Late June in the garden...

Thanks to the lovely rain showers last week, the spindly annuals I  grew from seed and plopped into the ground , are looking promising .  Despite once again mixing up all the labels. I've just bunged them  in to any bare patch. So, I could be seeing : Zinna 'red spider', Maltese cross 'dawn sky', Centaurea americana, Four O'clock 'Fairy trumpets and Browallia 'Blue lady' …

 There have been few changes to the back planting.  I've swapped Panicum grass for the  taller Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster' . Most of the Bronze fennel I grew from seed have gone, replaced with various other things I had around . 

All my adopted Figs have survived being repotted last summer, all six of them  , plus the two I already had,  are  rewarding me with figs, figs, figs !

And lastly one of my favorite plant combinations this month.

New June blooms..

I thought I'd post some of my new blooms , as I didn't show anything but poppies  on  GBBD.
Calycanthus'Hartlage wine' planted in the shade garden a few weeks ago. It's a beauty !

Ratibida columnifera 

Lillum canadenes var coccineum  , something new for my mostly red area. 

Grass pea grown from seed , it's a little spindly still , but a few blooms .

I  wanted something meadow like to fill this pot , so I  sowed Jobs Tears and grass peas  seeds  .  I'll see how it gets on through the summer .

An early morning clearance...

I got out and dug up the Japanese Anemone , day lilies and huge fern from the south/west facing corner at the back of the house. It gets the late afternoon sun. Those plants hated the summer heat. I  don't want another summer of this miserable , crispy  corner, so out they went. The Acanthus Mollis …not sure about yet !

I've been trying to get rid of a Japanese Anemone in another area,..not so easy, every tiny bit of root will grow back.
So, I'll be picking through this area for awhile . 

June blooms...

June has been a month full of blooms. I started the year by entering all my blooms for each month in my note book. I was doing really well , till June came, I couldn't keep up with them.
But, my favorite June bloom is the poppy.

And the bloom has been getting around . Even the big shaggy ones I tried to pull out before it had a chance to reseed .

Happy June Bloom day ! Visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens for many more June blooms.

Pond seating area

My little pond area has finally filled in . At least for the summer months, I'm still waiting for the evergreen shrubs to gain some height.   It's almost shady , at least till  the afternoon.
The big fat clump of Miscathus sinensis that was next to the pond had to be relocated, it had become as big as the stock tank. So two potted figs, poppies and a cucumber have moved in  .

A change of plan...

I did plan to make use of the dozens of terra-cotta pots I've collected , by  using them to sow annual seeds.  Just prick out most of them  and have pots of sweet blooms all summer ! But no, I 'mt tired of picking clinging snails off the pots.

So this week they are all being stuffed willy nilly into the bare patches in the garden.

I think it's the best idea , the snails will have slither through my sandy soil  to get at them.

And since it's going to be a rainy week !

Echinacea pallida and Eryngium superbum

Sometimes I plant out things I grow from seed , and , well forget about them.  They often don't bloom in the first year.
Echinacea pallida I grew last spring , I dotted the tiny plants  between other plants . Hoping they would survive; and here is my first bloom !

It took a bit of searching through old seed orders to find this one . Eryngium alpinum superbum …I bought the seeds   in 2014 . So , it's taken two years for these to bloom . It's a perennial , not a biennial , so I don't know where it's been hiding. 

Poppies

After a sweltering yesterday and more for today. Early this  morning the Poppies were out !