupiter’s Beard last night and the Valerian this evening, so we’ll see if they will have another round of blooms.

This (very early) morning started with a huge bang as the first set of seasonal thunderstorms rumbled through the area. After comforting one of our four-legged garden helpers, I tried to get some more sleep. No such luck as yet another storm came through. And another. We decided to spend the morning inside and complete all those house chores I like to forget about if I can be outside in the garden.

After lunch out with a friend we returned home and surveyed the lot. The high winds and torrential downpours really battered some of the plants. The peonies, lambs ear, snow peas, spiderwort, and valerium had either been waterlogged or blown completely over. After trying to shake some water off the spiderwort in hopes of making it stand upright again, I gave up. It was probably going to rain again. It did.

I’m kind of kicking myself because I learned last year the spiderwort tends to collapse outward. But it did so because it was much larger and the weight of the blossoms pulled the stalks away from the center of the plant. I guess now I know as soon as it fills out, I should wrangle it with a pantyhose girdle. Same thing goes with the lamb’s ear. Those flower stalks should have been staked by now. Argh. Next year the peonies will get cages so that should solve the waterlogged blooms bending the plant stalk over. The valerium was collateral damage as it was standing too close to the spiderwort. At least I remembered to effectively rope back the already massive jupiter’s beard.

I’m not sure what to do with the snow peas as they were climbing their fence in their 4’x4′ bed. According to the June 28, 1942 edition of the Sunday Morning Star, peas and pole beans can be given extra reinforcement by twiggy branches. This newspaper mentioning war bonds and victory gardens suggests to “give the plants known to need staking attention early in their career.” So, for next spring, when the afore mentioned plants awake from their winter naps, I’ll be waiting with bamboo stake, twine and pantyhose.