WHAT'S COMING UP THIS WEEK - ROSES, TRADESCANTIA, GERANIUMS, WEIRD THISTLY THINGS

I should warn you--I've had this digital camera for heaven knows how long now--three or four years--and I still don't know how to do a manual focus on it. Which is why you'll see several of these photos with crisp, clear backgrounds, and the thing I'm trying to photograph is all fuzzy.

A few of these photos are "by request" ones.

Anyway.

So, we're moving from spring to summer now. More and more, I'm understanding the love many people have for tulips. They bridge the gap from daffodils to the summer greenery in your garden. Every day I go out and one more thing is either blossoming or looking like it's about to, and sometimes I am impatient for summer to start already so that I can see what's out there.

But the tulips are there, looking gorgeous. Yes, I know I took photos already, but here they are again, with the hesperis matronalis in the background:



Everyone I know is getting Blue Parrot and Black Parrot Tulip Bulbs for October 21st this year.

Anyway.

I have alluded a bit to what happened with the garden. A little old lady named Dolly lived here her whole life, and she tended the front garden and the part of the back garden closest to the house as a flower garden, and the rest of the back yard was vegetables. When she moved out about 7 years ago or so, the garden was ignored, and has been until now. The man who lived here before us did some quick work to get it up to "sellable" quality, but that mostly just involved killing the worst of the brambles.

It's exciting to see what's coming up. Clearly, Dolly was fond of the color pink, as it seems everything in the front garden is pink. This week, the geraniums:



and carnations:



are just starting to bloom. There are what look to be hollyhocks, lupins, foxgloves, and peonies so far, and something else that I don't recognise.

There are five or six absolutely ancient rosebushes in the front garden. Ancient in the good way--they are huge and healthy and beautiful, and took a lifetime to grow. I often find myself commenting on things to Dolly, and I hope that Mike doesn't catch me or he'll think I've finally lost it.

The roses are in bud now, and although the camera (or at least my photography skills) doesn't do justice to the color of the emerging ones, it is stunning:






Personally, when I go to the garden centre, I mostly escape the pinks, but will almost certainly walk out with something purple. This week, I was violently assaulted by a Senetti that insisted on coming home with me, and now resides on the front steps:



Next to some violas that I brought home from work LAST AUGUST and don't ever seem to want to stop flowering:



Mind you, I do have one or two pink things that I planted. For example, the dicentra, which is looking very lovely underneath the apple trees:



There are some interesting wildflowers coming up next to the dicentra, and I like them so I'm letting them grow. I looked up what they are, but I can't remember now. But they're a really nice blue:



There are also some thistly-looking things elsewhere in the garden, and I don't THINK they're wildflowers, but they've clearly naturalised themselves, whatever they are. They're really cool:



and more purple than that photograph would lead you to believe. This photo of the purple geraniums (mine, of course) also turned out bluer than reality:



The polemonium I planted is starting to flower as well:



and, as you can see, it's planted in front of a ceanothus, and a water butt. Heh. I can't believe that thing is called a water butt. When Mike first told me that, I didn't believe it. A Water Butt is a thing that you collect rainwater in, so that you can water your garden with it or whatever. In addition to the Water Butt itself, you can purchase a Butt Pump at most fine garden centres.

I am still laughing, even as I type this.

Also blooming this week is the tradescantia which is growing in a planter up against the wall of the shed:



and lilies of the valley, which are planted around the pond, and also in a small planter next to the patio:





I was asked to take a photo of the pond itself, as I had taken some shots of the pond from a distance, so here it is in its enormous entirety:



That wooden plank you see in the photo is my Frog Ramp. I read somewhere that you should have a little ramp in the pond in case little frogs had trouble climbing the sides to get out, or if a hedgehog happened to fall in.

What you may not be able to see from that photo is the lurking frog:





I love the frogs. Nobody lurks like a frog. The other day, there were EIGHT frogs out there, all lurking. Lurk. Lurk. They're great.

Speaking of animals, here are finally some photos of the ferrets! First, the three all together:



(clockwise from the left, that would be Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates)

And then here are two of Socrates, who was the only one who sat still long enough for me to photograph him:





Whew! Time to go back to napping or something.