Rain! - July 3, 2023

We got a good soaking rain last night.  This ought to bring up those great northern beans we planted about a week ago and help everything else that didn't get watered deeply when we ran the sprinkler one night last week.  

It was so hot last week.  I moved my work station from the back porch to the kitchen table and spent very little time outside.  All around us there had been pop-up showers, and I had put off watering the flower beds in the hope that one would pop up over us.  By the time I poked my head out again, everything in the flower beds was drooping.  I watered the front beds and the zinna bed, but never made it to the phlox/hydrangea bed.  Yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the hydrangeas seriously needed water, but before I could get to it, someone came to get those 18 pounds of cucumbers I'd picked the day before, and I never gave the hydrangeas another thought.  Thank goodness Mother Nature did.

Speaking of the zinnia bed, it makes me so happy.  :)

When I was growing up, we almost always had zinnias, marigolds, and bachelors buttons in the flower bed in front of the house.  I did not like the marigolds because they were stinky, but I liked the colorful zinnias and the soft bachelors buttons.  Many times, all that stuff volunteered the next year.  Until this year, I haven't been able to grow either of those flowers - not enough sun - much less get volunteers.  I may not get any volunteers from these zinnias next year (they're on a hill, and the seeds may get washed down to the pond), but at least I got blooms!  

I planted big zinnias and little zinnias about two weeks apart.  The little zinnias all got washed to the back of the bed and came up thick as cat hair.  I moved some of those to the front bed and left the rest alone.  They are starting to bud and should begin to bloom before the big ones poop out.

There are also perennials in that bed.  Yarrow in the lower left corner, bee balm in the upper left.  Both have already bloomed.  Lavender in the middle.  A few other things whose name I can't remember.  

Here's the phlox/hydrangea bed.  It has been growing wild for years.  Last year, it got its first two hydrangeas when Nanny gave them to me for my birthday and I began to envision a whole bed full of hydrangeas.  Tried to start some cuttings from my old blue hydrangea, got one or two.  Bought two more at the greenhouse this year.  I've just been pulling up great clumps of phlox to make room.  Hopefully, the phlox and hydrangeas will share the space without a fight.

P.S. - Axel goes home today.  This makes me happy, too!  ;)