Garden Fair Week: Early summer edition, June 7-12

Welcome to the Garden Fair! So sorry that it started a day late. Blogger decided to have a bit of a break that ceased all publishing.

So, link up pictures of your garden, your friend's garden, the public garden, the botanical garden. Wherever you find beautiful flowers! The Linky is at the end of the post and will be up through Saturday at 11:59 PM. Allow the gardening fun to begin!

Come and take an early walk through my gardens. I'm a little behind on my weeding. Remember also that we are in zone 5, so we really can't get on the growing stick until at earliest May 15.

An onion that has gone to seed. It was a leftover onion from last year, but I think that their blooms are just beautiful. The planter from Mrs. H-. Such a gorgeous thank you gift. She didn't have to do that! I was happy to help! I wished that we had scratch and sniff monitors. The lavender is planted under my garden window and bedroom window. It smells wonderful. One of the three mystery tomatoes that I have. I accidentally flipped my flat of seedlings when I was trying to see if my heat mat was heating. (It was.) Since I had all of these gorgeous little seedlings all over the place, I decided to keep them and let the mystery live. We'll find out what type of tomatoes they are when they come on. They are either non-GMO Arkansas Travelers, Pearly Pinks or Sun Golds. Again with the tomato. I companion planted them with onions and basil. The peppers. The one nearest is the red pepper that I grew from seed. The further one is the Garden Fair pepper that K- brought home from school. You bring a plant home, grow it all summer long, then like the County Fair, you bring it back and earn ribbons and stuff. Teaches the kids to care for things. It isn't too bad! Look! We have baby green peppers coming on!
A pot of miscellaneous flowers. Well, and a freebie plant stake from work. These were all a little sparse-looking a few weeks ago. The roses. I have this climbing rose that blooms and has nice blooms for about a day. Still, it came with the house and keeps coming back. The parsley went to seed and I needed to bind it up a bit. It was attacking us when we got out of our cars. Since, Hubs has nearly impaled his arm on the tines, so I had to mark them with brightly colored cable ties. Very garden attractive, I tell you. The pot that was on the front porch prior to Mrs. H-'s gift. They are along with the Black Eyed Susans that are coming along nicely. (Never mind the weeds.) A Rose of Sharon and some Goose Necks. The Rose of Sharon was a transplant stick that was given to us about 4 years ago. Last year, we had one tiny little bloom. This year, it seems to have really taken off. We should call this "Hail-leluia!" We had a hail storm last week with about 20 minutes of non-stop shooter marble-pea sized hail. The milkweed wasn't impressed. Speaking of, it wants to bloom! See! The ants love it probably as much as the Monarchs do! The clematis that I purchased with the Mother's Day gift certificate from Hubs and K-. It is now happily climbing the vine arbor. Daisies from Irina. She's since moved to Montreal, but she worked with me for a few years at the gallery. It is because of Irina that I can speak very broken Russian. Midnight Sage on its way out. It was a thank you gift from a friend several years ago. We both share a love for purple. Ah, and tomato blossoms. The tomato by the steps appears to be a cherry variety. The Gerbera Daisy that Hubs and K- gave to me with my Mom's Day gift certificate. It is in a lovely adopted planter on the back porch. The parsley working on blooming. We're good with it blooming. We plant it and have it mostly as a host plant for caterpillars. Usually by mid-summer, it is loaded! The flowering lemon thyme. If you infuse apple juice with lemon thyme and pineapple sage, it makes one mean jelly! Delicious! Yellow yarrow. One of the original bed plants that we purchased when we first put the beds in next to the house. They used to be perennial beds, but the bed size wasn't large enough for the plants. We moved the perennials to the back and made the side beds one long herb garden. It's nice to be able to step out in November, snow on the ground, and still pull fresh parsley, sage and thyme for the Thanksgiving turkey. Lime Green Nicotiana. They were planted many, many years ago from seed that I purchased from Baker Creek Seeds. They come up every single year now. Soapwort. They have these delicate little purple baubles that come out from their middles. Beautiful! A perennial grown from seed in my garden window a few years ago. Peonies from my husbands Grandmother's plant. Aunt Debbie gave me a split when we first moved here. They grow big and gorgeous. Flowering, low-growing sedum. A very nice ground cover. Clover from my sister's house. I did purposely plant this last year. Butterflies find it very juicy. When I brought it home and planted it, it instantly died. I was bummed then, but delighted now when I found that it came back this year!
The miscellaneous planted pot that we have with K-'s picnic table under her swing set tower. Her grandma bought her the petunia and I dropped some verbena in for fun. Volunteer snapdragons. It has probably been 8 years since I've planted snapdragons and they come up in the same place in the driveway every single year. I've stopped fighting it and I enjoy them. Maiden pinks. Another perennial that I grew in the garden window. Blogger decided to go on the fritz and it was a good thing. Look at what I found bloomed when I got home! These are some Asiatic lilies that I purchase from Breck's probably 5 years ago. They had a coupon for $25.00 off $25.00 and since I have absolutely no pride about using a coupon, I ended only paying $1.05 for a bakers dozen of an assortment of Asiatics. White yarrow. This came from my friend's field. She has an organic chicken farm. This was before the chicken days, but the yarrow is so happy this year, that it seeded itself into a pot out back and is happily growing and blooming away.

We're excited to see what you are growing or see growing as you are out and about!



As a polite thing, please do not use photos featured in any of the links in the Garden Fair without express permission of the blog owner. Feel free to use my Garden Fair Week logo. Thanks!