A cool and very very wet spring has made way for hotter and sunnier days, and my garden is in full bloom! Many of the things I planted our first spring here are now mature, and for the first year ever we’ve got hollyhocks blooming everywhere! All the seeds that took seem to be pinks, in a wide range of shades. So, so pretty! Hollyhocks are the sweetest flowers, one of my very favorites!
Other favorites include my Alice Oakleaf Hydrangeas. I have two mature one and may have bought three more at a half off sale I found at the hardware store last week. This is the best time to buy perennials! When stores start slashing prices. Even if they look half dead, with a little love (good watering, garden soil, and the proper amount of sunlight) they will thrive and come back year after year to grace your garden!
I am also very proud of my Lady of Shalott rose from Steve Austin roses. It was a Mother’s Day indulgence, and then the rose suffered from thrips all last year. Thrips are terrible little bugs that get inside flower buds and suck out the nutrients and severely deform the flowers. This year I fed and nurtured all my roses with Rose food and pest control, and they’re all doing a lot better and pretty Lady of Shalott is bug free! (How undignified, that this beautiful lady should have a bug problem, right?!?)
Oh! And I cant forget the Easter Lilies! Lilies I got from church after the Easter season had passed and all the altar flowers were up for grabs! I got a couple of lilies and put them in the garden— this year I snagged an Orchid from the altar flowers 😉 it’s a bit ridiculous perhaps how much I enjoy that ‘end of the Easter season’ traditions. But I can’t resist flowers!
Next up in the garden will be our first harvest of tomatoes! And the herbs are doing well and growing like weeds (as are the weeds!) I’m growing dipping gourds too! I love a good gourd! 😉 Gourds for everyone come fall, lol!~
Well, off for now!~
Chat more later—
~H
Sleightholm Folk Art 
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